To the Editor:
The majority of you assume you will not be directly impacted by the water run off or restricted views which are the almost inevitable impact of the proposed subdivision and development on Vassar Road behind President Ford’s former house, a property listed on the National Register of Historic Places, in the beautiful historic neighborhood of Clover.
However, this is not true. Permitting this subdivision to go ahead will adversely affect every person who lives in Alexandria. It will set a catastrophic precedent for all future subdivisions and development across the whole of the City of Alexandria.
According to Planning Commission records for the last five years, the number of lots used for comparative purposes within a neighborhood is between 15 and 72. The purpose of comparable lots is to ensure that the feel of the neighborhood remains even when a plot is subdivided.
Therefore, with Lloyds Lane, the city chose to draw just 15 comparables, as this was the number of large lots which surrounded the new subdivision. In the development in north Old town, near Pendleton Street, the city drew 72 comparables, which comprised of all the houses on the blocks which touched the new development.
With the development in Clover, however, the city is setting a new precedent. It has chosen to use 159 comparables.
This is an unprecedented number. It more than doubles the number of comparables used in any previous subdivision case in the past five years in Alexandria. This stinks of the worst kind of gerrymandering — changing the size and shape of districts to influence a result.
City staff has done this because the comparables within 15 houses or 20 houses or even 72 houses would have meant they would have had to write a staff report against the Vassar Road subdivision. None of the plots within this number would have been even close to the new reduced size that the developers are trying to push through. The lot frontage of even the smallest two comparable lots is more than 24 feet larger than the frontage of the new proposed subdivided lot.
Instead, by expanding the number of comparables to 159 lots, it meant they could include Vassar Place, where houses are on a 360 degree circular cul-de-sac. The inclusion of these lots inserted six lots uniquely smaller in width and frontage than the other two lots in the group of comparables. Even with these smaller lots, the subdivided lot on Vassar Road is still smaller in lot width than any of the comparable lots.
This is a dangerous precedent. It means that by more than doubling the number of permissible comparables, any developer in the future can require the city staff to do the same again. This means that the large lot on Lloyds Lane, which the developers wish to divide into two, still relatively large, lots could potentially be divided into four lots in future. If the city was required to follow its own precedent and use 159 comparables in the Lloyds Lane area, for example, they would be pulling in the much smaller lots which surround that street. Permitting those into the mix would allow developers to crowd houses onto much smaller lots all over Alexandria.
The large spacious lots in Rosemont and Russell Road will be next for the developer’s knife. Then once those have been subdivided, using the basis of 159 comparables, developers will be able to subdivide them again and again until we have nothing but small over-crowded neighborhoods.
Once smaller lots are allowed all over Alexandria, it is not scaremongering to say that the nature of our city and its neighborhoods will be threatened forever. Once this precedent is set, it cannot be undone. It cannot be reversed when the City Council realizes its mistake. This is a one-off chance to ensure that the City of Alexandria remains the wonderful place it is to live in. Please, write to the City Council through call, click, connect (Planning and Zoning – development project inquiries) to ask them to vote against setting this dangerous precedent and protect the city in which we live.
Helen Lloyd
along with 10 other Crown View Drive neighbors