FROM THE CITIZENS' PERSPECTIVE . . .
WHAT'S HAPPENING IN THE HUNTER MILL ROAD CORRIDOR
Private Girls School Seeks Location on Hunter Mill Golf Park Property
Public hearing for Oakcrest School - February 4 at 8:15 pm.
(Special Exception Application SE 2009- DR-008)
Oakcrest School, presently located on Balls Hill Road in McLean , proposes to relocate to the back 22 acres of the Hunter Mill golf driving range. It is a private school of general education for girls grades six through twelve.
Features of the application:
Fairfax County development is guided by a Comprehensive Plan that is updated with citizen and staff input every four years.
The Plan is an integrated scheme for County development that balances residential and commercial building with schools, transportation, and other infrastructure elements.
Some schools, but not all, are approved for location in a planned and zoned residential area. The key issue for the Planning Commission is whether a school’s operations are compatible with the established planning and zoning of the area and do not overburden roads, create safety hazards, or change the character of its surroundings.
At the public hearing, residents of the Hunter Mill community can support the School’s application or make the case that its proposed operations are too intense to be compatible with the neighborhoods surrounding the Hunter Mill Golf Park site.
The School’s proposal would permit five hundred forty (540) people to use the site daily from an entrance on either Crowell or Hunter Mill Road. Compare this level of activity with the use by thirty (30) people in the eleven homes now allowable under current planning and zoning requirements. The traffic, safety, and visual impacts on the daily lives of nearby and distant residents of our community will be severe.
In 1988/89, due to traffic congestion, Fairfax Christian School was required to cap enrollment at 300 students and 60% of students were to arrive by bus.
The Planning Commission can recommend to deny, approve, or defer a decision on the application to encourage negotiation between the School and the community. The Commission is required by the Comprehensive Plan to “rigorously review” any Special Exception application for sites such as the Golf Park property. The requirement was imposed to assure that an accumulation of non-residential, quasi-commercial uses does not result in a de facto re-planning and re-zoning of the property.
The Planning Commission is made up of one Commissioner appointed by the Supervisor of each Fairfax County Magisterial District, plus three At Large members.
The Victoria Farms neighborhood abuts the subject site. It has negotiated independently with Oakcrest School for a fence barring ingress and egress from their neighborhood to the school.
Representatives of nearby neighborhoods and individual landowners have met with the applicant and with Dranesville Supervisor John Foust and Commissioner Jay Donahue to persuade them that the School’s proposed high level of activity will have negative short and long-term impacts on the established low density planning and zoning of the area. They have been unable to engage the School in negotiations to meet concerns about increased traffic, hours of operation, intensity of use, and the “domino effect” on nearby land.
In a November 5, 2009 report, the Fairfax County planning staff recommended denial of the current Oakcrest School application. This report is available at: http://ldsnet.fairfaxcounty.gov/ldsnet/ldsdwf/4301975.PDF. The staff is preparing an Addendum. No release date is available. At this time, the hearing before the Planning Commission is schedule for February 4 at 8:15 pm.
RECOMMENDATION: Deny the current Oakcrest School application until the applicant has addressed the important concerns of Hunter Mill Community residents.
The use is too intense, the traffic impacts are too great, and the proposed use strongly deviates from the comprehensive plan language calling for low density residential development. There is a 45 year history of citizen, planning staff, planning commission, and Board of Supervisor support for maintaining low density residential development on this site. In 2008, Supervisor Cathy Hudgins and Supervisor Joan DuBois initiated a twelve-month Special Study of this and related sites. The citizen task force and hundreds of citizens living in the Hunter Mill Road corridor unanimously supported retention of this low density buffer at the edge of Reston. The Board of Supervisors unanimously agreed with citizen task force and hundreds of citizens.
For additional information, call Jody at 703 759 5712. Jody Bennett serves as liaison between the applicant and community. Bennett is also Chair of the HMDL Land Use Committee.