The wall shall come tumbling down.
The Fairfax County Board of Zoning Appeals decided Tuesday morning that a 10-foot-high masonry wall that stretches across the front of the property at 6531 Georgetown Pike, currently owned by Veena Railan, is too tall and was constructed without a building permit.
Railan, who has lived in the house for more than a year, built the wall to block noise and lights from Langley High School, whose parking lot is directly in front of his home. Zoning requirements limit the height of a wall in front of a property to be no more than four feet high.
Before the board’s public hearing session, Railan requested the hearing be deferred so he could complete the special permit application to keep the wall and receive the results of a noise study he requested.
Mary Anne Ty, the zoning officer assigned to this case, said his request should be denied. “Mr. Railan had four months to apply for a special use permit before today’s hearing and did not file,” she said. Her report also said the wall was “not in harmony” with the homes in the community near Railan.
Thomas Moore, president of the Langley Oaks Home Owners Association, James Robertson, representing the McLean Citizens Association, and Cuneyt Oge, a direct neighbor of Railan, also spoke against a deferral.
Board member James Hart asked Ty when the board first learned of Railan’s request for a deferral and was told he submitted it on May 2.
“Why did you wait so long to request a deferral?” Hart asked Railan.
“We have not yet received our noise study,” he said. “All I can request is that I receive due process like anyone else.”
THE BOARD VOTED to deny Railan his deferral and proceeded with the public hearing, giving Railan a chance to plead his case for keeping the wall.
“We did not put up the metal fence. It was there before we moved in,” he stated, adding that after speaking with Robinson and the MCA, he understood that there was no problem with the metal fence but the large wall behind it.
“Our plan was to put decorations or stone on the front of the wall, but we’ve stopped doing that until we knew what the decision would be,” Railan said. “We wouldn’t mind planting trees between the metal fence and the wall to hide it. But please put yourself into our shoes … you can hear all the noise coming from the school, from football games or cars going into and out of the parking lot.”
He can hear the public announcement system from the school in his home, he said. “I feel we should comply with the laws. If we could get a special permit [to keep the wall], we’d like to have that option as due process,” he said.
Robertson told the board that if the wall were built as a sound buffer, it would not achieve that purpose because of two passages in the wall to accommodate the circular driveway in front of the house. “Sound will go through that opening and defeat the whole purpose,” he said.
“There are people in our association that are closer to the fields and the school than Mr. Railan and have found other ways to live with the noise,” Moore said. “It’s not a case of a public facility being constructed after he moved it. There are other ways to block sound.”
Oge said he and his family moved into their house, located to the west of Railan, in 1987 and have managed to use other methods to block out the sound from the high school.
“It’s true that you don’t realize the noise until you’re living in the house,” he said, adding that his house is also near a Montessori school and a church.
“Trees are not supposed to be used as sound barriers, but they do a good job blocking out the noise,” he said, as he’s planted several rows of trees in front of his own home.
Railan said the location of his driveway, directly across from the Langley parking lot, makes his home more directly affected by the noise from the school than his neighbors. “We’ve been told to buy earplugs to keep the noise out, but that’s just not a practical solution,” he said.
Because the metal wall did not need a building permit to be constructed, Hart recommended that portion of the appeal be dropped.
The board then voted unanimously that the zoning administrator’s recommendations be adhered to and found the wall in violation of the zoning ordinance. Railan still has the option to file for a special use permit when the results of the noise study are received, he said