It looks good, but is it too big?
That was the consensus among members of the citizens task force on Tuesday, in response to the first viewing of plans for the new Burke Centre Virginia Railway Express (VRE) garage, located on Roberts Road in Burke.
At Tuesday’s meeting, members of the task force showed overwhelming support for the design of the structure but expressed reservations with the size and number of spaces it would contain.
“I’m a bit disappointed. This was one of the fundamentally big issues,” said Steve Schrobo, who chaired the task force’s operations committee during the year it met, beginning in September 2003.
The task force’s concerns stemmed from the fact that their final recommendation to Supervisor Sharon Bulova (D-Braddock) and to Fairfax County staff expressed a desire for the garage to contain a maximum of 1,100 spaces. At Tuesday’s presentation, the plan, delivered by Ken Lim of the Fairfax County Department of Public Works and Environmental Services and representatives from the architectural firm Wisnewski Blair and Associates in Alexandria showed 1,450 parking spaces within the structure and 300 spaces outside.
The Burke Centre VRE parking garage will be constructed at the existing location of the park-and-ride lot, on Premier Court, located off Roberts Parkway in Burke Centre. Commuters had outgrown the existing facility — which has space for approximately 600 parking spaces — and money was set aside in the transportation portion of the Fairfax County bond referendum, which voters passed in November.
THE BUILDING PLAN, as presented by Pat Halpin and Jim Polhamus of Wisnewski Blair, calls for a four-story building, 500 feet long and 180 feet wide, with five levels for parking, including the roof of the garage. Along the south side of the garage, an access road would be constructed to allow access to the garage entrance at its southeast corner. Each level of the garage would contain about 300 spaces, and per the recommendation of Walker Parking, which also worked on the design of the structure, the entrance/exit ramps on each level would be kept separate from the parking spaces. The garage’s exit would be at the southeast corner, and outside parking, approximately 300 spaces, would be in two separate lots, one on the west and one on the east side. The existing recreation field to the east of the garage would remain intact.
Several of the recommendations of the task force were incorporated directly into the design of the building. Burke Centre trustee Sam DiBartolo was given credit for the idea of a clock tower, which would rise from the building’s northern side, maintaining the “small-town” look for which task force members were aiming. Other ideas, like planters along one end and a predominantly brick surface, were also task force recommendations that came to fruition.
“This design goes a long way toward meeting the task force’s recommendations,” said Janyce Hedetniemi, chair of the Braddock District Council and a task force member. “The only sticking point is the size of the garage.”
IN ADDITION to the garage’s size, those at the meeting expressed a desire for the county to move forward on construction of a pedestrian bridge that would cross over the VRE tracks, to allow pedestrian access from the north. Bulova said that while the architects working on the garage project weren’t tasked to incorporate such a bridge, the design lends itself to linking with a bridge, which could be built through a separate project but be ready when the garage opens.
“This facility is built in anticipation of there being a pedestrian bridge,” said Bulova.
The construction would take place in five phases, some of which would decrease the current parking spaces by nearly half. The timeline for the entire project from start to finish is approximately 17-20 months. The major construction work, in Phase 2, would take 12-13 months and would consume nearly 300 parking spaces, meaning parking would need to be found elsewhere. One option, said Bulova, is to build the parking lot for the new Burke Centre Library, located on Freds Oak Road and the Fairfax County Parkway, first, allowing commuters to park there.
The primary concern of those at the meeting, however, wasn’t parking, but traffic. Those in Burke Centre, especially several on the Board of Trustees, expressed a concern about the new garage becoming a “hub,” rather than a community lot. They implored Bulova to decrease the size of the garage, so less traffic would run through the area, and to discourage those who currently use the Rolling Road VRE lot from coming to the Burke Centre garage.
Bulova said she was taking a long-term approach to the garage.
“I think it would be a mistake to build something small, then come back years later and try to add on,” she said, promising to consider the concerns of the task force before the community presentation on the garage, which will be Feb. 16 at 7:30 p.m. at Bonnie Brae Elementary in Fairfax.
“I will give your strong feelings some thought and consult with my staff,” said Bulova.