Loudoun resident Michael Digennaro had thought he had asked the right questions, so he and his wife Darlene bought a home in Loudoun Valley Estates, settling in January.
Digennaro did not know that Toll Brothers, Inc. had filed a rezoning request in July 2002 to rezone the neighboring Loudoun Valley Estates II from one unit per acre to a PDH-4 zoning district, or Planned Development Housing with four units per acre, turning the development into a mixed-use community with a retail and a community center. The proposed change increases the density from a by-right development of 710 single-family units to nearly 3,200 attached and detached units on 865 acres west of Broad Run. Loudoun Valley Associates, L.P., a subsidiary of Toll Brothers, owns the property.
The Digennaros found out about the request in July after they had moved in. "To me I felt it’s a fraud. We lived in that house and that question was asked," Digennaro told Antonio Calabrese of Cooley Godward LLP, the zoning and land use counsel representing Toll Brothers, at a town hall meeting on Sept. 4. "None of the salespeople know what’s going on in the Loudoun Valley Estates II property. So what’s going on here is making me angry."
TOLL BROTHERS proposed additional changes to the rezoning request in an attempt to appease Digennaro and the other residents. The developer had met with the residents twice before the town hall meeting to find out what they wanted to see in Loudoun Valley Estates II. They are concerned that the increase in density would bring more traffic and schoolchildren to the area, require additional infrastructure and come too close to some of their homes.
Forty to 50 residents showed up at the town hall meeting to learn about the proposed changes, specifically in two land bays near Loudoun Valley Estates, Brambleton, Forest Manor and Forest Ridge.
"We apologized to you before. We apologize again," Calabrese said. "This is a very public process. There is no hiding of this case."
Toll Brothers originally proposed building 3.7 units per acre, but re-planned the site to have 200 fewer units and a density of 3.4 units per acre in a proposed summary that has not yet been presented to the county. The county’s General Plan allows the site to have four units per acre, a density proposed since 1985 in the Dulles North planning area.
"This area has been planned for significantly sized communities," Calabrese said.
Toll Brothers proposes reducing the density from 3,184 units to 2,961 units, most of the reduction coming from land bays 6 and 7, smaller sections of the overall development located southwest of the Dulles Greenway. The two land bays sit on open, flat land that was previously used for farming and are suitable for the originally proposed type of development, Calabrese said. "We did listen. We did listen intently to the passion, the comments and the suggestions," he said, explaining that the plan has been "dramatically altered." "We continue to evolve our plan."
TOLL BROTHERS proposes:
* Reducing land bays 6 and 7 from 916 multi-family units to 340 units. The units include 140 single-family detached units next to Brambleton and 200 carriage units, or triplexes with staggered fronts, at the southern end of Loudoun Valley Estates II. The carriage units are located next to Loudoun County and Claiborne parkways and will be placed next to a proffered school site and a planned retail center of up to 100,000 feet.
* Placing a 50-foot buffer between Loudoun Valley Estates II at Route 772, or Ryan Road, and to the south to separate the development from the nearby properties with trees and open space.
* Reducing the number of multi-family units, which is currently planned at 1,108 units in land bays 4, 6 and 7, to an undetermined number and placing the units in land bays 3 and 4 at the southern end of the property.
* Providing 140 acres of tree-save throughout the site.
Toll Brothers plans to increase transportation and capital facilities proffers, including adding two road projects and providing financial contributions. The proffers include:
* Constructing four lanes of Loudoun County Parkway between Ryan Road and
Creighton Road instead of two lanes, building out a 2.33-mile section of the roadway.
"Loudoun County Parkway will be our spine road as Route 659 is for Brambleton. We want this road to deserve the name parkway," Calabrese said. "This will be an essential regional road. It’s not just a road serving our property."
Constructing portions of two lanes of Claiborne Parkway and Creighton Road. The financial value of the transportation proffers is $22.5 million, Calabrese said. As for the capital facility proffers, they include:
* Retaining a 31-acre proffer for an elementary or middle school site.
* Constructing five ball fields on a 31-acre site.
* Providing about $30 million in financial proffers for capital facilities.
"Sometimes money is important if the county has a site to build," Calabrese said in response to complaints that Brambleton proffered four school sites compared to Loudoun Valley Estates II proffering one site. Brambleton is twice the size, planned for 6,200 detached and attached units.
"Twenty million in [transportation] proffers you’re giving us won’t serve the people in Loudoun Valley Estates," said Planning Commissioner Wendell Hansen (Dulles), who attended the meeting. "You’re going to have a hard time trying to see your houses until you build these roads."
"It takes time to build major infrastructure. You can’t have public amenities from day one," Calabrese said in response, adding that Toll Brothers will accelerate improvements "where it makes sense."
TOLL BROTHERS has been developing projects in Loudoun for the past 12 years and has seen an increase in the proffer requirements, Calabrese said. "The county has set higher standards. If we don’t meet them, we don’t get approved."
"The yardstick is capital facility contributions — the yardstick the county used to measure rezoning applications," said Jim Smith, vice-president of Toll Brothers.
Calabrese told the residents they helped Toll Brothers improve the Loudoun Valley Estates II proposal. "This is a dramatic step for the better," he said.
Board of Supervisors chairman Scott York does not think so.
"It’s the wrong plan," said York (R-At large), who also attended the meeting. "It’s way too much density and not enough on the proffers to mitigate the impacts on the community. … I’m very concerned about the overall density, and the 200 homes do not give me a warm fuzzy feeling. They haven’t explained why by-right is not good enough for them."
Hansen agreed. "I think Toll Brothers has got to tweak the picture before I would want to see it come in Loudoun County. I would like to see less density than the 2,900 units they’re planning now," he said. "I believe their road proffers are small, only enough to serve their project. … Their school proffer is not enough. … With the proffers they’re giving right now, I don’t think they deserve more than 1,200 to 1,500 units."
For Thomas Julia, Brambleton resident, Toll Brothers’ proposed plans show a significant improvement from the previous proposal. However, "many of us feel we need to get straight information from the get-go," he said.
The Planning Commission will review Toll Brother’s summary during a work session today. If the summary is accepted, it will be submitted formally to the commission and potentially the Board of Supervisors for final approval.
"It’s up to the commission how they would like to move forward with that," said Van Armstrong, program manager for the county Department of Planning, adding that for the county process, "It’s a little difficult to determine the timeline."