This is the text of the March 19 letter written by McLean Planning Commission vice president, Herb Becker, to Dranesville Planning Commissioner Joan DuBois.
Dear Commissioner DuBois and other Commission Members:
I am one of more than 65,000 McLean Planning District residents who would benefit from the generous proffer to augment the planned Civic Place Village Green in the McLean Community Business Center. As you know, this would be done through the Lowell Avenue abandonment option now in the Area Plan. I urge you and your colleagues to retain the current Plan language that would bring a fully functional and memorable public space to reality, as envisioned in the remainder of the Plan. Only a potentially resolvable technicality, and a few design changes, stand in the way of fulfilling this portion of the Plan’s vision for a South Village with a pedestrian-oriented and engaging sense of place — at no cost to the public.
I urge you not to let a vocal few derail the full potential of an important planned community amenity, such as a fully augmented Green. With the loss of Evans Farm, McLean needs a vibrant and inviting business core to help regain a part of its sense of community that was lost.
Since time is short, let me briefly address the salient issues that have unnecessarily clouded this significant urban design opportunity:
PROPERTY RIGHTS ISSUES: The entire north side of Lowell Avenue will be developed by Madison Homes, which does not object to the partial abandonment. In fact, Madison has proffered to fund development of an augmented Green with significantly added potential as an urban public event and gathering space. Despite his concerns, Dr. Gordon Davis’s property on the south side of Lowell is almost unaffected by the abandonment option if the remainder of the block remains a public street. His property still would have full access from four directions, and all his frontage would be left intact. The fire station would lose only unused frontage and the inclusion of its public property, facing the Green, into the Green would significantly augment the Green’s full potential.
FIRE STATION ISSUES: Access to the fire station’s fire sprinkler connection could be provided easily by creative widening of the pedestrian walkways on the augmented Green. Direct access to the Station’s storage and display area remains unhindered by abandonment further up the street. Elimination of the Lowell/Laughlin intersection would remove a hazardous vehicular conflict point as the fire apparatus leave the station. The fire station should be an integral part of the community and part of the Civic Place Green, not a private entity that distrusts the conduct of its own public.
The station rarely, if ever, uses the difficult turn into Lowell, which is only 28 feet wide at the station and lacks “no parking” signs to make its use safe. If Lowell were part of the station’s service routing, it would have asked that Lowell be widened and the signs installed long ago. Since the excess open space around the station is public land, its benefit to the public should be maximized, not relegated to an unused private domain of the station. This is true, particularly in light of the significant and rare opportunity to make this now-wasted space part of a special and inviting public space that is directly and intrinsically consistent with the Community’s overall vision for its CBC.
LEGAL ISSUES: The Commission must think outside the box in weighing the relative public and private interests involved in this decision. Do the imagined, unproved, and shifting access, business, delivery and property value concerns of one tangential property owner outweigh the opportunity of more than 65,000 McLean citizens, businesses, and office workers to enjoy an enhanced identity for their CBC and a very special gathering place? That is the ultimate question, not the legal obscurities of public access easement law and the aged precepts of VDOT, which are subject to enlightenment.
I urge you to keep in mind that in legal challenges of public policy decisions, the courts are predisposed to rule in favor of the elected/appointed decision-maker where the issue is “fairly debatable by reasonable people” and the decision’s result is clearly in the public interest.
Clearly, a decision in favor of retaining the Lowell abandonment option is such an instance. Also, I believe case law supports the existing abandonment option.
SITUATION REVERSAL: Hypothetically, if a fully functional Civic Place Green already existed and was fulfilling its significant potential as a major community amenity, economically and socially, would you be declined to destroy the Green and extend Lowell through it?
TRAFFIC CIRCULATION: If there is a street in the McLean CBC that is least needed, it is Lowell. The Lowell/Laughlin intersection will present a dangerous conflict point as fire apparatus depart the station, particularly during a future public event on the Green. Lowell was originally developed as part of a dense residential street grid that has been redeveloped over time into commercial uses. It is flanked on each side by more important through streets: Whittier, the informal bypass of this quadrant of the CBC, and Chain Bridge Road, McLean’s main retail street. Lowell is a minor street, just two blocks long, and is not a circulator of vital importance to the CBC.
VDOT AND CREATIVE URBAN DESIGN: As downtowns revitalize, particularly the way reinvestment is taking place in the McLean CBC, VDOT should be encouraged to adopt selective innovations such as public access changes (like street abandonments to other public uses) to achieve an overwhelming public purpose, such as we have here. One way to achieve this is wise and challenging decisions by local governance in the face of only apparently irrevocable, but outdated, VDOT policies. I hope local officials, seeking innovative urban design in our revitalizing business cores, have the will to challenge VDOT in these cases, in the name of progress.
Some have said that an efficient CBC is needed for their “life management.” I agree, but it is also needed as a community-building gathering place, one of those third places where we gather after home and work, according to Ray Oldenburg in his book, “The Great Good Place.” To that end, we must create the best “Great Good Place” possible, at the Civic Place Green, in the public interest.
I urge you and your colleagues to see beyond largely illusory obstacles to an enhanced Civic Place Green. I ask you to summon the will to extend the envelope of good an beneficial urban design. In so doing, you responsibly take full advantage of, and recognize, a very creative Area Plan, the Community’s vision for the CBC, and the significant proffering extended by a developer who gained equally significant bonus density in exchange for an augmented village green on the Lowell ROW and other amenities.
Please retain the adopted Area Plan’s Lowell abandonment option for flexibility in creating a Green that will be a major community asset.
Herb Becker, Vice President
McLean Planning Committee