One of the developer-initiated comprehensive plan amendments from last fall's slew of 20 will likely bite the dust next week at the county level.
Washington Homes is requesting that Victoria Station, a 15-acre tract located west of Cascades Parkway on the north side of Victoria Station Drive, be rezoned to allow high-density housing on land that's currently zoned for office buildings.
The applicant was requesting permission to build up to 180 units.
At Monday's Transportation/Land Use committee meeting, supervisors voted to forward the Victoria Station application to the July 5 business meeting with no recommendation — more than an hour after the committee voted to forward it with a recommendation of denial.
"Especially on these plan amendments, I think it’s best to do this in daylight," said Planning Director Julie Pastor.
Victoria Station isn't the first of last fall's developer-initiated comprehensive plan amendments, or CPAMs, to be rejected or possibly rejected. While the county planning staff recommended rejecting all but three of the amendments, the Planning Commission accepted 14 for review.
Two of the amendments were pulled by developers. One of them, Diamond Lakes, would have built a small city around a baseball stadium. Major League Baseball decided to locate in Washington, D.C. instead, and Diamond Lakes became moot.
THE COMMITTEE also voted to forward another comprehensive plan amendment to the July 5 meeting, also with no recommendation.
Pearson Reserve was a CPAM submitted to the county last spring.
The land comprises five parcels totaling 24 acres just west of Herndon on Old Ox Road. The application requests a change from business use to high-density residential in order to build 183 townhouses.
The land east of Pearson Reserve is residential, while the undeveloped land to its west is zoned for commercial and industrial use — a juxtaposition that worried both staff and some supervisors.
"A concern has been raised about the domino effect," said Supervisor Mick Staton (R-Sugarland Run), who is chairman of the Transportation/Land Use committee.
Pastor agreed, noting that the owners of the undeveloped parcels to the west might note the Pearson conversion to high-density residential and want to do the same.
"They could come in and say, 'Oh, the board's going for residential,'" Pastor said.
Supervisor Stephen Snow (R-Dulles), however, was not convinced that the land west of Pearson Reserve would necessarily go residential as well.
"The domino thing is not a thing that could be actualized," Snow said.
"What everyone forgets is that we need places for workers to live," Snow said.
IN OTHER business, the committee dispensed quickly with rezoning of a formerly contentious piece of land.
Last November, the Board of Supervisors voted to settle a lawsuit filed by Roma Dawson and Greenvest LC regarding Dawson's 225-acre tract in southern Loudoun, which the county had refused to rezone to allow 224 houses in 2001.
Dawson was Snow's campaign treasurer, but despite calls from minority supervisors to recuse himself from the vote, Snow voted to settle the lawsuit.
In the terms of the settlement, the county agreed to rezone the land, so Monday's discussion was cursory. While county staff noted the need for "further discussion of the outstanding issue regarding the adequacy of capital facilities" — meaning the land is located in a rural part of the county with few amenities — no discussion occurred at the committee level.
The Dawson rezoning was also forwarded to the July 5 Board of Supervisors meeting with a recommendation of approval.