Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, Public Hearing, Wednesday, January 10, 2024

Date: Wednesday, January 10, 2024
Place: Board Room, First Floor, Government Center, 1 Harrison Street SE, Leesburg, Virginia
Length: 8h 10m (video)
Official meeting video (county, Granicus): https://loudoun.granicus.com/player/clip/7569
Agenda (Granicus): https://loudoun.granicus.com/AgendaViewer.php?view_id=73&clip_id=7569

Machine transcript (speech-to-text) produced by Coraggio Consulting. Not an official county record. Names and numbers may be misspelled; check the video at the timestamp before quoting.
Speech-to-text: whisper.cpp, model large-v3-turbo. Produced 2026-10-19. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:05:12] Well, good evening, supervisors, good evening, staff, and good evening, Loudon. I'd like to call to order the January 10, 2024 Loudon County Board of Supervisors public hearing. This room has a hearing loop. If you need hearing assistance, switch your hearing aids to the telecall mode.

[00:05:29] If you need a headset, we have those available as well. Please see the clerk to request one. Would everybody please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

[00:05:54] Dr. Farron, Dr. Farron, you must be here tonight, right? You left already? Okay, all right, cool. All right, so as a reminder, all members of the public addressing the board this evening, you may only sign up to speak on matters that are before the board and has been advertised for this public hearing.

[00:06:18] You may only speak on items about the public hearing. Due to the broadcast delay, any member of the public who are not in the boardroom, if you wish to address the board on items one and two, those are the two items that are on the consolidated agenda, please call the number that you see scrolling across your screen at this time.

[00:06:37] If you sign up to speak, you will be allotted two and a half minutes. If you're in the boardroom, we ask that when your name is called, You please come to the podium and state your name. I would also wouldn't mind if you actually state, if you, you don't have to state where you live, but if you would state if you're a resident of Loudoun, that might, that actually will help, because I need to know, that would help.

[00:07:00] The timer on the podium will indicate your remaining time. Your time has expired. Please yield the floor to the next speaker. We are providing comments via phone. I ask that you use your own stopwatch to time yourself, And that is because I don't want to stop you, like, at two minutes because it interrupts your flow.

[00:07:18] But I will stop you when you get to two and a half minutes. And so you have to just kind of time yourself. When taking public input for items, I will first ask if there's anyone in the room wishing to speak. When people are on the phone, I will go to the moderator, who is Andy Torres, and I will ask him to let me know who's online.

[00:07:37] Mr. Torres, can you hear me right now, sir? Andy? Is it Andy tonight? Yes, he may be checking speakers in at the moment. Okay, well, we're going to hope that he's checking speakers, but he is there and can hear us. Supervisors, we have two items on the consolidated agenda.

[00:07:54] I am going to switch up the order of the actual agenda, the non-consolidated agenda, and I will talk about that after we do the consolidated agenda first. The board will first hear the two items on the consolidated agenda. As a reminder, these items are being consolidated because there are no outstanding issues.

[00:08:13] Staff has recommended approval. The applicant has waived its presentation time, and no public speakers have registered to speak in advance on these items. The items are item number one, the Brambleton Early Withdrawal, a parcel from North Catoctin, south, and item number two, Potomac View signed development plan.

[00:08:32] And so I am going to ask, is there anyone in the room who would like to speak on either one of those items? Mr. Tarlett, is there anyone on the phone or the WebEx who would like to speak on either one of those items, sir? Okay, seeing none, I'm gonna close the consolidated hearing and I'm going to ask the Catoctin Supervisor and the Algonquian Supervisor to check your motion sheets and please make motions on the items that you see before you.

[00:09:02] I will tell everyone that Mr. Sains will not be here tonight and so he will, none of these will be without Mr. Sains' votes tonight 'cause he won't be, he will not be joining us tonight. Mr. Kirshner, would you like to make a motion? - Thank you, Madam Chair, and good evening to fellow Supervisors and public.

[00:09:17] I move the Board of Supervisors Approved. Motion to be for approval of the request to withdraw as provided in the January 10th, 2024 public hearing, item number one, staff report. I'll second that. Thank you, Madam Chair. I don't really have any discussion other than I believe, Madam Chair, this has been approved by all parties who have reviewed it, and I think it is a good justification for removal.

[00:09:39] Wonderful. Anybody else? Seeing none, all in favor to say aye. Any opposed? That motion will pass 801. Mr. Sains being off today is for the evening. The Algonquian District, Ms. Brixman. Thank you, Madam Chair.

[00:09:55] I move that the Board of Supervisors approve Motion 2B for approval of the minor special exception as provided in the January 10th, 2024, public hearing item number 2, staff report. I'll be happy to second that. Discussion on the motion? Thank you, Madam Chair. This is a child care center that was approved in 2019, and they're looking just to expand a little bit their footprint of their signage.

[00:10:20] I spoke to them this week, and they will be. It sounds like a lot, but they're going to be taking down the sign on the street once the permanent signage is up on the building. I think my colleagues and probably the community know how I feel about having additional child care seats, so I'm very happy to have my colleagues' support to move this along so that they can open.

[00:10:41] The applicant, well, sorry, they're not an applicant anymore. the owners will be working with some of the neighbors over there on Jefferson Drive to possibly create more of a buffer from the traffic for dropping off and picking up kids and the signage. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Anybody else?

[00:10:59] Seeing none, all people say aye. Any opposed? That motion will pass 801. Okay, Supervisor, Staff, and Loudon, this is a really heavy agenda night. Supervisors, I would say to you, this is a really heavy agenda night.

[00:11:15] You can speak on every item if you want to, but not necessary to speak on every item because it's a really heavy agenda night. I'm going to move the agenda around, and this is why. There is no item on this agenda that's not going to take probably equal amounts of time tonight.

[00:11:34] Usually if I see an agenda and I see an item that I know we can get through very, very quickly, I'll do that one first. But I think almost every item on this agenda is going to take a while tonight. So believing that every item will take roughly the same amount of time, what makes the most logical sense to me is to move the item first where we have the most speakers in the room so we can move people out the room and you all can go about your life.

[00:11:58] Now, if you want to stay here all night with us, you're welcome too, but otherwise we're going to do that. Knowing that, we're going to do the Philomont item first. I know it's listed six, but we're going to go on and do that first. In addition, that item doesn't have an applicant because the county is the applicant.

[00:12:15] So we only have one round of questioning because it's not an applicant. For everyone wishing to speak on Philemon, I would say this. I plan on making a motion to probably send this to the TLUC meeting to have further discussion, more time, and some of the questions that I ask tonight, you'll understand why I want to have more time with this item to get comfortable with where I'm trying to go, to be quite honest.

[00:12:47] So, if I send this to T-Luck, it comes out of T-Luck back to a board meeting. You will have another opportunity to speak on this item. If you want to speak tonight, you absolutely can. If I get to your name and you don't feel like you need to speak tonight because you're going to have another opportunity, that's also fine.

[00:13:08] If you hear somebody else say what you want to say, you can certainly show your support and don't have to. So I'm just letting people know you have all kinds of options as far as how you speak to us. And please always remember, you can always email us and find other ways to speak to us as well.

[00:13:26] Okay. Having said that, I'd like the staff to come to the table for this item, please.

[00:13:43] Chief Pro, are you here for this item? Chief Johnson, where are you? Chief Johnson, there may be questions that supervisors have of you. I know that you weren't expected, and I apologize to put you on the spot, but I'd rather have you at the table or whomever from the fire department, just in case those questions, I imagine there could be, can come to the table.

[00:14:13] I know you all didn't expect this, and I apologize, but I'd rather have you here than not just to answer questions. Chief Pro, good job. Are we working off the supplemental on this one, staff?

[00:14:30] For the motion, Madam Chair? Yeah, well, for the, for the, for, yes, correct. Even though, because I'm going to make the motion to send it to T-Luck, just so you know. Correct. Okay, all right, we're ready. Ready when you are. This one, share, right?

[00:14:51] I'm trying to figure out these all the time. It just came in. That's what I was asking. Share again. Why are they so different? Okay, perfect. It's not, it's not in the, it's not supplemental in the presentation, it's supplemental in the main package.

[00:15:09] All right, thank you. It just has eight, eight slides. We're ready when you are. We're going to do the presentation, absolutely. Great. Thank you, Madam Chair. Fellow supervisors, my name is Lori Radcliffe Myers, and I will be presenting Philomont Fire and Rescue Station. The property is 7.03 acres located east of Snickersville Turnpike and south of Philomont Road in the Countryside Residential 1 Zoning District in the Catoctin Election District.

[00:15:36] The property is in the Rural Policy Area, in the Rural Historic Village Place Type, and the Village Conservation Overlay District. The applicant is requesting a commission permit to develop a new 18,800-square-foot fire and rescue station with associated site infrastructure and improvements.

[00:15:54] This station will replace the existing Philomont Fire and Rescue Station, which is located a half mile to the northwest. The application also consists of a special exception request to allow a fire and rescue station facility in the CR1 zoning district. The rural historic village place type identifies public facilities such as a fire and rescue station as a conditional use within the place type, meaning they are evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

[00:16:24] Staff finds the location of the proposed fire and rescue station is in general conformance with the land use policies of the 2019 General Plan and with the land use and design policies for the rural policy area. The 2019 general plan supports the preservation of the character of the villages and their historic structures and sites through the rehabilitation and adaptive reuse of existing buildings.

[00:16:51] Adaptive reuse of the existing station would be more consistent with plan policy, but staff acknowledges that feasibility studies have been conducted to explore this option, and they were deemed not practical. Other than the existing and proposed fire station, the closest fire station to the village of Philomont is Aldi Station No. 7, located approximately 8.6 miles southwest from the subject parcel, and the Roundhill Fire Station No. 4, located approximately 6.9 miles to the north.

[00:17:22] Staff acknowledged the need for public facilities such as fire and rescue stations and their importance in providing safety and welfare to communities. This is the existing commission permit, Platt. The submitted exterior renderings depict a large building that sits on a fieldstone foundation and is clad in a vertical boardwood siding.

[00:17:46] Varying roof lines and intersecting blocks help to reduce the perceived mass of the building by dividing the building into smaller pieces as recommended by the Rural Historic Villages Design Guidelines. The design appears to draw inspiration from simple agricultural forms that are commonly seen throughout western Loudoun County.

[00:18:04] Building materials include fiber cement siding, stone or alternative stone materials, fiber cement or PVC trim, and standing seam metal roof panels. The proposed design for the fire and rescue station includes materials and details that are similar to the agricultural buildings found throughout Philmont.

[00:18:24] Staff finds no outstanding environmental or heritage resource issues with the applications. The project has been conditioned to provide low-impact development, best management practice measures, an oil and water separator, tree conservation area, invasive species control, the use of native species for landscaping, and a pollinator garden.

[00:18:46] The application has been conditioned to minimize the visual, environmental, and heritage impacts of the proposed fire and rescue station. Staff supports board ratification of the commission permit, and staff supports board approval of the special exception.

[00:19:02] Staff finds that the general location, character, and extent of the proposed fire and rescue station are consistent with the Loudoun County 2019 general plan. Thank you. Staff is available for questions. I just need like a point of information.

[00:19:17] All that you just gave us right now, and first of all, thank you very much. All that you just gave us right now is what would happen and the information for the proposed location. None of what you just gave us right now is what could, would, or couldn't, or would ever happen if the current location was maintained or retained, correct?

[00:19:41] Correct. It's specific to the site that the fire and rescue station, the horse show grounds were proposed. How would my colleagues who haven't been out to the site, and I've been out there twice, Mr. Kirshner's been out there, Ms. Briggsman, how would my colleagues who haven't been out to the site, the current site, know what questions to even ask, having not seen the current site?

[00:20:06] They probably wouldn't. Well, it's not part of the proposal. The proposal is for the horse show grounds. So the proposal doesn't look to the current site and adaptive reuse of that site.

[00:20:21] it is only looking at the proposed new location for the fire all right all right thank you thank you mr kerson this is your district i will go to you first sir thank you madam chair and thank you staff for a lot of excellent work i know the motion is going to be ascended to teloc i'm going to support that motion um i was prepared to move forward um and support this tonight but i think that we want to make sure that we've covered everything um and see if there are any alternatives I know there's a lot of folks in the community that are very concerned about this.

[00:20:52] And so as a supervisor, I'll make sure of that. But I do have a couple of questions. The first question that I have, when we first began looking at this at a location, and I know it's been back some time that there's been discussions that this firehouse needed to be upgraded slash a new one that's made, have we ever considered any other alternative location, or is this the only location that we've ever considered because it was also owned by the Volunteer Fire Department?

[00:21:20] can anyone answer that yeah this site was originally put into the cip as the location it is the seven acres was to be donated is to be donated by the volunteers as such that made the logical sense for the place for this to be just a little closer to your to yourself thank you sorry thank you um to be the parcel to be donated to the county at no cost um for those reasons we didn't i guess have reason to look elsewhere but we did under those feasibility studies look at the existing station site during two different feasibility studies.

[00:21:58] Supervisor Kirshen, way back early on in this process, we did internally within Fire and Rescue look at other sites, just like we did with Aldi. We established an optimal area for our response times. We identified that and then looked at other parcels in the area that would accommodate the assides to that identified area.

[00:22:17] At that point, again, that's several years ago, there were no parcels for sale or available to us. And this was before probably we even considered the horse show grounds, quite frankly. But we have that report. That was done. And, again, at that time, there were no available parcels for us to look at or purchase, I should say.

[00:22:37] Okay, that helps. And that was, do you know when that was, 2000? At least three years ago. I don't have it in front of you. I think it was 2019, if I recall, but maybe it was 2001, 2000. I do know that there has been kind of some back and forth with a proposed plan by the community, and there may have been some suggestion that the design that was actually of the retrofit of the existing building perhaps was being looked at by the, was the wrong one being looked at.

[00:23:06] And I think that may be in part why this motion to send it to TLAC to ensure that we've given that a full look. Are you aware whether we were looking at, there was a different design that the staff's been looking at for eight months that was being proposed by the community yeah the the concept drawing that was submitted to the to for us to review was schematic in nature and we took that and expanded upon it made sure that our program fit in certain ways and move some stuff around there are some apparatus bays that in in what we did in the feasibility study were still maintained as apparatus bays and

[00:23:43] And the community members' design changed from the time we originally received it to later to remove those apparatus bays and use them more for a functional space. But really the schematic was just that as schematic. And the design is not complete.

[00:24:00] And we didn't do a full design on it, obviously. So the layout is really what we looked at. And the layout really hasn't changed from what the community members submitted. And optimally, when you work through a design, you're gonna come up with better solutions, better options. So if we were to, we would come up with better options.

[00:24:17] But for the most part, the layout that was submitted was the one we did the feasibility study on and the one we evaluated. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Crony. You just turned your mic off. Yeah, I just turned it off. Thank you, Chair Randall. Yeah, and thank you for the presentation.

[00:24:34] I look forward to hearing from the community tonight. So my question is, how many feasibility studies did you do for adaptive reuse? We did two different feasibility studies. The first was in October of, I believe it's a July of '21 study that looked at really two options.

[00:24:58] Ultimately, we decided on final two options. One was to demo the entire building and completely build new. And the other was to renovate the existing and expand upon it to get to the full size we needed. And that was presented to the Board of Supervisors in October of 21, and then in July of 23, we did the second study that was presented to the finance committee, and that looked at another two options that were similar. There's a cell tower on the site. One had the cell tower relocated, and one had the cell tower remaining in place, and we

[00:25:34] looked at, so a total of four options, really. Oh, interesting. Did you include Bill Ridge, the community architect in discussion for the ones that, you know, not the demolition, but renovation? Yeah, so he was the, he developed the scheme 4A as it is, and the second feasibility study that we did, a 4 and 4A. Chief Johnson and I sat down with him when he first handed that to us, and we talked to him at that point. The nature of the feasibility study was that it's a schematic

[00:26:08] in nature and that we are not doing a maximize maximization of the design so while he does he did further develop his his design and we recently talked to him about that but during the feasibility study we did not have a reason to go back to him to you know the layout stayed the same and whether we put piece a here and piece b here or switch them within the building really necessarily wasn't the the full goal the study while you could do optimize the design we feel we had enough information and didn't need to go back to them do you know would you recommend that the cell tower

[00:26:43] be removed or do you think that could stay if if a renovation option was pursued there's existing contracts on that and and i'm not sure of the you know cost or feasibility to relocate that ideally it would be better if it was gone for the the sake of that property you could have a little more flexibility but with the contracts and and those not being held by the county i'd be unable to to fully delve into what that would be okay yeah thank you thank you mr turner thank you madam chair um one of the citizens from louden county sent an email out i'm gonna say a week ago

[00:27:23] um and indicated that a meeting occurred that had basically all the stakeholders in the meeting just recently and that it was characterized as a breakthrough meeting that some new concepts were tabled. It was a very positive meeting. I got the impression from the email that the something substantive underlying had changed, which to me would be a basis to send it to TLOT. Were any of you in that meeting? Are you aware of that meeting? Can you characterize that meeting? Or do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, I can take that. And if Chief Johnson and I were both there as well,

[00:28:00] I did not hear anything in that meeting that substantially changed our feasibility study results. I think we got some clarification on his design as he further elaborated upon it, and he had some great points in there that I think were better than ours, but I don't think it ultimately changed anything substantial in our feasibility study.

[00:28:22] A lot of the major issues with that site still remain, and I believe we're not, you know, nothing came of that that would change that. Okay. I've also got an email today from the volunteer chief who kind of described your do-out area.

[00:28:41] Is it your considered opinion that the do-out area is so significantly large that the new station that you're proposing is the proper response to such a large do-out area and cannot be accommodated by a renovation, a re-adaptive reuse of the existing building.

[00:28:59] So as we mentioned before, I don't think the response times, what you're talking about, really changes. I mean, they're certainly less than a mile apart. That's never been a concern. I don't think from Fire and Rescue that one site has better response times than the other. Response times are different because of two-story, one-story design, the layout, but not based on one site versus the other.

[00:29:22] I would add, just go back to your previous question, one of the things, I'm not aware of any breakthrough at that meeting. We did have a great meeting. We had great dialogue and very professional. I think Supervisor Kirshner was there, can attest to it. One of the things I think we did come to agreement on was that the cost, it's been mentioned before about the cost, and I think we agreed upon that the renovation and addition would cost more than simply going to the training grounds.

[00:29:49] The second thing I think that we agreed upon that there absolutely is a need for a temporary facility. We cannot accommodate, it's been our position all along for staff and fire and rescue that we cannot endure living in a facility that's going to be renovated and added on to that there absolutely is a need for a temporary facility which has a huge cost with that.

[00:30:07] Okay, thank you. Thank you. Mr. Letourneau. Thank you, Mr. Letourneau. First, just from a technical standpoint, it might be a question for Ms. Sidner. This is a commission permit, one of these two applications here. So what is the timeline for the board action on the commission permit before it's deemed approved?

[00:30:27] Because it looks like November was when it passed, so it seems to me we're probably running out of time. Let's do that tonight. Was it passed in November? I thought it was December is what I heard. November 3, according to this packet. So it's 60 days. I'm not sure when the planning commission action was, but it's 60 days.

[00:30:44] So that means the board has to act tonight. So among many reasons, I may not support the TLUC motion because if we're going to approve the commission permit tonight, then what's... But the second thing is I want to delve into this notion. So there's been two feasibility studies on the existing site already and a discussion.

[00:31:02] I agree that it was characterized as a breakthrough, had some discussions with staff. This might be a question for Mr. Hempstreet. What is exactly the additional cost of renovating the station or rebuilding on that site compared to the staff proposal?

[00:31:18] Mr. Hillstreet? Yes, so my understanding is it's at least $6 million based off the estimates that we've done. At least $6 million additional. To renovate or build a new station on the existing site is at least $6 million more than building a new station on the proposed site.

[00:31:40] So for the board, it's really a value decision as to whether or not maintaining the existing site is worth roughly a 30% increase in cost. And from the standpoint of fire rescue, is the new site and the new plan more optimal?

[00:31:59] Yes. Can you elaborate? Yeah, sure. There's a number of reasons. One, it certainly meets our design manual, as we have alluded to all along. We're basically building from the ground up. The proposal that was recently submitted has enough square footage, right? If you build something big enough...

[00:32:15] It's technically feasible. It's technically feasible. We've never said it's not. But certainly building on the training grounds does provide our optimal design. Certainly most of our opposition to the building on the existing site was the renovation of a 60-plus-year-old facility.

[00:32:31] But again, the confines of the community center and the fire station and then building this new structure just really confines us even more to what we have today. And you would need a temporary location while a probably multi-year project is underway.

[00:32:48] I mean, at least an 18-month build and so forth. You're talking two years plus and absolutely would need a temporary facility, which would have to go somewhere. It can't stay on the site. So I think there's sometimes something called paralysis by analysis. I think we've reached it, given that this has had two different board check-ins and multiple feasibility studies.

[00:33:07] And there's numerous reasons to move forward Mr. Ham Street. Yes, thank you. I think there's another issue If if I understand correctly the volunteer company has indicated they are not going to permit us to Build on the existing site. So the only place they will allow us to construct it is on the proposed location I just need staff to confirm that that's still the understanding. Yes, that is consistent with what they've told us Mr. Mr. Turner. Can you give me a second? Don't start my time. Mr. Turner

[00:33:49] No, I know, you know, because... Madam Chair, may I clarify one thing from Supervisor. Absolutely. The materials are from November 3rd. The Planning Commission's action was December 14th, so we're still within the 60-day window, but it ends within the next couple of days.

[00:34:09] And that's what I want. I want, when this is complete, I want Ms. Sitton to actually, because Mr. Letourneau mentioned a commission permit, I don't know if everyone knows what that means and why it has to be done tonight. no matter what that has to be done tonight.

[00:34:25] And I just want Ms. Tittner to explain that before I go to you, Ms. Bricksman. Mr. McHugh, would you do that, please, for us? Or Ms. Tittner, would you please, if you mind? Mr. Eternal mentioned a permission permit, and I don't know that everyone knows what that is, what that means, and why it has to be done tonight.

[00:34:42] Well, thank you. And why it has to be done tonight. But if you could maybe tell the audience that so that people can all be in the same place, that would be helpful. Okay, so you're asking, I'm sorry. the commission permit so the commission permit is actually an action by the Planning Commission and so they acted to approve it on December 14th the board of supervisors has 60 days to overrule that if you do not either if you don't take any action on it tonight to overrule it then it is automatically deemed ratified by the board so the commission permit is approved effectively

[00:35:22] if you don't take action um so in that 60 days would run on february 12th all right miss um brixman thank you madam chair most of my sorry most of my questions have been answered but i just wanted to ask chief johnson what are the um additional services and the needed additional services that you foresee would be able to be accomplished on the horseshoe ground site so it's

[00:36:00] always been our intention to when we build a new facility or expand our facility whatever whatever which way we go is to include an EMS unit we have put an EMS unit there occasionally when we have extra staff I do not have one assigned there it's always been our goal to put one there we are kind of maxed out on space for people which is why we have not a similar very similar Aldi I can't put any more people in Aldi until we build our new fire station there so it's about square footage locker rooms showers and all those things that are needed, offices, all those things. So our intention was to, when we build this new facility or renovate, is to staff an EMS unit, which is six additional people assigned, minimum six

[00:36:39] additional people assigned to the facility to on each shift. We also would look to staff our tanker full-time, as well as a fourth person on the engine, have we done with all of our new stations. That's a recommendation to the, ultimately to the county administrator and the board to do that so okay thank you and then um staff um what's what was in the supplemental item because i didn't see it i guess it came kind of late what what was in there that you wanted us to see that wasn't in what we read earlier this week so the original staff report included conditions that had not been

[00:37:14] approved to form by the county attorney so we got the conditions back and the county attorney approved those to form so allowing the project to be actionable oh so it's actionable tonight correct okay all right thank you all I'll save my comments for the motion thank you miss Brooksman do we know when the last time the horse show grounds as we're calling it or the training grounds as mr. as the fire chief is calling it was used to be over show grounds was used as a horse show

[00:37:50] grounds I believe it was 2019 so before right before COVID or well I guess not right before COVID? Before COVID, yeah. Okay, all right. Is it possible at all that if we stay on the existing site, that we could stay there without moving the cell tower, in your opinion?

[00:38:16] Yeah, the feasibility study did consider that, and yeah, there would be a lot of work to coordinate with the cell tower. All the underground utilities would need to be identified, potentially relocated. Currently don't know exactly how they run, but if we're going to do an addition, we can't really build over that so coordinate with that and the maintenance access as well as you know building around it so it yes it's it's feasible to do that with the cell tower there it's possible not optimal correct okay and i know i'm asking questions about the existing site and that's not what the application is about and so i apologize but would it make more sense or and i don't know anything

[00:38:56] about how these things work would it make more sense to to not try to try to revamp the building but just raise the building, just take it down? Would you have more options to build what we need if we stay on the existing site, if we just took that building down completely?

[00:39:13] Yeah, the first feasibility study we did in 2021 did consider that as one of the options, and it does create a lot more flexibility, although some of the concerns are still you're still putting that large of a facility on that small of a site, and with well and septic, it does not leave a lot of room for the well septic.

[00:39:31] And one other note, the community center parking next door is on the fire station property, and there's no real location for parking on the community center. So that would have to be coordinated, and really it would cause kind of a dual use of that dry vial, and that is certainly not optimal from a safety standpoint for either the responders or the people dropping off at community center.

[00:39:55] And the recycling area is also on the fire station property, so that would need to be uh resolved and and figured out what to do there when i make these decisions when i when i when i get when i get almost almost a 50 50 place i have to make these decisions for me that i always go to um for these types of decisions what's what is the safety safety has to rule the day for me and first of all chief johnson you all do i mean our fire and rescue is just one of the best in the in the country y'all do a magnificent job chief johnson do you feel that if we were able to put a station on the current site,

[00:40:35] it would make anything more or less safe for the community or for our firefighters and first responders? It's difficult to ask. One of the things we talked about response times, we do not like to build two-story firehouses.

[00:40:50] However, many people are going to say we just built one, we just opened one in Sterling Park. We had no options. And what we did there was we completely raised the building, We had to buy an adjacent parcel of land just to build a parking lot, and that was our only option. It does increase response times.

[00:41:06] The proposed day room that was in the alternate proposal is on the far end of the building with the kitchen area, and that takes time to get out. As I mentioned during the planning commission, I'm not going to bore you because I know you all have heard it from me a thousand times about response times for cardiac arrest, response times and how much time we have for a fire.

[00:41:24] And every second counts, and you've heard me say that thousands of times here before you, hundreds of times before you. So I do feel that it would be safer. I believe the access is safer. I think it talks about the access to Snickersville is much safer at the proposed site.

[00:41:41] It's set back and so forth. And I think VDOT, as Scott could tell you, VDOT has said that it was a desirable site for that. So I do, and obviously there's many that oppose that. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you for that answer. Chief, could I add a thought?

[00:41:58] Yes. Paul Erickson, I'm Principal Architect with FGM Architects. We've been involved in all the feasibility studies as well as the design for the new site. One of the characteristics of the existing site is the adjacent community uses that we just talked about.

[00:42:15] One of the primary tenets of fire and rescue design is to try to separate the emergency response paths for the vehicles from any kind of public vehicles. We don't want to have passenger or public vehicles potentially impeding the emergency response.

[00:42:33] Because the existing site is an extremely small and tight site, and it has the parking from the community center on the fire station site, you have a potential safety hazard with the responding apparatus and the public parking for the community center on the same site.

[00:42:51] Okay. Thank you. That's very helpful. Thank you. We have quite a few speakers on this item. We have more than 20 who have signed up. I'm not sure if you all want to speak, but we have more than 20 who have signed up. I will read your names in advance. And when you come up, if you could state your name, and if you live in Loudoun, and when your time's up, please yield the floor.

[00:43:14] Our first speaker is William Grant, followed by Paul Rosenberg, followed by Rodney Crone. Mr. Grant? Are you Mr. Grant?

[00:43:33] Mr. Grant? I am. Okay. Wonderful. We're ready when you are, sir. Thank you. I'm William Grant. I'm a resident of Loudoun County. I've been a resident here since 2009. I live about nine-tenths of a mile from the current firehouse. I'm blown away by the decision to delay. I agree with the committee men that this could be analysis by paralysis, but let me begin.

[00:44:01] I have 35 years in academic medicine. I was the associate dean for graduate medical education. I've retired as a professor emeritus in emergency medicine, professor emeritus in family medicine. I know a bit about first responders and what they need.

[00:44:17] I was a co-founder of the Upstate New York Medical Reserve Corps. I conducted some of the largest multi-agency research simulations, including military, first responders, community, and others.

[00:44:33] When we talk about the location, the 42-square-mile first due area, that site is right in the middle of it. It's a perfect place for that response site. Over the 65 years of this building, things have changed.

[00:44:52] The rules have changed. The needs have changed for first responders, for their facilities, and what they need to know. It's not clear that any alternative station would meet current standards for the national fire and rescue standards. It would require significant realignment of the local community center.

[00:45:11] It would ignore the impact on the local historical store. And construction would pose significant impact on the daily operations of the fire and rescue crew. It may or may not meet the first needs. The Board of Supervisors staff have found there are no outstanding land use issues.

[00:45:29] There are no outstanding compatibility issues. There are no outstanding transportation issues. There are no outstanding public safety issues, and there are no outstanding issues with on-site utilities. Do not, please do not leave our region and the local communities of Philemon, which we've been talking about also, Silicot Springs, Aramont, Unison, Foxcraft, Montville, and Norfolk, and most importantly, our firefighters and their rescue personnel without the station they deserve.

[00:46:02] The project and the funds have been approved and approved by the voters. The required studies are done. It is time to move forward and ratify the approval of this fire station. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Paul Rosenberg, followed by Rodney Crone, followed by Jane Covington.

[00:46:26] Good evening, sir. Good evening. My name is Paul Roxenberg, Percival, Virginia. I'm a retired fire officer with the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority. I worked for Fairfax County Fire and Rescue for six years. I served as one of the first paid part-time fire and rescue employees in Loudoun County.

[00:46:46] I served as the president of the Big Pine Key Volunteer Fire Department in Florida. I was a member of the Percival Volunteer Rescue Squad, the Percival Volunteer Fire Department, and the assistant chief of the Round Hill Volunteer Fire Department. I started my fire service career with the Philemon Volunteer Fire Department in 1977, where I was the first emergency medical technician in the department and ultimately granted life membership for my years in service to the community.

[00:47:13] Needless to say, I've had the opportunity to work and live in numerous fire stations over the past 46 years. Some stations were well-suited to support the needs of full-time staff, and others have fallen far short of the requirements necessary for the crews stationed at those facilities.

[00:47:29] The new fire and rescue station proposed to be built at the Philomont Fire Department's horse show grounds will meet the needs of the modern fire department and be an asset to the Philomont community for years to come. The design addresses space, efficiency, flow, safety, environmental, and living concerns.

[00:47:46] The plan to remodel the existing fire station for the fourth time in an attempt to facilitate the current and future needs of the full-time staff living on the premises and provide a safe, efficient area around the station will fall far short of the necessary requirements going into the future.

[00:48:02] The infrastructure alone is already an enormous liability and safety risk to the community. Some of the issues that need to be addressed are as follows. The cell tower would need to be relocated. That would interrupt communications. There's extreme grade issues requiring retaining walls and backfill.

[00:48:21] There's a massive water tank buried in the back that would need to be addressed for other construction. The roadway entrance is on a steep grade that puts members and apparatus at risk due to line of sight and weather issues. The front access is shared with community center where public parking and citizens need to be accounted for.

[00:48:37] The shared parking facility with the community center is now a risk to children at the facility. Lack of outside area for maintenance and testing of apparatus and equipment is a problem, and the septic system is not up to par for the people that are going to need to do it. The new station location is an area owned by the volunteer organization that, in my recollection, has been planned location for the new station from my earliest days.

[00:49:01] The property is owned by and for the benefit of the Philomont Volunteer Fire Department. Once complete, the plans... Mr. Rosenberg, I'm sorry, your time is up, sir. If you'd like to, you can feel free to email us your comments. They have a copy here. Thank you, sir. Thank you.

[00:49:17] Rodney Krohn, followed by Jane Covington, followed by Peter Reineck. Good evening. My name is Rodney Krohn, Sr. I moved to Philomont 52 years ago last month. Four months later, I've become a member of Philomont Fire Department.

[00:49:34] I retired 48 years later. In December 1971, I could drive from Tyson's Corner to Leesburg and see only six cars. Today, I can see that in an instant. Houses are being replaced by farmlands, which all around me, they used to be farmed, and now the last crop went in, houses.

[00:49:58] And demands for everything has increased, including emergency services. We have increased the size of that house two times, and now it's not big enough. It's not built for firefighters.

[00:50:14] They live, eat, and sleep in the firehouse, 24-hour shift as they answer emergency calls. The fire department is giving the fire and rescue and training grounds to the county free. In turn, the fire department is giving the oil station back for community resources.

[00:50:32] The Seven Acres is owned by the Philemon Fire Department, as the Apollo just said. This has been studied for 10 years. This is a stall tactic on the opposition. Career fighters can be on a call for most of a night in the worst conditions.

[00:50:48] I've been there. I've done that. They deserve the best. They are protecting you, the community, everything around. Ask not what your fire department can do for you. Ask what your fire department, what you can do for your fire department. That's a quote from John Kennedy with All Rations, January 20th, 1961.

[00:51:10] We are a community. Let's stop fighting and break ground. There is no perfect solution, but we're looking for one, it seems. Quit looking. A house divided will fall. In summary, I support the new station, an old horse show and training ground.

[00:51:26] thank you thank you sir jane covington jane covington followed by peter reineck followed by john benedict good evening good evening my name is jane covington and i'm here tonight speaking on behalf of the heritage commission throughout this discussion over the many months and years the heritage commission has written numerous letters in opposition to new construction i would like to highlight one point tonight i would like to highlight the history of the horse show grounds as outlined in the National Register documentation.

[00:52:02] The Horse Show Grounds was purchased in 1962 with money raised by the Philomont community with generous donations and endless volunteer labor. For decades, the Philomont residents and Volunteer Fire Department worked hand-in-hand to operate the Horse Show, the annual fundraiser to support the Volunteer Fire Department.

[00:52:26] In 2005, a new generation of firemen rewrote the bylaws, terminated lifetime members' tenure, and brought a new leadership to the fire department in a different relationship with the Philomont community. The new volunteer leaders moved away from community activities, phased out their volunteer contributions, and left the community saddled with full responsibility of fundraising for the fire department.

[00:52:56] This new generation of volunteer leaders are not part of the Philomont community, are not stakeholders, and are making recommendations to destroy an historic community asset that they did not work for. Using history as a guide, the firehouse and or showgrounds belong to the Philomont community.

[00:53:19] These public hearings are designed for the specific purpose of allowing public opinion to be heard and considered. The Heritage Commission strongly recommends the board listen to the Philomont community, which is so diametrically opposed to the new construction.

[00:53:36] Thank you. Ms. Covington, are you speaking? Are you, first of all, there's no clapping. There's just, you can do jazz dance. Are you speaking on behalf of the Heritage Commission? I am. Okay, thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Peter Reinach, followed by John Benedict, followed by Dulaney Morrison.

[00:53:55] Hello, my name is Peter Reinick, and I have lived in the Philomont area for over 30 years. I'm here to give my support for the new station at the fire rescue and training grounds. There is a segment of the community that wants the new station rebuilt and enlarged on the existing station site, and I respect their opinion because everyone only wants what's best for Philomont.

[00:54:19] Although when you look at the pluses and negatives of each location, the facility at the fire ground, rest training grounds, far surpasses the other. The existing site currently has conflicting uses now, all the parking for the community center, the recycling center, an agreement for parking for the general store, and the cell tower on a site with over 20 feet of grade change.

[00:54:42] They want a two-story building that is too big for the site and doesn't meet all the criteria for Loudoun Fire and Rescue. I do not want a substandard station. I want one that meets the standards now and for the future. Anyone who has trekked up those existing station stairs knows that a two-story facility is undesirable.

[00:55:03] It would destroy the community core and remove the ability for an adaptive reuse of that station for community use, which is desperately needed in the area. And that's what the fire and rescue people have proposed, the Philomont Fire Station has proposed.

[00:55:23] The proposed building on the fire rescue site is a perfect way, and the architect has designed it wonderfully. It sets back off the street and is designed like a horse barn with a community green in the front. There are no conflicting uses.

[00:55:42] It has a space to blend in. I can see the facility as an award-winning design if they build it there, and it can be used as an example of how to design a facility in a rural setting. A segment of the community feels that this is their open space park, but for the 30 years I've been there, I've maybe been there five times, and I feel that this is the same for about most people.

[00:56:10] That is because it is private property. Please approve the special exception. This is the best option for Philmont. Thank you. Thank you, sir. John Benedict, followed by Delaney Morrison, followed by John Myers.

[00:56:27] Good evening. Good evening, and thank you. This is John Benedict, I live outside Middleburg, in Loudoun, about five miles south of Philomont, as the crow flies. I basically am of the view, with many of my neighbors, that the board should defer action on a decision tonight and instead direct the staff to review the alternative concept more thoroughly.

[00:56:58] I mean, the counties are actually very fortunate that local residents came together with an alternative design, one for adaptive reuse of the existing firehouse site. The alternative proposal is a solid and professional design and fully deserves close review.

[00:57:14] I understand Mr. Hemmstreet, Chief Johnson, Chair Randall's staff, Commissioner Kirshner, Supervisor Kirshner, excuse me, and other leaders recently met to hear more about it and that's a good and first step. And after all, the local community residents overwhelmingly seem to oppose the building on the horse show grounds.

[00:57:35] and support for the alternative plan appears broad based and for good reasons. You know, Middleburg Zone Station, you know, seems to be an example of how renovation and expansion in place is feasible.

[00:57:50] And the alternative proposal, frankly, is a good opportunity and deserves serious review. You know, it appears to meet the needs of an appropriate fire and rescue station. It's a first step to protect the scenic character of the Snickersville byway.

[00:58:09] It respects the community and its history, including locals' donation of the horse show grounds. And unlike the current plan, it's consistent with the comprehensive plan, or I'd at least say more consistent with the comprehensive plan and the heritage plan, including by demonstrating the value of adaptive reuse.

[00:58:29] As a bonus, it seems to me it could save public money. The current proposal seems quite a large footprint compared to Middleburg's two-story renovation with an awful lot of asphalt and seems expensive for a rural station with so small a staff and about four calls a week in a rural service area that doesn't seem to have a prospect of substantial demand growth.

[00:58:58] Every day, Western Loudoun is under relentless development pressure, and it's losing its farms and scenery, and this is one step. I'm sorry. Your time is up. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Delaney Morrison, followed by John Myers, followed by Tom Sullivan.

[00:59:16] Good evening. Good evening. Good evening, Madam Chair and members of the board. My name is Delaney Morrison, and hopefully many of you all know me from the preservation field, but I live in Aldi, and I'm a lifelong Loudoun resident. And I spent many hours working with you all and some of your predecessors on the Aldi firehouse saga, which, although a long process, beautifully demonstrated the value of citizens working alongside dedicated governing officials until a solution was reached that benefited everyone and checked all the boxes off.

[00:59:47] He worked with us until we got it right, and we remain extremely grateful. He was also involved in the much shorter but no less important issue of Mickey Gordon Park. Again, you all heard the concerns of local citizens, and you worked together with us until ultimately agreeing to withdraw the application.

[01:00:04] And again, that was a sign of your demonstration and understanding that each rural village has its own interests and unique history. And these are both excellent examples and give us faith in good government function. Today we are facing a frustrating situation in Philomont with the proposed firehouse and the historic horse showgrounds, which was recently listed as a contributor to Philomont's National Register designation.

[01:00:26] Over the last two years, I've been involved in several meetings with Loudoun officials, including past Supervisor Buffington, Chief Johnson, Chair Randall, Supervisor Tacroni, and others. And all of these discussions have been productive and thoughtful, leaving us confident that our governing leadership would honor their track record and continue to work with us until a solution was reached that would satisfy the community and meet modern fire safety needs.

[01:00:48] As we've heard tonight, Bill Ridge's plan to build the firehouse at the current site does meet the LAW feasibility study requirements. And he has been waiting and hopes that he will be approached to work with the county staff to bring that project to fruition for review.

[01:01:05] So I leave us saying that the situation to me is very simple. The horse show grounds are to Philomont what Mickey Gordon is to Middleburg. They are what the Aldi assemblage is to Aldi. The horse show grounds are a critical piece of community space, an important part of their heritage. It holds a place in the hearts of its residents that spans generations.

[01:01:23] So if you're as willing and as committed to the community of Philomont as you have been and should be commended for in Aldi and Middleburg, I have full confidence we can make Mr. Ridge's solution work. So I hope you all will support deferring the decision tonight and direct staff to work with Bill Ridge until we can bring his alternative solution back for consideration. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Morrison. John Myers, followed by Tom Sullivan, followed by Robert Appenzeller. Good evening. Evening. Chair Randall, members of the board, neighbors, friends, and Latin County residents. My name is John Myers. I'm a lifelong fourth generation Latin County

[01:02:01] resident and president of the Latin Career Firefighters Association, the union that represents over 600 firefighters, medics, fire marshals and emergency dispatchers that serve Loudoun County. As a firefighter for 23 years, I've seen firsthand the beauty and strength of our rapidly growing community, but I've also seen the vulnerability that comes with living in a rapidly changing landscape that could turn dangerous in the blink of an eye. That's why I stand before you today, not just as a resident, but as a professional firefighter who's seen the limitations of the current fire station and location firsthand. Our current setup is like a loyal old horse, dependable, but past its prime. It served us well, but it simply can't keep up with the changing

[01:02:37] needs of our growing community. Our response times are stretched thin, our equipment is outdated, and the facility is cramped and inefficient. Don't get me wrong, our members are the heart and soul of this department. They're the ones who leap into flames, brave the storms, and run towards danger while others run away. But they deserve better. They deserve a station that equips them to do their job safely and efficiently. A station that puts them closer to the people they're sworn to protect. Imagine this. A fire erupts in the dead night. Every minute counts. By the time we arrive, the flames are already through the rafters of a house. Now imagine the same scenario with a new station strategically updated and located. We'd be on scene quicker, giving those

[01:03:14] families a fighting chance, a chance that we can't afford to take away. That's why we need to build this station at a new location. The main purpose of a fire station is to get our first responders out the door as quickly as possible when we respond to an emergency. Every single second matters. But this isn't about response times, though. It's about giving our firefighters the tools they need to do their job. Modern equipment, proper facilities, and the space that fosters camaraderie and keeps them safe. A new fire station location wouldn't be just a building.

[01:03:43] It would be a symbol of our commitment to the safety of our first responders and to the safety of every resident in Loudoun County. Now, I know some might ask, can we just make do what we have? But think about this. Would you send your loved ones into battle with outdated weapons and inadequate equipment? We wouldn't. And our firefighters are on the front lines of our community safety every single day. Investing in a new fire station is just about bricks and mortar.

[01:04:04] It's about investing in our future. It's about building a safer Loudoun County, one where families can sleep soundly at night, knowing that their help is just minutes away. It's about honoring the legacy of those who have served before us and ensuring that our children inherit a community where the safety is not a question mark, but a promise. So I urge you and call me for a new fire station at a new location. Let's work together to build a safer Loudoun where firefighters are empowered and families are protected. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Myers, are you speaking tonight on behalf of IAFF Local? Yes, ma'am. I am. Thank you, sir. Tom Sullivan, followed by Robert Appenzella, followed by Stephen Price. Thank you, Chairwoman and other supervisors. Good evening. I'm Tom Sullivan,

[01:04:43] and I'm speaking also for my wife, Tracy. We have resided in Philomont for 28 years. I want to say that no matter what the board decides, we've already won on this issue. It's a win-win for everybody because we recognize there's a problem to be solved and we're taking action to solve it.

[01:05:05] The two solutions on the table fulfill the basic requirements, but I highly favor erecting the new fire station on the training grounds, also known as the horse show grounds. Doing that does not prevent a horse show. It's a matter of public record that at the first information meeting that Supervisor Tony Buffington, formerly of Catoctin, elicited a response from one of the

[01:05:37] constituents who stated unequivocally that he would provide his farm to host a horse show in Philemon if anybody wished to organize such a horse show. I'm sure that gentleman is not alone.

[01:05:55] It will not prevent having a horse show, but there have been other activities. For example, we had a very large community garage sale on those same grounds but once again there's other land available because it's a win-win no matter what's decided i'm going to be happy with the decision whatever it is as long as the decision is made i must say my wife and i enjoy a huge discount on our homeowners insurance by living so close to the existing firehouse under our policy

[01:06:33] will lose that discount because it will now be beyond the quarter mile limit for that discount, but that's okay. I hope everyone appreciates we have a lot of open space in Philemon, and my wife Tracy and I have spent over half a million dollars just on appearance, just on historical character, including creating new open space. The county also spent some money on that with all the inspections

[01:07:04] and approvals that were needed to do that thank you thank you sir um robert appenzella followed by stephen price followed by tom lacy good evening good evening madam chair distinguished members of the of the bos thanks for having us here this is a great process i love the reaction that you guys are actually listening to this stuff which is good so my wife and i i don't represent anybody I'm just here as a citizen, as a resident.

[01:07:40] I live on Colchester Road, which is right there almost on the map. We've been here since 2001, just before the towers came down. We've seen the community evolve, just like the rest of Loudoun County. It's been good. And we've evolved and we haven't given up our inherent charm, you know, our village look, you know.

[01:08:01] I don't think a new fire station would detract from this charm, from this rural Virginia scenario that we cherish. And I know people who feel the same. You know, we walk the neighborhood, we talk, and we go to the general store, and we're part of the community.

[01:08:20] I'm a defense contractor. I don't do fire stuff. I don't save any lives. But I do do defense stuff. And I've found, in my experience, it's usually a good idea to trust the people that have the weapons, that have the fire hoses and the axes.

[01:08:36] They've chosen this occupation. So, insofar as their needs are met and they've articulated a requirement, I say build it. I'm giving back some time. Thank you, sir. Stephen Price, followed by Tom Lacey, followed by Assistant Chief Peter West.

[01:08:58] Mr. Price. Yeah, there you go. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening, Madam Chair, ladies and gentlemen of the board. I'm Stephen Price. I'm here tonight speaking on behalf of the Virginia Piedmont Heritage Association.

[01:09:16] I also happen to be a resident of Philemon. The Philemon Volunteer Fire Department, who is pushing to a great extent construction of a new firehouse on the horse show grounds, what you need to know is that it is a volunteer fire department in name only.

[01:09:37] No volunteers have run any calls for over 10 years, and it is a private club of about 10 or 12 people who have refused to take any new members for some years now. And so, in effect, what they've done is taken control, if you will, of community assets that have been paid for by members of the community over many decades of raising money.

[01:10:03] Why do they not take any new members? Well, it's because the majority of people in the area do not want the new horse, the new firehouse to be built on the horse show grounds. And the evidence I have of that in the package I've given you is the results of the 220 bond referendum to build the new firehouse.

[01:10:26] It passed in Loudoun County with 77-plus percent of the vote and carried every single precinct except Philemon, the Philemon Fire Department, or the Philemon Firehouse Precinct, and St. Louis, all within the first due area.

[01:10:43] So the people that are right in the community, they manifested their opposition to it as being the only people to vote against the referendum. Now, just quickly, what you need to know is that the horse show was in existence years before they bought the horse show grounds.

[01:11:05] I put in a 1958 program into the materials I gave you. It was really big business within two years. This is the 1960 program. I don't have copies to give to you. But the whole point is that the horse show generated lots and lots of money, and they bought for $4,000 plus the horse show grounds, which is like $43,000 in 2024 money, and gave it as a matter of accommodation to the fire department to hold title to because it was the only community organization that could hold title to real estate.

[01:11:45] And so now for the fire department, who took it as an accommodation to turn and try to convert it. Your time is up, sir. Thank you. I would just ask the board not to be complicit in this breach of faith by the fire department. Thank you.

[01:12:01] Tom Lacey, followed by Assistant Chief Peter West, followed by Phil, I think it's Ed Burrell. Good evening. Good evening, sir. Yes, sir. Tom Lacey, Phil, I'm here in reference to two opinions about the future of the firehouse that I've heard recently in Philomont.

[01:12:19] One of them, well, I've heard it tonight, but first by the chair of the Planning Commission December 14th when she offered the notion that there were two reasons they bought the horse showgrounds, one of them for a secure future plan where they wouldn't have to worry about moving from farm to farm when they got the horse showgrounds in 1962.

[01:12:40] But the Planning Commission chair also offered the notion that this was a plan to secure a site in 1962, which they could move to in years in the future. I think this is a far-fetched notion.

[01:12:55] I think it's hard to believe in 1962, after being at the firehouse from 1956 to 1962, after six years, they were planning on moving. I just don't think it holds water that at that early time in 1962, the firemen were planning on a new building at the horse show grounds.

[01:13:17] I think they bought the parcel, as was said, only for the horse show. It's really hard to believe from 1956 to 1962 they suddenly were planning to move from the recently built fire department.

[01:13:33] The other opinion I've heard recently was that there's a secret, kind of hidden, silent majority in Philemon that's basically unable to speak up because most people support building, rehabbing rather, the fire department.

[01:13:52] I think when I was collecting signatures as part of the 450 signatures to support rehab at a firehouse, there was no way that you could say anybody was shy about expressing their opinion. In fact, I think Philemon people are eager to express their opinions about current subjects.

[01:14:12] And this notion that I heard recently that there's a silent majority in Philemon that supports but is unable or afraid to speak up in reference to the future of the firehouse, I just think it's a far-fetched notion to entertain.

[01:14:29] Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Assistant Chief Peter West, followed by Phil Ebro, followed by Aaron Gable. Good evening. Excuse me. Good evening, Madam Chairman.

[01:14:45] My name is Peter West. I'm a Philmont Volunteer Fire Department Officer. I have served as a fire service for 55 years, including Station Chief. I support construction of the new fire station at the fire training grounds. The decision before the board is whether to approve the fire station at the training grounds.

[01:15:04] minority of the community has advocated renovation of the existing station. Two feasibility studies have shown that this is technically impractical and cost prohibited. So let's look at the facts. There are really only two choices. Renovate the current fire station or build a new fire station at the fire training grounds. Renovation of the existing fire station site presents many issues and unacceptable compromises. The site is too small. The fixed interior structure walls will prevent a free-flowing interior design. The community center and station parking will be

[01:15:39] restricted. The recycling center must be removed to another location. The site provides a dangerous access on the Snickersville Turnpike. Major elevation changes in the site will require very expensive fill and retaining walls. Doubling this building size with a renovation will adversely affect the historical look and feel of the recently designated historical village.

[01:16:05] Renovation of the current station with all of its compromises that I've described above will end up, the county will end up with the worst operational design fire station in the county. Alternatively, building a new fire station at the fire training ground avoids those issues.

[01:16:22] It provides ample space for a single floor building to be for a modern fire station standards and provide effective cancer reduction decon zones. There will be no septic field risks. There will be no parking issues. There will be much safer emergency vehicle access to Snickersville Turnpike.

[01:16:41] It will be $8 million to $10 million cheaper to build, and it will not require the construction of a temporary fire station during construction. The old station will be available for community use and the cell tower income for operation of that facility should that happen.

[01:16:59] For a practical, technical, and cost point of view, the decision to build a new station on the fire training grounds is an easy one. I want to go back and say children operate in the community center next to this station.

[01:17:15] That provides an unsafe situation. Sir, thank you very much. Phil Eber, followed by Aaron Gable, followed by Richard Parasol. Good evening, sir. Good evening.

[01:17:30] My name is Phil Ebaugh. Ebaugh. Very close. There's an EBAW drive in town, by the way, named after me. Thank you. It involved in land development. I will remember. Anyway, I graduated from Penn State in 1978 in landscape architecture.

[01:17:48] I was registered in Maryland and in Virginia, both. I designed Exeter, the development on the north end of Leesburg. I was a project manager for that whole job. Huge stormwater management ponds, Belmont going through there, and bypass going through.

[01:18:03] I designed both of those. So I've been around a long time. I am a Philmont community resident. I live one mile north. When I moved here, Stan Lickey was a fire captain. He ran the general store there. There's three buildings in Philmont. Have any of you been in Philmont? It's a charming place. I mean, it's a teeny little place. Three buildings. The general store, fire department, and a community center.

[01:18:31] So you're going to take away the fire department, build a new one. Great. Now we have this huge thing just sitting there that, oh, yeah, we can use for community stuff. We have a community center. There's other places to do that. We're going to have this huge abandoned building doing nothing.

[01:18:47] You need to tell me what you're going to do with that building. There's three buildings. The fire department is right in the middle. It's going to be a disgusting piece of crap when you leave. It is. I mean, kiddo, it is. Also, turn lanes, you're talking about horse show grounds, Snickersville Turnpike, Scenic Byway, you look up Scenic Byway, Virginia, on the internet, what pops up, it's Snickersville Turnpike, because it's a gorgeous road, absolutely gorgeous.

[01:19:17] Turn lanes, Snickersville Turnpike, to get this fire station in, it's going to screw up Snickersville Turnpike in a big way. You're going to have at least 200, 300-foot turn lane and 100-foot tapers on either end, left and right turn lanes going in. That's widening the road, widening Snickersville Turnpike, which sucks.

[01:19:35] Okay, my wife worked on the Ladies' Auxiliary for a long time. I worked parking cars in the ring for the barbecues that they had. So we made money for the fire department a long time. My wife was the treasurer of the Ladies' Auxiliary. She was pissed when the fire department said, you need to give us all your money, because that's what the Ladies' Auxiliary did.

[01:19:56] They made money for the fire department. Anyway, I'm all for reusing the existing fire station. Without question. Don't leave us with a piece of crap building. Sir, thank you, sir. Okay, thanks. Thank you. Erin Gable, followed by Richard Parasol, followed by Amanda Fallon.

[01:20:17] Good evening. Hi, I'm Erin Gable. I'm a resident of Philomont. I can see my house on the photo behind you. I live directly above the Philomont Horse Showgrounds, the proposed site for the new fire station. I'm appearing before you today to ask you to defer your decision on the Philmont Firehouse and direct staff to work on the addition and renovation of the existing firehouse as recommended by the Loudoun County Heritage Commission.

[01:20:43] Like many residents of Philmont, I moved to this area because of the peace and tranquility of country life. Unfortunately, the proposal to build the new firehouse on the historic Philmont horse show grounds would forever disrupt our way of life in Philmont. My children used to be able to watch the horse show from their bedroom windows, but if this proposal moves forward, they will soon have a year-round view of an 18,000-square-foot sprawling firehouse and its parking lot.

[01:21:13] I am reminded of a quote by Joni Mitchell, my children will not be sleeping easy at night. As an adjacent landowner, I have been disappointed by the lack of community interaction around this proposal, as well as the lack of action from the county to reduce impacts from the facility, including light and noise pollution, the disruption of wildlife, potential impacts to our wells, and not to mention the economic impacts of eventually trying to sell our house, our homes that will now be next to this monstrosity. All of us in Philemon want our firefighters to have a

[01:21:51] facility that meets their health and safety requirements. We are simply asking that this facility remain where it is in the heart of our village, rather than permanently destroying our open space and leaving us with an abandoned building a piece of crap as the previous speaker noted we do not want this new fire station built on our horseshoe grounds please listen to the pleas of so many in our community and allow the recommended addition and renovation of our existing fire station i would ask you also to consider on the health and safety front the health and safety of my family we do not know what sort of contaminants will be going into our groundwater

[01:22:29] I have a private well I'm very concerned about carcinogens and contaminants that will be at this fire station and that how that will affect my children thank you for your time mm-hmm thank you I think we can all agree that none of us want to see a piece of crap anyway so we all know that thank you anywhere no matter what happens here which is Richard Pierce all followed by Amanda Fallenfeld by Madeline Skinner. Good evening, sir. Good evening. My name is Rick Pearsall, and I'm the chief, 26-year volunteer and life member of the Philomont Volunteer

[01:23:07] Fire Department. I am still an operational member. I still run calls. I've received national awards, or not national, but county awards for my operational duty, so I don't know where the information comes from that there's no operational members anymore at Philomont. I have a 28-year member of Philemon and a 47-year member of Loudoun County. I am here tonight to speak for the Philemon Volunteer Fire Department. I'm not quite sure where to begin. I've scribbled all sorts of notes on here, but over the last several weeks, I want to thank all of the supervisors that have come out to the station and visited and seen and put boots on the ground as referenced by Commissioner

[01:23:46] Mark Miller. There, I think you'll get a much better appreciation for what the issues are, and I think from that point you'll receive and understand some of the correct information that's there. I and the Philomont Volunteer Fire Department leadership firmly believe the best win-win situation or decision for Philomont, the community, Loudoun County Fire and Rescue, and Loudoun County is to approve. It's the approval that places a 50-year station on the proposed site with all the efficiencies and health safety benefits while providing protection for the first responder and citizens and enables Philomont to follow through in its intent to turn the

[01:24:21] existing community resource into a community center. A lot of folks are excited about this. We can do after-school activities, senior activities with yoga gym. We can do educational seminars and sessions and so on and so forth. The potential is significant. There have been over nine meetings that have been held, so anyone that will tell you that the community has not been involved isn't paying attention. There have been over, as I say, nine meetings over the last three years, many of them formal. I think it's time to move on. I understand the possible motion on the floor tonight, but I believe the supervisors will not hear anything different in two months from

[01:24:59] tonight if we continue the path that we're on. I want to say this in bold letters. The Fillamont Volunteer Fire Department wishes to reiterate that by a Fillamont Volunteer Fire Department Board of Directors approved motion, the existing station is not, EFSIS, is not being made available or offered for renovation or adaptation as a fire station. I repeat, the existing station is not being offered for renovation or re-adaptation as a fire station.

[01:25:33] It's privately owned by the fire department. Thank you, sir. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Amanda Fallon, followed by Madeline Skinner, followed by William Ridge. Good evening. Thank you for your time, everyone. Can we show our hands of who knows what FFA stands for? All right, a couple.

[01:26:01] A couple. Well, it's a national organization in support of agriculture. There is only one chapter left in Loudoun County, which I am the advisor. Professionally, this idea of a new firehouse and training center kills me. But personally, I will be even more negatively impacted by this proposal.

[01:26:25] I live in one of the oldest cabins in Percival, circa in the late 1700s, which is also registered in the Village Conservation Overlay District and the newly approved National Registry of historical places. These recognitions also include the seven-acre horse show grounds, as well as Snickersville Turnpike. My modest two-level cabin sits directly across the street from the Philomont horse show grounds. The stars at night are amazing, and the open space is

[01:27:05] wonderful to run dogs and ride horses. A training center in rural Loudoun, this would create light pollution and a lot of noise. The safety factor is even worse. We all know the roads are too narrow for heavy equipment. There's no shoulder on this historic road, which is one of the fifth most beautiful roads in the country, Snickersville Turnpike. The village residents are extremely

[01:27:37] worried about their wells, mine as well. We have taken great steps to provide farm and wild lands in and around our property. There is a well-utilized wildlife corridor on the south side of the proposal property that consists of a creek which feeds into a pond that has bass in it.

[01:27:59] Many people enjoy fishing there and bird watching. I'm speaking on behalf of the last rural open spaces in Loudoun County to please adhere to our county policies and zoning that you all approved and keep our firehouse where it is with an addition and renovation that we want for our brave firefighters to utilize in safety and happiness for all.

[01:28:24] Who doesn't like a win-win situation? Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you. Madeline Skinner, followed by William Ridge, followed by Kathy Watts. Good evening. Good evening, Chair Randall and supervisors.

[01:28:40] This is a big night for Loudoun County. I know it's a pretty full agenda. I've sort of redone my wording here based on what's been going on. I wish I could do more. Again, we really do want to clear up, as far as the breakthrough on the December 21st meeting, I thought it was a breakthrough because it was the first time there was really an open conversation with the appropriate attendees at this meeting.

[01:29:02] So I saw it as a breakthrough. The fact that it was clarified that the feasibility study done in 2023 was done on an incorrect concept. Once we were able to focus on the correct concept and had a very productive conversation, that it was feasible that all of the health, safety, comfort, fire, and rescue requirements, including an ambulance, excuse me, could be met with the addition renovation. Remember, this is a brand new 12,000 square foot addition that we are talking about. We want nothing less for our fire and rescue staff who we respect and appreciate. We look forward to working together

[01:29:40] on the future design in detail and the planning of this particular concept. The idea of cost being a factor is absurd because I know the number was given about $6 million to do this.

[01:29:56] If that firehouse is left empty by building on the horseshoe grounds, how much will it cost the county eventually to renovate that building to be used? Philomont can't do it. We don't have the capacity to do it. We would have to turn to the county. So millions would have to be spent on renovating that building.

[01:30:14] If you're going to spend that kind of tax money, let's keep it the way it is. Let's keep it a firehouse. That's what it was built for. And it's a sturdy building with at least 50 years left on it per a building evaluation that was done in 2018 by a consultant paid by the county. I heard from reliable sources that some are saying the Philomont residents really want the new firehouse.

[01:30:33] Where are their yard signs in the neighbor's yards? Where is their 451 signature petitions? Good question. It must be a very silent majority if nobody wants to speak up. A statement that really hit me from one of the planning commission meetings was somebody, one of the speakers said, a facility is a reflection of the people in it.

[01:30:55] I think that's a very dangerous concept. So anyway, please, we look forward to deferring, working on this more, working on it as a community in a much more productive conversation moving forward. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Skinner. William Ridge, followed by Kathy Watts, followed by Tia Ehrman.

[01:31:17] Good evening, sir. Good evening, Chair Randall and board members. My name is Bill Ridge. I'm an architect. I worked for 30 years for EPA renovating laboratories, 30-year-old laboratories, while they were in operation.

[01:31:32] So I've done this many, many times before when I did the proposal, which you all have copies of, I sent forward as well. What I have proposed meets all of the standards for a new fire station, that nothing is compromised with the one exception of there will be stairs.

[01:31:50] And in terms of response times, a fire pole is faster to get from a bunk room down to apparatus than running down 75 feet of hallways. So what I've proposed will not impede response times. Actually, what I propose is much closer to the Snickersville Turnpike, and the access to Snickersville Turnpike is basically exactly the same grade as it is to come down from the horse show grounds out onto Snickersville Turnpike, and the sight lines are the same.

[01:32:19] The costs in the feasibility study were based on misunderstanding of my proposed design. They had raised the level of their addition eight feet up in the air, which created a huge cost for eight feet of fill and retaining walls.

[01:32:37] That was totally unnecessary and was a mistake. In the package I gave you, there's a photograph of the site, the fire station from Snickersville Turnpike, showing it is not a steep site. It is fairly level and the access, there's plenty of room to build on that site.

[01:32:55] There's an elevation that shows the new station with four bays and the bunk rooms on the second floor. The only thing on the second floor are bunk rooms, kitchen, day room for the staff. None of the firefighting functions are upstairs.

[01:33:12] So in short, I've strongly urged that you take, give the staff of DTCI time to do a legitimate study of this proposal and prove it out that it can, in fact, work before making a decision. Thank you.

[01:33:28] Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Ridge. Kathy Watts, followed by Tia Ehrman, followed by Chris-- I think that says Boyer, maybe? Boyeum? I'm sorry. Ms. Watts?

[01:33:44] Yeah. My name's Kathy Watts. I've lived in Loudoun County for almost 36 years, with 17 of those in Philemon. I'm about half a mile from the proposed new station a mile from the old one. I hope everybody's read the results of all these studies because I hear a lot of misinformation, including about turn lanes and everything. And I really think people need to read it because that's not true. There's no turn lanes and there's some other things too. But anyways, I'm not here to talk about that. For 65 years, the Philomont community came together frequently, not just for a horse show and not just for a horse show once a year. They came together for barbecues, spaghetti dinners, ice cream socials, brunches, holiday dinners, and other

[01:34:22] activities that were held at the current fire station. It has all of the infrastructure in place for the community. All were welcomed and donations to PVFD were appreciated at those times. In addition, the upstairs meeting hall, which is affectionately known as Lickie Hall, was available for rent by organizations, clubs, and for private events. I recall taking my own children there 20 years ago to drop them off for an activity of some sort. It's the first time I ever stepped foot in that station. With volunteerism dwindling, Company at Eight has had to make these choices that understandably transition to full-time career staff with the fire and rescue personnel

[01:35:01] from the county. They need a place to live and work. It needs to be safe. It needs to be in a building that meets the county's fire and rescue standards. A new station needs to be built, not just for the present and not just for Philomont. This is for all of Western Loudoun County. It's not just our station, but for the future needs of everybody. It needs to be safe and have room to expand. It needs, if needed, already be determined by experienced engineers that the renovating the old station is not feasible and therefore has been discontinued as an option or has been discounted as an option. I agree that Philomont needs to be preserved and as much as possible I believe that protecting historic Philomont Village actually begins with preserving the old fire station

[01:35:40] which I understand may be eligible for the historic registry. The old station has been renovated twice. If a third edition were added to it, I'm fairly certain it will change the look and feel of the village forever and of course the community will never set foot in that building again they can't now because of the current situation the board of directors its members and all unpaid volunteers have worked hard for many years to fulfill their 65-year mission of providing safe and effective fire and rescue to fill a mountain western loudon i hope you guys will go ahead and approve it thank you very much thank you ma'am tia ermine followed by chris um i think it's boy her i'm not quite sure followed by ray prince good evening good evening

[01:36:20] supervisors um for the record my name is tia erman speaking with you this evening on behalf of the piedmont environmental council um to give our input on fillmont uh just the location name of the historic village of fillmont should set the tone for this fire station it is located in the historic village overlay district in fillmont and should have been designed with the corresponding parameters in place from the very beginning. It should be constructed to reflect the unique setting this appropriately and clearly directed by our county documents. County documents have a lot to say about the 12 historic villages of Western Loudoun, including Philmont, and this

[01:37:00] project is in direct contradiction of much of this community-developed and board-approved guidance. From our Countywide Comprehensive Plan, Chapter 2, page 105, if anyone's curious, Rural Historic Village Policy No. 1, development and uses in rural historic villages must be compatible with the historic development pattern, community character, visual identity, intensity, and scale of the individual villages.

[01:37:26] This proposed project on the horse show grounds does not follow any of this direction. Continuing on to bore you to death, under strategy 1.2, it more explicitly directs, preserve the character of the villages and their historic structures and sites through the rehabilitation and adaptive reuse of existing buildings.

[01:37:48] How does this application follow any of this direction? We encourage the board to take another look at plans to build in place as requested by the community and believe it is quite possible for an expanded building on the original site to provide safe modern facilities, utilize the adaptive reuse techniques our comprehensive plan calls for, and leave the character of this rural historic village unbroken. This would also preserve the horse show grounds in place, leaving them available for future green space projects, not for an individual, but for a community with a deficit of publicly accessible green spaces and parks. This also creates a firehouse which is appropriate for the surrounding community

[01:38:27] and in line with both the community's desires and the county's stated goals. I'll close quickly by saying what makes Loudoun such an amazing place to call home is the complete diversity of our communities. Eastern Loudoun, Western Loudoun, they are very diverse and a unique place to live.

[01:38:46] This is a facility being designed not for Ashburn but for a historic village and it needs to be differentiated. Thank you, Ms. Ehrman. Thank you. Chris, I think it's Boyer. I'm just not quite sure. Followed by Ray Prince, followed by Drew Bishop. Will you say your last name for me?

[01:39:08] Because I can't quite. Baker. Oh, well, that was way, I was way off. I'll be going to remedial penmanship class. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir, for having me.

[01:39:24] I'm Chris Baker. I live in Philmont, just down the road from the current firehouse. Been, you know, been opposed to the whole new firehouse since the beginning.

[01:39:45] It's a huge undertaking, huge expense for the county. And after the tens of millions of dollars that will be spent on that, we will have, I'm not going to say crap, we're going to have a blight with the old firehouse. It'll be left vacant, underutilized, and horrendously expensive for somebody to update and maintain to whatever the future use of it might be. Philmont's a really,

[01:40:18] really neat community. It's not eastern Loudoun. It's quiet. It is rural, as rural as, you know, Loudoun County can be. And it's been an absolute pleasure to live here in Philmont.

[01:40:36] And anything that disrupts that, takes away from the community, I think is just an unfortunate and unpleasant prospect for our future. So I ask you to defer or negate the whole thing.

[01:40:57] Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Baker. We appreciate that. Ray Prince, followed by Drew Bishop, followed by Peter Weeks. Good evening. Thank you. My name is Ray Prince. I live about halfway between Percival and Philip Pellamont.

[01:41:20] I wanted to concentrate on a subject which many speakers prior to mine have talked about, and that is the response times. It seems that most of the discussion of response time talks about comparison of the two stations and how quickly the firefighters would be ready to leave the station, how quickly the equipment could get on the road and get going.

[01:41:48] But surely part of the response time is how long it takes you to get to the fire. And I'm sure there have been studies that look at how much an extra minute or two minutes cost as the fire continues to destroy the structure and endanger the people who live there entails.

[01:42:13] Now, we're talking about comparing two fire stations, both of which would be using Snickersville Pike. The larger fire trucks weigh between 40,000 and 50,000 pounds. Can you imagine a 40,000 or 50,000-pound fire truck going 50 miles an hour down Snickersville Pike?

[01:42:35] I think that would represent a real danger. And if there were an accident, it would certainly delay the ability of the fire department to do something about the fire. I think maybe the issue here is, should it be in Philmont at all compared to a place that has greater access?

[01:42:56] Maybe, for example, a fire station along 15, Highway 15, perhaps near the data center if it gets approved. I think the issue here, which happens many times, is we should be careful in making a decision that we aren't penny wise and pound foolish.

[01:43:19] Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Drew Bishop, followed by Peter Weeks, followed by our last speaker on this issue, which would be Christopher Young. Good evening, sir. Good evening. My name is Drew Bishop.

[01:43:34] I'm a resident of Philemon. My wife and I own and operate the Philemon General Store, which is adjacent to the Philemon Firehouse, where it currently exists. I've spoke several times on this issue. I've been to as many public meetings and impromptu community meetings.

[01:43:50] Chief Johnson made an effort to come out and meet with some members of the community. Unfortunately, that wasn't as well advertised, I think, as it could have been. I think, for me, the amount of people showing up to this event and speaking on one side or the other of it indicates to me that we don't have a consensus within the community.

[01:44:15] That's very clear. I think everybody wants and desires what's best for Philomont and the surrounding communities. Everybody wants what's best for our first responders, whether that's in a new structure or in a structure with an addition or renovation. We want that.

[01:44:30] We really desire that. I think it's wrong for anyone to think that if they oppose the current plan that's being decided tonight or considered tonight, that they don't want what's best for first responders. That's not correct. I'm troubled by a lot of things with this process.

[01:44:49] I think we're getting better, but I think we could have done better early on with involving more people from the community. You know, one of the meetings more recently that happened was at the firehouse itself. And, you know, I'm not an architect.

[01:45:06] I'm not a building engineer. But I listened to two highly qualified architects who don't have the same opinion of how this can be accomplished. I'm troubled by the fact that Mr. Ridge wasn't included in a feasibility study on the concept that he proposed.

[01:45:26] I'm troubled by the fact that the volunteer fire department won't accept volunteers. I think these are all indicative of a wider problem, and I don't want the Board of Supervisors to endorse that division by making a decision prematurely on this.

[01:45:43] And I think the other thing I'm troubled by is that we're looking at a first-due area that's 42 square miles, and the overwhelming majority of properties within that first-due area cannot be met within the national standard response time.

[01:46:02] And I want this body to think about that and think about asking Chief Johnson. Mr. Bishop, I'm so sorry, but your time is up, sir. If you have comments, you can absolutely email them to us. We have Peter Weeks, and then we have two people who are remote after Mr. Weeks will speak.

[01:46:20] And that would be Mark Hansen and Christopher Young. Mr. Weeks, are you in the room? Mr. Weeks is online. Mr. Weeks is online, as is Mr. Hansen and Mr. Young. Okay, then Mr. Weeks. Oh, thank you for taking my call.

[01:46:36] First of all, my name is I'm Vice President and I'm the representative of the Snickersville Turnpike Association. I'm also President of the Newmont Citizens Association, so another historic village and another historic village under threat.

[01:46:58] I appreciate what everyone has been saying tonight, particularly those who have indicated that it would be best to continue responding to what the Philemon citizens have said, what other effects have proposed, and to re-examine, continue to research and defer decision tonight so that we can reach a consensus, as someone said earlier. We already had a quote from Joni Mitchell earlier. I'll add her famous

[01:47:35] song, you don't know what you've lost till it's gone. That beautiful open area is described in the general plan as a green buffer will be forever gone. Whether it's the horseshoe grounds, as one person has described it, whether pastoral view, whether it's wildlife, whether it's a pond, it's gone. It's gone forever. So we really have to make the right decision here. What's best for

[01:48:10] citizens, for the historic area, for all of the historic villages. So that's what I would like to communicate to everyone tonight. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Weeks. Mark Hanson, and followed by Christopher Young, who was our last speaker, and we both are remote. Mr. Hanson? Yes, good evening. My name is Mark Hanson. My wife and I actually live in Philemon and fully support building a new, fully modern fire station on the Philomont Fire Department training grounds on Snickersville Turnpike.

[01:48:47] Looking at the results of the two comprehensive studies that have been done, I think it makes the most sense of scarce money and resources into building a new, modern fire station at a lesser cost than renovating the existing station. The way I see it, a new fire station at the new location would provide the best environment fully meet professional health and safety standards for the firefighters who potentially put their lives on the line every time they go out on an emergency call. Our firefighters deserve no less than that. As a Philomont resident, I say let's provide our firefighters with a modern

[01:49:25] fire station built on the fire department training grounds that efficiently and safely provides them with their best shot for safe Loudoun County homeowners and businesses. Thank you. Thank you. And our last speaker on this issue will be Christopher Young, who is also remote.

[01:49:44] And I'm going to shut off speakers at the Mr. Young. Mr. Young, are you there? Thank you, Madam Chairman, yes. I am a resident of the Lamont area where we've lived for almost 40 years now. We are so lucky.

[01:50:00] This is such a beautiful countryside with open rolling terrain and lots of green space and glorious mountain views. I certainly support the need to preserve our rural landscape and to respect the history of western Loudoun County. That's why I urge you to accept the application from Loudoun County Fire Rescue to build a new, modern, one-story fire rescue station on the seven-acre field that was once used by the annual volunteer fire department.

[01:50:33] With proper landscape screening, this will be a far less imposing threat to the history and tranquility of the Hamilton Beaumont than the alternative plan of expanding the existing two-story house to more than double its current footprint, dwarfing the general store and the community center, eliminating the recycling center, compromising the safety of preschool children going to and from the community center, and disrupting cell service.

[01:50:59] Bottom line, our dedicated first responders deserve the very best accommodations and safest workspace that can be provided with no concessions. We should trust that the Loudoun County Fire Rescue leadership knows what is best for their personnel when they make this application.

[01:51:23] The old Fremont Foundation, as we've said, can be repurposed as a multifaceted community facility without compromising the village's historic charm. And for those who are concerned about preserving our green space, I say do as well. Put your properties in a conservation easement and urge your neighbors to do the same.

[01:51:43] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Young. That was our last speaker for this item. I am now going to turn to Mr. Kirshner, who has Mr. Kirshner for a motion. Were you going to make the motion, madam?

[01:52:00] I'm happy to make motion to move it to T-Log. There's two motions to make. Oh, you want me to go ahead and make that motion? Yeah, we have to do the, no matter what, we have to do that tonight. And I guess we actually don't have to because it will automatically go into place, but probably out of a formality we should.

[01:52:18] So I would move to suspend the rules. Yes, yes, that's a good point. Concerning specifically the commission, let me make sure I have the right motion. You don't have to suspend, you can just make that motion. We don't have to suspend the rules for that? Yes, we do.

[01:52:33] Yes, so I'd move to suspend the rules. I will second that. A motion is made for suspension. I second the motion for suspension. Discussion on that motion? Seeing none, all will be able to say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion passed 801. Mr. Kirshner? I move the Board of Supervisors ratify the Planning Commission's approval of Ledge 20230069 Philmont Fire Rescue CPAM 20230003 subject to the commission permit Platt dated November 3rd, 2023 and based on the findings of approval provided as attachment 1 and 3 to the January 10th, 2024 Board of Supervisors Public Hearing Staff Report.

[01:53:10] I will second that, discussion on that motion. Ms. Sittner, do you have something on that you want to add? I'm sorry, did you say subject to the conditions of approval? Oh. Or did you say... I read the wrong motion.

[01:53:26] My apologies. You just said findings. You just said findings. Okay, I apologize. Okay, you're good. I want people to say aye. I have a light. Oh, on the commission permit. I'm sorry, I didn't see that. On the commission permit. Yes, ma'am. So I just want to confirm that the commission permit that we're approving tonight is not site-specific.

[01:53:42] In other words, it could be, it's just a region, right, and not site-specific. Ms. Sittner? So when I look at the plat, there's a, on I think it's sheet three of the plat, there's a legend item that says limits of CMPT, which is the commission permit, and the specs, and it outlines a specific area.

[01:54:08] It was hard for me to see on this small screen exactly what that covers, but I think it's just this piece of property, staff could confirm that. but it's only, so the commission permit is only limited to whatever's in that area that's shown on that plat. Mr. Galena, you have, can you help with that?

[01:54:26] It's specific to what's shown on the application materials. If there was a general approval, we wouldn't even need the commission permit because the other site is already shown in the comprehensive plan. So I think the answer is yes. It's specific to where they're talking about building.

[01:54:44] Is that correct? Yes. Approving the commission permit does not approve the application itself to build the building. Okay, so it would potentially, so we can still look at adaptive reuse of the existing site? Yes, absolutely.

[01:54:59] Okay, thank you. All right. All the people say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion will pass 7, I'm sorry, 8-0-1. Mr. Kirshner, so I can make another motion. Madam Chair, I'd ask that this matter be moved to TLUC.

[01:55:15] I believe it would be the February meeting. February TLUC meeting. I will second that. Discussion on the motion, Mr. Kirshner. - So Madam Chair, there's a lot to be said about this, and since this isn't the main motion, I'm going to keep some of that for that if we get there or at a later date.

[01:55:32] I will say that this has been an issue that I have spent a lot of time digging into. I have struggled with a number of the concepts. I don't believe, quite frankly, there's a perfect answer, and you're not gonna please both sides. And the truth of the matter is, I wish we had a third option, but obviously that's not been brought to us.

[01:55:52] But I do think, and there are a number of board members here, and I think there are members from the community that feel like that this has not been fully vetted or heard out. And so I do think that the opportunity to sit in TLUC and actually ask fuller questions of our staff rather than the two minutes that we have, I fully understand the concept, but I think it would be very helpful for other members of this board to do so and for the community to weigh in on some of those.

[01:56:23] And we could ask them to come forward. Obviously, that would be up to Teluk Chair and whatnot and speak, especially the architects that came forward tonight and those who have alternative plans for us to fully vet this and make sure we are making a fully informed decision. So that's why I would move this to Teluk, and I would ask my fellow supervisors to support that.

[01:56:42] Thank you, Ms. Umstead. Thank you, Madam Chair. I will support this motion, though I am concerned about this issue dragging out similarly to the way the previous firehouse application dragged out down in the Aldi area.

[01:57:18] I am very persuaded, having done a tour of both properties, that the best way to preserve the historic firehouse in Philomont is to convert it to another use rather than adding on another addition, which I think will make it just a very large structure in a charming village.

[01:57:38] I think the horse showgrounds make a lot of sense for a new location. It appears that the sight line from that sight is far greater and safer than the line of sight from where the fire engines would have to come out onto Snickersville Turnpike.

[01:58:03] So I would have voted for this tonight, to be honest. But the community is pretty clearly split almost down the middle on this, and those are always difficult situations. So I will go with the district supervisor, Mr. Kirshner's wishes on this.

[01:58:22] Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Letourneau. Thank you. I suspect that sending this to TLIC may not actually impact the timeline since the motion was to send to the March public hearing. Is that hopefully correct, or we don't know?

[01:58:38] Depends on what TLIC does and when the schedule. Yes. Well, I'm not going to support the notion tonight anyway, because it gives life to the idea that this has not been well vetted, that the board is not informed as it could be on this discussion, when in fact, we are informed about as much as we've ever been informed on anything that we vote on, on this discussion.

[01:59:02] There's been numerous public comment, to which I genuinely appreciate on both sides. There's been quite a few thoughtful emails, which have been split pretty much down the middle, including those who identify as being actually in Philomont. I can't read what yard signs mean versus what people send, but that's just what our inbox looks like.

[01:59:22] And the reality is, unfortunately, sometimes there's just not going to be compromise that makes everybody happy. It's pretty clear that the volunteer fire station from Philemon is not going to permit renovation of the firehouse.

[01:59:37] Therefore, what is it we're discussing anymore? Because that is not an option. We're acting as if the board is trying to decide between two options. There is no other option. This is the only option. We don't own that firehouse. It's privately owned by a private company.

[01:59:55] So to ignore that would be really to miss the point of the discussion. but most of the commentary ignores that we have had a few folks who have said just don't build it or build it somewhere else this is a fire system so this one fire station in and of itself serves other communities throughout western loudon and even sometimes eastern loudon we have a system of backfilling um i know when there's an incident in my district all of a sudden middleburg and aldi are covering stuff in south riding and this station in philomont's covering millberg that's that's the kind of thing that happens. And at the end of the day, the compromise would not satisfy

[02:00:32] our fire rescue professionals, the ones who actually have to live with this, deal with this, and provide the service. And so that's why I'm saying I don't think we're going to actually get to complete consensus on something. And frankly, we don't usually. So it's up to us to make these decisions. I think there is support for this station. I think ultimately, hopefully, it will pass. And I think we're just delaying the inevitable. We're having circular discussions for which we are, quite frankly, pretty well informed already about an option which is not actually an option.

[02:01:03] And so I will do something I don't usually do is normally if somebody wants to discuss something more, I'm not on TLUC, knock yourself out. But symbolically, it's not the right thing to do in this case. It gives rise to something which I think is not going to happen.

[02:01:18] So I'm not going to support it. Thank you. Mr. Turner. Thank you, Madam Chair. Right before this meeting, several people approached me and said, How do you feel about sending it to TELUC? And my response is always the same when someone says, let's send it to TELUC. What's the substantive value added of an additional discussion at the Transportation and Land Use Committee?

[02:01:40] And if I perceive some substantive value added to that discussion, then by all means, send it to TELUC. That's what we're there for. I actually was persuaded on the assumption that there was something that had occurred recently. The meeting is what I was referring to, but other information had been provided.

[02:01:58] But I was also persuaded by Supervisor Letourneau's comments earlier this evening and just now. I disagree. We will not reach consensus on this issue. The goal, obviously, in a perfect world is to reach consensus on all issues. That's a highly perfect world that simply doesn't exist.

[02:02:15] We rarely reach consensus, and as Supervisor Letourneau said, we have to make decisions. I am absolutely convinced that all the information that we need to have to make a decision is on the table, and we heard it here tonight. So I think we're ready to make a decision. I don't think there is substance of value added by sending it to TLUC, so I will vote no on this motion.

[02:02:40] That's the first time Mr. Turner is a TLUC chair. Mr. Turner, you and I will talk off just a little bit. Okay, yeah, okay. Ms. Glass.

[02:02:55] Thank you, Madam Chair. I will not be supporting this motion as well. I am in agreement with Supervisor Letourneau and Supervisor Turner regarding this. I believe that we've been vetted. We've heard from the community.

[02:03:11] I hear what you're saying. But I'm not sure if we can find anything else by going to another, going to a TLA committee. And as was stated before, if the volunteer firefighters say that we cannot build on there, then we only have one parcel to work with.

[02:03:36] So thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Mr. Crony. Thank you, Chair Randall. I will be supporting the motion, Supervisor Kirshner's motion. I think about Aldi and what happened in Aldi with the fire station.

[02:03:52] And I believe we came to consensus. I think a lot of people in Aldi, it took 10 years, but we came to consensus. People are happy with what happened in Aldi. Well, we did. I'm from Aldi, so I know it's feasible.

[02:04:09] I think there can be a community solution that works. I think that, you know, we need to think about how important the village of Philmont is to the community and protect the horse show grounds.

[02:04:28] You know, that isn't something that's being discussed, but we heard from the community that they'd like to have it as green space, as open space. And also take another look at Bill Ridge's design, because I don't think that was fully vetted, even though I heard that you did work with him.

[02:04:46] But I think from that meeting in December, there might be opportunities to work further on some tweaks and some changes that might make this even more feasible. I did hear from the community, I took lots of notes, and I hear you that leaving that historic firehouse just empty and mothballing it is not a good solution.

[02:05:11] So I do think it's worth further pursuing adaptive reuse and addition, and I don't think it would necessarily, you know, Obviously, safety is the most important thing, and not compromising safety is extremely important.

[02:05:31] But I do think there can be consensus, and I do think we can find a community solution. And I see the value of citizens working side by side to come up with a solution, and I hope that people can come together. We have TLUC, we have another month, maybe two months, Come together and find a community solution because, you know, not having consensus in the community is is is not a good thing.

[02:06:00] So I'd like to see us come together as a community in Philemon and come up with a solution that people can agree with. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Coney. Vice Chair Bricksman. Thank you, Madam Chair. With all due respect to Supervisor Kirshner and Madam Chair, I didn't know about this possibility of sending it to TLUC until right as Madam Chair was saying it on the dais.

[02:06:27] So as someone that gets criticized quite regularly for bringing motions at the last minute, I just want to point that out. After walking the fire station and walking through and having a tour last week, this is an untenable situation that we have our career firefighters serving in this building and combination of buildings it is not suitable for adaptive reuse and and then the idea is will then do we just tear it down and build another fire station well then that defeats the entire

[02:07:05] idea of preserving a historic building which is fascinating to me because so many people say that they want to keep the historic and heritage aspect of our villages. Well, how is tearing down the historic fire station going to do that? The only way to do it is to maybe do adaptive reuse to another use, not a fire station. I think that deferring action on this does not help anyone. It really doesn't. It just extends the division, the pain, and the anxiety that's going on in the community right now. As Supervisor Letourneau said, we are well-versed. I've toured

[02:07:45] the station, several of us have toured the station and the grounds, and we have tried putting this square peg into a round hole so many ways. We've had two exhaustive feasibility studies and nine meetings. I just don't think sending it to TLUC is going to bring up any new information or new data that would cause us to want to build this new station on the existing grounds.

[02:08:12] There's all sorts of issues. There's the egress and ingress. There's the, I mean, sitting there at the bays where they have to have the trucks go out as people are coming in to pick up and drop off their children from preschool is just outrageous to me.

[02:08:29] Why we would even be doing that in a county like Loudoun? That's not safe for anybody. We've got the drainage and septic fields to deal with. We've got the line of sight that if you went out the back way behind the general store, the line of sight is horrible.

[02:08:45] On the new property, the line of sight is going to be excellent. And to the building that is designed, it's the most beautiful fire station I've ever seen. It's probably going to be the most beautiful fire station in the region. I agree. We're going to have some design awards going on here.

[02:09:00] And lastly, as Supervisor Letourneau said, they're not going to sell us the property. the volunteers have made very very clear this property is not going to get sold until this land use decision is made and we're building the fire station on the on the horseshoe grounds thank you madam chair i won't be supporting miss brixman just a point of information sending something to a subcommittee is always a possibility and it doesn't have to be an advanced motion but if you ever have questions like that i'd be more than happy to ask them in the future Thank you, Madam Chair.

[02:09:32] So the truth is this. Because of my experience with Aldi, which I do not want to take 10 years to do this, I am willing to go another couple of months and go to TLUC because we had this experience in Aldi. There was more than one time we thought we were not going to be able to find anything in Aldi that worked.

[02:09:52] I do not believe that the current, well, first of all, whether or not I believe the current fire station is an option or not, immaterial because they're not going to sell it to us. That's not even material. That doesn't even matter. I did hear somebody say that there's other possibilities. I don't know that I believe that, but I'm willing to wait two more months just to make absolutely sure that there's not any other possibilities. I have a feeling we're probably going to get to the same space anyway, but when I have as many people from Philomont sign the petition that was signed and come talk to us, I do not believe giving this two more months to

[02:10:31] see if there is something out there that's possible is something that I I'm willing to do that I'm not willing to do a whole lot more than that or go a whole lot longer than that and of course I don't believe we're going to end up well we cannot end up on the site that we're on already because they're not going to sell it to us um I will say that for me the most compelling and powerful speaker tonight and there were many compelling and powerful speakers was John Myers from the fire department I've said before I will always appreciate history I will always appreciate preservation I will always appreciate landmarks but

[02:11:07] nothing is ever going to be more important to me than safety and it's not just the safety of our citizens it's the safety of our firefighters and so I will never approve something that will not be the safest thing for our citizens and firefighters which is why I think I'm probably going to get to that space anyway. But to give this two more months to look and see if, because that's what happened in Aldi, we gave it, I know I wasn't here for all those 10 years, but for the time that I was, we gave it a couple more months and we actually found another site that worked. If that's possible, and it may

[02:11:41] not be, I'm going to give it two more months to see if it's possible. The current site is not possible because they're not going to sell it to us, but anything else may or may not be possible. So I'm willing to say yes to this. I'm willing to give it two more months.

[02:11:58] And then that's as far as I would be willing to go. And so I would say to the people, to everyone who does not want this built on the grounds, on the horse show grounds, stop trying to get us to do the current fire station because it's not an option for us, literally.

[02:12:16] And let's look for something else that could be an option. Don't waste your time doing that because it'll be a waste of time. But let's take the next two months to see if there's another option available. I should say, just a point of clarification on a motion that's a tied motion, the motion does not pass, the motion does not pass.

[02:12:37] So if this is a 4-4-1 vote, then that motion will fail, and you all should know that in advance, because I'm counting up here, okay? All right, Mr. Kirshner? Just briefly, Madam Chair, I would state that the four individuals who are willing to send this to TLAC for further discussion and to see if there are any other solutions, three of us represent Western Loudoun, and I think four of us have rural policy area in our districts.

[02:13:04] So I just want to point that out. I would also note just I do think there is substantive things that could be discussed. I think a fuller vetting of discussion of this would be helpful in TLAC. I do agree with Madam Chair that that the retrofitting of the current building is really probably not an option, given the position of the volunteers and their ownership.

[02:13:29] And so perhaps there is another solution. It may be a very quick discussion at T-Luck. I'm not sure. But as Supervisor Letourneau pointed out, other than the limit of time that we knock ourselves out at T-Luck, it's not really going to hurt how this moves forward.

[02:13:45] So I'm a little surprised that you're not willing to support it going to T-Luck simply because it's not going to hurt the timeline. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Mr. Kirshner made the motion. And who seconded the motion? I seconded the motion. Okay. Sorry. It's a long time ago.

[02:14:02] All in people who say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed. If you're opposed, please raise your hand so I can make sure. Okay. That is a 4-4-1 vote because Mr. Saines is not here. That motion will fail on a tie vote. what technically doesn't fail doesn't pass but it doesn't pass on the tie vote so we have to make another motion for tonight and I'm going to go to the district supervisor for that motion mr. Kirshner yes I'm regrettably that that didn't pass I will make another motion madam chair I move the board first of all I would ask that the applicant move the critical action date for the specs

[02:14:40] if that is we don't need to that's what it says in mine do we need to do we do Why? Because we just did the commission. We're the applicant. Well, and it would be the county, so it's not part of the motion, but okay, I'll just go on.

[02:14:56] I move to the Board of Supervisors forward, Ledge 2023-0069, Philmont Fire and Rescue, SBX 2023-0003 to the March 2024, Board of Supervisors public hearing for action.

[02:15:12] Motions made and seconded by Supervisor Letourneau. Discussion on that motion, Mr. Kirschner. Thank you, Madam Chair. And listen, I've really looked at this application a lot. I am willing to be persuaded. As a matter of fact, I have tried many, many times to persuade myself to try to figure out, because I've heard from the community and I've looked at this and I've tried to figure out is there a way to do it.

[02:15:31] I appreciate what both sides have said, and I think both sides have made some really, really good points. It is no fun to be put in this position to have to choose between, I want to call it a warring community, but a community that's kind of divided about this, and it's tough, and it's hard, and I'm not going to go over all the positive points on both sides, but I will tell, I will say a couple things. I'm a little surprised that the community is willing to add a, you know, a much bigger adjacent addition to a retrofit in a community like this. I'm a little surprised at that, but that's what they

[02:16:07] are asking to do. And we have heard that the proposal that the community makes is feasible. And so that's why I was really willing to look at it. I've participated in more recently, obviously, since this is newly in my district, I've participated in a number, including the stakeholders meeting with the fire department and the community and architect and our staff and discussed this and listened and really asked some questions. And I was told, you know, quite frankly this is feasible but when something is feasible does not necessarily make it practical

[02:16:43] and I don't know how many so I'm just going to tell you that some of the things I find that's impractical on the proposal that's been made and I think Chair Randall's recommendation of perhaps finding another location is probably the only one that could change my mind on this but it's not practical to retrofit this we would literally have to do all our staging at the pony grounds right now. It would take a lot longer. And I think the, and we would have to figure out how to move the tower. And that's a very big if it would delay this application for a long time. And when you

[02:17:23] delay applications, you know, your costs are going up four or five, 6% annually. And so it becomes even more expensive than what we've been told. And I understand some of the community say, well, it's not really that expensive. Listen, we go on what they have looked at. And so we have to trust and our staff when they tell us that and they've told us we've done the feasibility on this it's going to cost you five or six million it's hard for me to say to the rest of loudon county you're going to pay an extra six million when we could have done something different um and i love philemon and i wish we could do something different but safety is such a critical and

[02:17:59] important aspect to what we do in this county in our role as supervisors and the real two big things in terms of the proposal that's been made that i cannot get past because i was willing to with a lot of this is one this is not even owned by the community it's owned by the volunteers and i for one i'm not going to take something by eminent domain which is what it would be required which is the proposal and two it's going to cost the seven negative amount more money so for those reasons i'm going to move it forward we can find a solution in the meantime i am all ears i'm following in supervisor buffington's footsteps i think this was his desire and i think ultimately

[02:18:35] i've come to the same conclusion thank you supervisor letourneau yeah i was just going going to point out so with this motion there is two months anyway should should there be some new information or some new site or something it could come forward in this time period this was always the motion in the packet so it was always the one that I plan on supporting I will ask staff though just to be sure we covered this at the beginning there was a feasibility analysis of this whole corridor to to look at different sites prior to the selection of this site correct yes correct so the likelihood of finding a different site that works better for the use of the county and is obtainable is probably pretty low, right?

[02:19:14] I would say so. Thank you. Mr. Crony. Yeah, thank you, Chair Randall. So I'm disappointed it's not going to committee. I was looking forward to having further discussion, but I do want to let the public know who came tonight and spoke that you do have two months, just like Supervisor Letourneau said, to talk among the community, to come up with a solution, and please reach out. I mean, I'm willing to talk with the community and like i said you know i know aldi and i'm not talking about 10 years

[02:19:51] but i know aldi took a while but we did come up with a consensus and i think it's a good one so i'm hoping that we can come up with a consensus for philemont and of course safety is the priority but i'm hoping we can come up with something that we can all agree with that protects um historic Philemont and protects potentially the horse show grounds for open space and green space for Philemont and also looks at you know the current site for some adaptive reuse because I would hate to see that mothballed so please reach out

[02:20:29] I'm with you I want I want to see consensus in the community and I appreciate you all coming out um mystical you have something to say yes ma'am just a technical issue that was pointed out to me the specs number in the motion is wrong. It's OTH 0003, which is the CMPT number. It should be 0014 just for the purposes of correcting the motion. Okay, well, without objection, we're going to see that motion correct. Okay. All right. Thank you. So I'm

[02:21:03] going to do a couple of things. One, Mr. Letourneau, you were correct, but we were also correct that there was no other options for Aldi, and then there was another option for Aldi. So there are some times that you believe there's nothing there and then we find something. I was willing to take that chance or that opportunity. I think what Mr.

[02:21:28] Kirshner said was so important, and I want to reflect what Mr. Kirshner just said. The four people up here right now who represent any part of Western Loudoun County all voted to send this to TLUC. The poor people who represent no part of this area did not. Supervisors, we usually give each other a little more, you know, grace when you're talking about your area. So I just want to reflect that to my colleagues. I will go back to what I said before. I think for me, the most important thing that was said tonight came from Mr. Myers. There's nothing that will ever be more

[02:22:01] important than the safety of our first responders and the safety of our community. But I'm glad We still may have a little bit of time to look around and see if there's anything. And I will say again, let's not focus on what we've been focusing on for the past month because that's not going to work because they're not going to sell it to us.

[02:22:23] When we did Aldi, when we found the space in Aldi, the amazing woman sitting to my left was the one that found that space in Aldi when they said there was nothing else there. Mr. Crony got in the car, went around, drove around, came to my office and said, Trendle, look, I found a space, because that's how she talks, and she had, and then we did, and so I will never say never, because sometimes things can actually, you can actually find, sometimes miracles kind of pop out of nowhere, so we're, you know, so don't focus on what we have been looking at, because it's not an option, and we will, you know, we'll get back together,

[02:23:02] and at the next meeting, we'll have this discussion. I do want to thank everybody who came out tonight. You didn't have to come out. I still have all the signatures that you all sent us some time ago. I do appreciate all sides that had an opinion and thoughts tonight.

[02:23:22] You know, I know some people said the community was divided. I didn't hear a lot of division because what I heard was a couple of things, and somebody actually said it. Everyone cares about Philomont. Everyone cares about the first responders and safety. So that's where you build on your consensus.

[02:23:40] We may get there in different ways, but people all said that, and so I'm not sure we were quite as divided as some might think. But hopefully, you know, we may find a different solution. We may not, but I do appreciate everyone who came out tonight and speak.

[02:23:59] And Chief Johnson, once again, I want to say thank you to you and the full combined fire and rescue department. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Kirsten, would you like to close? I would. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I too want to echo what the Chair has mentioned. I want to thank everyone for coming out, everyone who's engaged. This is not done-done, but obviously it's on its way.

[02:24:17] And I want to thank everyone that has engaged in this, spoke your piece, really reached out, pled to see something different or pled to see it happen. The one thing I will suggest, and maybe the communities can get together on this, is if indeed this is inevitable, if we cannot find another solution to ensure the safety of the community in this portion of Loudoun, perhaps there could be, somehow we as a county could help, I'm not committing any of my fellow supervisors to help with a future park type suggestion

[02:24:55] in this community that would be available for future horse shows and other activities for the community. I also want to note that it's my understanding the volunteer fire department has suggested that they will make this the remaining firehouse available to the community so again um this is not a full loss if indeed this occurs um i i hope that's true that's what i have heard that i see i see heads nodding over there so perhaps um this can be a partial win for the community who don't want to see this open space used but again i think we have a very solemn responsibility to not only our documents but also the safety safety is such

[02:25:33] a very important thing, and so I appreciate the support of my colleagues on this. Thanks so much. The Supervisor Kirsten made the motion. Supervisor Eternal seconded the motion. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion will pass 7, I'm sorry, 8-0-1.

[02:25:50] Thank you, everybody, for coming in tonight. Supervisors, I know we've been here for a long time already, but we have a really full agenda tonight, so I don't want to take a break yet because the agenda, I know that, I see your face. Okay. So I want to keep it moving because the agenda is just so, yeah, me too.

[02:26:08] I know. I have some. So we're going to keep moving. We're going to let the room clear out first, and then we're going to go to item number three.

[02:26:30] Scissors. We used to have scissors. Scissors. Just give me a second.

[02:26:49] Hold on.

[02:26:49] If you're leaving the room, could you do so expeditiously, please, so we're going to keep going, perhaps a little quieter.

[02:28:26] We're going to item number three. Normally we would take a break, but we have such a long agenda, everyone, so we're going to keep it going. All right, we have item number three. To the staff, we are ready when you are.

[02:28:46] This is in the Broad Run District. Good evening, Supervisors. My name is Bryce Johnson. I am the county project manager for the Tillots View application. The property subject to this application is an approximately 50-acre site located in the Broad Run Election District.

[02:29:06] An aerial of the site is shown on the screen, with north oriented to the top of the screen. The property is located on the east or right side at Belmont Ridge Road and the north side of Waxpool Road. It is immediately surrounded by single-family detached homes and Waxpool Elementary School. The 2019 General Plan identifies the property as located in the suburban compact neighborhood place type, which is envisioned to develop with a minimum of eight dwelling units per acre. Tonight, the applicant proposes a zoning map amendment, or ZMAP, to rezone the property to the R16 and R8 zoning districts in order to permit up to 397 dwelling units.

[02:29:46] This includes a mixture of single-family detached, single-family attached, and multifamily stacked units. This results in an overall density of eight units per acre. I will note that a few places of the staff report incorrectly listed the density at 8.2 units per acre. That was the previously proposed density when the Planning Commission considered this at their November work session.

[02:30:08] For reference, here's an excerpt of the applicant's concept development plan, or CDP. Black Angus Drive bisects the property into two halves. On the left half of the plan, the applicant proposes approximately 18 acres to be developed in the R16 zoning district.

[02:30:23] This includes 239 units consisting of multifamily stack units, shown in the blue, and single-family attached units, shown in the orange. On the right side of Black Angus Drive, the applicant proposes to develop approximately 31 acres in the R8 zoning district.

[02:30:40] This includes 158 units consisting of single-family attached units, again shown in the orange, and single-family detached units shown in the yellow. A tree conservation area is shown in green along the northern property line. For tonight's discussion, I want to focus on the outstanding policy issues identified by staff during review.

[02:31:00] The traffic impact study provided by the applicant identified a failing level of service at the intersection of Truer Parish Drive and Waxpool Road shown on the screen. The applicant is committing to a traffic signal warrant study to mitigate the traffic impacts. However, staff identifies two issues with this commitment as proposed. First, staff notes an issue with a proposed credit against the regional road contributions to pay for the signal. The 2019 Countywide Transportation Plan, or 2019 CTP, allows for a credit only for regional improvements which are not required to address the impacts of the application. Assuming VDOT approves a traffic

[02:31:36] signal, the applicant is committing to install the signal, but to receive a credit against the regional road contributions. This credit is equal to the cost of the signal, minus a $50,000 share for the proposal. Although the intersection already has a failing level of service, the development would worsen the condition. Therefore, staff recommends the applicant not be granted this credit against the regional road contributions consistent with the 2019 CTP. Second, staff notes an issue with a possible innovative intersection improvement, such as a roundabout. Per VDOT processes, an innovative intersection must be considered as an option when assessing whether

[02:32:13] or not to install a traffic signal. Staff notes the 2019 CTP specifically states that necessary improvements must be installed prior to occupancy. In the event that VDOT recommends an innovative of intersection improvement instead of a signal, the proffers allow the applicant the option to provide a $50,000 cash in lieu of installing that improvement. This means the applicant could develop the site, generate additional traffic, but not install the required safety improvements at this intersection. Staff recommends the applicant firmly commit to install the improvements necessary to mitigate the additional traffic impacts. Finally, the county anticipates regional road

[02:32:52] and transit contributions be provided on a per-unit basis. The applicant is not providing these contributions for the required affordable dwelling units, the ADUs, or the proffered unmet housing needs units, or the UNUs. Staff continues to recommend that the applicant provide the contributions for these units. At the Planning Commission work session in November, the Planning Commission recommended denial to the Board of Supervisors. Staff also cannot support approval because the proposal is inconsistent with the policies of the 2019 Countywide Transportation Plan. I will note that I have Marie Pham with DTCI online to help with

[02:33:27] transportation questions. I believe Bev Tate with public schools is also present to answer any questions that you might have for schools. We're all happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Thank you very much. This is in the Broad Run District. I will go to Supervisor Glass first.

[02:33:45] Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for this presentation. If an applicant were to propose a density below what is recommended in the comprehensive plan, would staff recommend denial of that application for not complying with the density envisioned in the suburban compact neighborhood place type? Staff would have to identify that as an outstanding issue because it would be inconsistent with the place type. Okay. Is there a history to why these parcels were place typed as suburban compact neighborhood in the plan, even though they're

[02:34:20] surrounded by the suburban neighborhood place type and not located near public transit nor other services? Back when we were working on the general plan, we were looking for relatively large developed sites that could support additional housing density, and so this was one of the ones that was identified early on in the project and made it through the rounds of review, and so that's why it remains in the plan at this place type density. Thank you. That's it? That's all you have?

[02:34:49] Okay, Mr. Letourneau. So what percentage of the traffic generated, or is there, first of all, Is the signal warranted today that's being proffered? Or is it needed today? Or is it the application that's causing it to be needed? I'll defer to Marie on that. Marie, can you hear us?

[02:35:08] Yes. Sorry, it took a second. Good evening, Supervisor Letourneau. I don't believe we have a signal, a preliminary signal analysis for what would be today. Okay. So we don't know. No.

[02:35:25] All right. On the issue of the road credit, then, the argument from the staff is that because the application is causing the need for the signal that's why they should not get the credit correct all right no i'll where you go for it i'm sorry what we're seeing right now is approximately 100 seconds of delay at the southbound approach with the proposed development we're seeing that increase to approximately 162 seconds of delay okay well that's a significant increase um so i

[02:36:01] understand maybe this is a courtney question again i understand what the place type is and therefore what the unit density goes along with that but you know when we did the comprehensive plan it's impossible to get it right for every single parcel what latitude does the board have to say even though the comprehensive plan may say eight units per acre we think in this particular parcel that's simply or this particular assemblage that's simply too dense does the board have that

[02:36:34] discretion miss yes miss sittner yes because i think here you're looking at i mean you have the plan is the guidance but it doesn't say that you have to approve an application that comes to you for that you're looking at the totality of the circumstances so I think in every case the board has to look at the application holistically and does it overall meet the plan policy are the impacts mitigated perhaps a lower density would be required because of the impacts for

[02:37:03] example so that helps okay thank you mr. Turner thank you madam chair to The Supervisor Turner's point, I just want to expand on that a little bit. I really haven't decided on this application, but I think it's profoundly unfair for us to describe a place type in the comprehensive plan and then just after they've in good faith submitted an application just say, sorry, we think that's too dense, even though it complies with what we told them to do in the plan.

[02:37:39] Whether we can do it or not, I just don't, I'm really uncomfortable with that process. Like I said, I haven't made up my mind yet. I want to hear more of the discussion, but we said this can be suburban compact neighborhood, and they are at the absolute bottom of what a suburban compact neighborhood density could be.

[02:37:57] And I think they've acted in good faith. I don't know that's going to win the argument for me, but I think it's a point that should be made. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Bricksman. Oh, thank you, Madam Chair. So, staff, is there transit nearby or planned transit nearby?

[02:38:17] Maureen? No, not that I'm aware of Supervisor Bustman. Okay. I didn't realize that. And then for some of the expected trips on page 14, do we suspect the widening of Belmont Ridge Road would alleviate those issues of the trips?

[02:38:42] I'm not sure I know exactly what you're referencing. There's a chart, Table 4, on page 14, where it talks about existing trips, generation, total permitted trips with 50 single-family dwelling units, which I assume is the former land use application that was approved. They're over their trips, permitted trips, and I'm just wondering if the widening of Belmont Ridge Road would alleviate that. It accommodates their projected volumes, yes. It does. Okay, okay, great. I have a little bit, I'll talk to the applicant

[02:39:20] about this, I have a little bit of an issue with the lack of green space and open space in this application. The staff, are they meeting the open space needs? They are right at it. Right at it. Are there connections along Belmont Ridge Road so that residents from this proposed development could cross the street and access the Beaver Dam Reservoir area and the parks? Are there safe crosswalks? Not that I know of off the top of my head. I can get that back to you. Really? Yeah.

[02:39:56] No crosswalks. So all those residents that live there, no crosswalks. I mean, I don't know that. Okay, okay. I'll get that for you. And there are trails. It's my understanding there are trails around Beaver Dam. There's like an eight-mile trail, right? Correct. That's what I thought.

[02:40:12] Okay, okay, great. Did you have a clock running? I'm sorry. I'm done. Thank you, Madam Chair. My question is, as it always will be, to the LCPS, do we know school generation numbers? I'll defer to Bev. Hi, and thank you for coming.

[02:40:40] Couldn't be a long night. Good evening. Here for the hall. Yes, we are, the schools currently serving the property are obviously Waxpool Elementary, which is adjacent to the parcel. There is available capacity there. When we look at our six-year projections, Eagle Ridge and Briarwoods are reaching that 100% capacity, but we have Watson Mountain Middle School opening and ultimately HS14, so an attendance zone adjustment could be made if warranted.

[02:41:10] So what about the high school? Briarwoods. I know, but. So they are, this year they're at 93%. Based on our projections, they're about 106% in our six years out in the fall of 29. We are hopeful to open a new high school in the fall of 28, So attendance zone adjustments could be made if warranted.

[02:41:34] I'm always a little confused that when we say like 100, anything of 100% capacity, you don't call that still having capacity, do you? No, ma'am. We said it's over. That's over capacity, okay. And what if the high school doesn't open?

[02:41:51] We will have a greater problem. Not to be flippant, but I mean we will. Yeah, but because you, I asked because you said we are hopeful that one will open, but it's not. So it is in our CIP, and we will have a commission permit application moving forward for your review.

[02:42:09] Okay, all right, thank you. Yes, ma'am. I have an answer about the crosswalks across Belmont Ridge Road. There's, as part of the widening of it, there's no plan to crosswalk. So if there's, the answer is no. Okay, all right.

[02:42:27] Hi, how are you? Thanks for coming. You have 10 minutes. You can, you know the drill. You can stand or sit or either way. We're ready when you are. Good evening, Chair Randall, supervisors. My name is Amanda Williams, a land use attorney with Cooley. Happy to be here tonight on behalf of Pulte for the Tillots View application.

[02:42:45] I do have David DeMarco with Pulte here with me and engineering representatives to answer your questions. Next slide. Excuse me. Bryce did a great job, of course, but quickly, the subject property is noted here in blue. Roughly 50 acres at the intersection of Belmont Ridge and Waxpool, just south of Waxpool Elementary, as you can see.

[02:43:03] And it is largely cleared today. Next slide. Specifically, we are requesting to rezone the property from R1 to R8 and R16 in the areas shown here. You can see the unit type breakdown on this slide, but it's a total of 397 units.

[02:43:18] Importantly, we are requesting no zoning modifications and no special exceptions, which as you all know is a rarity for this type of application. So we are just requesting a simple Z map. Next slide. The site is specifically planned suburban compact neighborhood, which calls for eight to 24 dwelling units to the acre, and four stories in height encourages infill neighborhoods with a mix of housing types near traditional suburban neighborhoods.

[02:43:42] What we're here to talk about tonight is completely consistent with this place type, offering a mix of housing types at eight dwelling units to the acre, really at the very lowest end of that range to be mindful of our surroundings and still able to offer the type of neighborhood envisioned by the plan and help support the county's more overall affordability goals in this area of the county by providing more attainable housing options.

[02:44:02] Next slide. This is an overview of the layout and I'll note a few things. Pulte was very intentional with the site design and where the density is focused. The multi-family units are tucked into the R16 district across from the school. The single-family detached less dense units are across Black Angus adjacent to the closest residential neighborhoods and the single-family attached units mainly placed along Waxpool. In terms of pedestrian improvements we are completing a 10-foot shared use trail along Waxful to provide connectivity out to Belmont Ridge we are providing sidewalks along Black Angus and along our internal streets and three

[02:44:38] crosswalks as you can see noted by the triangles on this slide to provide safe connectivity we were also very intentional with the buffers and transitions we've been able to identify 1.75 acres of land tree conservation circled and red here this will serve as a great transition in buffer we are on the eastern boundary circled in yellow we are providing a 25 foot setback with at least 10 feet of that will be a landscape buffer under the zoning ordinance we are not required buffers in either location but we have worked with supervisor Glass's office to enhance this area the area also circled in green is another supplemental buffer to further enhance the condition along the roadway

[02:45:15] here in addition to the required setback which is 100 feet I will note we previously were requesting a zoning modification to 75 feet which staff supported but after the planning commission we did remove that so we will maintain the 100 foot setback and an enhanced buffer with additional evergreen trees and a berm lastly i'll note the four specific active recreation areas circled in teal i'll discuss them in a bit a little bit more in a bit but beyond these areas you can see there are plenty of additional pockets of passive space including the pollinator gardens a reforestation area the tree conservation and other natural open spaces that total about eight acres of of land outside of the dedicated active recreation next

[02:45:54] slide this overview gives you an idea of the general size and layout of the active recreation the single family green and entry park in the r8 district a multi-family green and community recreation area within in the r16 next slide these precedent images give you a better visual sense of what these areas might look like tot lots and walking trails in the single family green seating and landscaping in the entry park lawn games fire pit and a high quality community club clubhouse and pool in the R16 district.

[02:46:20] The idea is that all of these are touch points throughout the development to allow the residents to connect and engage and really create that walkable environment. Next slide. Pulte is also including design and architectural commitments. You're looking at the townhouse elevations here. High quality, modern architecture that we think really fits in in this area.

[02:46:37] Next slide. This is the stacked multifamily product showing articulation of facades and visually interesting architecture. Next slide. Lastly, the single family detached units. As you can see, really nice looking homes with front porches and differentiated materials. Next slide.

[02:46:52] We are really proud and thankful to Bryce of how closely we've been able to work with staff on this to really resolve almost all substantive comments from NRT zoning, planning, et cetera. And the only outstanding items are really policy issues that are not new to the board. The main one being related to a credit for an offsite traffic signal at Truro Parish and Waxpool, which does already fail today.

[02:47:11] This slide here, you can see the location of our site and the intersection circled in green about a mile away. Next slide. We are proposing to install that signal up front and requesting a credit for 90% of the cost. This slide shows you graphically the distribution of trips at that intersection.

[02:47:27] The applicant's trips shown in yellow, the Tillots trips are roughly 4%, and the remaining non-Tillots trips through that intersection are 96%. Next slide. Accordingly, what we are proposing is to install it up front, but take credit for 90% of the cost.

[02:47:42] so not 96%, so we will fund 10%, two and a half times our impact, and Pulte is happy to make this improvement on front to help the traffic in the area, but want the allocation of the cost of it to be proportional to their very minimal impact. And this concept is consistent with the board's recent past practice with regard to applicant's specific proportional impact to an offsite facility.

[02:48:04] Next slide. We also wanted to highlight our coordination with the community. We met with the three adjacent HOA boards prior to the public hearing process kicking off, and it had some follow-up discussions along the way. The Broadlands HOA board to the north, Village of Waxpool HOA board to the south, and the Reserve at Waxpool HOA immediately to the east, and some specific homeowners in the Village of Waxpool.

[02:48:25] Coming out of those meetings, we have several commitments in the application beyond what was discussed with county staff. First is a landscape buffer across Waxpool Road you're looking at here on the Village of Waxpool HOA parcel. We met with and walked the property of homes along Auction Barn Drive you see in pink there, roughly 600 feet away from the project.

[02:48:43] Her concerns about potential visual impacts of the project and also existing cars that are turning off Belmont onto Waxpool. Pulse is committing in its proffers to a landscape buffer along Waxpool in front of their homes. Next slide. This gives you a better visual, the location of that. The buffer would be at least 20 feet wide and 300 feet long with canopy trees, evergreen trees, understory trees, and evergreen shrubs to provide some screening.

[02:49:06] Next slide. Second, we are committing to construct a missing sidewalk link along Waxpool between the project and Eagle Ridge Middle School. Another thing we heard when we met with the Village at Waxful was a concern about safe pedestrian access to that school. Pulte took this to heart, identified this missing sidewalk link, and is committing to constructing it with a crosswalk to provide that safe access for the Village at Waxful and the other neighborhoods in the area.

[02:49:29] Next slide. Lastly, we are coordinating with the Reserve at Waxful and its board. We've met with them and had some follow-up discussion. They've expressed some excitement about the possibility of cost sharing for services given the small size of that community. Next slide. This last slide, or almost last slide, summarizes the extensive proffer commitments being offered with this application, which we are really proud of.

[02:49:51] I will not repeat them all, but a couple we didn't touch on. LIDs and EV charging stations, affordable housing commitments, which does include a commitment to coordinate with the adjacent schools, including elementary and middle schools to advertise those units so that hopefully we can get those teachers and workers into those units.

[02:50:07] Capital facilities contributions, regional transportation transit contributions and fire and rescue. Next slide. Over the last several weeks we have been working closely with Supervisor Glass's office on some additional commitments to further enhance the proposal that you did not see in Bryce's presentation or in the staff report. I won't mention them all because I don't think that I have time but they include first a commitment to request a warrant study for the intersection at Black Angus and Belmont Ridge which is the intersection next to the school and if warranted we will design and construct that signal at no cost to the county. Right now, pursuant to our traffic study and as approved by DTCI and VDOT,

[02:50:44] this signal is not warranted with our development. But as an additional measure to confirm that a signal isn't needed there, we've agreed to perform this warrant study once some units are online. We've agreed to increase our affordable housing commitments for a total of 48 affordable units, including five unmet housing needs units. We've also agreed to expand our architectural commitments and agreed to provide historic interpretive signage on the site to commemorate the historic wax pool area and a few other items. Next slide. And with that, I'd like to wrap up by reiterating that what we're proposing tonight is consistent with the type of development called for by this place type. Pulte, to their credit, looked carefully at the guide at the comprehensive plan

[02:51:23] and the surrounding neighborhood at the onset and worked closely with the seller to come up with the concept at the lowest density recommendation to respect its surroundings while still offering the type of housing diversity that's really needed in this area of the county, particularly adjacent to a school and civic amenities, and has since worked closely with staff and Supervisor Glass to make this the best application it can be beyond its conformance with the plan and the zoning ordinance.

[02:51:48] In all, we really feel strongly that this is a high-quality application that will create the kind of neighborhood and provide the needed, more attainable housing options that were envisioned by the board when it adopted this place type in 2019. We would be very grateful for your support, and we are, of course, happy to answer any questions.

[02:52:06] Well, thank you very, very much. I appreciate that, and you have 30 seconds left to go. That was a good job. Got a lot in there in that time. I know you're very proud, aren't you? Yeah, you're very proud. Ms. Glass, this is your district. I will go to you first for questions of the applicant. Thank you, Madam Chair.

[02:52:23] Would the applicant be willing to lower the density to an amount that is more compatible with immediately surrounding densities? Good evening. So, as we have discussed, we are not in a position to lower the density lower than what we've lowered it to.

[02:52:43] We did lower it after the Planning Commission hearings, so we are at the very lowest end. First, I mean, we would be coming, if we did that, we would be coming to you with a staff report that identified additional issues with our application. And, you know, obviously, Pulte looked at the comprehensive plan as a guide for what they developed.

[02:53:01] We're also, you know, working with the seller of the property who also looked at the comprehensive plan, and you would not be surprised, doesn't necessarily want to be at the very lowest end, but we have worked closely with them, and we are there. So we are not in a position to do that. Is the applicant willing to proffer to study and install a warranted traffic signal at Black Angus Drive and Beaumont Ridge Road?

[02:53:24] We are. Is the applicant willing to extend the critical action date to accommodate the March 13th public hearing? So we talked with staff about this, and obviously our preference would be to February. We have been in this process for quite some time, but we acknowledge that staff needs to review some of these additions we're making.

[02:53:42] So, yes. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Kirshner. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for the presentation. It was very helpful. I noticed the Planning Commission denied this unanimously. So the first question I have is, in your opinion, what, if anything, have you changed as a result of the discussion with them since it's come to us?

[02:54:07] And two, I know my planning commissioner specifically has some ongoing concerns with the parking, as he always does. And I don't necessarily disagree with Supervisor Turner that it's really hard for us to say, hey, this is too dense when that's part of the comp plan.

[02:54:24] But also what comes with that is some level of responsibility to ensure that there is sufficient parking, other amenities, et cetera, ensuring that that works within the area. So could you address some of those questions? Yes. So I'll start with parking.

[02:54:39] We did talk with your commissioner quite a bit about the parking, and we are able to accommodate. Obviously, the parking discussions have been ongoing. This has been well in the process and grandfathered into the revised 1993 ordinance. but we are we looked at the layout carefully and we are able to accommodate the zoning ordinance the new zoning ordinance parking standards um so there should not be a concern with parking pulte from the beginning was you know we we don't want to come in an area like this and have parking concerns so that should not be an issue and we are willing um to to put that in our in our application materials um in terms of what we've done since the planning commission um obviously we're in a tough tough spot with being in conformance with the plan and i think there was

[02:55:18] this is you know I don't know for sure what everybody's reason was for that but I think it was just a fundamental disagreement with the comprehensive plan which is obviously challenging for us what we've done since then is we did drop the zoning modification we had one zoning modification that staff did actually support from a design perspective but we dropped that we reduced the density we were at 8.2 and we reduced it down to 8.0 so that we were really really at the lowest the lowest possible density and then we also were able to increase the open space and we increased our pollinator garden commitments as well from the planning commission

[02:55:53] to now okay and we are providing around 12 acres of open space which is five acres more than what's called for under the comprehensive plan and this area is this area is eight to 24 is that correct so you're at eight right now yes okay for under the new comp plan right um how what can you give us your i mean i know in terms of the lights that were suggested by staff can you talk a little bit about that from your perspective sorry i'm in in terms of what the light in the intersection

[02:56:28] the light at true parish yes the so we are we are committed to constructing that oh very frankly fairly immediately um given the timing in our proffers um for needing to have that bonded like we would have to request the study for it um very promptly if this were to be approved um so it will come online what we are requesting is a credit that is proportionate to our impact we're actually willing to pay it's it's two and a half times what our impact is so we are 4% of the trips through that intersection so we do feel

[02:57:00] that this is a proportionate request mr. Turner thank you madam chair this may be staff are we using the regional transportation calculation the old one or the new one? It's still just the standard. 6,000 per unit. Okay, which is substantially higher than the new one. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is. Somebody up here just mentioned that while you only add 4% to cars, you actually increase the wait time at the light from 100

[02:57:39] seconds to 160 seconds, which is a 60% increase. Who said that? And are you the applicant? Are you aware of that number? I've got Tushar here from our traffic engineer. I can help with that. Yeah, I think Marie was talking about is the delay increases at that intersection.

[02:57:57] What happens is once an intersection starts failing, even when you add minimal trips, the delay exponentially goes up. So there's a little bit of a discrepancy when you start talking about delay. But historically, we've always looked at the fair share impact of how many trips are going to the intersection, and that number is 4%.

[02:58:15] Yeah, I knew that. And staff, is that intersection failing now, or is it borderline failing, or it is failing now? It is failing today. The side streets are failing today, yes. Okay. Just for my reference, I would say the traffic light is going to be a tough one for me to get past.

[02:58:35] Going forward, assuming you move forward tonight, if you do move forward tonight, I'll want to see a larger contribution towards the traffic light than what you're proposing, the 10%. At the very least, I would want to see 60%, which is the impact on the wait time. but it's already a failing intersection so that one's going to be that one's going to be a tough one for me to get past but thank you miss brixman thank you madam chair um thank you for the presentation i i'm not so troubled by the the density here except for the fact that we don't

[02:59:09] have any transit options um which makes me really nervous um do you know if there and i apologize may have been a question for stat but do you know if there's a shared use path along belmont ridge Road? Yes, I believe it's a 10-foot shared-use path there. Okay. And we'll connect both of our, we are completing the 10-foot shared-use path along Wax. Okay. We'll connect to that. Would you commit to finding a way for people to safely cross Belmont Ridge Road to those amenities?

[02:59:38] For example, if you end up putting in that at Black Genghis Drive, if you put in the intersection, or sorry, the light or somewhere else? If we, if that, when we do that warrant study, if it were to be warranted, they would look at that, whether that, the, There would be a crosswalk there, so that is on the table with our commitment to provide a warrant study at that intersection.

[03:00:02] How far down the line would that be, the warrant study? Well, part of the idea is to do it a little bit later once the units come online because our study does not show that there is any signals needed. So what we've talked about with Supervisor Glass's office is the 175th unit.

[03:00:20] We would do that study so that we've got some units online. can confirm whether that signal is needed or not then. Okay. Do you know what the price point will be for the single-family detached, and how many ADUs or UNUs will be in there, single-family? I'll defer to you on the price point of the single-family detached, but we have 13 single-family detached ADUs. Oh, wow. Okay. I like that. What is an SWM pond? Stormwater pond. Okay. Can a trail be put around that is it worth it is it big enough so we do have so we we committed to a pollinator

[03:00:57] garden entirely around that pond okay so that makes it a little tough to completely have a trail go around it but we will have trails in that area our community recreation center the clubhouse and the pool are adjacent to it so the idea is that is an amenity in and of itself we also have worked with supervisor glasses how big's the pool some seating there how big's the pool 1600 square feet is it is it enough uh is it like um regulation 25 yards I do not know the answer to that no I

[03:01:29] mean I assume not but I don't know for sure okay okay um or 25 feet with lanes can you can you do that I don't know that but okay okay uh just just one more comment don't don't stop with the pollinator gardens even though there will be a new Algonquian planning commissioner please thank you noted we had them already i promise we just expanded it you can tell miss bricksman's children

[03:02:01] weren't swimming used to be a swimmer it's been a while um do we know at what ami level the um affordable dwelling units will be placed at i mean will they literally be affordable or anywhere along the ami spectrum so we have the affordable units which will be per the zoning ordinance we also are committing so it'd be 30 to 70 and then the unmet housing needs units okay and then those two okay did i miss something mr mr turner's question so the road is failing right now and

[03:02:38] this is going to be a strange question are you all saying that what you're going to do will make it fail less although it still will be in a failing position is that what you're saying no with the with the signal it'll operate at acceptable level of service conditions yes Would the signal operate at, okay.

[03:02:55] We will fix the problem by installing the problem. You will fix it. We will do up front. And so then it will not be at a failing level at all at that point. Cut it. Yes. Lee Moserak just walked up, so I think he has something to say.

[03:03:11] Thank you, Madam Chair. Just to correct, to supplement about transit, there is a weekday transit route along Belmont Ridge Road in this area serving the Ashburn Metro Station. Okay. Thank you.

[03:03:28] Mr. Mesereck was answering Ms. Brixman's question. I think that was all I had, though. I think that was all my questions were answered. We do have quite a few speakers on this item. I'm going to call you up and state your name when you come up, if you don't mind, and when your time is up, if you yield the podium to the next speaker.

[03:03:47] I'd appreciate that. I think it's Shariq Marza, followed by Shannon Ditling, followed by Asad Sharadi. Good evening, sir. Good evening. Thanks for having me.

[03:04:02] I would like to pass the motion, but every time you have more than 50% people here, maybe we should have some water and coffee breaks also. I live in Village of Waxpool. I've been living in Loudoun County for about 20 years. My home, my backyard is off of the Waxpool Road.

[03:04:20] When we bought our home, we were told it will always remain a one-lane road. If you come over and spend an hour every day, first during the school hours, you will see kids walking. I'm sure all of you have had some kids or grandkids.

[03:04:37] You'll see kids on bikes. You'll see kids on skateboards. On that one-lane street, they built a crossing across our community. And it's like an S. Coming from Belmont Ridge, it's an S-shaped road.

[03:04:52] you can't see on the left what's coming. In the past, as a community, we've asked the Loudoun County Transportation to add a speed bump on Vaxpool, which is a single-lane road. And our main issue is, at least my main concern, is that it's already pretty dangerous. If you come and see how kids cross that street, there's a 90-degree angle with two schools, and some genius came up with another idea on the same single-lane road to add another school. There are school buses coming in at 45 miles an hour these are professionally trained drivers they come into

[03:05:27] village of waxpool go out of village of waxpool school buses really coming really fast already today add 200 trips at rush hour that's according to the study add another 600 700 cars on that single lane i don't care about belmont ridge what what whatever you know uh lights somebody's talking about putting on a true repairish. If you go there today, it's not 160 seconds. It seems like an hour and 60 minute wait on each side today. If you go, there are two schools on one side,

[03:06:02] one school on another side. And my whole point is safety. You talked about safety. It's about our kids. All of you had kids. Maybe some of them walked to schools today. It's about their safety. They're crossing this one-lane street, which already has ample traffic on it, and talking about adding 200 cars, trips at rush hour and 2,600 trips a day on the same road is a bad idea.

[03:06:28] Thank you. Thank you, sir. I'll get some water. Thank you. Shannon Detling, followed by Assad. Sharadi, followed by Melissa O'Work. Good evening. Hi, thank you for the opportunity to speak. I'm Shannon Detling. I live with my wife and four children, school-aged children, on Auction Barn Drive.

[03:06:45] I'm obviously a resident of Loudoun County in the Broadwind District. Applicants requesting rezoning from R1 to R16 behind our home. That's a 40-foot-tall wall of townhomes. And so just like the Planning Commission unanimously recommended denial, we also respectfully ask that the Board of Supervisors deny the application.

[03:07:06] The recent changes proposed by the applicant do not resolve the concerns of the neighborhood regarding traffic and safety and incompatibility. They went down 10 units, so adding now 397 units is going to make existing traffic, safety, and congestion problems even worse. At this site, as was mentioned, Waxpool Road is a small road. It already gets cars backed up in both directions every morning. It was an unpaved road just a few years ago. The site isn't walkable to anything other than Waxbo Elementary, there's no public transit stops nearby. There is a route on Belmont

[03:07:43] Ridge, but I would challenge where that bus stop is. Everyone is going to be driving in and out of that community. There's 2,600 more trips a day. You're going to have more cut-through traffic and speeding. It's not going to be safe. With three schools in the area, it's not going to be safe for children who are walking, and putting a signal, as mentioned in the proffer, is not going to resolve the issues as it's past the main area of concern. The 50-acre site is twice the suggested a 25 acre land or infill size from the general plan.

[03:08:12] The area cannot safely handle the traffic from the residents of 400 more homes. The proposal includes rezoning from R1 to R16 and building walls of 40 foot townhouses next to our R1 village of Waxbo neighborhood with no transition on the applicant's property from the R16 to our R1 neighborhood.

[03:08:32] Landscaping if put in would take decades before screening a 40 foot tall wall of townhomes. The proposal's incompatible with the surrounding neighborhoods, which are all less than four units an acre. The nearest R-16 is two miles away. So this does not complement or complete a surrounding area as required by the general plan.

[03:08:52] We moved our neighborhood years ago because of privacy and the low density, including that the site behind us is zoned R-1. I believe that the proposed rezoning will not benefit our community, and we ask that the board deny the application. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Excuse me, Asad, I think Asharad Hay, followed by Melissa O'Rourke, followed by Hank O'Rourke.

[03:09:16] Good evening. Hi, how are you? My name is Asad Chaudhary. I'm a cardiologist practicing for the last 13 years here in Virginia. I live in the village of Waxpool, just immediately south of the proposed construction with my wife and two daughters. I'd like to start by doing a small experiment, and in order to do this, I need everybody to be very silent, and I'll explain what's going on.

[03:09:36] So pin drop silence for a second. Okay, what happened right there? As a cardiologist, I can explain to you when we are exposed to high levels of sound, our bodies go through a very well-studied reaction. Our stress hormones, cortisol levels immediately start to go up. All of our heart rates just went up about 10 points right now.

[03:10:02] Our blood pressure has also increased, and in numerous different studies, it's been very clearly shown that exposure to road traffic noise increases the risk for blood pressure, heart attack, heart disease, and cancer as well. If we look at some of the recent studies that were done from the United States Center for Disease Control, it showed that there's an increased risk of spontaneous abortion when you live within 500 meters of a road.

[03:10:27] Right now on Waxpool Road, the average daily traffic is roughly around 1,000 cars, 1,000 per day, and that's on the Loudoun County website. Adding these number of houses will certainly increase the number of cars traveling there. And as you can see on the map, almost all of the houses on Auction Barn Drive are within that distance from the road.

[03:10:48] They're in that range where we will be exposed to higher levels of noise and also with higher levels of pollution. If you look at the Journal of Allergen Clinical Immunology, they have an acronym called TRAP, which stands for Traffic Related Air Pollution. And what they have found is that when people live within 300 meters of a road, your ability to actually exhale a certain amount of oxygen significantly goes down.

[03:11:11] If you look at the American College of Cardiology, they found that just living near a higher level of decibel exposure had a 72% increased risk of heart attack. If you look at the NIH publication, they found that opening your window, even a little bit more than a few inches, exactly corresponds to higher levels of high blood pressure.

[03:11:31] So I can go on, but there are so many medical studies that show this. So I ask that you deny this application. As a Lauda County resident, we have to think of our health as a number one priority. Well, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

[03:11:47] Melissa O'Rourke, followed by Hank O'Rourke, followed by Tia Ehrman. Good evening. Hi, my name is Melissa O'Rourke. I am a Loudoun County resident and have lived in Loudoun County for the last 30 years, and I am a Loudoun County teacher.

[03:12:04] My husband and I live in the Park Grove neighborhood of Broadlands, and we back to the neighborhood in question. Along with our neighbors, we carefully considered the zoning on the adjacent property when investing in our homes. Our neighborhood consists of homes ranging from $1.5 to $2 million, so these are significant investments. We have grave concerns regarding what this change in zoning could do to our property values.

[03:12:23] The current plan has the area directly adjacent to ours slated as R8. While these are still single-family homes, we know from a new R8 neighborhood across the street that looking at these homes, they are so close that they give the appearance of being one large unit towering over us.

[03:12:39] You have to be standing in just the right spot to see that they aren't connected. We are concerned that the appearance will devalue our homes. We believe that limiting the zoning designation to nothing more than R4 would be consistent with the other neighborhoods around this area. Second, we ask that you consider the topography of the neighborhood.

[03:12:56] Looking at this map, you can't tell how very graded the property is. The neighborhood slopes severely down from the east and toward Belmont Ridge. Because of this, we already have many grading issues with water runoff and have concerns about how the clearing of trees and ground cover for those many homes would worsen the issue.

[03:13:13] We also have a large stone retaining wall along that entire side of our neighborhood that holds back the earthen wall. We're concerned about what the blasting will do to the structural integrity of that wall. In fact, several homes in the neighborhood have already suffered severe cracking from the blasting for Waxpool Elementary. And while they worked with the contractor on that, they were not able to get those cracks repaired.

[03:13:33] Additionally, the severe slope means that any homes built behind us will have the effect of towering over our neighborhood. Combined with the closeness and the appearance of one large building with our eight homes, it will further devalue our lots. We ask that the density be reduced on this parcel of the property. Lastly, we understand that the property will be developed and we understand the county's need for affordable and higher density homes.

[03:13:52] but we feel for several reasons that the number of homes projected will overwhelm the roads and schools in this part of Ashburn. I cannot imagine what Waxpool Road near Eagle Ridge would look like on any given morning after 400 homes are dumping onto it. To expect the cars to only access Belmont Ridge is naive.

[03:14:10] We also ask that you will limit the higher density development to the parcels directly adjacent to Belmont Ridge and consider limiting the property deeper into Waxpool Road and behind Wild Timber to no larger than R4. We ask that you reject this application. Thank you. Thank you. Hank O'Rourke and you, sir, will be followed by Tia Ehrman and Gosai Naikahill, I think.

[03:14:35] Good evening. Hi. Hank O'Rourke. I'm a 30-year resident of Loudoun County, 25 years in the Broadlands, and 15 years in my current residence. I follow my wife as I usually do, so I would like to echo all of her sentiments.

[03:14:51] And I'm requesting that you vote against the rezoning. I've lived in Loudoun County for most of my life, and since I married my wife here and raised our family here, this has been the best part of my life. I've seen Loudoun's exponential growth and benefited from it and chose to live here because of our schools, our public services, and my neighbors and fellow citizens.

[03:15:14] I want to share with everyone that I want to share that experience with everyone, the same experience that I had. So I think that we need to do that in a responsible and rational manner as opposed to the manner in which it has happened in the past.

[03:15:34] So in addition to all the excellent and responsible and rational points my wife made, I would ask that you also consider the following. The unforeseen cost of rezoning could very well be a long-term drain on the coffers of Loudoun County. Adding 8x or 16x the number of family homes will stress public infrastructures on roads, sewage, runoff, and emergency services.

[03:15:55] A decision against rezoning is a decision for reasonable expansion, good fiscal discipline, and reducing the future burden for the taxpayers of Loudoun County. Thank you. Thank you. Tia Ehrman, and then I'm going to spell this.

[03:16:10] It's G-O-S-A-I, and I just don't want to mess your name up. Sorry, I apologize. And you will follow Ms. Ehrman. Ms. Ehrman. Good evening, everyone, again. For the record, again, my name is Tia Ehrman.

[03:16:26] I'm speaking to you on behalf of the Piedmont Environmental Council. We've followed Tillett's view through the Planning Commission, and I've certainly commented on this application before. This evening, I continue to share the commissioners' and the staff's concerns about this development, even after the most recent adjustments by the applicant.

[03:16:43] The parcel in question is located interior to several existing communities at an elementary school, as we've discussed, at nearly 50 acres, twice the size of what qualifies as infill, and a residential density more than twice that of the next highest surrounding neighborhood, the impacts to these communities will be substantial.

[03:17:00] And we question its listing as this place type in the comp plan in the first place since it really is going to have a lot of off-site impacts. Of greatest concern, naturally, is the traffic to be generated for the surrounding developments in connector roads and the traffic concern in front of the school. We agree with staff that this application fails to adequately meet the guidance of the countywide transportation plan in mitigating these negative impacts and we agree the traffic light needs to be addressed with the larger contribution from the applicant in general this development exemplifies one of our continuing overarching concerns for the direction of development in loudon the applicant is seeking

[03:17:36] substantial density in comparison to the neighborhoods impacted by the development but it is still unable to even meet the bare minimum requirement for open and sipping space According to the packet, it still sits at a planned 6.89 acres instead of the anticipated 7.44.

[03:17:57] While we hear time and again, the developers explain that allowing greater flexibility within our ordinances is what is necessary to cultivate innovative, great products. The reality we see is one that are minimal in all of the quality of life aspects that actually create a unique sense of community, like tree canopies, outdoor spaces, and green parks, but heavy on the housing density.

[03:18:22] We hope this board will establish a new pattern of expecting more than the bare minimum going forward. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so I think it's Gosai. Is that right? Yeah, Gosai. Oh, wow. Very good.

[03:18:38] And you will be followed by, oh gosh, I'm going to spell this one too. N-I-L-A-N-J-A-N-S-E-N-G-R-E-P-L-A. Good evening, you ready? Yeah, good evening, all. So let's start with this one.

[03:18:54] I'll just talk something differently. That's the only open space left in Ashburn, and I don't know where they find it. And they just want to build all these crazy things over there. What I feel is like Israel and Gaza, all right.

[03:19:14] that's like uh they think that that's the only space left for all the people uh in the world they can come and decide over that because that's so much dance like how can you build so many things so many houses in that small area and the people who the houses around there is like almost 1.5 to 2 million dollar houses right people spend their money they pay taxes they pay interest rate the interest rate so high people who bought the houses last year and so they're paying so much taxes and they build those houses like four tower houses like come on like we're not gonna get a sunrise in the morning we cannot see that i know that they want to make money that's a different story

[03:19:53] whatever she represented like in five minutes is like blink of eyes nobody like half of the people won't understand right away because that's like a ghost you know you you need to you need to understand you need to go into details if you come over there and see that the land is not a flat it's like the land is something like goes down is deeper so there will be a structural issue if they build these houses, there are so many factors.

[03:20:15] It's not only one factor. I don't know why they're behind this and they just want to think about building so many houses. I cannot even imagine that they just put those numbers like that, that they want to build this type of houses in such a-- Broadland is known for their richness.

[03:20:34] Suppose down the road, after two years or five years, what bad people comes in. And when there is a closeness, there is more problem. When you build the houses, which is very close to each other, what's going on around those houses, you never know that. And there's a school around those areas.

[03:20:50] So in front of that, we have a lake. In front of that, there are kids. They play the baseballs over this side. We have a lot of grounds and everything. Those are all packed. There's no parking spot at all. So if they build this many houses, I don't know if their kids go to the school. I don't think so that that is even feasible to do these things like this.

[03:21:09] So I would say that you should reject it. You should think about it. Everybody should come and visit that. This is not at all a site to build the houses. We see the deer in the morning. We have fox, and everything comes in the morning. We have beautiful sun in the morning. Sir, your time is up.

[03:21:26] Yeah, but I just say that. Thank you. Thank you. And after you, sir, our next speaker will be Groswami Sherpa, I believe. Good evening. Good evening.

[03:21:42] I'm Nilanjan Sengupta. and good evening to all of you honorable members of the Board of Supervisors. I stand before you not just as a concerned citizen, but as a passionate advocate for the well-being of our community. I've been a resident of Ashburn for more than 20 years.

[03:21:59] This proposal poses serious concerns that cannot be overlooked. Firstly, the Loudoun County Planning Commission has already recommended denying this application, noting a significant misalignment with the Loudoun County 2019 Countywide Transportation Plan.

[03:22:16] This discrepancy highlights a glaring issue with the project, the inability of our infrastructure to support such an influx of traffic. So why are we even having this conversation today? Our roads, particularly near Waxpool Elementary, Auction Barn, they're not designed for this volume.

[03:22:39] The addition of nearly 400 units We'll exacerbate the traffic to a degree that poses safety risks and diminishes our cherished sense of security. Furthermore, the tranquil essence of our neighborhood is in jeopardy.

[03:22:57] We are a community that values peace, quiet, and the simplicity of small-town living. The introduction of such a large number of new residents will irrevocably alter the fabric of our daily lives, replacing our calm streets with constant noise and activity.

[03:23:18] I heard Asad talk about from his perspective, and I also heard your reactions. I would urge you to seriously consider our health risks. Moreover, as residents, we must consider the impact on our property values. I'm not going to say much. Other speakers have said that, but we did invest a lot, and we do expect you, we do expect and urge you to consider the profound implications of this development on our community and our daily lives.

[03:23:46] It should not come at the expense of the residents, us, who have built our lives here. We trust you and your wisdom and judgment to protect the heart and soul of our community. Thank you for your time and thoughtful consideration.

[03:24:03] Thank you, sir. Goswami Shishirpa, followed by, I'm going to spell the last name, I think it's S-E-N-G, actually I misspelled the first.

[03:24:19] D-E-B-A-P-R-I-Y, that's you, you're next, okay, you're next, yes. All right, thank you everyone for giving me this opportunity to provide my perspective. Bring your mic a little closer to you, ma'am. Yeah. There you go. All right, so I just want to talk about facts like which usually as a, I'm living in Wild Timber Lake, right, Wild Timber Code residence.

[03:24:45] I moved here in August. I paid like almost 1.5 million for the house. I moved from Dallas, where I can get the same amenities, same amount of area, same amount of sunlight, like in about 800K. I moved here because I wanted to have fresh air, have the essence of living on a countryside and enjoying the city amenities.

[03:25:11] So after building these houses, we will be feeling like sunken inside those towers, because where the site is, it's like uphill. So if they are building four stories, our houses are two stories. So we don't see anything. I wake up in the morning like a beautiful sunrise view from my bedroom.

[03:25:32] So I'll be losing that. Even if it's R2, R4, that's understood. But if such amount of houses are built like R8, R16, there will be no sun at all in my house. So that's the thing which I, what I saw and what I paid for, it's all lost.

[03:25:54] So it's ruthless to have, look around the houses, they're all R1, why we want R8 and R16 here? Look around all the houses. But I don't get this idea. And I really wish that you reject this proposal.

[03:26:10] And R2 and R4, I mean like, it's R1. Still, you can build R1 and convert RC to R1 and have all the R1 houses. What's the issue? It also fits with the overall area around.

[03:26:26] And I really don't feel this idea is a great idea. It's a concern to our health. Quality of life is at risk. Quality of education will be at risk. Thank you. Thank you. And our last speaker. Yes, ma'am.

[03:26:43] Good evening. Good evening. My name is Dabupriya Sengupta, and I have been a Loudoun resident since 2003. I live in Auction Byrne Drive. I stand before you today to strongly oppose the proposed residential construction, near our home specifically i am here to advocate for the kids with special needs and the detrimental effect this proposal has on their quality of life my son is one of them

[03:27:18] he is autistic have difficulties with loud noises congestion traffic heavy traffic etc we have continuously moved to provide him a quiet serene calm environment we bought our first home in Ashburn in 2004. Construction started behind the backyard. We moved to Brambleton in 2006.

[03:27:42] Our son was happy. We were happy. 16 years later, they started building something in our backyard, Loudoun County Parkway. So people started racing motorcycles, middle of the night, etc. So in 2022, we moved to Auction Barn Drive because it was so quiet, so beautiful.

[03:28:03] Now, there is a proposal to build more homes again behind my backyard. Our community was designed with single-lane roads tailored for a small population, introducing hundreds of new families is a recipe for disaster, chaos.

[03:28:22] The inevitable traffic conditions will not only make commutes unbearable, but will also hinder emergency services, a risk we cannot afford to take. Moreover, sudden increase in population will drastically affect the character of the community.

[03:28:40] You know, there are other special needs kids in this street. All of them will suffer just because we can doesn't mean that we should. So I ask you to reject the application. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, Ms. Glass, I'll go to you for a motion.

[03:29:00] Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that the Board of Supervisors forward LEGI-2023-0031 Tillotsview-ZMAP-2022-003 to the March 13, 2024 Board of Supervisors public hearing for action.

[03:29:19] Motion made and seconded by Ms. Bricksman. Discussion on the motion. Ms. Glass. Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. I want to thank the constituents of Broad Run to come out and speak on this matter. I know this is really important to you.

[03:29:36] I also appreciate the applicant for working with me. But I do not know if I will be supporting this application when it returns to the board in March. I have a lot of concerns about the density that is proposed with this project. I've regularly heard concerns from constituents about traffic in this immediate area as a portion of Waxpool Road at the site was paved just five years ago.

[03:30:01] And there are neighborhoods that already have cut through traffic. I would prefer to see a density and unit design that is more in line with what is immediately next to the Tillett site, as opposed to placing as many units as possible on one of the last remaining large undeveloped parcels in broad run.

[03:30:24] Again, I do appreciate the proffer changes the applicant has worked out with me and we'll continue to discuss with them before March. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Mr. Turner. Thank you, Madam Chair. Boy, I've got a lot of thoughts on this one.

[03:30:42] I think the applicant has made a good-faith effort to blend and transition in this application with the single-family detached homes. I don't like single-family detached homes, and I really, really don't like stacked units. Can we not come up with a better answer than stacked units?

[03:30:59] But this is what we have here. I think the single-family detached is a deliberate effort to try and blend into the surrounding single-family detached as it borders the surrounding neighborhoods. The single-family attached townhouses along Waxpool Road, given the buffer on the far side of Waxpool Road, I don't think is that particularly visually obtrusive.

[03:31:25] And the stack units are buried in the application over by the school. So I think there's a good faith effort. At eight units per acre, I don't think that that density is as egregious as a lot of the surrounding neighbors may feel that it is.

[03:31:46] We've seen several applications in the last six months, one I know of in particular with a 13.27 dwelling unit per acre, which was permitted. My personal feeling is, and you'll hear this now a lot going forward based on some changes I'd like to see us make, I'm uncomfortable when the staff is forced into the position of denial or approval recommendations.

[03:32:12] I think we ought to grade that on a 1 to 5 scale with 5 being a perfect application. I'd probably call this a 3, which means it's probably leaning towards passage with some reservations. And the principle among those, I think, is the traffic light. I think you guys need to step up more with the mitigation of the traffic.

[03:32:29] Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Turner. Mr. Crowey. Thank you, Chair Randall. I just want to thank everybody who's come out. I appreciate your comments. I was listening closely. I think there's a compatibility issue with the density.

[03:32:45] I think it's too high. I actually think a difference of 8.2 dwelling units per acre and 3.7 creates just a density issue. So I don't support the density in this area. I think Watson Road, I heard from you on the traffic on Watson, and Watson Road cannot handle it.

[03:33:06] And I also think that the schools can't handle it. So HS-14 is in my district. Independence High School is overcrowded. Brambleton Middle School is overcrowded. And I don't think saying that HS14 will help with the school capacity issue at Briarwoods is a good solution because we already know there are issues down in Brambleton and south of Evergreen Mills Road with capacity in the schools in that area.

[03:33:40] So I am very concerned about the schools. So thank you, and I look forward to voting on it in March. Thank you, Mr. Letourneau. Thank you. Well, I appreciate everybody coming out. It's always difficult for residents who kind of walk into these situations, and they don't necessarily know a lot about the land use process and how everything works.

[03:34:04] I do have to start with kind of a couple of facts, and I'm sort of the guy up here who sometimes just lays it out. It's private land. It's the middle of Ashburn. When you look at that picture, all you see is houses. We don't own it. Nobody out there owns it.

[03:34:20] Well, maybe somebody does, but they'd be on the applicant's side. So you're going to have cases like this where somebody who owns the land can come forward with this type of proposal. And what we have to do is evaluate it against our comprehensive plan.

[03:34:36] And our comprehensive plan, the most recent update of which was 2019, most of us were on the board then. We begged for, well, actually, no, they weren't, only a few of us. But either way, we begged for public input, but we had areas in the county designated for a certain number of units.

[03:34:56] So what we have to do is look at that and look at each of these applications. And then our decision is not whether we like it or not. It's whether it's consistent with the comprehensive plan. Now, I raised a question earlier about density here because what we heard is that the issue that staff has is not that consistency issue. There's no way I can only have 26 seconds left.

[03:35:14] I don't think it started at 3. Really, you're just going to put some time on him because Matt said something. No, but come on, I'm just talking about it. Really, I mean, look at me next time and stop the time. Okay, this is how this is going to work from here on out.

[03:35:30] That's going to happen. You and I are going to look at each other and have like an eye conversation, right? And then I'll let you know what's going to happen, right? We just can't be like willy-nilly at or taking away time like that. But go on, go on.

[03:35:45] I wasn't going for two and a half minutes, but you know that. Wait, well, so what do I get? Because it's at 30 again. Can I at least get my three minutes? A minute. No. Maybe like a minute to wrap up. Stop his time. Give him a minute.

[03:36:01] Keep going. Thank you. All right. So where I was, well, I was trying to just get, you know, we had a lot of speakers, and I want to try to, so anyway, where we have to do is evaluate, and I asked the question about the density. There are other elements of the comprehensive plan. I think Supervisor Turner is generally correct.

[03:36:17] If an applicant comes in with an application that meets the density, then we should try to honor that. At the same time, there are some other aspects of the comprehensive plan, like blending. It's not only about the density. So I think we do have room to say to the applicant, and I am saying that I think this is a little too dense.

[03:36:34] I think we have to do a little better job being mindful of what's around here and what that density is and what the other constraints on the site are. This does feel like trying to cram too many units on, which probably gets to an underlying land value issue, which is not really something for us to consider, but it's something that the property owner should hear, because I think this is probably just too dense.

[03:36:55] So I also think that there should be a greater contribution on the traffic signal, because the applicant is causing a significant increase in that delay. So those are my pieces of feedback. We'll see everybody in a few months. Thank you, Mr. Kirshner. Thank you, Madam Chair. i'm not going to repeat a lot of what was said i will say when i first picked up the application began reading through it the fact that the planning commission was an eight i think 801 vote a lot of alarm bells went off we don't usually see that kind of rejection and so i think the concerns that are being shared up here perhaps some of the community should be heard by the applicant and um now i the as far as the density is concerned i i think it's a legitimate density

[03:37:34] i don't like the level of density quite frankly um but i cannot fault the applicant for asking that given it's at the low end I'm not sure what I'll do ultimately on on that level but if the if there is room to come down on it I think it would be helpful certainly Mr. Letourneau said so and I'm saying so as well the school concern I I guess I didn't look at that carefully so before we get to the next meeting I'd like to know that indeed our school coverage is at least within reasonable limits I agree with the traffic I mean we've got to make sure this this traffic is resolved and that the applicant does as much as they can to work on that.

[03:38:13] And then, obviously, the parking continues to be. I'm glad that we've adjusted a lot of that. I'll double-check as we get to the next level. Thanks. Thank you. Ms. Brooksman. Thank you, Madam Chair. I like the application. It comports with the comprehensive plan.

[03:38:31] You're at the lowest density that's allowed in this area, according to the comprehensive plan. I do have some concerns about transit, which was mitigated a little bit by what staff said, and the crossing of Belmont Ridge Road.

[03:38:49] I'm a little bit more comfortable with the green space since you showed the totlots and that sort of thing. I think I would have liked to have seen them combined a little bit more to make, like, more green space in one area. And one thing I want us to make sure is when we're building these totlots that they're accessible for folks with disabilities.

[03:39:08] I've been seeing a lot around the county recently that aren't. And by the way, the county is interested in building a variety of houses. If we only built the same kind of house that's in the parcel next door, we would only have single-family detached dwelling units throughout the entire county.

[03:39:26] There's a way to step down. I believe the applicant did step down from, you know, putting single-family units right next to the other single-family units and then going into the multi-family um and and by the way the the multi-family is not next to the single family like even close so um i'm okay with that i you know we don't often see single-family um dwelling unit applications uh that i've seen in quite some time and but this one i also feel a little bit better about it because we're going to have 13 that are attainable housing that's pretty incredible given the difficulty folks

[03:40:06] are having entering the housing market right now so i do commend the applicant for that um i would like to see a little bit more contribution to the to the traffic signal and again i i'd like to find a way to get a crosswalk or some sort of safe passage over to the other open areas because there's all kinds of open space right across the street and so i would like to see all those communities have access to that and you guys could probably help with that um i'll support the motion tonight thank you thank you i'm going to say some things that are not going to be popular to some of the people that spoke so you can just know that's coming. There are some things that I'm

[03:40:43] very concerned about in this application density and other things but you are never going to move me when you come up here and tell me how much you pay for your house so that you live in a rich community. The house you bought is important to you because it's your home and I don't care if you spent five billion dollars on it, five hundred thousand dollars on it, or five hundred dollars.

[03:41:01] it's your home and I'm not making decisions based on how much you spent on your home and if you have a rich community or not a rich community that will never matter to me I'm going to do what I think is the right thing to do no matter how much you tell me you spend on your home so just in the future if anyone wants to think that's going to move me that will never move me telling me how much you spent for your home every single person in Loudoun County's home is important to them no matter when they bought it no matter how much they paid for it it's your home you raised your children there you bought your babies home you had your anniversaries you you it's your home

[03:41:39] and so i i've never understood that but just put it out there that's that does not move me at all i am concerned about the density just in general i think it's a little denser than i'd like like to see it um i do think that i like to discuss the road contribution because i think that that can be looked at as well um i actually when i when i when we bought our home we had an empty lot next to us for years i looked out and i used to really enjoy the the view and then after about seven years somebody bought the the lot and built a home and i was like okay that was nice but

[03:42:17] I didn't buy the view, so it wasn't my view to have. I understand why that might be upsetting, but it wasn't my view to have. There are other issues in this application that gives me pause and that would make me look twice, and I know Ms. Glass is going to be working on some of those things, so I have no idea how I'm going to vote on this application.

[03:42:40] If I had to vote tonight, I would not be voting for this application. But just know that I might work a little differently than everybody else up here, but just know that's how I work. Thank you. Ms. Glasser, would you like a closing?

[03:42:58] Yes, Madam Chair. Again, I just want to thank the speakers for coming out this evening. And I will continue to meet with nearby residents in the application to see if concerns can be addressed. And I appreciate the comment that Ms. Sidnor had stated earlier about us looking at it holistically.

[03:43:21] And that's what I want to do. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Motion was made by Supervisor Glass. Who seconded this? Ms. Bricksman seconded the motion. All the people who say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion will pass 801. Thank you.

[03:43:37] Supervisors, we are going to take a 15-minute break because we've been on the desk for a while.

[03:43:42] okay i heard that we're going to start again um and we're going to go on to item number four

[04:10:58] we're ready when you are staff thank you so much thank you chair randall good evening supervisors my name is marshall brown with the department of planning and zoning and i'm here to present the applications for cedar terrace at south writing the subject property is located south of route 50 and west of loudon county parkway in the dulles election district it is within the suburban mixed choose place type. Dulles Airport is located to the northeast of the subject property. I would like to note that before I go any further that this application was accepted prior to the adoption of the new zoning ordinance and

[04:11:33] is being reviewed under the revised 1993 zoning ordinance. The applicant proposes to rezone a portion of the subject property from a combination of commercial and residential uses to R16 in order to develop 383 dwelling units. This consists of 211 single-family attached, 120 multifamily stacked, and 52 multifamily attached units. They're also requesting a Zone and Concept Plan amendment to amend the CDP and proffers that are associated with the South Riding at Market Square 2 application. This is to allow 222,200 square feet of commercial uses. There are four specs applications. One is to modify the yard

[04:12:13] requirements for single-family attached and multifamily stacked units and to eliminate the yards between Land Bay 3 and the PDH 4 district. There is also Also, three additional specs permits for the additional uses in the PDCCSC zoning district to permit animal hospital, veterinary services, and an indoor kennel.

[04:12:32] There are 15 total zoning modifications, and some of them are listed on the screen. And it's to permit access from Route 50 in Loudoun County Parkway and to permit access from private streets, reduce parking for affordable housing units and the residential amenity space, the pool and clubhouse area, To reduce or eliminate landscape buffers, building and parking setbacks, to increase height for commercial and residential structures without increasing a setback, and to permit structures to front and open space.

[04:13:03] This is a view of the CDP, just to orient you. The commercial land bay is outlined in red, and it is adjacent to Route 50. The residential land bay is outlined in blue, and the green land bay is where the multifamily-attached residential land bay 3 is located.

[04:13:20] The area that is highlighted yellow on the screen that covers a portion of the red land bay, it's a bit difficult to see on this image on the projection, that is to note the presence of the LDN 65 plus airport impact overlay district, and I also want to note the two arrows noting entrances that the applicant has applied for zoning modifications for from Route 50 and Loudoun County Parkway.

[04:13:48] The applicant is proposing two affordable housing options. The first is to pursue low-income housing tax credits for 52 multifamily attached units. This is in land bay 3, and these would result in 13.6% overall affordability.

[04:14:04] The second option is to pursue affordable dwelling units per the zoning ordinance. This results in approximately 27 single-family attached, 8 multifamily stacked, and 4 multifamily attached. And this is 10% overall affordability if this option is pursued. In general, the applicant's land use mix is consistent with the 2019 GP policy for the suburban mixed-use place type.

[04:14:26] The applicant has proffered a set of design guidelines to govern architectural and site design elements for commercial and residential uses, as well as for landscaping, streetscape, and open spaces. Elements of the applicant's design guidelines are consistent with the 2019 GP for the suburban mixed-use place type.

[04:14:43] However, staff has identified the overall site design layout as not consistent with the place type, which I will go into in further depth in a moment. I also want to note that the applicant has proffered out additional uses which are not consistent in the PDCC-SC district for the commercial land bay, and that staff has provided conditions to mitigate impacts to the specs uses.

[04:15:03] We have identified a number of outstanding issues, including site design, transportation, and financial contributions. To touch on these, the primary outstanding issue, as stated earlier, is that the site design being located in the suburban mixed-use place type, which supports compact pedestrian-oriented design that should consist of a mix of residential, commercial, entertainment, cultural, and recreational uses in mixed-use buildings and or multi-story single-use buildings, as illustrated by the two smaller pictures on the slide, which are from the 2019 GP. With respect to site design, staff does acknowledge that the imposition of the updated airport impact overlay district restricts true

[04:15:42] mix use, as supported by the general plan. However, the proposed design for big box style retail with expansive surface parking in Land Bay 1 is not supported by the general plan. Existing main streets at South Riding Market Square and the approved but not yet constructed main street at Avonlea 2 are disconnected by the surface parking lot depicted in the applicant's proposal.

[04:16:04] Staff is recommending a redesign of the commercial area to encourage a more pedestrian-friendly activated main street connection that carries through the subject property connecting neighboring districts or developments. This recommendation helps implement general plan recommendations for the suburban mixed use place type. In addition, the applicant is requesting ZMODs to increase heights for commercial and residential uses in the suburban mixed-use place type.

[04:16:30] Staff does not support approval of these ZMODs as they are not consistent with the design recommendations for the place type that support heights of no more than five stories. There are outstanding issues with transportation proffers. The first is a request for credit against regional roads contributions for the addition of a second northbound left turn lane from Loudoun County Parkway to Riding Center Drive.

[04:16:52] Staff does not support the credit, as there is no policy in the 2019 countywide transportation plan to support credit, and the applicant's traffic impact study notes that this improvement will be needed to accommodate the proposed development at full build-out. Second, the applicant is proffering to coordinate with the county on initiating a signal warrant study for two proposed traffic signals, one at the property's northern entrance on Tall Cedars Parkway, and another at the intersection of Riding Center Drive and Riding Plaza.

[04:17:21] The applicant's proffer for each signal warrant study caps the cash in lieu that would be provided in the event that VDOT requires an innovative signal control, or roundabout, at $500,000, which may not cover the cost of the improvement. Staff does not support a credit.

[04:17:37] Staff does not support the current proffer language. If innovative signal control is shown as warranted in the signal justification report, the applicant should bear the cost of this improvement. The applicant is requesting zoning modifications as well to permit a right-in access at Route 50 and Loudoun County Parkway, respectively, as shown on the screen.

[04:17:59] Route 50 is identified in the 2019 CTP as a limited-access highway, which cannot accommodate the proposed entrance. Route 50 is classified as a limited-access, or excuse me, I'm repeating myself. The Loudoun County Parkway entrance is permissible by the 2019 Countywide Transportation Plan classification, but may be within the functional zone for a future interchange at Loudoun County Parkway in Route 50. The applicant has provided proffers that account for the eventual closure of this entrance in the future if required by VDOT. So again, staff is requesting or does not

[04:18:32] support the ZMOD for the Route 50 entrance. And again, lastly, the applicant is not proposing to provide regional roads and regional transit contributions on a per dwelling unit basis, which is inconsistent with the 2019 CTP, and staff is recommending those contributions be provided.

[04:18:49] The Planning Commission did recommend approval to the Board of Supervisors, and this was subject to revisions to the applications that would relocate the multifamily attached building further within Lenn Bay 2 and to provide the proper language that would allow for the eventual closure of the Loudoun County Parkway access per staff's recommendations.

[04:19:10] Staff cannot support board approval at this time unless the outstanding issues regarding site design, transportation and the contributions are resolved. I am happy to take any questions. Thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. This is in the Dulles District. I'll go to Mr. Letourneau. Thank you very much. I appreciate the staff report. So I do think on the overall site design, there's a little bit of a, other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln moment here, because this is in the airport impact overlay district, the northwest quadrant of the site if you want to go back to the site plan so i understand that staff is saying it's inconsistent

[04:19:48] with suburban mixed use but isn't that ultimately our fault because we put a suburban mixed use parcel into the ldn 65 area where residential is not permitted certainly so we have we acknowledge that that is an imposition to providing actual mixed use our recommendation is to provide is to follow through on some of the design in the suburban mixed use place type so that's to provide lots and blocks to provide walkable spaces sidewalks street furniture that type of thing which to break up the massing and the scale of the surface parking with the extension going west

[04:20:24] from the existing shopping center but then the block up here is what you're really talking about yes it's it's primarily that area through the surface parking lot right but you know i would say there has to be also an element of realism about what the market actually wants and supports as opposed to a whole lot of small users.

[04:20:43] On the transportation stuff, would staff agree that the ultimate solution here is to be able to incorporate the discussion about serving this parcel into the interchange access report study that's going on with VDOT on Route 50 on Loudoun County Parkway?

[04:21:01] I will defer to Marie Pham. I will say that we did discuss with the applicant team to include the Loudoun County Parkway access into the interchange access report, but I would Let Murray answer the rest of that. That's correct. The Loudoun County Parkway access is included with the framework for the IAR.

[04:21:20] But not the Route 50 access? Not the Route 50, no. But couldn't the slip ramp potentially be designed or integrated into that project that would serve from either side, really? From Route 50 or Loudoun County Parkway?

[04:21:37] From either side. I believe that's what they're looking at potentially with Loudoun County Parkway. Okay. The Route 50 access is an entitlement that exists currently on the site, right? That's right.

[04:21:53] Okay. So, right. So, you know, I think it's asking a lot to ask the applicant to give that up without knowing where the interchange access report discussion is going, which nobody can tell them. And we have tried, as you know, my staff and me and others, to have these discussions with VDOT, but they're just not really ready to have it at this moment.

[04:22:13] So it's kind of hard to work that out. And my time is up. It is. Thank you. Ms. Umstead. Thank you, Madam Chair. So the proffers do talk about the fact that this is near an airport and that the applicant has agreed to navigation easement and superior noise-dampening materials.

[04:22:41] The staff report, though, I can't find any mention of the airport proximity in the staff report. The staff report does talk in a less demanding way of the possibility, I guess, of a noise wall along one of the roadways.

[04:23:05] But is there a reason the staff report did not get into airport noise or airport proximity? So the navigation easement and noise attenuation measures are required by the zoning ordinance, so they would be in place regardless.

[04:23:22] The commercial land bay would not have any of the noise attenuation measures that are associated with residential housing, but the land bay two, which is under the LDN 60 to 65, will, and that is required by the zoning ordinance. I'm certainly happy to provide more detail in the next version.

[04:23:38] All right. Thank you very much. Mr. Turner. Thank you, Madam Chair. I give this one a three also, and the reason I would give it a three, I think it would be graded down from a four, specifically because you have to contend with the airport overlay district, which is basically out of your control. You've tried to make this piece of land conform to an overlay, which is a tough overlay. I'm optimistic. I think our group with the FAA is going to prevail, and we're going to get a new runway 30 departure procedure, which would make

[04:24:11] this AIOD obsolete. Given those constraints, I think this is an interesting neighborhood because it provides substantial access to, I think, a more walkable retail area in the market square, and then the big box offers some opportunities to it.

[04:24:29] Again, it's not optimum, but I think it's a pretty good effort at making this land viable. So, thank you. Mr. Crony? There's a way, you know, we're closing.

[04:24:47] Your mic. Hi, Mike. I thought I had it on. I'm wondering if Pinebrook Road was a way to access, because that's an existing access on Route 50 this retail center? Did you look at that? I mean, I'm asking staff, like at Pinebrook Road, you know, closing up Route 50, that access that they're asking for and using Pinebrook Road.

[04:25:10] I will defer to Marie Pham. Yes. Pinebrook Road was included with the study and they do show traffic using that roadway. Okay. Okay. Thank you. So how many acres are being proposed that are being converted from commercial to residential in this application?

[04:25:34] In this application, let's see. Well, it's on this next slide. 29.54 of the total land assemblage is being converted to residential. Okay, from commercial.

[04:25:53] From commercial. Okay. And then if the cost of an innovative traffic control device is warranted by VDOT, I see the applicants capping the amount of payment at $500, half a million. What is the county's policy?

[04:26:11] Because it looks like they're asking for prorating capital facilities contributions. What's the county's policy? In general, we do not support credits of any type. There just is not a policy to support that in the countywide transportation plan. Okay, so we don't have any policy.

[04:26:28] That's correct. Okay, thank you. Okay, good evening. We're ready when you are. I don't want to say the rules to you, and you know them already. Talk fast. My name is Colleen Gillis. I'm waiting for the presentation to come up, but my name is Colleen Gillis. I'm an attorney with Cooley, and I'm here tonight on behalf of Toll Brothers, the applicant here, joined this evening not only by Angela Rassus of Toll Brothers, but also Susan Bourgeois, who is with Rappaport, who's responsible for leasing the adjacent South Riding Market Square Center.

[04:26:59] So we've got it all covered here in terms of what's going on and what could happen. Next slide. So obviously, don't need to talk about this. It's suburban mixed use. Next slide. Which then got compromised, as you all know, when we changed the airport impact overlay district.

[04:27:14] Next slide. And where that airport impact overlay district line lies is where that dark black dotted line is. On the left is within the 65 LDN. To the right is within the 60 LDN, which is why we've done all of the residential there. By way of just brief overview, we've got 211 single-family attached townhome units, 120 multi-family stacked units, and 52 multi-family attached units in that LIHTC building in the bottom right corner of the plan.

[04:27:44] I share this because when we were originally in and we were much more compliant with the suburban mixed-use place type, it was a much denser plan, a lot more units, and we have cut it back significantly to comply with the airport impact overlay district. and I'm hoping that we can increase above a three by the end of this presentation because we are quite proud of what we're doing here. Next slide. So we knew that design of this center and extension of the retail was critically important not only to the success of that but also to Supervisor Letourneau and based on recent discussions also Supervisor Tacroni. So this is looking north in the direction of Route 50 from the position where the existing retail center terminates today. The

[04:28:23] Existing retail centers behind us, we're looking north. You can see high-quality architecture, great wide sidewalks, street furniture, on-street head-in diagonal parking consistent with what exists there today. Next slide. More of that as we continue north. We're just driving up to the north.

[04:28:39] You can see that this is really attractive, consistent with other mixed-use place types, notwithstanding the fact that we don't have residential over the top of it because of the airport impact overlay district. Next slide. Continuing to the north, we've got a great plaza here. This plaza is important to the community who is looking for something very similar to what we have, for example, at One Loudon, where South Riding and the other communities in the area can have a Saturday concert series, farmer's market, things like that.

[04:29:05] And this, we anticipate, will be the heart of this retail center. Next slide. As we travel to the north, we've got a country club-style fitness facility. Marshall mentioned the zoning modification. It is to accommodate this building.

[04:29:21] It is a two-story building, which is, as we've heard, like some greater height of these buildings, this building is two stories. It does a great job of obviously creating a screen wall of sorts between Route 50 and the rest of the development, but also would be a great addition to this part of the project.

[04:29:41] One thing I do want to mention as we talk about that parking lot and what can be done there, We are doubling, providing twice as much parking lot landscaping in terms of islands, trees, paths, and the like over what is required by the ordinance.

[04:29:57] So we are trying to create an atypical type of parking lot there. Next slide. We also have a daycare facility, as you can see in the bottom right, two drive-through standalone pad sites. We anticipate coffee user and then either a fast food restaurant or something along those lines.

[04:30:15] Next slide. And then we get to the residential portion. These are the townhomes that front that fitness facility we looked at earlier. Next slide. But we really separated them from the commercial area by creating this enormous park space here. You can see meandering paths, areas for seating, gathering, etc. And we heard from staff, and our renderings just didn't show it, that they wanted another pathway on the other side of the street here.

[04:30:41] We've increased the width of the landscape strip on the left side, on the north side of the street here, to a minimum of 15 feet, and we have committed to a sidewalk being in that area. Next slide. And then we've got multifamily attached units as well.

[04:30:57] This is the LIHTC building. We have heard from you and, obviously, Chair Randall over the years that the design of these buildings is critically important. We're proud to partner with Good Works on this, and I think that this is a LIHTC building that we can all be exceptionally proud of. that looks like a market rate building. Next slide.

[04:31:14] And that is setting the standard for high quality architecture throughout the community. These are examples of our two over two units. We've got a great huge park area with a pool, a sport court, great open space gathering area. Next slide. And this is a better view of those two over twos as you drive in off of Tall Cedars Parkway in the top left and then townhomes on the right surrounding that park.

[04:31:36] Next slide. But as we've heard from staff, there are two concerns, design and transportation, next slide. And we've already talked about this concept of can we create vertically integrated and the challenges there created by the AIOD. One of the other things that staff has talked about is the desire to create or lengthen our main street, our retail street length here.

[04:31:59] What you can see here, we've measured it out with the extension of that retail street length. Our retail street length is 1,775 linear feet long. don't really know what that means, but next slide. I know how long the Main Street is, Exchange Street is at 1 Loudoun, and that is 1,500 linear feet. You know what it's like to walk from one end to the other. We've sought the guidance and the advice of Susan with Rappaport. She has let us know that making that street any longer becomes difficult to lease, difficult to tenant, and the experience that we're looking for where people park once and walk stops being a reality. People

[04:32:36] park they go into that store they drive down they go to the next store park again that's not what we're looking for next slide and additionally integrating any sort of additional residential excuse me retail within the residential portion notwithstanding the fact that it's going to be challenging to to tenant it further dilutes what is already a robust commercial market in this corner we've got a total of about a million square feet working closely with rapaport to tenant that to lease it up to make it amazing but adding even more so that we can vertically integrate the portion that we can do residential we just think is ill-advised. Next slide. Now obviously we're talking about the write-ins off of Loudoun County Parkway and Route 50. Supervisor

[04:33:14] Letourne, you are 100% right. That write-in off of Route 50 is currently entitled as is the write-in off of Loudoun County Parkway and we'll talk about that in a second. But while we're at this point and I know Supervisor Tacroni, you asked the question about Pinebrook of staff. Pinebrook is designated on the countywide transportation plan to be actually a flyover over Route 50.

[04:33:35] And so as we're trying to get traffic from Aldi and places in your district and draw them into the center, Pinebrook at some point will not be accessible to us because it will only take people from the north side of 50 to the south side of 50 and vice versa. We're trying to get people into the site. Next slide. So these are the two proposed write-ins. On the left side is the Route 50 write-in. On the top is the Loudoun County Parkway write-in. Next slide. And this is on the 2006 approved plan. This is what's permitted in the 2006 approved plan. A write-in off of Route 50, but more importantly, a full access intersection at Loudoun County Parkway. Write-in, write-out,

[04:34:13] left-in, left-out. Next slide. All we're asking to preserve are the write-ins. We're not looking for full movement on Loudoun County Parkway any longer. We understand that that's not appropriate. we just want to keep those rights in. And the reason why, and I think it's really important to hear this, Susan has schooled me very, very well, this is so important to the viability of the retail here. Access and visibility are critically important to making this retail successful. And the one thing that I've heard over the years from Supervisor Letourneau and in at least one meeting from Supervisor Tacroni is the need for additional retail here. And this is a critical ingredient to making that possible. Next slide. Obviously, we're talking about credit

[04:34:52] for intersections here. These are, this improvement here, the second left-hand turn lane is importantly warranted today. It's needed today. And we are 16.8% of the traffic here, and we are asking for what you have approved in other applications, which is, can we pay our fair share and then take the balance of it from regional transportation? It is a regional improvement.

[04:35:14] Next slide. And then the two new signals. Supervisor Tacroni, you were spot on in talking about this. The challenge that we have is that we have proforma'd, we have figured out that it's a half a million dollar improvement if we do the signal. As Supervisor Turner and Supervisor Glass know with the construction of the roundabout at Faulkner and Waxpool, those are sizable improvements.

[04:35:36] And to take a proforma that has a figure in it of a half a million dollars and maybe VDOT in a couple of years as we're building out makes it a five million dollar improvement becomes very, very difficult. We know that your interest is in making this area and the road network here as safe as possible. We want to be a part of that. But if it's more than a half a million dollars, we'd like to take credit against capital facilities because it is an improvement that is regional and needed on a larger scale. And so we'd like your support of that. We think it's a reasonable approach.

[04:36:08] We'll make it happen, but we'd like to, if we have to take on the entire cost, it cripples the project and we'll prevent the project from going forward. Next slide. So we are super proud of this this project. It's obviously gone through a bunch of iterations. It's been it's been down a very long path a windy storied path but we've been grateful to work with Supervisor Letourneau and his office on all sorts of things including working with VEDA on the interchange access report and happy to answer any questions. Thank you ma'am. Mr. Letourneau. Yeah so I guess the first question I should ask is are you willing to extend the critical action date by a month to the February hearing?

[04:36:45] Yes. Okay, and I'll explain why February when I get to the motion. It has been down a long path. I think we've probably done more work on this application than anyone that I've been a part of. Correct to say that we started at 1,100 residential units and 80,000 square feet of residential, and now we're at 300-something and 280.

[04:37:06] So there's been a real change in this. the right in on route 50 is there a turn lane in there yes okay and that we that is on your property yes it goes on to avonlea or is it off-site to avonlea i think it starts on avonlea and then but you would be willing to continue to work with us yes and vdot on a potential solution that could be incorporated with the interchange absolutely absolutely okay um but can i ask susan a question sure okay so well because you were really impressing on me how important that that was

[04:37:44] for the tenants you want to talk just a little bit about what the lease up looks like on this with and without access microphone microphone on there yep certainly so um access points for retail have we've proven through all the various pandemics and inflations and recessions that you need three things access parking and visibility and if you don't have access on route 50 in the on-counter parkway you can't get anybody in and i we can't build the retail it just is not it's not going to lease um and we've and we've seen projects throughout the region where they don't

[04:38:20] have it and the project has not been successful okay um on the um i have asked you for some additional things yes and i know you're coming back yes to me on those one of those um i did ask you to look at the contribution on that signal. The statistics that we have is that a turn lane is needed if there's more than 300 vehicles an hour. This application, it's already at 300 or over 300. This application would increase it by 79, taking it to 419. So at a

[04:38:57] minimum, I'll just reiterate, if we're going to give you the credit, I want to make sure that turn lane is built much earlier we have preliminarily looked at it and we believe that we can cut the timing in half so currently it's proffered to be completed prior to the 260th we would reduce that to 130 okay that's good um i think that's the only question for the applicant i have a couple other comments on on um on the innovative design stuff but they're more for staff than they are i didn't get to it with staff so i'll ask it on my time later thank you mr turner thank you madam Chair, I'm going to raise your Mike Turner score to four.

[04:39:31] Yes. I really like what you've done with what you have. Thank you. It looks really good. Good. I really like that a lot. Thank you so much. Refresh my memory on the credits for the write-in off 50 and the write-in off Loudoun County Park. Are you asking for credits for those?

[04:39:47] No. Or those are integral to the projects? Yes. We're going to build those. We're not asking for any credit. Very good. That's all I got. Thank you. Is it a five now? Mr. Croney? Nobody gets a five. Yeah, thank you, Chair Randall.

[04:40:04] Yes, we desperately need retail in Dulles South and in the Dulles area. So I'd love to see this as, like, the gateway on Route 50 or as another one loud. And what incentives do you see having to provide to retailers, Susan?

[04:40:23] Like, what are you thinking? There's no incentives. Okay. We have the location, right? Okay. We are main and main of Southern Latin County, right? there's no doubt about that you're at 50 and lowland county parkway that's it we just got to get them in okay great american restaurant we're gonna try we're trying we still try it still have it in my mind i'm not getting rid of that yeah thank you i'll talk with them too um so she's new i'll just i'll do it i will so energy i will i'll do it if you want i'll bring you um seriously

[04:40:57] i will um uh will the applicant consider connecting i guess you you um avonlea 2 and south riding market square with a pedestrian trail i i know that there's that parking lot is there a trail um that connects all of these wonderful commercial centers yeah yes there is and and i've uh hold on if you can go back marshall i know you said people won't walk it but let's just like no there's a difference between people walking store to store to store and people from avonlea what we're hoping is avonlea too coming and walking we want to provide them right

[04:41:33] great connection all of this and there is and marshall if you can go to slide 11 um you will see that there is a this is a along that road that divides the retail on the left and the residential on the right and you can see that we've added an additional sidewalk connection on the far side the left side of the road as well and those will connect both the the one on the right side or the south side of that road, as well as the one on the north side, those will connect over to Avonlea. Okay. And to the Home Depot too? Yes, absolutely. That connection will go all the way

[04:42:11] into what we're calling our main street and we'll lead into those sidewalks. Pedestrians can get from one center to all the way to Avonlea. And I believe our sidewalks on front of the the stores are 12 feet. Yeah. Okay. And then just one thing I want to know is Latin County Post Schools mentioned that to relieve the current and projected student enrollment in the Dulles South area, additional schools are planned. And I'm just wondering what schools. So I'm wondering if maybe when we come back, if they could tell me what schools, because I've lived there 20 years and I don't think any schools are planned. So I just

[04:42:50] want to understand what schools are planned. But I think that is it. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Brixman? Thank you, Madam Chair. I think Ms. Gillis could sell crown jewels to the monarch. Are the hours better than this? Because I'm in. The hours better. Hello, neighbor. So I like this application. I'm a little bit concerned about the sea of parking, but understanding

[04:43:24] the potential tenant that's going in there um i i know why and then i won't ask you about if it's an olympic size pool because i know that that potential tenant actually does their own swim teams i will say with regard to and i said it pretty quickly in the presentation i'll just reiterate we are doubling the interior parking lot landscaping within that so it won't look like your standard just all asphalt we're adding and there's trail connection through that as well Okay. That's really good to hear. And then the LIHTC building, they'll have access to all the amenities? Yes, absolutely. Okay. And then something caught my eye when I was reading

[04:44:02] through this. There's a Z mod to reduce yards from 15 feet to five feet. So can you explain to me a little bit why you think that's justified? Because to me, I don't want people's yards made smaller just to create a more urban environment here within the project okay just to create a more urban environment okay will all of those yards then be maintained by somebody else or will they be maintained by the owners Angela yeah we'll have the HOA or condo Association we you know the multifamily stacked will

[04:44:41] be part of a condo Association that maintains all of the common area okay we'll similarly have the HOA and kind of umbrella Association maintaining those areas okay great um my colleague asked about the pedestrian connectivity um i think oh and pollinator gardens got any of those i don't think we do but we can look at where we can put one well i like how you have that uh that green area that's kind of combined it looks like a field yes um i like that a lot but okay thank you my only question is same question i i think you guys

[04:45:18] kind of answered it we have school capacity yes no i wasn't quite sure what the answer was i know the question was asked but i don't know what the answer was um our secondary schools in this part of the county right now are at capacity um we are anticipating the school board taking action again as new secondary schools open to revise attendance zones that's what i can i don't know i don't know that i know what my what the answer is to my question so you are you saying

[04:45:57] you believe we will we will have capacity we um long term we will yes ma'am i mean the board will adopt boundaries that will provide capacity we have capacity in time i mean we do not have capacity present in our de la salle secondary schools now okay okay but we are staff speaking we are hopeful that when watson mountain becomes a full-fledged middle school and the next high school opens that the board will adopt attendance zones that will provide relief for both Dulles

[04:46:33] North and Dulles South areas. What's the timeline? If you don't mind, can you just hang out there for a sec? What's the timeline for full build out? Yeah. Angela? Yeah, we anticipate open for sale and that for a couple of years. So that would be 2026 timeframe. Okay. So are we looking for that time? Are we looking to the 2026 timeframe for capacity? The next high school that we have planned would open in the fall of 28 and that is on the north side of route 50 but will involve

[04:47:05] boundaries for dallas south so that we can provide relief but not at that point no ma'am okay thank you thank you very much all right um all right that's all i had so do we have any people i have no one i have no enlisted to speak on this issue is anyone in the audience who'd like to speak on this issue seeing them mr turner would you like to make a motion yeah i'm going to know before i make it i'm moving this i'm going to ask to move this to the february meeting both because we're already past the critical action date and perhaps more importantly there is a light tech building as part of this application my understanding is that the state deadline for funding is in early

[04:47:44] march so i'd like to try to get this application decided in february so they don't miss the light tech deadline so with that i move the board of supervisors forward legy 2023 0019 cedar Terrace at South Riding. ZMAP 2021-0016. ZCPA 2021-0008. Specs 2021-0042. Specs 2022-0028. Specs

[04:48:06] 2022-0029. 30. ZMOD 2021-0050 and 51 and 52 and 53 and 54 and 55. And then also ZMOD 2023-0005.

[04:48:24] Okay. ZMOD 2023, 0006, 0007, 8, 2023, 00020, 24, and 25. To the February 2024 Board of Supervisors public hearing for action.

[04:48:42] Motions made second by Ms. Bricksman. Discussion on the motion, Mr. Eternal. Okay. Maybe under the new zoning ordinance, there'll be a few fewer ZMODs. We'll see. So this is overall a really good application that we've worked really hard on to try to get something that's workable both for the applicant and provides new amenities for the citizens of the Route 50 corridor who, as Supervisor DeCrony alluded to, are desperate for a one Loudon type of product.

[04:49:11] We do have the Avonlea project, which is next door, which is providing some of that. But this application has more commercial and retail opportunity, and it has Rappaport as part of the project. So I think this is a really good opportunity. I don't think we should let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

[04:49:30] I understand some of the staff concerns on the design, but I think we've kind of discussed how with the LDN 65 and the particular user that they have here, this design makes the most sense. i think we do have this outstanding policy question on the innovative design which is an issue that gets raised in most of these applications and i think from the applicant's standpoint the uncertainty is why they are putting caps on these things i think we have to address that larger policy question but on this particular application i'll just be blunt and say i think the likelihood of anything other than a signal is nil because

[04:50:05] tall cedars parkway is a four lane median divided road so the reality is and i can ask staff you may may not want to comment we don't typically put roundabouts on roads like tall cedars parkway which have four lane median divided and you're just going to have a relatively small entrance intersecting it that's generally not a good candidate for a roundabout would you agree somebody from staff maybe marie's still on i will defer to marie okay um i was actually going to send supervisor la turner that i would defer to loo to okay all right we're in my opening

[04:50:41] So, you know, I could always get Lou at my closing, but as he's walking up, my point is, in this particular case, I think this is extremely likely to be a signal, and therefore I'm not as concerned about it. Good evening again.

[04:50:57] I would agree it's likely it's going to be a signal, but until we do that, there's a chance that it may not be. Yeah, but I think the chance is pretty low, because we've had many discussions about these intersections on tall seaters, and none of them have warranted a roundabout because of the issues involved with four lanes, median divide.

[04:51:17] Okay, so with all that, the school capacity issue is something that we need to look at. These three schools here are the schools that my children go to, literally, Liberty, Mercer, Champs, so I'm definitely invested in that issue. I think we can talk a little bit more about the exact timing and the timing of the schools.

[04:51:35] I do believe that the attendance boundary on John Champ will change when the new high school was built. If you look at it now, it goes way up into essentially where that school is being built. So I think there will be some change in some capacity there. But we can certainly take a look at that in the few weeks here in between the hearings.

[04:51:53] Okay, thank you, Mr. Turner. Ms. Umstead? Ms. Umstead? Oh, Umstead. Okay, thank you. So back on the school capacity issue, I mean, in the 2029 to 30 timeframe, you've got both Mercer Middle and John Champ High School over capacity.

[04:52:19] Mercer Middle is going to be 113% of capacity. John Champ will be at 103% of capacity. And you've already got, they're already using modular classrooms or trailers at John Champ.

[04:52:36] So that remains an issue for about the next five to six years. In addition to that, of course, you have the annual operating costs required for the students.

[04:52:53] This development will generate of over $4 million and estimated capital costs over $17 million. So it does remain problematic that there won't be adequate school capacity, at least at Mercer and John Champ, for the next six years.

[04:53:18] I don't know how that will be addressed, whether they'll put in more modular classrooms, because it doesn't look like any new schools are going to be online in time for that. so those are primarily my concerns it is an attractive development however i mean visually it's very attractive and i appreciate that work thank you so i can make a motion missile eternal oh i'm sorry god i'm tired already all right i think we're good then all in public say aye

[04:53:54] opposed that motion will pass 801 thank you very much so much thank you so much we're going to go to item number five, the Belmont Innovation Campus.

[04:54:13] Yeah, we have Clear Springs too. I'm sorry everyone this has taken so long. It's just a very really heavy agenda tonight and lots of speakers and I know we're late and I don't know how to make it go faster and I apologize, but it's just a heavy public hearing tonight.

[04:54:39] Martha Crony is you four years ago.

[04:55:02] I took my mic off. But she is. all right again thank you madam chair fellow supervisors again my name is lori and i'll be presenting belmont innovation campus okay so the property is comprised of 111.7 acres located in ashburn election district south of route 7 west of belmont ridge road east of goose creek and north of route 267 70 acres is located in the planned development general industry and agricultural

[04:55:41] residential A3 zoning districts and 41.7 acres is in the planned development industrial park zoning district located in the quarry notification overlay district and steep to moderately steep slope overlay district. The property is located in the suburban policy area in the suburban employment and suburban industrial mineral extraction place type. The proposal is to rezone approximately 70 acres from planned development general industry and agricultural residential A3 to plan development industrial park PDIP to allow for the development of data center

[04:56:16] uses. The application also consists of a special exception request to increase the FAR from 0.6 to 1.0 FAR, a minor special exception to modify the buffer and yard buffer yard requirements, and a zoning modification to reduce parking setbacks and building setbacks along Russell Branch Parkway. The applicant is also proposing two utility substations within the proposed building envelopes adjoining the eastern boundary of the 200-foot transition buffer. At the Planning Commission public hearing, the applicant presented the project with two alternate concept development

[04:56:55] plans, one with the future Gloucester Parkway extension and one without. After the public hearing, the applicant withdrew the CDP with the future Gloucester extension. So now staff has identified transportation as an issue. So with the removal of the alternate CDP, removing the Gloucester Parkway extension, the application is inconsistent with the 2019 CTP. Staff does not recommend the board accept this amendment. A comprehensive plan amendment is the appropriate

[04:57:32] mechanism to address amendments to the 2019 CTP, which would include a holistic evaluation of the removal of the extension and what impact such a change would have on the level of service of local and regional roads in the area. It is important to note that the 2019 CTP modeling referenced in the applicant's response assumes that Leesburg Pike has been widened to eight lanes and that Russell Branch Parkway has been constructed as a four-lane major collector.

[04:58:06] Currently, there are no plans within the county's capital improvement plan to complete either the widening of Route 7 or the construction of Russell Branch Parkway west of Belmont Ridge Road. Additionally, should a future CPAM not be initiated or approved, the county would have to either acquire the necessary right-of-way to complete the Gloucester Parkway extension across the property or identify an alternate east-west alignment.

[04:58:32] Either scenario would be a significant cost to the county. Staff recommends the board deny the applications. Again, the applicant's revisions to the concept development plan following the commission public hearing no longer accommodate the future Gloucester Parkway extension as shown on the Loudoun County 2019 CTP.

[04:58:51] Removal of Gloucester Parkway without the benefit of a study that would be completed during a comprehensive plan amendment to amend the CTP may result in unattended consequences and a reduction of level of service along other parallel roads to Leesburg Pike. That's end of staff's presentation.

[04:59:10] Staff is available for questions. I also have DTCI staff here available as well. Thank you. Thank you so much. This is in the Ashburn District. I will go to Mr. Turner first. Thank you, Madam Chair. So right now the application does not have the Gloucester extension in it, correct?

[04:59:29] Correct. The applicant could modify the application to include the second sheet with the Gloucester extension in it. And then to construct on that easement, we would have to complete the CPAM process before they could actually build on the reserve for Gloucester Parkway extension, correct?

[04:59:52] Correct. Yes, that's correct. Okay. And I had asked previously about how long, because the DTCI and Kimley Horn, a consultant, has already looked at elimination of the Gloucester Parkway extension, but they haven't done the full analysis.

[05:00:12] So they would have to do a complete analysis of what the impact will be if we remove that from the CTP. The estimate I got from an earlier conversation was three months for DTCI to complete its analysis of removal of the extension. This would be within the context of a CPAM, of a change in the Comprehensive Plan, CTP.

[05:00:31] Three months for DTCI to complete its work. Three months for VDOT, up to three months. VDOT can take up to 90 days to analyze the change in the plan. And then three months for the Public Hearing Planning Commission Public Hearing Board of Supervisors process for a total of about nine months, correct?

[05:00:50] Yes, and that's assuming that the commission and board would take action at the first hearing. One meeting each time. That's right. It assumes no follow-on meetings. have you talked to anybody at all in any of your discussions that is in favor of keeping the Gloucester Parkway extension I know that's kind of a loaded question but handle it the best you can because I haven't I've talked to a whole lot of people including myself who don't want the Gloucester Parkway extension but we don't have the benefit of the data analysis I'm just curious are there any advocates for the Gloucester Parkway extension that you've encountered

[05:01:28] I'm not sure that we're aware of anyone that's directly advocating for a Gloucester extension. The main concern is ensuring that there is a crossing somewhere there, whether it's one or both. That's partly what we'll run the model to see if it's necessary. But having something cross there that's between Route 7 all the way down to Sicklin would be useful to counties.

[05:01:50] Transportation needs long-term. Okay. And the current motion, and just for the benefit of my colleagues, the motion we'll be using is the alternate motion that's in your notebook. And we're okay.

[05:02:05] I think we're not in legal form yet, but if we move it to a March meeting, the applicants should have sufficient opportunity to get it in legal form. So March is an okay. That's what's in the motion right now. That's sufficient. Do we agree on that? Correct. Assuming the second.

[05:02:22] Yeah. Second meeting. Yeah, CDP put back. Okay. that's all right thank you supervisor letourneau so what level of analysis do we have from 2019 when we did the last CTP update because we must have looked at this Gloucester extension at that time we looked at we looked at the county at a high level with with with the road in oh so we never looked at a scenario where we did not look at a scenario with with the road removed at that point in time There's volume capacity analysis for the global network throughout the county.

[05:02:59] Supervisor Turner alluded to there's been some level analysis done by Kimley Horn more recently looking at this, maybe in the context of this application. We've done, we took a preliminary look at removing, and it does impact some of the other crossings of Goose Creek, but it's not to the level of being sufficient for a final determination of a CPM.

[05:03:22] That would be required with a CPAM. Okay. When you come back, if you came back to us in three months, it would be with a full analysis that we then could use to do a CPAM if we wanted to?

[05:03:40] Yes, we're confident we could get that done. If we have the board's direction and it becomes a priority and we're directed to make it a priority, then yes, we believe that time frame is... And then from that point forward, there would be a CPAM process that would have to play out as discussed, the Planning Commission and so on?

[05:03:57] That's correct. Okay. That's the only outstanding issue on this application? Correct. Which could be resolved potentially by going back to the language that was approved by the Planning Commission? Correct. Putting back in the alternate CDP and adding the proper language.

[05:04:14] Supervisor Umstead? Thank you very much. On Gloucester Parkway, I am not in favor of the extension. I've got a community that would be at the western end of it that is not at all happy with the thought that a major road is going to come in and aimed right at their road, Kincaid Boulevard.

[05:04:45] Russell Branch Parkway, I mean, right now, I guess we're planning for both of those to cross Goose Creek? Yes, that's correct. I mean, it's always problematic when you try to cross Goose Creek and it's probably doubly problematic when you try to do it twice.

[05:05:04] So, I mean, I think if we're going to do Russell Branch Parkway in a way that would make more sense than Gloucester. So, I am certainly open to removing Gloucester from the county transportation plan.

[05:05:21] Thank you. Thank you. Madam Chair, it's up to me. Thank you. um clarify please i thought that you said in your initial presentation that russell branch parkway was not in the ctp to go over goose creek so currently russell branch parkway it is it is in the ctp it's just the portion from belmont um to the the site is on another property is on the

[05:05:56] northern property so we have a reservation for russell branch but we would have to purchase that portion from the development to the north of this project but we have it's i just also add it's not in the it's not in the cip at this point so it's not a project that we have programmed or any funding we have um it's in the cip it is no no that's not either neither neither crossing is in

[05:06:28] the cip do we need to buy land for that one as well we have a reservation on the west side of gloucester okay and we actually have some reservation on the west side of goose creek for brussel branch as well okay from previous rezonings but nothing um currently for gloucester on the east side of the creek okay um i uh when we talk about cpams i get a little bit nervous because we have at least two very large cpams in our dbc work plan um that are of great

[05:07:07] interest to the community um and the data center one is of great interest to the community and this board so when you say if the board gives you direction to make it a priority does that mean that that's going to take away staff time from doing the other CPAMs?

[05:07:24] The technical amendments that would be needed for the CTP where we move forward and the analysis supported it would not be complicated. So the biggest use of time would be pretty much just putting out the actual advertisements, the items for Planning, Commission, and Board.

[05:07:45] So there's not a lot of work that would go into just making this one small change, and DTCI often does the bulk of the background work and then putting items together for those. So while there would be some DPZ involvement, it wouldn't necessarily need to bump anything else down the priority list.

[05:08:01] Okay. Thank you. That's all I had. Thanks, Madam Chair. Thank you. The specs on this increases the FAR from 0.6 to 1.0. It increases, it almost doubles, almost doubles the square foot of data center space.

[05:08:18] Is that true? Is that right? Yes? Yes. Talk to me about power. And going forward, as I ask questions about power, I'm not just asking, like, do we have power for this data center?

[05:08:36] Because what I'm learning is that no data center is powered kind of in a silo. You know, the data center's powers that's needed, even if we have it to power this very large data center campus, we have to get it to do other things, other places.

[05:09:00] It's like, you know, it's not, you can't look at any of these things in a vacuum. I am starting to get real concerned about the amount of power. Well, I've been concerned, not starting to get concerned, about the amount of power our data centers are using.

[05:09:18] We now have, you know, power lines, you know, possibly coming across Western Loudoun County. This campus adds like 20% more data center usage in this county than all of our data centers combined right now.

[05:09:38] I mean, it is a huge, huge amount of data center space, power, FAR. How do we feel about it? I mean, is there just no stopping at this point?

[05:09:53] I mean, how do we feel about this? I mean, I don't know what to do with this issue anymore. I don't think you're the only one. Thank you. We've started obviously trying to reach out to Dominion as things come in to see what they are able to tell us up front, but it's on an application-by-application basis.

[05:10:14] It's not looking at things across the county. It's not looking at the transmission lines that have become an issue recently. So there's not a lot of guidance that we can give you at this point either because it's not something that we have regularly looked at up to this point. Yeah, so we're looking at an application-to-application basis.

[05:10:32] We're not looking at it across the grid in its entirety. Right. We've generally been looking at what substation would you be pulling power from the best, not looking beyond that. Do you think, and this is maybe not even just about this application, do you think that we need to start talking about how these types of applications will impact the grid overall?

[05:10:54] I think it's a valid conversation to have. I think the biggest problem we have internally is that there's no one on, to the best of my knowledge, anywhere on county staff that has significant background in that kind of area. So we would definitely need to bring on some help to better understand those things ourselves.

[05:11:11] Yeah. And that's not saying anything about this particular application. I'm just, I mean, this is an enormous application as far as data center addition and usage and grid capacity. So, yeah.

[05:11:29] Okay, well, thank you. And I guess we're here from the applicants now. We're ready when you are. You have 10 minutes. You can sit right there. You can stand up. Either one is fine with me. I'm just waiting for her to pull up our presentation. Thank you, Madam Chair.

[05:11:53] Okay. We're ready when you are.

[05:12:10] Good evening, Madam Chair and members of the board. My name is Erin Swishelm, and I'm an attorney with Walsh Colucci. I'm joined at the table tonight by Ron Meyer of RMA Land Development, who is my co-applicant representative on this application. We want to thank you for the opportunity to present the Belmont Innovation Campus to you this evening. Next slide, please.

[05:12:27] So before we get into the specifics of the application, we wanted to provide some site context, and Lori did a good job here. The applicant owns a site that's outlined in white here. It's approximately 111 acres at the northeast corner of Belmont Ridge Road and Gloucester Parkway. Right now, 51% of the site is zoned to the PDGI and PDIP zoning districts, which allow data centers by right.

[05:12:50] and the comprehensive plan and the data center study both support data center development on the site. The property is also bordered on three sides by properties that are contemplated for industrial or data uses. The Planning Commission did forward this application to the board with a 7-1-1 recommendation of approval, where staff recommended approval of the application, and neighbors and stakeholders spoke positively about the application.

[05:13:13] Next slide, please. So our guiding principle in envisioning this process as a whole was to achieve a win-win-win solution for a site that already allows for by right data center development to us this meant optimizing data center development on the site while setting a new standard for environmental stewardship on the property and protecting community interests in the neighborhood that we are going to be in we kept these guiding principles in the front of our minds in our collaboration with staff and with our stakeholders and with our neighbors next slide please so in light of the site's location and its comprehensive plan designations the applicant is seeking to rezone the rest of

[05:13:50] of the site to the PDIP Zoning District. Community planning has found that this proposal is consistent with the plan's recommendations for the site's place types. Approval of the applications, as you can see here, will result in additional 19 acres of development area and also offers commitments to 19 acres of additional buffering along the Goose Creek, as well as additional environmental protections and community amenities that we'll talk about during the presentation. Next slide, please. One of the key environmental commitments in the application is the proffered buffering along the Goose Creek, which we designed to be consistent with the board member initiative that was proposed by Supervisors Turner, Briskman, and Glass.

[05:14:29] The applicant is committed to providing 500 feet of habitat-supportive buffering along the creek, which exceeds the requirement under the zoning ordinance by 300 feet. The Goose Creek Scenic River Advisory Committee did provide comment during staff review and supports the proposed buffering. The referral that you see here, it was actually written following our first submission, and The commitments have only gotten better as we have taken time to take in the valuable feedback that we've gotten both from staff and from our stakeholders.

[05:14:57] Next slide, please. So keeping in mind all of these ethos, the applicant is committed to providing 32 acres, or 30% of the site, as habitat-supportive buffering along the Goose Creek. This buffering includes a 300-foot Goose Creek buffer, which preserves existing vegetation through a TCA, and includes commitments to reforesting unforested areas that are not proposed for park uses.

[05:15:20] These buffering commitments further include a 200-foot transitional open space buffer, which will contain habitat-supportive and pollinator species, and that includes in any areas that might be affected by utility easements. We've also provided a commitment to the improvement of water quality on the Goose Creek.

[05:15:37] we're providing a full risker buffer a minimum of four lids and enhanced ens measures that are consistent with the goose creek reservoir protection standards and treat this area of the goose creek as if it were the goose creek reservoir next slide please as staff talked about in early october 2023 we updated our plan set and proffer statement to remove the development scenario which reserved right away for glossary parkway across the site this was in response to the overwhelming community and stakeholder opposition to the extension at and following the planning commission public hearing as well as comments that were made during the planning

[05:16:12] commission at that public hearing this change is the only outstanding issue that is identified by staff and as previously noted staff supported approval of the application stakeholders who have opposed this extension include the county's own goose creek scenic river advisory committee the goose creek association the belmont community association and kincaid forest hoa extending the gloucester parkway across the goose creek in this area would result in two crossings within 1,500 linear feet of each other and would require clearing at least 40,000 square feet of mature trees and habitat that are currently in the 300-foot Goose Creek buffer. That's exclusive

[05:16:49] of any construction easements that would be necessary to construct the roadway. This would have a negative impact not only on the native plant and animal species on the property, but on the water quality of the Goose Creek, as well as the historic mill that's adjacent to the reservation and the future park uses that we'll be discussing shortly here.

[05:17:08] Next slide, please. So these negative impacts to creek resources could be really devastating. And as we've said to the county before, data included in the 2019 CTP tells us that they're not necessary.

[05:17:25] The 2019 CTP data shows that the Russell Branch Parkway has sufficient capacity to serve the traffic needs in the area without the Gloucester Parkway extension. And in fact, Russell Branch Parkway would still have more than 50% capacity available without the Gloucester extension. Since the CTP's adoption in 2019, there's been an increase in industrial land use in the area of the property, and that has resulted in even fewer trips generated than the CTP originally estimated, which further reduces the need for the Gloucester extension.

[05:17:54] Approving this application without that commitment is supported by the county's own CTP data from 2019 and is also consistent with other CTP and comprehensive plan policies that support prioritizing environmental resources. The CTP notes that it supports measures to reduce road intrusions into river and stream corridors, and the 2019 general plan recognizes that these riskers are one of the county's most important natural ecosystems and that they support not only the air quality and water quality of our habitat, but the biodiversity of our collective habitat as well.

[05:18:28] Next slide, please. In an effort to preserve these resources, we have worked closely with Parks and Recreation to help achieve LPAT and Signature Project goals for the site, and have provided commitments to build 1,500 feet of linear trail across the site's property frontage, and to dedicate the entire buffer to the county for use as a public park, and to provide vehicular and pedestrian access to the park.

[05:18:52] We have also included commitments to construct a pavilion in an already unforested area on the site for visitor use, and to provide a cash contribution for a future kayak launch on the site. Last term, the county paid about $8 million for another site along the Goose Creek that has fewer amenities, and this application provides the park early in our project and at no cost to the county.

[05:19:11] Next slide, please. We're proud of the community amenities on the site, but we are equally as proud of the work that we have done with Belma HOA and our other neighbors to help shape how the development will look from roadway frontages. As you can see at the bottom of the cross-section of this slide, we're utilizing the natural grade of the site as well as some retaining walls to sink the proposed buildings 30 to 40 feet below the grade of Belmont Ridge Road while still maintaining a six-foot berm with enhanced evergreen plantings. These combined design features mitigate the visual impact of the proposed data center buildings along both Belmont Ridge Road and from the Goose Creek. To illustrate how these sight lines will work, we have included some cross-sections

[05:19:47] on the next two slides. Next slide, please. On this slide and the next, we've highlighted the two closest views from the Belmont neighborhood across from the site and the views from the creek. As you can see here, the natural 300-foot Goose Creek buffer provides full screening of the buildings from the creek, and the proposed retaining wall and landscaping effectively mitigate the view from Belmont Ridge Road and nearby residences. Next slide, please. And this is our second CAM view. You can see here, again, from the creek, the buildings are fully shielded, and the proposed buffering mitigates and screens the proposed data centers from the roadway and from the residences. Next slide, please. And what you are going to see will look really great. Here

[05:20:26] you will see one of our proposed elevations for the application and on the next several slides we'll walk through how we achieved or how we arrived at these proposed designs. Next slide please. We've modeled our building design commitments after the principles and the recently adopted zoning ordinance and have committed to providing both principal and enhanced facades. Principal facades will face Belmont Ridge Road and enhanced building facades face other planned roadways. The enhanced facades are shown in blue here and the principal facades are shown in red. Each principal facade will include all of the enumerated design elements

[05:21:00] and enhanced facades will include at least three. Next slide, please. These are our proposed elevations and they were developed with the project for this project specifically in consultation with the applicant's architect who applied the previously shown proffered design commitments to their working data center design. And the result is a series of elevations which are modern but not stark and are designed to resemble class A office space. Next slide, please.

[05:21:25] this application is a result of more than a year of collaboration and coordination between the applicant staff creek advocates and community members and we thank each of the people who was part of any of those conversations given the current public sentiment towards the data center industry our team is very proud to have such broad community support for this application which we achieve through cooperation and listening and being willing to make commitments that really haven't been contemplated before in legislative applications we hope that this sets the tone going forward and we also thank you again for the opportunity to present before you this evening uh ron our team and myself are available to answer any questions that the board has

[05:22:04] seven seconds to go good job all right mr turner i will go to you first sir thank you madam chair i just want to clarify for the public for some of the speakers i'm sure in the room and you mentioned it several times in your presentation so this site is a by right data center site, which means this site is going to be a data center. It can be if we vote yes, we get a number of the amenities and the proffered conditions and programs along Goose Creek and all the other things that you mentioned in the proffer. If we vote no, then you don't come back to us. You build a data center on the site. Supervisor Turner, there's no clear example of

[05:22:43] this than the property to the north, which as you drive by on Route 7 at Belmont Ridge Road, you can see it's been completely cleared down to, I believe, around 200 feet away from the creek. They have matching zoning largely with us on a buy-write capacity. Instead of doing a buy-write application, what we decided is exactly what Aaron mentioned, try to come in with a win-win-win where we're doing a 500-foot buffer, many precedent-setting creek protections.

[05:23:08] We've worked, as you know, since May with many of the creek advocates. We had a big meeting, and we've worked diligently since then to really try to set the new standard for how to treat waterways in this area. And also, you know, going back to obviously, you know, being on this body, data centers haven't had a good reputation.

[05:23:27] And what we try to do is fix that from the inside and say, hey, there are commitments we can make. And there are things we can do to actually be better community partners. And to have a homeowners association right next to you and a creek next to you and to have people in both of those saying relatively positive things about you, it's really a testament to SDC billing to make concessions that not many applicants have.

[05:23:46] And we've worked really diligently to do that. And I think the stark contrast to some other neighbors who are going in a by-right capacity, you can see the difference for yourself. And have you encountered anybody who is advocating to keep the Gloucester Parkway extension? I've seen multiple stakeholders that don't want it.

[05:24:03] Have you encountered anybody? We honestly have gotten so much feedback on removing Gloucester Parkway that that was a big driving decision on the change. And the question really has become, can that community wait for a CPAM? Can this development wait for a CPAM? The developer is not altruistic.

[05:24:19] We understand that we gained a developable area with Gloucester going away, but really it's the people that we've worked for nine months, 12 months, who are saying this is their number one issue. You've given us all of these other things. Can't you help us get this? And then say no to them or to say put them in some sort of uncertain CPAM process where staff continues to advocate saying that they may want to still keep the road doesn't seem like a fair treatment to our stakeholders.

[05:24:45] And so that's really why we want to have the conversation this evening and explore whether or not the county could allow us to proceed potentially as is, and if there's a way to protect the county's precedent on the CTP within the current situation, or if we are going to initiate a CPAM, or if you are intending to initiate a CPAM, can we do it in a way that gives these Creek advocates more certainty?

[05:25:06] In my 13 seconds, I'd like to ask the county attorney, what would be the implications if we approved the application prior to the completion of the CPAM process? So there's been discussion with the applicant about going back to what their original proposal was and adding the sheet back in the CDP that showed Gloucester Parkway, but then also doing an alternate sheet without Gloucester Parkway.

[05:25:36] And if they did that and there was a proffer that said you will develop with Gloucester, as shown on the CTP, but if a CPAM is adopted that removes it, you can develop this alternate way without Gloucester Parkway, without having to come back to the board for a ZCPA, then the board could go ahead and approve that.

[05:26:00] and we've done that before. We've had that type of instance where the applicant has put forward an application that complies with the countywide transportation plan but recognizes the possibility that that may change and gives them a way to develop in the event that it does change without having to come back to the board.

[05:26:18] So if it were presented that way, yes, you could approve the application. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Kirshner. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just have one question, and it triggered during your presentation.

[05:26:35] You said that this proposal will be developed below grade of the road. Is that something new? I will say this is the first time I have seen it, Supervisor Kirshner. And it's really, I think, again, due to the creativity of this particular applicant, an SDC, being willing to do things that are new and innovative to try to be a good neighbor and to be a good partner on these projects.

[05:27:03] That's tremendous, and I'd love to see more of that because obviously the height of these and the visual aspects of them are a large concern along with the power. But I was glad to see that. I had not seen that in the application itself when I read through it, but thank you.

[05:27:20] Mr. Crony. Thank you, Chair Randall. So, when I met with you guys, one thing that we talked about was potentially adding solar panels, and I'm wondering if that could be something that we commit to, like, at least on the administrative building or on the parking canopy, because you are setting precedents, and I'd love to, you know, have solar be one of those precedents.

[05:27:47] - Supervisor Crony, we are continuing to look into it, and I will say that in the event we're sent to February or March, our confidence is that we hopefully can make some sort of commitment on that front to the effect of what you were saying. We understand no other data center has ever committed to any level of solar panels.

[05:28:03] We'd love to bust that precedent, if possible, like we have with our creek buffers, our water quality protection. And just, by the way, since the Planning Commission alone, these weren't in the summary provided, but we met with the Piedmont Environmental Council and other creek advocates. They asked for some specific things. We've added two more LIDs.

[05:28:19] Our wetlands credits, this is not done from my recollection on any other application. We have to get our wetlands credits specifically from Loudoun, whereas others you can get anywhere in the Potomac watershed. So we have to get our wetlands credits specifically in Loudoun unless they aren't available or they're really, really cost prohibitive, right?

[05:28:34] That has not been done. We've added a crosswalk to Gloucester to make sure people from Belmont everywhere can cross easily as a suggestion of Supervisor Glass's office. We're doing five years of invasive species control on our site. That's never been done. Previously, we were at three. Jem asked for five, or she asked for five or more.

[05:28:51] We got to five, right? These are things that are not in the staff presentation or in our own presentation, but we're still willing to work, and we're still willing to break precedent and willing to do more if it's feasible. And Dave Fiedler, Joe Livesey, who are here from the SDC team, I will say this, is that from early on in trying to figure out how this project would develop, knowing that it was going to be a data center campus, we have an applicant who's been willing to run things to ground as it comes to feasibility of these things.

[05:29:16] And for your request, I'm confident we're going to be able to make some sort of commitment between now and our next set of proffers. Okay, great. Did you guys, thank you, did you guys look at, for the backup generator, look at natural gas versus diesel? Yes, and I can bring our experts up if we need to, but the short of it is, is that for a natural gas, you really need a natural gas transmission line, or we'd be looking at very, very large scale silos.

[05:29:41] further the industry as a whole you have to remember SDC really builds for hyperscalers for those tenants and those tenants aren't really there yet on those types of fuels what I would say is that SDC is actively pushing for those sort of innovations and is really is trying to look at at that for potential backup generation and then also some on-site options for generation in general on the natural gas front it's just we they're trying to push the industry but you can't necessarily you know especially when we're looking at only asking for about essentially eight more acres of development outside of the the substations you know it's we have to stay within sort of the

[05:30:19] bounds of where the industry is today and lastly real quick um i hope we can do a livable green wall somewhere i saw that one of those pictures it would be great to have a livable green wall so rather than an option maybe put that as one of the walls sdc sdc the developer for this site has a campus in Frankfort that has a substantial amount of green wall and as long as this environment can withstand it I think the intent is exactly to do that I will say green wall if you look at the rest in town center and Tyson's where they put it on parking garages it's had a hard time here so we're working on trying to see if it's feasible and we can get a provider okay thank you miss Bricksman thank you mr. Crony miss Bricksman thank you madam

[05:30:58] chair um how tall are the buildings proposed so we don't have a any kind of height modification um they could be up to 100 feet um but we have not requested any um you know modification to the step back so we would also be stepping back one foot for each uh foot over 60 feet all right um and uh i just want to clarify 51 percent of this property is by right data center but the other 49 is a3 correct correct however in the a3 zoning district you can do utility substations um which is what you're seeing on the property to our north and and by the way mass

[05:31:37] clear it like it's been done to the north right mass clearing all the way down pretty darn close to the creek you're talking about a different property no more north right but that's the same the same a3 zone is your is your proposal to put the stations on the property that's a3 no so uh part of the additional 19 acres of development that we're asking for is really eaten up by the substations that we're proposing, right? So instead of putting them down closer to the creek, we are asking for that additional area so that we can provide all of that creek buffering

[05:32:15] that we have proffered to. The site to our north has the same A3 zoning in that area. They originally proposed substations 200 feet from Goose Creek. Our substations are 500 feet off Goose Creek, right? And so they have a buy right A3 area, and that's what they've done, right? And they may push them back but frankly i think they're pushing them back and supervisor turner maybe can speak to this we worked hard with dominion to put the power lines off of goose creek and also away from the neighborhoods in the center of our site if you if you look at uh if we look at sheet number i think it's hang on a second i'm i'm gonna run out of time okay sorry but are you saying that you've

[05:32:49] been able to get dominion to commit to putting power lines somewhere yes interesting okay and by the way we're putting habitat supportive plantings in the easements so there's a native and i heard i heard i heard pollinator i heard seven acres i heard thank you very much gardens reclaiming my time sir um so sorry um there's a sound wall by the road um but how come there's no sound wall to protect all the species on the on the other side between your property or your building and and everything to the goose creek so we're actually committed uh viceroy briskman to noise attenuation

[05:33:27] measures and some of that is a louvered or solid state sound wall on as like the parapet to the building so we're we've committed to acoustical raps on our air chillers we've committed to the sound wall and Ron I think there was one more that is escaping me right now there's we're doing so the high hum we're doing these acoustical raps the low rumble we're doing low emission fans then we're putting a wall around the air chillers on the roof okay all right which has never been proffered in Loudoun. Thank you. Okay, I'm going to say some stuff and I prefer not to be interrupted. I'm sorry. So listen, I think you all are doing as much as you can do with this

[05:34:04] application and doing good stuff. However, every time we have an application, a data center application that asks for special exception, that increases it by double, which is what this is doing, by double. We're increasing data centers by double. We're increasing power usage by double.

[05:34:22] And kind of this almost threat of, but if you don't do it, you don't get all these good things. Look at that company over there that didn't do good things. Look at them. They didn't do good things because you didn't give them a special exception. You can't tell me you're a great company, but you're only going to give me something that's good for the community if I give you more FAR or if I give you your larger data center.

[05:34:43] It doesn't really work like that. If you're good for the community, you're good for the community. And this is like holding this over our heads. If you don't do it, you won't get yada, yada, yada. That just doesn't really, that doesn't work. This is very much, other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

[05:35:00] Very much. I think you all are doing good things. I do. And it's not even just about this application. We do so much special exception for data centers because they say, and we're going to give you this, and we're going to give you this, and we're going to give you this.

[05:35:16] We have added God knows how many more FAR, how much more FAR for data centers under specs. I mean, we routinely add one-fourth more, one-half more under specs because of what they're going to give us.

[05:35:32] And we're sitting here wondering what are we going to do about power. And this has been said recently, we haven't even started talking about the power that's going to be needed for AI. We're sitting here figuring out what we're going to do about a power line coming through Waterford, through Waterford.

[05:35:49] So it's not even, I mean, I get that, you know, the good things are happening as data centers go, this is good things. but at some point we've got to stop feeding the beast i mean we just do you know it's like a car company going we'll give you some free gas but you got to buy buy all my cars well yeah yeah give me some free gas but you're still making money off that car and buying from you i mean it doesn't it just doesn't end and so you know almost half of this application specs and this is normal for us

[05:36:27] This is normal for us. This is a great application. You all are doing great things in this application. You're responding to the degree that you can. But we don't have power anymore.

[05:36:44] We don't. And I haven't asked a question. Yes, ma'am. We don't have power anymore. And at some point, guys, I just don't know what to do about this.

[05:36:59] And this is not about, listen, Mr. Myers is actually my friend. Like, I consider him a friend. But this is not about any of that. This is about the fact that we're about to put power lines for Western Loudoun County. But not for this project.

[05:37:14] It doesn't matter. It's all for this project. It's the grid. It's the grid. We have quite a few speakers on this item. We're going to go through the speakers. If I say your name wrong, I apologize in advance. First speaker is Ronald Zabriskie.

[05:37:31] And then we have on web, on virtual, Ted Lewis, Aaron Walter. Tom Donahue, okay, we'll stop there. It's Mr. Zabriskie, are you in the building, sir? Good evening.

[05:37:52] - Good evening, Madam Chair, members of the Board of Supervisors. My name is Ron Zabriskie, and I'm here as a board member and as a resident of Belmont Country Club and to speak on behalf of the Belmont Homeowners Association and its 6,000 plus voting residents. I'm here tonight to advise you that the Belmont HOA will voice no objection to Belmont Innovations Data Centers and the request for rezoning of part of the property for the further development of their campus, but vigorously opposes the extension of Gloucester.

[05:38:21] So I would like to also take this opportunity to extol the professionalism of SDC Capital, partners to local management team, who have worked with us diligently and in good faith to address many of our issues. Specifically, they've reviewed with us their design plans and have amended their building design and proffers so as to provide greater noise abating approaches.

[05:38:42] Likewise, as to that facade, they have agreed with us provide glass or glass architectural panels to comprise of at least 20 percent of the primary facade additionally subject to vdot approval they have agreed to refurbish maintain for 20 years the medium on both sides of belmont ridge road an equally important issue for our residents are the high voltage overhead power lines the developer worked with us dominion energy and mike turner to allow them to to traverse the middle of their property such as to keep them off belmont ridge Road while keeping them away from Goose Creek. Now, these are just some of the examples of the

[05:39:20] cooperation we've experienced in working with Belmont Innovation. Now, another shared goal for both our developer and our HOA is eliminating the extension of Gloucester west of Belmont Ridge Road and across Goose Creek to Cross Trail Boulevard. There's no need for an extension of both Russell Branch west of Belmont Ridge, and then there's no need for the quarter mile south of just yet another extension of Gloucester. The surrounding data center development in this corridor has eliminated the need for the Gloucester extension as data centers generate much less traffic than was forecast in the 2019 Comprehensive Plan traffic studies. East of Belmont Ridge, Gloucester splits our community in half. In Midway to Claiborne, there's an elementary school,

[05:39:57] Newtley, and also middle school. Keep our children safe and don't drive more transit traffic onto the extended Gloucester. For the sake of the preservation of Goose Creek, save 20 plus acres of watershed and canopy, which are critical to containing runoff and purity of Goose Creek. There's no need to visually and physically destroy the tree-laden corridor, but rather eliminate the Gloucester Extension and its requested bridge.

[05:40:21] Thank you for your time. Oh, I'm sorry. Thank you, sir. I think we're going no, he's in, they're in the room? Okay. Oh, hi, Mr. Lewis. Hello. I don't know whether to say good evening or good morning. Not yet. Not yet. After you, sir, would be Aaron Walter.

[05:40:41] Good evening. My name is Ted Lewis and I live at 20964 turner farm lane in leesburg virginia i am speaking on behalf of the goose creek association which i serve as co-chair while our association does not support any development adjacent to goose creek due to the potential for negative environmental impacts we understand the current zoning of this property means the data center will be developed on this site regardless of whether the subject rezoning passes we also believe that the developer of belmont innovation has proactively reached out to collaborate on ways to reduce the environmental impact of the development

[05:41:16] to Goose Creek. For these reasons, we are in support of the proposed rezoning the site. Some of the environmental measures the developers proffered include the 500 feet of habitat supportive buffering to Goose Creek, which includes the 300-foot no-build zone and an additional 200 feet transitional open space. The Goose Creek water quality protections and the Goose Creek Northern Regional Trail and Park, which includes a canoe and kayak launch. It should be noted that these profit measures would not be required on a by-right development. In addition, this developer

[05:41:52] has committed to financially supporting Goose Creek Association's installation and operation of water quality monitoring stations to document the water quality parameters, including real-time data upstream and downstream from the subject site. A key factor in the way this developer is proceeding is that the developer reached out to environmental groups early in the process.

[05:42:16] This enabled everybody to work together and help address concerns where possible. I believe the proactive communication approach used by this developer and the environmental measures they have implemented is a good example of how developments near or adjacent to environmentally sensitive areas such as Goose Creek should proceed. Related to this rezoning, we strongly support removing the Gloucester Parkway easement and planned bridge crossing to Goose Creek.

[05:42:42] It just doesn't make sense to have two crossings of Goose Creek within a quarter mile of each other. There's nothing more damaging to Goose Creek than a bridge that would go across it. So we strongly support removing that easement and hopefully no bridges, but if you have to have bridges, one bridge over Goose Creek.

[05:43:02] Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Lewis. Erin Walter, followed by Tom Donahue. Good evening. Good evening. Hi, I am Erin Walter. I'm a citizen of Loudoun County. So the Board of Supervisors has made it abundantly clear that they are not the approval authorities for power lines coming through this county.

[05:43:26] As you have stated many times during the discussions regarding the lines on Western Loudoun, I would argue that the Board of Supervisors has an opportunity to control power lines, and it's right now.

[05:43:44] That time is now, and in order to do that, you have to monitor the power as an infrastructure in the county, and with each proposal, you have to have them tell you how much power they're going to need, and you have to start figuring out what your budget looks like, just like anything else, any other budget. So with that in mind, I will ask the following about this 4.8 million square foot data center that is a huge increase to this county's overall

[05:44:20] data center footprint. How much power will it need? What will be the bill to the citizens for the infrastructure costs that we pay for? What's the full path of the power lines? Where will it run? Which landowners will have power lines in their yard? What source will this new power come from? Will it be coal from three states away? How much water will it use? I don't. Honestly,

[05:44:56] if the Board of Supervisors can't answer these five basic questions when approving data centers, I don't know what we're doing here, because we've got to know the answer to these questions. Infrastructure needs to be part of your consideration when you consider data centers.

[05:45:16] You consider infrastructure and you talk about it all night when you're talking about housing in terms of schools, roads, et cetera. Data centers require infrastructure, too. They just require a different type of infrastructure. So you've got to start asking the right questions when data centers come to you.

[05:45:37] And no, I don't think any of them should be by right. Ma'am, I'm sorry. Your time is up. Okay, thank you. The next person will answer my question. Thank you. Mr. Donahue, and you'll be followed by Mavis Tainter.

[05:45:55] Good evening, sir. Good evening. My name is Tom Donahue. I'm a retired electrical engineer from Leesburg. I understand the importance of data centers and appreciate the effort in this proposal, but Chair Randall is right. It is all about the grid. The power used by new data centers per square foot has increased by about a factor of three in recent years, according to Dominion.

[05:46:16] TA Realty, for example, in November announced the 1.9 million square feet of new data centers on Sicklin Road will use 430 megawatts. Using that, 240 watts per square foot as a guide, the 4.85 million square feet of the Belmont Innovation Center might grow to as much as 1,100 megawatts, which is about all of the power that Panda, Stonewall, and Dickerson natural gas plants can produce combined.

[05:46:41] That is also about 73% of the maximum power delivered by a single 500 kilovolt transmission line. PGM is planning three more 500 kilovolt transmission lines to come to Leesburg by about 2028. So there should be plenty of power, right?

[05:46:58] This is going to take care of it. But Prince William County has approved 26 million square feet that will use the same transmission lines as Loudoun does. PJM estimates that the proposed transmission line from the west to Aspen substation will cost about $940 million.

[05:47:16] PGM estimates that the new line from Aspen to Golden, which will run right in front of the Belmont Data Center, plus a third of the new Aspen substation that connects to the Western Line and two others as a fair share, will then run up another $160 million. Taking 73% share for Belmont of that, that means that the overall increase in cost of infrastructure is about $800 million that the ratepayers will have to pay for.

[05:47:42] We are at a point where large new data centers will depend on electric infrastructure that still needs to be built. So this $800 million is a rough estimate of what the Belmont Innovation Center might cost the TAC rate payers. Finally, old data centers will be refurbishing with newer equipment, and that will use more power just like the new ones do.

[05:48:03] Plus, the data centers have been operating closer to maximum capacity than they used to, according to Dominion. As we exceed the capacity of the old electric infrastructure, we must plan for more power generation and more power lines. At the rate we are going, Even the three planned PJM transmission lines will not be enough.

[05:48:22] We must plan for this. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Mavis Tainter, followed by John Lovegrove, followed by Randy Ness. Good evening. Good evening, everyone. And thank you, Chair Randall, for your comments about the power and the power needs.

[05:48:42] I'm Mavis Tainter. I live on a farm in Western Loudoun with my family and have lived there for a number of years. Recently, late at night, suddenly an email popped into my box that told me and showed me a map that there was going to be a power line coming directly through the heart of my farm.

[05:49:03] It goes through the buildings that are the core to keeping our business going. Not only that, but because we have very historic buildings on our property dating to the early 1700s, many of those buildings are going to be compromised and they're going to be condemned and torn down.

[05:49:23] if this power line goes through. So I turned to the Board of Supervisors. I sent out mass emails to everyone and to various people singly, and I got the same answer back. There's nothing the Board of Supervisors can do. So, Mavis, what you need to do is get in touch with your congressperson in Washington, your senators in Washington, your state senators in Richmond.

[05:49:46] You should take on NextEra Energy and Dominion Power, which are billion-dollar companies here, and take them on by yourself, Because the Board of Supervisors can't do anything to control these uncontrollable power lines that are coming all through Western Loudoun.

[05:50:03] And it's not just my farm, but it's every house in a line from where I live all the way into the town of Waterford. All those houses are going to be condemned. All those small farms are going to be out of business. So I've come here tonight because I feel we really are at a watershed moment here.

[05:50:23] you all have the right to say no to these zoning changes. And trust me, I get the buy right situation you're all sort of locked into here. But if you don't start saying no to these data centers, what is going to happen to the rest of us?

[05:50:43] This is an issue that you can say no on because you do have a say on zoning. As Chair Randall pointed out, this company here is asking to double the size of this data center that's near sort of south of Leesburg.

[05:51:02] So I'm here to ask you all to say no tonight. I think this is an important statement for you to make. Ms. Tainter, I'm sorry. Two minutes. No, ma'am. Your time's up. Thank you. You can feel free to e-mail us, though.

[05:51:18] Thank you. Thank you very much, Chair Randall. John Lovegrove followed by Randy Neese followed by John Benedict. Hi, my name is John Lovegrove. I'm the president of Loudon's Future, a nonpartisan political action committee.

[05:51:34] And I really want to clear up one thing. This is not a buy right. This is not a foregone conclusion. Half of this property has to be rezoned from A3 to PDIP. That's what the applicant is here for. It's a legislative process. You can disapprove it.

[05:51:50] So half of this property does not have a by-right designation. I'm not sure why that keeps getting presented, but that's the reality. You're at the Rubicon, ladies and gentlemen. At least three of you have said no more data centers. This is the, by far, one of the largest data centers ever proposed for Loudoun County.

[05:52:11] It will increase the square feet from 25 million to 30 million. It increases the amount by 20%. It will require 500 megawatts of power. As Mr. Donnie pointed out, that may be low because of the increased energy density that these new data centers are using.

[05:52:31] I think there's a lot of numbers out here that need to seriously be considered. The staff's report inexplicably says in the public utilities section that there's no impact to public utilities. It's laughable. I don't understand it. So I think we need to take another look at this.

[05:52:50] We need to take a step back. Please disapprove the zoning change. We need to establish a commission. We have lots of commissions in this county. We need to establish a commission on data centers, and we need to look at alternatives to what's been done to Loudoun County.

[05:53:07] We've gotten into this mess by doing what we're going to do tonight. We have to stop letting new data centers be built on land that has to be rezoned to allow them. There are a number of initiatives in the industry. There is a plant down in southwestern Virginia that's using on-site power.

[05:53:26] They're looking at liquid natural gas. They're looking at hydrogen. They're looking at modular nukes, which I think are a long way away, but that's one of the things they're looking at. We have a large generating plant in Loudoun already. Stonewall generates 770 megawatts.

[05:53:46] It doesn't require transmission lines from the west. I think we should look at the carbon footprint of taking power from an old coal plant in West Virginia versus putting those power plants in Loudoun County. Thank you. My time is up. I'll be happy to continue to consult on this. Thank you, Mr. Lovegrove. Randy Neese followed by John Benedict followed by Benjamin Nguyen. Good evening. Good evening. Randy Neese. I'm a resident and business owner here in Loudoun County.

[05:54:17] I spoke on this same issue at the Planning Commission as well as the last board meeting. Tonight, in the sake of time and to help everybody kind of digest all this, Mr. Turner will talk about trying to find somebody that wants the Gloucester extension.

[05:54:39] I'm going to give you a synopsis of the things that you've heard here in these prior meetings. that are compelling reasons to take the Gloucester Extension out of the county transportation plan. First, I'd like to start with some words out of that CTP.

[05:54:58] It says the county supports measures that protect water quality by minimizing intrusion of road networks on rivers and streams. So that's what you're guiding to. And, of course, the Gloucester Extension would equate to two, as you've heard here, and as you well know, two roads across Goose Creek within 1,600 feet, the other one being Russell Branch, and that's not, and, of course, Route 7 is, like, right parallel to that, of course.

[05:55:34] So there was also some, in prior meeting here, there was some discussion about traffic density and traffic modeling. And maybe that's all preliminary, but the stats that they were quoting at that forum at a prior board meeting was if they eliminated the Gloucester extension, that by 2040, you'd still only be at 50% capacity on Russell Branch.

[05:56:03] Now, again, I can't speak for that, and I'm sure the county would do a more detailed modeling if it came to that. A summary of the environmental impacts allows to eliminate more than 40,000 feet of mature forest along the Goose Creek that would otherwise be used for parks, trails, and to provide a forested buffer to protect habitat and improve water quality in Goose Creek.

[05:56:30] And, you know, they're not all here tonight, so I want to give them due diligence because I've sat through their briefings, and I think you have, these environmental groups expressed opposition. Mr. Neese? Yes, ma'am. I'm so sorry. Can you send us that in the e-mail because your time is up, sir? I will. Thank you very much, ma'am.

[05:56:46] Thank you very much, sir. And I applaud your efforts to try to think of a comprehensive power. Thank you, sir. John Benedict, followed by Benjamin Nguyen, followed by Michael Myers. Good evening. Well, good evening. Thank you again.

[05:57:02] It's John Benedict from the Middleburg area. I support denying the application, an odd way to put it, but at some point, you do need to draw the line and realize we've got to get a handle on the energy demands of data center growth throughout the county.

[05:57:25] I mean, frankly, the applications problem is much bigger than simply removal of the Gloucester Parkway extension or the proffers. Last month's hearing, we heard a lot of concern about the excessive growth of data centers and the problems they're creating by electric demand.

[05:57:46] PGM projects north of $5 billion in costs for the new transmission facilities necessary to serve data centers, with more costs still to come. Dominion projects the cost of new transmission facilities just to serve data center demand will cause consumers' electric rates to more than double by 2030.

[05:58:03] Proposed transmission lines threaten to damage the county's landscape, especially in the rural west. Yet the staff report doesn't address the impacts of this application on the county's electric utilities. We're looking at 500 megawatts for this site.

[05:58:20] It's extraordinarily oversized in scale. The data centers, you know, this would consume more than, what, 150,000 houses worth of electricity. And since data centers are so much more energy-intensive per square foot, its consumption will be many times greater than all of the commercial office square footage in the county combined at this one site.

[05:58:46] It will be, you know, a further increase on the burden of consumers to cover the indirect costs that it will create for transmission requirements. If this were involving water or sewer demand or, you know, school impacts or traffic, it wouldn't be approved.

[05:59:05] So why is it that, you know, the county staff and the county analysis ignores the impacts of electricity demand? The county needs to reform its zoning. It needs to reassess its approach toward data center applications to better account for the impacts of their incremental energy demand.

[05:59:23] And this application, with its flaws, is as good a place as any to start. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Benjamin Wynn, followed by Michael Myers. Good evening. Benjamin Wynn for the Goose Creek Scenic River Advisory Committee, the state body that is appointed to advocate and advise on Goose Creek.

[05:59:47] Yes, sir. This is what we like, is the buffers. And I've said this before, this is my fourth time here on the same issue. So I won't spend any time. A lot of what I would have said has already been said by some very capable people here. It's not going to be repeated.

[06:00:02] I've heard a lot of reasons why we shouldn't have Gloucester Parkway, and I sat back and listened, and I only heard one reason for it. One, and that's because it's on a map, period.

[06:00:20] That can be resolved by a sound policy decision, and we hope you make it. We would like you to make it as quickly as possible so that our committee can move on to protecting our buffers from other development. Thank you very much.

[06:00:37] Thank you, sir. Michael Myers, followed by, on the WebEx, Alicia Friedberg and Richard Ramis. Good evening, sir. Hi, I'm Michael Myers, Executive Director of the Law and Wildlife Conservancy. We would like to commend the applicant for including more environmental considerations than other data center applications.

[06:00:56] However, we would like to see this application and other applications with significant amount of windows or glass facades to include bird-friendly window treatments to prevent bird collisions and fatalities. We do not object to the removal of the future potential Gloucester Parkway extension from this application. We recognize there are complicating factors on this topic, and as we've previously expressed, we do not support multiple new road crossings of Goose Creek in such a close proximity to one another.

[06:01:20] This would have an unnecessary negative environmental impact, harm wildlife, and degrade the quality of a state scenic river. We should all do what we can to protect the ever-dwindling habitat and wildlife corridor along Goose Creek. Our primary concern with this application is granting a special exception to increase the floor area ratio of the data center which increases the potential density of the service held inside, which increases the power consumption needs on this parcel, and increases the needs for more collateral infrastructure elsewhere, such as large transmission lines. Additional transmission lines not only impacts this site, with the 200-foot transitional buffer being the right-of-way for the power lines, additional power consumption needs of the data industry as a whole, which includes this one,

[06:01:59] are devastating our natural environment by requiring more and more transmission lines to be built. A long broad run, along Route 7, and one approved by PGM to cut across a state park, mountains, ecological cores, conservation easements, and a significant amount of open space across western Loudoun. And these additional power lines are inducing more data centers to be built by right, such as one now being proposed on the east side of Belmont Ridge Road. Any special exception to make it easier to build a data center or to increase the density or capacity of a data center is part of the problem. The Board of Supervisors does have control over how easy it is to build a data center and or the size of data centers through the special exception process.

[06:02:37] While the board may not have control over every data center that gets built in Loudoun, you do have control over the size of this one. Eastern and Western Loudoun residents have expressed great dissatisfaction with the quantity of transmission lines being built in Loudoun County impacting every district. We encourage you to do what you can to limit the demand for energy to not only stand a chance for meeting regional and state climate goals, but to also protect our natural resources from collateral impacts.

[06:03:02] I agree with Mavis, John, and others. You all can just say no to special exceptions. Thank you for your time. Thank you, sir. And virtually we have Alicia Friedberg and Richard Ramis. And then our last speaker, who I believe is in the house with us, is Jim Bingo.

[06:03:20] Thank you for the opportunity for me to share my thoughts and concerns. I live in Alexander's Grove neighborhood, which is adjacent to the Belmont Station campus. I have concerns about rezoning 70 acres of this land to allow a mega-sized data center complex to be built.

[06:03:36] If the current zoning is enforced, at least only 41.7 acres, not all 11.7 acres, will be a data center. However, any size data center on this land causes three additional concerns for me. Noise, visual appearance, and as I learned tonight, large power draws on our area's electricity.

[06:03:56] I have a desire to live next to a huge concrete building, which can be an eyesore. I worry that this could negatively affect my property value. My neighborhood has been here for nearly 30 years, so I would like great caution and consideration taken. The final words are drafted on the particulars of how these buildings will look.

[06:04:14] I would like to ask that the 100-foot-tall sections or the tallest sections of the buildings to be located 200 feet or more from Belmont Ridge Road. I would like it to resemble an office building with windows and other visual interests in contrast to a concrete box.

[06:04:29] Also, leaving a strip of trees along Belmont Ridge Road to create a natural barrier would be nice. Since the building will be built 30 to 40 feet below Belmont Ridge Road, I would like to see most of the enhancements be on the top half of the building that will be seen from the road. The Board of Supervisors has a responsibility to our neighborhood to protect our property values and make sure Belmont Ridge Road doesn't end up looking like wax pool.

[06:04:52] with my neighbor when she called those data centers on wax pool a concrete jungle. Also, the board has a responsibility to make sure our quality of life isn't affected. I worry about noise from the coolers being disrupted in our neighborhood. I don't want to be able to get any noise from the data center inside my house or when I'm outside at the neighborhood park or sitting on my deck. I feel strongly that the strictest standards regarding noise mitigation be applied when constructing this data center. Neighborhoods in Loudoun County submitted noise complaints about data centers next to their communities i don't want this to be my neighborhood in a few years

[06:05:26] time to summarize i have concerns about this development most of the concerns are the noise and the potential property value related to being adjacent to a data center and all that comes with that in regards to the appearance of buildings of the buildings and what is visible when driving or walking along bellman ridge road thank you for your consideration of my concerns thank you The next speaker is Richard Rasmus, followed by Jim Bingo.

[06:05:52] Yeah, and I'm present for this. I'm Richard Rasmus. I live in Hamilton. I, among other nonprofit organizations, I'm the chairman of an organization called Resilient Utilities Now, which is focused on critical infrastructure in general and the electric grid in particular.

[06:06:10] And I'd like to echo some of the remarks made here about how dire the situation is going to become. I think we are writing checks, and we don't have funds in the bank for this. And it's shocking that with all of the data center activity and all the implications for electricity, that I think the staff said that there really isn't much expertise here or on the board.

[06:06:37] And I think it's critically important that, as somebody suggested, that a commission be put together that does have the expertise to understand how deep the hole is that we're digging. And I understand this sounds like a wonderful project on an individual basis, but there are very few opportunities that this board has to have an effect, even if an incremental effect, on dampening the voracious consumption of power that are coming from these hyperscaled facilities.

[06:07:09] And, you know, one of the things we haven't talked about is that once you get to the point where, you know, the margin of safety is being, you know, very tight, You risk putting all of the citizens in the community at risk of brownouts, rolling blackouts, unscheduled, which is also a real problem for the existing data center community.

[06:07:32] You know, it's very harmful for them. So I think that although this sounds like a lot of good work was done and beautifully aesthetic, It reminds me a little of some of you may remember the National Lampoon magazine where there was a picture of a dog and a man with a gun with the dog.

[06:07:50] He said, buy this magazine or we'll shoot this dog. You know, Goose Creek is a wonderful project, and I salute that. But we have got to take every opportunity we have to slow down the growth of these data centers or we are going to be in a deep hole very soon.

[06:08:08] And it's not an easy thing to correct after the fact. These projects take years and years to try to mitigate the power problems. So I urge you to build an organization that can give you the expertise to realize how critical this situation is.

[06:08:26] And at least, you know, if we have half the footprint, we'll have half the power demand. You can do something about that now. So I urge you to oppose this special exception. Thank you, sir. And our last speaker on this item is Jim Bingle. good evening. Good evening, Chair Randall, board members. I'm Jem Bingle speaking on behalf of the Piedmont Environmental Council. PEC has been deeply engaged in understanding and addressing the current electrical supply challenge resulting from data center development in Loudoun and

[06:09:01] elsewhere in Virginia. The problem is huge and needs your help. We know you're trying to manage it better and face challenges in doing that, but we don't support more data center approvals to deep in the hole we're in. We know this application presents a dilemma. While some of the site can be built on by right, the rezoning almost doubles the footprint and power demand, but the applicant has offered many environmental protections to accompany their rezoning application. We don't support siting a data center on the sloping banks of Goose Creek. It's not possible to mitigate all of the impacts on the creek and the natural resources of the site, but the proffers that

[06:09:41] accompany the rezoning or above and beyond anything we've seen from any other data center applicant. Removing Gloucester Parkway from the county CTP and from this site would also help to reduce environmental impacts on Goose Creek, an issue we've addressed previously. There isn't a need for that and for this and the Russell Branch Crossing effectively bookending this site and ask that you initiate the removal process now regardless of your decision. The applicant has been responsive to our suggestions to improve the project and we appreciate the most recent new natural resource

[06:10:17] protection measures they have proffered yet more can be done incorporating solar on the roof and parking lot canopies opting for non-diesel backup generation and how about less density they could voluntarily disclose and increase their energy efficiency practices and be willing to actively partner with the county and community to take a leadership role in discussions and steps on site to reduce data center industry impacts.

[06:10:44] The applicant has not set a gold standard for data center proffers yet, but we appreciate their efforts. You must do more and expect more from the industry to directly mitigate their impacts as neighbors and partners in Loudoun.

[06:10:59] Innovative solutions are happening elsewhere, but not here. This applicant and the industry must do more to offset their far-reaching impacts in Loudoun and beyond. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Turner, would you like to make a motion?

[06:11:15] Yes, Madam Chair. Hang on one second. I move that the Board of Supervisors for LEGIE 2023-0048, Belmont Innovation Campus, ZMAP 2022-0021, SPECS 2022-0042, SPMI 2023-0013, and ZMOD 2022-0077 to the March 2024 Board of Supervisors public hearing for action.

[06:11:44] and I further move the board direct staff to initiate and prepare a comprehensive plan amendment to amend the countywide transportation plan to remove the Gloucester Parkway west of Belmont Ridge Road from the CTP in accordance with Virginia Code Section 15.2-2223 and 15.2-2229.

[06:12:02] The proposed amendment shall be referred to the Planning Commission for Public Hearing in accordance with Virginia Code Section 15.2-2229. Motion made, seconded by Ms. Glass. Discussion on the motion. Thank you. Somebody mentioned that this proposal presents a real dilemma.

[06:12:22] Well, let me tell you, as the Ashburn Supervisor, this is agonizing for me. On November 13th, I gave a presentation to the Virginia Association of Counties after studying for a week or two weeks, what I felt was the growing constraint between available power to Loudoun County and the data center industry.

[06:12:40] It was the first time, to my knowledge, that such a briefing had brought together all of the information to show an overview, a holistic view of the real constraints that Loudoun County now has trying to power 175 data centers. Everything Chair Randall said tonight is exactly correct, and I agree with everything she said.

[06:13:03] If you look at some of the specs on this application, it started in 2022, long before any of us perceived the real serious power constraints to the industry in the county. And I had an applicant that came to me in good faith with some really good, innovative, environmental considerations for a piece of land that was going to be a data center.

[06:13:25] And I didn't know the FAR at the time, but it was going to be a data center. And I said, I can have a bad data center or I can have a good data center and I can help Goose Creek and we can create a linear park and do a number of other things with this project. And in good faith, they stepped up and have a number of really, really innovative and new things in this project that are good for the community.

[06:13:47] And yet, they are juxtaposed with the overall position of the power constraints that we have in this county for the data center industry. It's almost opposite poles of the spectrum that I have to try and make a decision. And the decision really comes down to, in the late stages here, is 1.

[06:14:20] 9 million square feet more of data center on top of an already 2. 8 million square feet of data center worth the kinds of revolutionary and innovative protections for Goose Creek that keeps the power lines out of the visual sight of both Goose Creek and Belmont Ridge Road, that sets them back rather than have substations on our strip right next to Goose Creek. and it's an agonizing decision and i'm not happy about it i don't ever want to be in this position again because from now on the words that are going to come out of my mouth are going to be virtual carbon copies of everything you heard chair randall say earlier we have got to get control of by right data center development in loudon county tomorrow we need to get control of it so i'm going to forward this application because i think it's a good application because I think it has real benefits. And the incremental damage, I have to say, is worth the price in this

[06:15:00] case. But it really pains me to say that. So I am going to afford this application. But I want the data industry to beware. Things are going to change. Things are going to change in this county because we don't have the power anymore. Thank you, Manager. Thank you, Mr. Turner. Excuse me.

[06:15:17] Mr. Letourneau. Thank you. Just a couple questions when this goes forward. Can we get the exact number of how many square feet of actual data center is getting added to the application as a result of the rezoning request, because I know some of the land is actually going for substations and things like that. So I just want to verify. I know some attorneys use numbers, and they're probably correct, but I just want to verify that. The second thing I'm going to ask for is over to the county attorney's office, which is an attorney-client memo on the ability of the board to

[06:15:49] consider power when making lane use decisions and that's a complete full faith question because there are times up here when I don't know the answer to the things that we can and can't consider other than knowing that we are operating under certain constraints and sometimes issues come up and I think we need a legitimate full legal analysis to the board attorney client on that issue to help guide us when these things come up. So I don't know if I need to get the board's assent on that or if I as an individual can ask for it but I think all of us could benefit from it. So

[06:16:29] either through the chair or directly I'll make that request. Thank you. Ms. Sintner does anyone have any objection to that request? No. Okay then without objection then if we could yeah thank you thank you. Mr. Kirshner. Thank you Madam Chair. First of all I've just got a couple of points both to the applicant, and first of all, thanks for staff for doing the work, but to the applicant as well as to some of the statements that were made into my fellow supervisors.

[06:16:57] First, I want to say this is probably the best data center application that I have seen since I've been on this board in four years and two weeks. I guess it's the second week we're in. So I commend you tremendous community outreach, the people that came in and supported it from around the community, all the things the supervisors have already said about it.

[06:17:20] it. So I commend you. I'm impressed. Some of the innovations that were made, the environmental considerations, et cetera. And I, and also, I just want to point out, I did not find your comments to be threatening in any way. It is the reality of what we face when we make these decisions. These decisions are sometimes, as Supervisor Turner, the, you know, what's better, what's not. I understand his frustration. I get it. But we have to face these decisions. And Sometimes some of them are, you know, the reality is we could, you could, this will end up likely like the one that's, I think you said west or north of you, or east, whatever it was.

[06:18:00] Secondly, I want to address briefly the power line issue. This power is, these power lines are coming, this power is coming. We have a seven-year build-out in our data center industry that's pretty much largely approved already. So I think the focus on approving no more data centers, I think a lot of the things we've put into place are really important.

[06:18:19] some of the consideration. That is not going to stop the demand of power. As a matter of fact, if you read the PGMI report, you know one of the biggest reasons all these power lines are coming in from different reasons is because the decommissioning of coal plants and power plants in other places. Now it's partly demand here, but it's partly that. So we have to also take into consideration that. Finally, we can affect change. I think someone here said, well, we can't affect change. We definitely can affect change when it comes to these power lines. I have already, My staff has already met with Next Era, which is the proposal that's coming through Western Loudoun.

[06:18:57] And I just want to assure people that I'm watching it very closely. I'm not happy at all with the current proposal. However, they have assured us that this is just a proposal. They are hiring consultants. We're going to hold them to their word who will be charged with creating a new route based upon public input.

[06:19:17] So I think, honestly, all this energy that's being put into applications like this, although we appreciate it, we want to hear from the public, that those are the places we need to put our energy because this power is coming these lines are coming unless we get some alternative energy source um i i just think we are we are fighting the wrong thing here we need to fight placement of this but this as far as this application is concerned i appreciate it i think it's done done a very good job i think all the points made by the applicant and the staff were excellent i'm going to support it mr crony thank you chair

[06:19:51] Randall. So I do think, I appreciate what some of the speakers said tonight. I do think we need an energy impact study. I agree. I think that should be in our staff report. But I appreciate what Supervisor Letourneau said. I don't know what we're able to do. I don't know if that's something the applicant can provide, like a traffic impact study, an energy impact study.

[06:20:15] But I think, yeah, we do need that expertise when making decisions about data centers. I agree. I think the power is part of the equation. You know, where are we getting the power? Do we need new power lines? I appreciate that you guys have put substations on your property because needing 32 substations somewhere else is not a good look for Eastern Loudoun County.

[06:20:43] I don't know where we're going to put the 32 substations that are needed. for our other data centers. So yeah, I think we need to do a better job of looking at the energy impact of these applications.

[06:21:00] That's what I would say. - Thank you, ma'am. Ms. Umstead. - Thank you, Madam Chair. I wanna thank you for all your community outreach and your ability to bring on board some of our most important communities in support, as well as the protectors of Goose Creek.

[06:21:24] That's very impressive, and I appreciate your working so closely with them. I appreciate everything you've done to try to make this the most environmentally friendly facility you could. And you appear to have accomplished that, so thank you.

[06:21:42] Thank you for working with my constituents on Gloucester Parkway. Um, they are very impressed with the outreach you did to them. Um, they have, as you know, been very concerned about that road coming, um, towards Kincaid for Kincaid Forest.

[06:22:00] Um, you know, I'd like to, um, uh, speak a little bit more about what Supervisor Kirshner said on, um, power sources. We heard from one of our delegates in the General Assembly that part of the problem is as we decommission fossil fuel plants, new sources of power are coming online.

[06:22:28] And Dominion executives will tell us that the data center industry is at the forefront of promoting renewable energy. It is because of them that Dominion has invested in solar panels, wind, hydroelectric, and geothermal.

[06:22:53] So data centers should not be blamed for coal plants. If anything, they have pushed us away from more harmful forms of power, and that is to their credit as well.

[06:23:11] But I deeply appreciate all your hard work, and I will be supporting your application. Ms. Kless? Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to thank the applicant for doing all of the work that you've done with the community, with the look of the data center, as well as your work with the environmental community.

[06:23:48] this is definitely not the last time we're going to hear about this where we will continue to work with the community regarding data centers you know that's that's our next thing that we're going to be working on so we've heard you all out here who has spoken regarding this and and we will continue to focus on this

[06:24:16] thank you thank you I do appreciate the work on this application I think the community would be less sour maybe on data centers if this sort of work had started a decade ago or something like that but I hear time and time again from my constituents begging me not to build more data centers in Loudoun County no more. They're tired of looking at them. I became concerned about data centers probably halfway

[06:24:55] through my first year in my first term. And that's part of the reason why I initiated the remapping study with Department of Economic Development 2021. The power is a huge issue, but it's not the only issue. And the only way that we can pump the brakes on this is to not allow doubling of FAR on certain properties. The proffers are great. You guys did a lot of great work, but I don't think you're going to get my vote on this, even by threatening the clear-cut property,

[06:25:30] and even by dangling the removal of a road to certain sectors of the community. And by the way, the road's not just a line on a map that someone just decided willy-nilly to put on the map. That disregards and disrespects all the work that went into the general plan and the CTP that this county did this board and this staff did in 2019.

[06:25:55] That road was put on the map based on data and studies and what engineers were telling us. It wasn't just drawn on the map for no reason. That's why we have to really look hard about maybe taking it off the map.

[06:26:14] And I'm a little bit frustrated that that road discussion's gotten all tied into a data center discussion. So I will support sending this forward, but I can't remember the last time I voted for rezoning on a data center, so you're probably not going to get my vote this time either, although I do appreciate the work.

[06:26:36] Thank you. I feel like two terms ago when True North Data Center was voted on and I voted against it, this started a place where we were going to eventually go.

[06:26:53] There is no doubt that this is, at this point, the best application we've ever seen environmentally for data centers. We've said that before about other applications at that point. They always get better, but that doesn't mean we can keep doing this.

[06:27:12] And I also think that some people are confusing power generation and power transmission. Those are two different things, and perhaps people should learn that difference before they keep talking about things that they're not quite versed on yet. Listen, I don't, first of all, I don't believe you all were threatening us.

[06:27:41] And so if that's how that came off, and I think it is, I apologize. That was an overstatement. If that's how that came off, I apologize. But I am frustrated with the idea that, well, but if you don't do the special exception part of the application, then this won't happen and this won't happen and this won't happen.

[06:28:02] And it does paint us in the corner, as Mr. Turner said, that we feel like we have to do the special exception part in order to get the benefits, which there are oftentimes, whatever the specs is, doubles or almost doubles the size of the data center.

[06:28:22] The amount of FAR we've approved under specs because we're going to get something else, at some point, when is that something else diminishing returns when you talk about what you lose? The listeners today don't use much water anymore, but when we started this, they used a lot of water, used a lot of water.

[06:28:42] The diminishing returns are what will happen to parts of our county as transmission lines are going through. That's diminishing returns to what you might be given. So this moment, I think, is a culminating effect from, gosh, I don't even know when the first data center was, I mean, that was probably, what, 20 years ago or something?

[06:29:08] I'm not even sure, but I remember True North Data Center, and I remember that 5-4 vote on True North Data Center, and I remember, and I cannot believe I'm going to quote Ralph Bona, that said, like, this is going to cause a cascade that's going to be bad, and it was a 5-4 vote against it, and I was on the losing side of that vote.

[06:29:30] I did not vote for True North. And at some point, I have to take a risk. And my risk looks like this. We may not get some of the things that we would get because I'm going to say no to the specs. But I'm going to say no. Mr. Turner?

[06:29:49] Thank you, Madam Chair. If I can ask the applicant just one quick question because we didn't verify. How much power do you think you're going to use? So on slide 20, we have our power plan or alignment where you can see both our substations and the power line that's serving us.

[06:30:05] We are right now, we have two substations that have 300 megawatts of capacity each on the site. We're projecting to use almost all of that at this time. The line that you see in blue would be the power line that's serving us that's getting filed with the State Corporation Commission in March.

[06:30:22] That line is adequate to serve us. We do not specifically need the Route 7 Aspen to Golden site that's providing reliability sort of for the entire network. This line that you see in blue is the line that we need. As far as the Western Loudoun line, we are not, to my knowledge, a part of that sort of long-term projections that are driving that need.

[06:30:44] We understand that it's the industry as a whole, but what we'll say is that under existing plans without that, our site would be serviced. And so Dominion has provided a referral comment to this application. I'll also point out that on slide 18, we're gonna be- Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

[06:31:00] Okay. Has he answered your question? Because, okay, well, then you want to do a closing? Thank you very much. Sorry. I just want to point out, after my November presentation of ACO, I actually talked to staff and said, we don't have any power expertise on staff.

[06:31:15] Can we get some power expertise on staff? Staff's working that now, so we're already focused on that. And then lastly, I believe, I could be wrong, but I believe as TLAC chair, I'll be heading up the data center comprehensive plan amendment and Zoning Ordinance Amendment follow-up to the Zoning Ordinance Rewrite.

[06:31:34] So a lot of what we talked about here tonight will be discussed in that forum over the next few months. That's all I have. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. I'm sorry, were you sending this to the which meeting? Were you sending this item? March, second meeting.

[06:31:49] To the second meeting in March. Motion was made to Vice Attorney, seconded by Supervisor Glass, correct? To send this to the second meeting in March. I'm sorry, the public hearing in March. I'm sorry, the public hearing in March. Frank thank you I'm sorry I'll say aye opposed nay so that motion will pass 6-1-1-1 with one abstention one opposition and one person off the days tonight so I oppose Miss Brickson abstained

[06:32:24] Mr. Sains is not here thank you so much I need to make a motion that we continue this meeting and do the last item because we're after 12 midnight and by our rules of order if we're after 12 midnight we have to make a motion to go on so I'm gonna make a motion we have one more item to do okay so we can just okay we're just going on then good well yeah but that's would be ridiculous absolutely these people have been waiting here for a long time there's no way we should not keep going are you kidding me

[06:32:57] you would have said no come on Laura okay a last item with deep apologies with the

[06:33:13] staff, please come to the table. I know you would. She is. Everybody come on. They've been

[06:34:13] waiting. We're fine. We're good. Exactly. Well, staff, please. We're ready. All right. Thank you, Madam Chair. Again, fellow supervisors, my name is Lori, and I will be presenting Village at Clear Springs. The property is comprised of 29 parcels totaling 245.95 acres in the Catoctin election district and is located east of evergreen mills road west of the dullest greenway and south of leesburg town limits the existing zoning zoning is ar1 agricultural rural the property is located

[06:34:50] in the transition policy area in the transition compact neighborhood place type and the transition small lot place type the applications propose to rezone the subject property from the ar1 zoning district to the PDH-6 zoning district administered as residential R-1, R-8, and R-16 in order to develop 1,077 dwelling units consisting of 230 single-family detached dwelling units including one existing single-family detached dwelling unit and 121 age-restricted single-family

[06:35:29] detached dwelling units, 667 single-family attached dwelling units, including 153 single-family attached age-restricted dwelling units, and 12 single-family attached attainable dwelling units, and 180 multifamily attached affordable dwelling units. There are also special exceptions and zoning modifications associated with this application. There are 12 different land bays throughout the development. These are the non-residential land bays shown in purple and

[06:36:09] light teal. So we have here is the proposed tennis facility. Here's the existing church. Here's the proposed civic or another church and then the neighborhood park and then we have the linear park. Then these are the residential land bays shown in kind of peach and yellow. You can see that. There were two alternate CDPs associated with the project. One is shown with the tennis

[06:36:48] facility. One is if the development were to happen without the tennis facility. So they provided two alternate CDPs on the project. Since the Planning Commission public hearing, there's been a reduction in the credit request for the dedicated parkland at the Planning Commission. There was an ask for the credit to be reduced by $1,942,421, and this has been done within the proffers.

[06:37:22] The outstanding issues that staff still have, as currently proposed, the applications do not meet the intent of the transition compact neighborhood place type, but rather place a suburban type design onto the landscape where there is an emphasis to retain the visual character established by extensive natural open space.

[06:37:53] To fully meet the design guidance for the place type, staff recommends the applicant redesign the site to include only unit types and densities anticipated within the TCN, remove landscape berms, and ensure open space is the dominant feature of the site as viewed from Evergreen Mills Road. The CDP shows an L-shaped building with indoor tennis courts and a private club lodge at a maximum height of 45 feet.

[06:38:15] The proposed height of the buildings is not in keeping with the TCN, which envisions buildings between one and three stories with a maximum height of approximately 36 feet. While the proposed buildings may have fewer than three interior stories, their height and scale exceed the intent of the place type.

[06:38:31] The applicant also anticipates 106 light poles for the outdoor tennis and pickleball courts. This is not in keeping with the intent of the TPA to provide a visual distinction between the suburban policy area to the east and the rural policy area to the west.

[06:38:48] As currently proposed, the types of uses and density will not provide a visual cue that distinguishes the town of Leesburg from the TPA. As the rural policy area is located west of Evergreen Mills Road, the proposed uses and densities do not provide a transition between the two policy areas.

[06:39:08] Evergreen Mills Road construction costs and credits. The applicant is requesting a $16,623,561 credit against proffered regional road, transit, and capital facilities contributions for the construction of a four-lane, median-divided road along the site's frontage to Evergreen Mills Road.

[06:39:28] built to Virginia Department of Transportation standards. The staff does acknowledge that the applicant is proposing to provide additional capacity with the proposed Evergreen Mills Road widening improvements beyond what is necessary to serve the proposed site. Additionally, staff acknowledges that the improvements address the safety concerns regarding the current condition of Evergreen Mills Road.

[06:39:50] The widening of Evergreen Mills Road to four lanes is not currently in the county's capital improvement program funded by another development although the northbound left turn lane at the entrance to revolution sportsplex would advance the project currently in the county CIP there is no policy however in the 2019 CTP to support the roadway credit requested by the applicant as such this will be a decision that would need to be made by the board also the applicant has proffered regional road and regional transit contributions to the county for each market rate single family dwelling unit the applicant is not proffering to regional road

[06:40:30] contributions or transit for the 192 nonprofit affordable housing units at this time in conclusion the scale density and intensity other proposal are not in line with the transition policy area nor does it meet the intent of the transition compact neighborhood place type staff recommends the board for the applications to a future board of supervisors public hearing for action that is it for staff's presentation staff is available for questions before i go to mr mckerson i i i just want to

[06:41:09] understand something because i did you say that there was you're showing us one application possibility with the tennis courts and one without correct that's how the is it possible to have it without correct if the if the tennis facility yeah and I'll let the applicant answer that but yeah okay no I'll come back to that I just I'll come back to that okay okay this is in the JMLA correct but it's in the Catoctin district it's in the Catoctin district in the JMLA no TPA I mean

[06:41:44] sorry TPA okay but this is your this is your district Mr. Kirschner correct it is all right You gave it to me last time. Then you're going first, sir. Well, thank you, staff, for your work on this. I appreciate it. Thanks for the presentation. I'm pretty familiar with this application.

[06:42:01] I'm not going to ask it. I don't think I'll ask a ton of questions. We'll see how we get. A couple things. I know you talked about the look and the feel. The proposal in this application is to berm along Evergreen Mill. Is that correct? Correct. Okay. And the four-laning of Evergreen Mill, which they're asking for the cap facility's credit of $16 million, do we know what they're actually, the approximate they're going to spend on that?

[06:42:27] I don't have that. We'll ask the applicant when we get to that. That's fine. And it's running from where the four-lane is currently, it's joining four-lane in Leesburg running all the way to Shreve? Correct. Okay. So I just want to state for the record, I used to live off from Evergreen Mill.

[06:42:44] This is a very dangerous road. This is a very important improvement, especially with this application, obviously. But it's a long time coming. That's an incredibly busy road that needs those sort of improvements. So I'm really glad to see that they're doing that. I know my planning commissioner worked close with them to ensure that these were done.

[06:43:00] And I have gone over a number of these with the applicant, and I think they're going to do a good job on this. As far as the tenant's facility is concerned, I think one of the things that makes this application pretty special, And obviously, Economic Development has come in and worked with the tenant facility to do that is if indeed it comes in.

[06:43:17] Obviously, one of the reasons staff is supporting this is because of the height of the facility itself, because they believe it's inconsistent. Is that fair? That and the intensity of the facility as well. And when you say the intensity, are we referring to the lights that will be there or the use of it?

[06:43:34] The lights, the use, all of it, the amount of people that will be coming to the facility. It's just not consistent with the transition policy area. Heritage High School is right next door, correct? Correct. They have lights on their school. Across from Heritage, there is the, I think, park within the Leesburg limits.

[06:43:54] They have night lights for those fields there. Do we anticipate the lights on the tennis court will be any more intense than those lights are? No, not to my knowledge. Okay, and the tennis court backs up to the Greenway. Is that right? Correct. All right.

[06:44:10] Do we know, well, that's probably a question for the applicant. The only reason that they're asking for these improvements on the, I guess, the road itself, and it's just you're saying that's not good because that's not something that we're allowed to do in the manual.

[06:44:34] Fair enough. But we as a board can overlook that. Okay. Those are really the only questions I have. I have a few more for the applicant, but overall I think a pretty good application. I'd like to hear what my colleagues have to say about it. Thank you. Ms. Umstead.

[06:44:50] Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to go back a little bit to the issue of what would happen if the tennis complex is not built. Am I correct that there, while the land bay is proffered for that purpose, there is no proffer that the complex would actually be built?

[06:45:19] Correct. In regards to there's, within the proffers, there's first, if USTA accepts the dedication of the land, then they will build the tennis facility. If USTA does not accept the land, then the applicant would dedicate the land to the county and build a park.

[06:45:43] All right. I did not see in the proffers, which I read on that section, a commitment from the applicant to build the tennis complex if USTA accepted the land.

[06:46:07] Are you sure that the applicant has committed in the proffers to build the full tennis complex? I'll defer to the applicant, but from my understanding, they have an agreement with USTA.

[06:46:27] But that's not the same as a proffer. I think your assessment's correct, but I'll defer to the applicant to confirm. All right. So, and I did read, you are correct that if USTA does not accept the land, there were other provisions.

[06:46:52] Correct. Do we have a sense of how much revenue? I know that Beth Erickson from Visit Loudon was very good. The applicant initially, in meeting with me, underestimated how much revenue we would get in TOT taxes.

[06:47:14] But Ms. Erickson said actually it was going to be a bit higher than that. So do we know how much we are estimating will come in in TOT taxes? Ms. Erickson?

[06:47:31] Thank you. I think regarding TOT taxes, we are estimating just shy of 12,000 room nights generated annually based on the tournaments that can come in. So, when you're looking at TOT, that based on $120 room night, 8%, you know, it is certainly, excuse me, not insignificant on the revenue that's coming in.

[06:47:58] And between TOT, the additional spending and taxes generated, we are about $8.5 million annually coming from the facility being pumped into the economy. All right. Thank you very much, Colleen. You agree with that?

[06:48:14] I do. We also had economic development also did additional economic analysis of the direct, indirect, and induced impact from both the annual and the initial. So for the one-time construction cost, we estimate about $57.6 million in economic impact and an annual of about $18.1 million from the sports complex.

[06:48:37] No, no, Ms. Umset, your time is up. I'm sorry, I'm out of time. Thank you. Ms. DeFroni. Thank you, Chair Randall. So on this topic, how many events or tournaments do you think there'll be with how many people? Like, what are you estimating?

[06:48:53] We have that information that was a part of the item. I don't have that right in front of me in terms of how many events, but the way that we looked at it, excuse me, it was based on the business that we believe that we can drive and understanding really the unique stature of this venue within the Mid-Atlantic area and the proximity to Dulles International Airport.

[06:49:17] So that's how we came to the number of just shy of 12,000 room nights. Supervisor Tacroni, we estimated in that initial evaluation about 12,284 special event attendees a year. Okay, attendees a year?

[06:49:35] Correct. So another question I had is more for staff here. Do you think there'll be a significant traffic coming through the community? Like one suggestion I had to the applicant was to move that tennis center where the exit and entrance would be off Evergreen versus, you know, further into the community.

[06:49:57] So I'm just wondering kind of what your thoughts, if that was a discussion point. So I do know that there is a condition that a traffic plan has to be initiated if there are more than 350 attendees participants.

[06:50:13] But the traffic analysis showed that this development, and I'm not saying this includes the tennis facility attendees or anything, is about, and Marie, correct me if I'm wrong, but it generates about 8,000 trips more.

[06:50:32] But again, with the improvements that they're proposing on Evergreen Mills Road, it actually exceeds what that traffic. So I want to talk about the schools, and I know that someone's here from the schools.

[06:50:52] I'm wondering why the students in this neighborhood are going to Heritage, are not going to Heritage. They're going to Loudoun Country High School or Loudoun County High School. I'm just wondering why they're not in, because Heritage is right next door.

[06:51:09] So I'm wondering why the students aren't going to Heritage. Yes, ma'am, Heritage is next door. The attendance zones adopted by the school board have heritage sitting in its most southern boundary. And so it's the boundary that was adopted by the board.

[06:51:24] Yeah, that just seems crazy because they can walk there. And I think this is a huge amenity for the kids. You know, they'll want to walk. Okay. All right. Interesting. And then can you give, so the build-out is 2030, so we need estimates of what projected enrollment would be in 2030.

[06:51:42] Correct. In our CIP, we provide six-year projections, so we go out to the 2029-30 school year. So we do not go to the actual 2030. We provide projections up to September 2029, and it would show that Evergreen Mill would be about 81%, if I can read my handwriting at this point, 81% utilization, less than 600 students.

[06:52:11] J. Lepton Simpson, which is the middle school, is about 64% and Loudoun County High School will be sitting about 95% of its current capacity. Thank you. Mr. Letourneau. Just, no, wait, hold on.

[06:52:27] Schools. Sorry. Just to wrap up, because I think it was a little unclear there. The school board has, in the past, changed attendance boundaries after a development's been approved and prior to the students moving in. I know I personally worked with Mr. Morris on a situation like that. Yes, sir, that is true.

[06:52:43] So in their policy, they have an administrative that if they so choose, they could change the boundary before the first resident comes in. Right. So all you're giving us is today, because there's nothing here, what is the school boundary? But that doesn't mean it's what it would be in the future. And that would be something staffed.

[06:52:59] I just thought that's important to clarify. Thank you. Some other quick questions. So Supervisor Kirscher asked a version of this question. I think I'm going to ask it more directly. What is the cost of the Evergreen Mills improvement that's being proffered? And if we don't have this, can we get that number?

[06:53:18] Yeah, the applicant. The applicant does, but I've learned a long time ago. I believe, Marie, do you have the... County's numbers are often different than what an applicant has. Are you saying how much it would cost the county to build? Yeah, what is the county projected for that improvement?

[06:53:36] What do we think that improvement would cost us to do? yeah marie are you yeah thank you yes so based on the numbers that the county tipped the fiscal impact committee back in november we're estimating 7.83 million dollars per lane mile so we would estimate this to be approximately 20.4 million dollars 28 million dollars okay 20.4 20.4 got it okay um and then um can you explain because i don't really understand it the difference there's a discrepancy between staff's interpretation of the by right allowance and the applicants can i

[06:54:14] get staff's side of that in this question yeah so um in regards to the way that that staff does the base density as we look at the entire acreage of the site not by parcel which that's the way the applicant is doing the base density is they're breaking it into the 29 existing parcels and then using that as base density um staff has never calculated base density off of that it's always been the entire acreage so this issue come up before in other applications it must have right

[06:54:50] because we see a lot of assemblages i don't i don't know i'd be curious i'd be curious what our sort of legislative history is on this issue because we must have had other assemblages where there's a discrepancy between the total parcel and the individual i would agree with you logically but I can't recall one.

[06:55:06] Well, I know you're not going to give it to me at 1255 at night, but as part of this, we're not voting on this tonight. So as part of the follow-up, thank you. Anybody else? Okay, applicant, you have 10 minutes.

[06:55:23] Okay, hang on. We're ready when you are. I'm waiting for her to pull up our... Oh, okay. Sorry, Madam Chair, I wasn't trying to delay. No, no, it's not.

[06:55:39] No, it's fine, it's fine. I will say while we're waiting, when you come up to speak for the public, when you come up to speak, I would appreciate it if you let us know if you live in the county or not. We have, we've had a lot of correspondence and we're not quite sure who's in the county and who's not.

[06:55:56] Thank you. We're ready when you are. Thank you. Good evening, Madam Chair and members of the board again. My name is Erin Swisselm and I'm an attorney with Walsh Colucci. I'm joined here by the applicant, Hobie Mitchell of Clear Springs Development Group and Andy Gorecki of J2 Engineers, who's our engineer. We thank you for the opportunity to present the village of Clear Springs to you this evening.

[06:56:14] Next slide, please. So as Lori said, the village of Clear Springs is a 246-ish acre assemblage of 29 parcels located south of Heritage High School between Evergreen Mills Road and the Dulles Greenway. It is largely identified as the transition compact neighborhood place type, which is a new place type with the board's adoption of the 2019 general plan.

[06:56:38] And the plan suggests a density of between three and five dwelling units per acre for the property and a compact design in areas of development to allow for 50% open space and 10% civic space. The applicant is seeking a residential rezoning to develop a master-planned residential community featuring diverse housing options, a partnership with the USTA Mid-Atlantic, public parks, and a widened and safer Evergreen Mills Road.

[06:56:58] Next slide, please. The Village of Clear Springs will feature 1,077 homes, including 192 AHUs and a sizable age-restricted housing component, which is located at the upper right-hand land bay of the property. The overall density falls within the plan's recommendations.

[06:57:16] The community also includes a robust amenity program featuring a partnership with USDA Mid-Atlantic to develop a state-of-the-art tennis center, which is shown in the upper left-hand corner of this image, which will serve as the community center for the development. The applicant has committed to dedicating approximately 30 acres of land to the county for public parks uses.

[06:57:33] This includes a 22-acre linear park and trailhead and a nearly 8-acre neighborhood park at the south end of the property. The applicant is further committed to widen Evergreen Mills Road to four lanes with a median division and associated turn lanes along the property's frontage in coordination with the town's widening project and to address safety concerns that were identified by the county's safety audit of Evergreen Mills Road.

[06:57:56] Other transportation commitments include studying potential traffic control improvements at two site entrances, which are labeled here in pink, and installing those improvements if warranted, as well as improvements to Shreve Mill Road and an installation of a sidewalk to allow safe passage to the neighborhood park on Shreve Mill Road.

[06:58:13] Next slide, please. We are very proud to say that the project features 192 affordable homes. That's 18% overall affordability. 180 of these AHUs will be provided in two three-story LIHTC-funded buildings that will be designed to appear as though they are single-family attached units labeled here on the slide.

[06:58:34] We have also partnered with Habitat for Humanity to provide 12 additional AHUs. These will be arranged as quadruplexes and will be dispersed throughout the property. All of the AHUs are subject to the same design standards as other housing units on the property, which will create a cohesive sense of place and community.

[06:58:51] Next slide, please. The age-restricted housing makes up approximately 25% of the overall housing for the property, and we're proud to provide this much-needed high-quality housing for Loudon seniors. Each of our age-restricted units, whether it's attached or detached, will feature either a first-floor master or the option for an elevator, which will allow residents to age in place in their homes.

[06:59:12] Both age-restricted and non-age-restricted housing will be provided as single-family attached and detached homes that are sitting on small lots. The single-family attached homes will be arranged, as you see here, in duplexes, triplexes, or quadruplexes, and each grouping will be elevated to appear as though it is one larger home.

[06:59:31] Next slide, please. As we've talked about, the applicant is committed to widening Evergreen Mills Road along its frontage to a four-lane median divided highway with associated turn lanes and has proposed phasing which is tied to its development of the property. The first phase has to be done and fully constructed, open to traffic prior to the issuance of the first zoning permit on the property, and both of the new lanes have to be completed prior to the issuance of the 590th zoning permit for the property.

[06:59:58] Traffic will then be diverted onto the newly constructed lanes, and work will begin on the existing lanes, so the Evergreen Mills Road remains open during the entire road work process. Existing lane improvements include correction of the crown and drainage improvements, which were identified as needed in the county safety audit of the roadway.

[07:00:15] Next slide, please. As Steph talked about, the only currently funded safety improvement to Evergreen Mills Road and the county CIP is a left-hand turn lane into the Revolution Sportsplex. The county has budgeted just under $5.2 million for this improvement. This turn lane is in the scope of work that is proposed with this application and if approved, the county could reallocate this money to other worthy projects and needs.

[07:00:40] The county has also as Marie mentioned developed a formula through its fiscal impact committee for determining the cost of roadway projects through in the county So based on the county's formula the 3.24 lane miles of roadway that the applicant is providing including turn lanes Would carry an associated cost of approximately 25.4 million dollars the applicants credit request of 16.6 million is approximately 34% less than the county's estimate We're using the county's formula for what the road improvement should cost Next slide, please.

[07:01:14] This $16.6 million request includes safety improvements to the existing lanes and, as Lori mentioned, improvements associated with the additional capacity that's provided beyond what is needed by the Village of Clear Springs. So we did a road capacity analysis, which was reviewed by DTCI staff, and estimated that if all of the traffic for the development was placed onto the new lanes, we would require about 42% of the capacity of those lanes.

[07:01:40] So we have rounded up and are requesting a 50% credit for the cost of the new lanes because that is the additional capacity that we are providing. This request does not include the eight acres of right-of-way that we are dedicating at no cost to the county, improvements to Shreve Mill Road, or any of the frontage improvements or signalization commitments that we have made in our proffer statement.

[07:02:00] The board has approved applications which have requested CAP facilities credits for regional roadway improvements before. One of those is the Cascades Parkway subdivision application, which was approved in 2022. Approving this application with the requested credit not only speeds up the widening and safety improvements to Evergreen Mills Road by years, if not decades, but also protects the county against increasing construction costs by locking in the total public cost of those improvements.

[07:02:26] Any increases would be borne by the applicant and not the county. Next slide, please. We are also extremely proud to be partnering with USDA Mid-Atlantic, which is a 501c3 non-profit organization to provide a state-of-the-art tennis center that will serve as the community center for Village at Clear Springs. Every resident will be a member of the tennis center as a function of paying either their HOA dues or their rent, and each resident will have unlimited access to the facility during its operational hours. In addition to the tennis amenities in the facility, it will also feature the HOA offices, workout facilities, and community rooms, as well as the

[07:03:00] USTA offices. The tennis center is subject to the same proffered design guidelines as the rest of the development and will be constructed using the same types of materials. The indoor courts are also set to be in two-story buildings with a standing seam metal roof.

[07:03:17] Next slide, please. The layout for the Tennis Center has been thoughtfully designed so that it borders Heritage High School and the Dulles Greenway and that the proposed buildings shield the courts and their lighting from nearby residences. The lighting for the project will be fully shielded, as you see here in the image on the screen.

[07:03:35] This allows for us to provide targeted lighting of the tennis courts and pedestrian walkways while preventing any light intrusion into the night sky and nearby residences. We also wanted to say that the day-to-day operations for the tennis center will be focused on daily play, including recreational play, camps, lessons, and team play, and that the tennis center is not designed as a stadium, as you can see here.

[07:03:57] The seating is clustered around individual courts. That seating is also movable so that it can be arranged around courts that are actually in use. As Lori mentioned, we have agreed to a condition of approval that any larger events will be coordinated with Loudoun County and will require a traffic management plan so that the county can be assured that parking and transportation needs associated with each event have been met before it occurs.

[07:04:22] Next slide, please. The Village of Clear Springs is a result of careful planning, close work with community partners and stakeholders, and productive conversations with staff and the Planning Commission during earlier review. The result is a vibrant master-planned community featuring a variety of housing options for Loudoun County residents and a robust amenity package to include the USTA Tennis Center.

[07:04:42] This application is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create a cohesive community in this location, all while addressing housing needs and transportation safety needs along Evergreen Mills Road. We want to thank you for the opportunity again to tell you about the Village of Clear Springs, and we are, of course, available to answer all of your questions.

[07:05:00] Well, thank you very much. Let's go to questions. Mr. Kirshner. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for the presentation. And real quick, is there anyone here from UST? Yes, we do have folks from USDA here. Can I come up?

[07:05:15] I may have a couple of questions. I think one of my... I am happy to invite anybody from USDA to the table. I just thought they were part of the applicant. Would you, through the chair, invite them up, Madam Chair? I don't have... Actually not. So while they're... If that's okay. That's fine.

[07:05:31] I'm messing with you. Of course they can. I'd like to hear from them in terms of where they are in the process of... because my understanding they're raising money right now for this. And if there's a builder that you're talking to that may help them, I understand the land's being donated, et cetera, because to me this application really, really works because of this facility.

[07:05:49] Right. So while they're – and this is our CEO who is coming up. So we're capital partners with the USTA on this. Yeah, you can have a seat at the table if you'd like to. Not only are we donating the land that this property will sit on, we're helping to develop the actual land itself and providing a capital contribution towards the development of the facility.

[07:06:15] So, you know, we're truly partnering with USDA. And I am happy to turn it over to you. Yeah, so thank you. What's your name? Tara Fitzpatrick-Navarro. I'm the CEO for the USDA Mid-Atlantic Foundation. Awesome. Thank you for coming up. I'm hurrying because I have limited time.

[07:06:32] What I'd really like to hear is where – I'm sure you're excited about this opportunity. We would love to know. I would love to know how the fundraising is going. What is the likelihood we're going to see here? Because what I would not like to see is approve this and you guys not come. Yeah, I completely understand that.

[07:06:49] We're over a third of the way towards funding at this point. Okay, and how long do you think it will ultimately take you to raise that? I mean, is this kind of an unknown or is it – Um, frankly, without zoning, we're having a lot of trouble crossing the next thresholds and, uh, zoning application approval will make a significant impact in our fundraising.

[07:07:13] And our goal is 12 to 18 months. It's very aggressive, but we feel confident based off the conversations we've had that we'll be successful. And, um, do you mind sharing what the total amount, are you able to share the total amount you will need to raise for this? Um, or what you can share as far as that's concerned, the project costs is approximately 42 million.

[07:07:34] Okay. And, okay. All right. Um, can you just give us a little bit of the concept of how this will be used by you? Sure. Um, obviously daily play lessons, uh, recreational drop in play court rentals, kids programming tournaments, uh, local league matches, uh, team based play, as well as special events where we hopefully host things regionally such as ITF tournaments, et cetera.

[07:08:07] Okay, real quick, as far as the intensity, last question, as far as the intensity of the use is concerned that the staff brought concerning, could you address that, specifically the parking? I think I'm fine with the lighting, but in terms of the parking and the use of it, do you feel like you've adequately addressed that?

[07:08:23] Sure. So we have provided, you know, over and above the parking that the USTA has requested based on, you know, what their operation of the site is going to be. I've got the engineer sitting next to me. I'm going to turn it over to Andy for the actual numbers on that, if you have them handy.

[07:08:42] Yeah, so they were, based on their initial concept, they were anticipating 194, 195 spaces. That was for parking as well as employees. We thought that wasn't enough. We actually added more than that, and we're roughly 270. Yeah, thank you.

[07:09:00] Thank you, Madam Chair. So we had talked when we had met with the applicant, we had talked about what measures would be taken to deal with airport noise, because Leesburg Executive Airport is right, almost right next door.

[07:09:20] and I got a sense that there would be navigation easement placed over the property. I am not finding that in the proffers. And I just reviewed them again, and if you can, if there is some mention of that in the proffers, I know you have a noise impact study for road noise, but I'm not finding it for aircraft noise.

[07:09:48] So, airport noise disclosure statement is proffer number 40, and the navigation easement and airport noise notification is proffer number 41, Supervisor Umstead. All right. Do you plan, I had asked this question when we met earlier, do you plan to include any noise dampening materials in your residential buildings?

[07:10:12] Sure. So all of the buildings will be built to the most recent building code, not just Loudoun Counties, but using industry best standards. So we are confident that we will be able to achieve the level of sound dampening that would be necessary for any of the overhead noise.

[07:10:29] All right. But the building code is simply the most modern building code for all buildings, not necessarily additional noise dampening measures for airport developments near an airport.

[07:10:48] Sure. And I think as we also discussed in our meeting, Supervisor Umstad, there's actually not a ton of overflight traffic that happens on this property. So, I mean, we think that what we are doing will sufficiently address the noise that is, you know, currently being experienced by the people that live on the property.

[07:11:05] All right. And I just looked through the proffers again, and the version of the proffers that is in the staff report goes up to number 36. I have nothing above that. Where is 40 or above?

[07:11:22] I can't speak to what the staff put in the staff report, but I have the most recent version of my proffers in front of me that have been submitted. So the total number of pages before you get to signature sheets is like 44. All right.

[07:11:37] I, the staff report has several pages missing then. Thank you. Sure. Mr. Letourneau? So I want to talk about the quad and the triplexes. I was around when we kind of created this concept in the comprehensive plan, and we've had one previous application, which was down south, that built these.

[07:12:00] What I didn't see was any kind of commitment on square footage. We were kind of intending these to be on the smaller side, to be sort of more naturally affordable. Quite frankly, the picture here, they look massive. Yeah, so part of that is just the particular elevation.

[07:12:16] So they're going to be three stories, not four. And they're all going to sit on smaller than average lots. So we do have a lot variability in our proffer statement. And we're anticipating that we're going to have units between 16 feet wide, you know, kind of up to the larger age-restricted units.

[07:12:35] And the reason the age-restricted units would be larger is just to accommodate potentially an elevator shaft. Do you have, like, a range of square footage? I'll turn that over to Hobie. Well, square footage, you know, 16-foot unit usually is about 42-foot deep, and then you're up two stories.

[07:12:53] You also have garages, two-car garages within these units as well. But I suspect the unit sizes for the ATACH will range from 2,000 feet to maybe 3,400 square feet, depending on the larger ones, maybe the active adult, because they're generally a wider and deeper house.

[07:13:14] Okay it would be worth and we can meet after this but it would be worth looking at what was done by Van Meter on Braddock 620 as kind of a model here because I think they really have been trying to sort of successfully model what the county wanted and they kept coming back for guidance from us and staff to get that right because they wanted to sort of prove out the concept so we can talk more about that but I'm kind of interested particularly in that.

[07:13:42] thank you thank you um miss uh the crony so when we met um you mentioned that you would look at whether you could do quads instead of multi-family for the affordable housing units i don't know if you had a chance to look at that right so as as we we met earlier this week on that um and we haven't had a chance to fully vet that out okay um so i mean that is something that we're happy to to look into um as we discussed it would really require more of a redesign of the site and so um in order to you know kind of look at that we want to make sure that we're including all of our

[07:14:21] assumptions so that we can give you the most complete answer okay great thank you sure um to ms umstead's question i think she was looking at page 430 428 and that might have been the comment she was looking at is that correct so in in packet that i have the the two proffers are on Page 64 and 65.

[07:14:48] No, definitely not in the hundreds. Yeah, the comments are in the hundreds. That's what I'm saying. That's what I think that was. You're saying 64 and 65. Yes. Page is 64 and 65. Of the overall, of the 931-page item, yes. And mine goes, I mean, my package goes well past.

[07:15:10] So, yeah, I have them in my package. Okay. All right. Thank you. I don't have any other questions. Anybody else? We're good? Okay. All right. Here we go. Madam Chair?

[07:15:26] Yes. One thing, there was a couple of questions. I want to make sure that the board understands we have a binding written agreement with USTA. So the other alternative was sort of like the sky falls because they wanted to have some kind of alternative.

[07:15:42] Well, what's going to happen if the sky falls? So that's why that alternative was on the plan. But as you heard from USTA, they're committed and have already started stuff. So were you asking my initial, are you answering my initial question?

[07:16:00] Yeah, there was a couple, there was a question about whether USDA was committed to do that. I think she answered it. But I also want to make sure the board understood we do have a binding written agreement with them to perform the things that they talked about, including the coordination with the HOA.

[07:16:17] Okay. All right. Thank you. All right. Theos Tomatis, followed by, I'm sorry, is Mayor Burke still here? Where is she? Okay, I'm sorry. Hold on one second, Mr. Tomatis. Mayor Burke, followed by Theo Stamatis, followed by Jaron Tish, I believe.

[07:16:36] Just give me one second. Good evening. Or morning. Yes, I think it is morning. Chair Randall, Vice Chair Bresman and board members. I am Kelly Burke, and I'm the mayor of Leesburg. I'm here tonight to share with you Leesburg's serious concerns about this application.

[07:16:54] When this application was first referred to the town in the summer of 2021, The town expressed its opposition to the application due to the overall land-use conflict and impact to the Leesburg Executive Airport. Leesburg Town Council, Leesburg Airport Commission, and Leesburg Town Staff have consistently asserted that the residential use is not appropriate for such close proximity to the airport and its flight plan.

[07:17:16] The Leesburg Airport is no longer a small airport. It is the second busiest airport in the Commonwealth. Last year, we recorded 90,000 takeoffs and landings. Both the 2012 and the March 22 town plan include policies calling for protection of the airport from encroaching residential development.

[07:17:36] Given this concern, on September 14, 2021, the town council approved a resolution recommending denial of this Village of Clear Spring application. The key reason for this recommendation denial is that the proposed residential development will be located directly below the flight paths for the Leesburg airport.

[07:17:53] The town already receives numerous noise complaints from residents on the subject parcel of land. This residential development will not only add to the dissatisfaction of the residents who will be there, and I don't think that's what you want. While the applicant has argued that the proposed development is not located within the LDN 6065 noise contours, this argument is flawed, as the Council is already aware aircraft flight paths associated with any airport are not always consistent to the noise contours.

[07:18:23] This has been proven the case that the Leesburg Executive Airport as a subject property is directly underneath that flight pattern of the 90,000 overflights. The future residents will be subject to significant noise from a large number of aircraft that will be flying overhead, and the airport continues to grow.

[07:18:39] While the Town Council continues to recommend denial of this application, at the minimum, the applicant should commit to the acoustical treatments such as insulation and windows to reduce interior noise levels and protect future residents that will be subject to the aircraft-related noise and ensure that all existing notification procedures remain in effect.

[07:18:58] Please use reason and concern for your residents that will live there, and thank you very much for your time tonight. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Tomatis. And you will be followed by Jaron Tish. Good evening. I'm the Government Relations Manager for the Loudoun Chamber of Commerce.

[07:19:21] On behalf of the nearly 1,100 Loudoun employers that are Loudoun Chamber members, I'd like to express our thoughts on the Village at Clear Springs application that is now subject for review by this board. For more than a decade, the Loudoun Chamber has made the issue of attainable workforce housing our top public policy priority.

[07:19:40] The chamber has successfully advocated for the structural and policy changes, many of those adopted by this board, that will provide greater affordability and diversity of housing options for our workforce at all income levels. The village at Clear Springs presents an opportunity to have a positive and significant impact on this area of critical need here in Loudoun County.

[07:20:03] As proposed, this application promises to deliver what the Loudoun Chamber has previously advocated for, innovative housing solutions to address the county's unmet housing needs by providing a range of unit costs, sizes, and types, both rental and for sale.

[07:20:20] With 18% of the total units in this project meeting the county's affordability needs, this exceeds the ambitious milestones of the Loudoun's Unmet Housing Needs Strategic Plan. In addition, the plan also allocates 12 single-family attached homes for Loudoun Habitat for Humanity.

[07:20:38] This will allow the families who occupy these units to both secure safe and affordable housing while building generational wealth in a way that would not otherwise be available to them. As Loudoun's chief private sector advocate for our community's economic diversity, this project's proposal to locate the USTA's mid-Atlantic region state-of-the-art training center and campus here in Loudoun will certainly advance this board's goal, and I know your goal, Madam Chair, of diversifying Loudoun's economy.

[07:21:05] This 190,000-square-foot facility, 36 indoor and outdoor tennis courts, 12 pickleball courts, 30,000-square-foot activity center will further expand Latin's national reputation as a leading community for sports programs. In addition, this facility will create $8.5 million annually in economic activity as well as create many jobs.

[07:21:29] I want to thank you, Madam Chair, and this board for hearing the chamber's views on this project, and I thank you for your leadership to our community. Thank you. Thank you very much. Jerron Tish, followed by Michael Myers. Good evening. Good evening, Madam Chair, members of the board.

[07:21:45] Thank you so much for your time. My name is Jerron Ocho-Tish. I'm a resident of Loudoun County. I live on Gleeview Drive in Broadlands. I would like to offer my emphatic support for the village at Clear Springs. I have a husband who owns a motorcycle dealership off of 606.

[07:22:03] He has many employees who cannot afford to live in this area. The affordable housing that the village at Clear Springs will offer will go to mitigate that for his business, and I know countless other businesses in the region. This has been such an eye-opening process for me.

[07:22:20] I've never been to one of these meetings, and there was an item on the docket, the tillet. Actually, my house was on that map. I had no idea that this was happening. And one of the things that stuck out to me was the lack of green space and community amenities in that plan.

[07:22:37] So I'll be doing some community organizing on that, too, now that my eyes have been opened. But what this USDA facility offers our larger Loudoun community is places to play. And where I live now in the Broadlands community, we have nine tennis courts.

[07:22:55] Six of them are lighted. We did a national search to bring in the most amazing tennis pro that I've ever worked with. My family is a generation of tennis players. I currently have multiple sclerosis. So finding public or community tennis places to play that would offer wheelchair tennis in my future is nowhere existing in our mid-Atlantic region.

[07:23:19] So the USTA Center offers so many assets to the Loudoun community. Right now, I'm having to go up to Delaware and Sea Colony. I'm having to go down to IMG. Me and my friends, my USTA League friends, my non-USTA League friends, we have barely anywhere to play in the wintertime.

[07:23:34] It is really a dearth of tennis opportunities for such a super zip code. When I started back on this journey three years ago playing tennis in hopes of getting my next generation up and going, it was shocking to me how few opportunities we had for tennis and really grassroots tennis that's open to the public.

[07:23:52] We have many private tennis clubs that are not serving the needs of the larger community in making tennis accessible. So the USTA Center would be a huge asset, bringing in $8.5 million in revenue annually. I'm in huge support of this.

[07:24:08] I can't emphatically enough support this. And I hope the residents can see the huge opportunity for our larger Loudoun community. I've never met someone so excited at 1.24 in the morning. Thank you so much. Michael Myers, followed by Tia Ehrman.

[07:24:29] Hi again, I'm Michael Myers, Executive Director of Loud and Wildlife Conservancy. We have significant concerns about the village at Clear Springs due to the scale of this project being inconsistent with the transition policy area and the negative environmental impacts of this project. Simply put, there is no definition of transition that this project in the transition policy area fits.

[07:24:47] We wholeheartedly agree with staff that the proposed scale, intensity, density, and heights are not consistent with the place type, and we would add that this application is wildly inappropriate for this area. One definition of a transitional area would be to be a buffer and to add more distance between the lights at Heritage High School in the town of Leesburg residents and more rural areas south and west of this site.

[07:25:06] Instead, this application proposes more athletic field lighting, increasing the sky glow and impacts upon our night skies further away from the town of Leesburg. Another aspect of a transitional area would be to have open space and natural vegetation as a dominant visual feature, and this application fails in that regard as well.

[07:25:22] While there is a linear park within the proposal and numerous eight-foot trails throughout the proposal, having an unvegetated 10-foot trail along the roads hardly achieves the vision for connecting adjacent parcels as part of the Linear Parks and Trails plan, something that could be achieved by having natural vegetation as a dominant feature along the edges. While linear parks do function as wildlife corridors, those corridors lose their value when the wildlife have to cross four or more lanes of traffic. The widening of Evergreen Mills Road should include wildlife underpasses to allow for the safe movement of wildlife to and from this parcel. Additionally, the pedestrian crosswalk at Shreve Mill Road or adjacent to it should include a wildlife crossing

[07:25:57] to allow safe passage for wildlife to move from their formerly rural home and future narrow linear park to the remaining rural areas south of this parcel. This site was previously in the rural policy area and is currently zoned AR1 in the transition policy area and though it is fair to say whether even that is still appropriate, this project will be more dense than areas within towns and the suburban policy area, and it does not make sense for this location.

[07:26:22] It is certainly not a transition-minded project. Honestly, having applications like this make it this far makes me wonder why we have policy documents at all if we're not going to follow them. Thank you so much for your time, and good morning. Thank you, Mr. Myers.

[07:26:39] Ms. Tia Ehrman, followed by Barbara Clark. All right. Good morning, all. And I am not going to have the enthusiasm. The speakers are go dead at this point in the morning. For the record, again, my name is Tia Ehrman, speaking on behalf of the Piedmont Environmental Council. This development is in the transition policy area, a unique and special region of our county intended to be the visual and actual transition from suburban east to rural west. And construction here should reflect the guidance laid out in our county documents for this region. As such, we support staff's position that this

[07:27:15] development is inappropriate for the TPA and should be amended to better suit and support the region it is proposed for our objections are based first on the transition policy area and place type inconsistencies and further on how the 11 total 11 total z maps z mods and specs applications expand on those inconsistencies the sheer number of exceptions should really point to how out of line this is with the area that it is being proposed for we have many questions about the inclusion and positioning of such a major sports facility along the back side of the northern portion of this development the flow of traffic to that facility is going to go right past

[07:27:54] residential housing which doesn't make any sense to us why not position it directly on the major roadway so that patrons can turn on and off of that rather than being pulled by residential housing we strongly believe that a redesign of the development could accomplish the tba tpa policy objectives of featuring open space and vegetation which staff notes it is failing to do in particular from the Evergreen Mills Road viewpoint we feel this development has the potential to meet the intent look and feel of the transition compact neighborhood place type we recommend that the

[07:28:29] multifamily attached units be removed as this is outright inconsistent with the TPA and instead the applicant proffer a mix of intermingled unit types that can help to achieve greater affordability overall with more smaller units both at market rate and affordable rate I am not the only person who doesn't want a giant house to clean um and as we heard earlier this evening it causes the county and many supervisors heartburn uh when we have these applications that vary from the zoning in the comprehensive plan we hope that a similar feeling applies to this application which is so

[07:29:04] far out of line with our county's guiding documents for this parcel zoning thank you Ms. Ehrman, Barbara Clark, followed by two, Sri Nagareti. Good evening.

[07:29:21] Good morning. Sorry. My name is Barbara Clark, and I've been a Loudoun County resident for about 17 years. Okay. Thank you for the opportunity to address you today. I am a local small business owner with businesses including mental health, retail, and software development.

[07:29:39] I know that's a weird mix, right? My businesses struggle to attract talent with the limited availability of affordable housing for our staff, including some of our older employees. I'm here to advocate for a project that addresses, at least in a small way, critical issues facing our community.

[07:29:57] One of the significant challenges we face in Loudoun County is the struggle to hire and retain therapists and staff due to the limited availability of reasonably priced housing. Our clients also grapple with the housing dilemma, often being forced to move further west, which seems like we're kind of pushing our problems to other jurisdictions.

[07:30:20] Our business is not alone in facing these difficulties, and while I recognize that the proposed project may not solve all of these problems, it does offer a crucial step forward. This plan provides attainable housing options for our workforce who have been priced out.

[07:30:36] Furthermore, it includes houses as part of the Habitat for Humanity programming contributing to the community's well-being. I'd like to emphasize the importance of housing options for aging residents, myself included. There's a shortage of choices for individuals over 55 in Loudoun County, and this plan takes a step towards alleviating that issue.

[07:30:56] As someone who professionally deals with the aging demographic and is part of the sandwich generation, I can attest that this is a significant concern for many residents. And by the way, these new 55-plus neighbors won't contribute towards young children in our schools.

[07:31:14] I'm going to yield some of my time. I just want to say in conclusion, I urge your support for this project. It represents a practical solution to real issues facing Loudoun County. And it aligns with your vision for a vibrant and inclusive community.

[07:31:30] Thank you for your time, and I trust you will consider the long-term benefits this project offers to our residents. Thank you, Ms. Clark. I don't see Mr. Nogaretti anymore. and he may have left. Then he will be followed by Mike Wilkins, followed by Jim Russell. I can't believe people are still signing up. Good evening, morning, Mr. Wilkins. Good morning. Actually, Mr. Navarrete did leave. He said he was going to call in, but it's so late, I'm not sure if

[07:32:06] he's going to make it or not. Okay. So, good morning, Chair Randall and Honorable Supervisors. My name is Mike Wilkins. I'm a Loudoun County resident of almost 40 years. You might recognize me. Some of you might recognize me from hours participating in meetings during the Envision Loudoun process, but you might not recognize me because it's taken so long. I was six feet tall at the time.

[07:32:30] Having watched the deliberations that resulted in the approval of the 2019 general plan and events since then, I can honestly say that I do not understand why the staff report does not support the approval of this application. During Envision Loudon, I listened to the discussions about how this part of the TPA was no longer rule, how the county's need for housing contributed to the density calculations for this place type. Thinking back at the time, there were some in the planning commission and staff members that questioned whether the transition compact neighborhood with 50% open space could even be designed and underwritten as it was envisioned.

[07:33:10] Move ahead five years to 2024 and the county is more in need of affordable housing than even back in 2019. Evergreen Mills Road is not getting any safer and will continue to be a major roadway from south to north. We need to add more trails and parks to the inventory and build ADUs and moderately priced housing too. You have before you an application that could help to mitigate all these things. Yes, it can be built, but maybe not exactly like staff envisioned it back in 2019.

[07:33:39] The supporters of this application are asking this body to look at the big picture that this application paints. Maybe you like the over 17% affordable units in the multifamily building, but don't like berms. Maybe you don't visit county parks, but you really want Evergreen Mills Road to be widened and made safer. I believe that there are benefits in this application that each of you can support. What is asked of you now is that you look at the big picture and work out differences among your colleagues. All of the benefits will be available to county residents if this application is approved. After eight submissions and many hours of staff's time,

[07:34:18] this application is about as fine-tuned as it can get. Therefore, I respectfully ask that you approve Village at Clear Springs during the next meeting for action. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Wilkins. Jim Russell, followed by... Chair Randall. Yes.

[07:34:33] Mr. Nagareti is actually online. Oh, okay. Just hold on a sec. Mr. Russell, come back. Hold Mr. Nagareti. Mr. Russell, go on and go. All right. Good morning, Madam Chair, Supervisors. My name is Jim Russell.

[07:34:48] I live in the town of Leesburg, and I'm speaking on behalf of the Virginia Statewide Community Land Trust. I'm speaking in support of this application, and maybe I misspoke saying I'm speaking for the VSCLT.

[07:35:05] I'm really here to speak for Chapter 4 of the comprehensive plan. So often when we're talking about these applications and when we're looking like, is it appropriate where we're putting it, we're talking about land use, sometimes some parts of the comprehensive plan are at loggerheads with each other.

[07:35:23] And to say maybe this application doesn't really fit where, you know, it's being proposed, other parts of the comprehensive plan, it's a perfect fit. And given that these 12 units for being given to, you know, the land being given to Loudon Habitat for Humanity will be put into the Virginia Statewide Community Land Trust, and they will be affordable, attainable homeownership opportunities in perpetuity.

[07:35:52] And so some of the points that come up in the housing chapter that, you know, our aspirational goals that we're laying out in the comprehensive plan are attainable housing under 100% AMI.

[07:36:07] We're talking about 30 to 60% AMI for homeowners. Extending the covenants. It's not 15 years. It's not 30 years. It's forever. Preserve attainable housing. Again, just like we don't have to extend the covenants here, this will be a community asset for a long, long time.

[07:36:30] And I want to harp on that is the way a community land trust homeownership opportunity works. 70% to 80%, depending on what study you look at, people who own a community land trust property graduate to market rate housing.

[07:36:46] So they leave, they go to market rate. That opens up for people living at Clear Springs, perhaps in an attainable rental. And they can see with their own eyes every day the homeownership opportunity awaiting for them. And this is a unique possibility for us to say to other developers to donate land where we can create these same kinds of opportunities at a much larger scale.

[07:37:11] Thank you very much. Thank you very much. We will go to the phone to Mr. Nagareti. And after that would be, I think it's the streak, Heileman? Okay, after we get the phone call. Mr. Nagareti. Hi.

[07:37:29] Can you hear me? I can hear you. All right. Ready when you are. Dear Madam Chair and respected Board of Supervisors, I'm Sri Nagarady, former Transit Advisory Board Member at the 2020 Virginia State Census Commissioner.

[07:37:53] I wish you a Happy New Year and congratulations on your new term. As a London County resident since 2010, I have witnessed our remarkable 48.7% population surge reaching 464,000 in 2024 from 312,000 in 2020. So population doubled past 20 years.

[07:38:20] Comparing Loudoun County's growth with other Virginia counties since 2010, Fairfax County 8.9%, Prince William 27.9%, Virginia Beach 6.8% and Loudoun County is partly 8.7% in population growth. So, Loudoun is number one in population growth as well as per capita income growth and it makes the wealthiest county in years. I strongly advocate for the development initiatives especially

[07:38:53] considering the recent Metro Silver Line phase 2 into Loudoun on November 15, 2022 and housing demand surge. 24 months average special exception application processing time in Loudoun which that still permits delays in construction urgently streamlining and extending the approval process is vital to address the housing shortage promptly i hope wholeheartedly endorse the proposed

[07:39:28] development application which is crucial not only for the current demand but also anticipating future growth expedited approval is essential for a sustainable and thriving environment This development consists of mixed use, basically all types of single-family, detached, attached, and multifamily, including this post-west lease, which is, I think, never have been seen in Loudoun, this kind of proposal.

[07:39:58] So, I want to thank you for your dedication to Loudoun County's well-being. I trust your emphasis on SHWIP approval, which benefits our community. Thank you very much for taking time and staying late. God bless you all. Thank you, Mr. Nagareti.

[07:40:15] Mr. Heilman, followed by Bahar LeMay. Good evening. Morning, sir. Yes, good morning. I had prepared quite a bit, but I'm going to keep it short. Good evening.

[07:40:31] My name is Sir Heilman. I've lived in the county for over 30 years. I'm a retired business management consultant specializing in business operations, and I currently live down in Creighton Farms neighborhood. I also serve on the Loudoun Habitat Humanity Board of Directors with experience on several other boards, including past president of the Habitat Humanity of the Blue Ridge.

[07:40:54] As a longtime resident in Northern Virginia and as a strong supporter of obtainable housing for all, I'm pleased to support the rezoning application for the Village of Clear Springs. Four years ago, the Board of Supervisors approved the 2019 Comprehensive Plan that placed the area east of Evergreen Mills Road, south of Heritage High School, west of the Greenway, into the transition policy area.

[07:41:19] At the same time, the plan density was increased to reflect the increased demand for housing, the people moving to Loudoun as the county moved from a rural agricultural dependence to a world-class technology and business center we all enjoy today.

[07:41:36] Nowhere in the country has this demand risen faster than here. As business grows, so does the need for employees and families to call Loudoun County home. The Board of Supervisors now can approve a new type of planned community, one that protects 50% open space, provides almost 18% of the dwelling units as income-controlled homes, and yet offers the possibility of incorporating a world-class sports facility, the United States Tennis Association Mid-Atlantic Regional Headquarters.

[07:42:08] Because of my work with both Blue Ridge Habitat and the Loudoun Habitat, I understand that providing the housing for all is key to the success of our communities and neighborhoods. I want to see my children and grandchildren have housing opportunities that allow them to consider Loudoun County as a great place to live and work.

[07:42:28] The village of Clear Springs provides much-needed housing options that include a high ratio of affordable units, Lots of open space, a first-class neighborhood amenity, and amenities, thank you. I ask the Planning Commission to approve this application so that the county can soon begin to see the efforts, new affordable housing, and the open spaces that this project will provide.

[07:42:53] Thanks for your time. Thank you, sir. Bahar LeMay, followed by Jim Sisley. Mr. LeMay? It's L-I-M-A-Y-E, followed by Jim Sisley.

[07:43:12] Mr. Sisley? Good evening, Madam Chair and Supervisors. It's nice to see you all again. I have to tell you, the last time I was up this late, it was in this room. I was a member of the 2019 Planning Commission that tried, basically, and recommended the adoption of the comprehensive plan that you currently work under.

[07:43:40] The village at Clearspring is exactly the type of project and development that was anticipated for the transition policy area, despite what you might hear from other parties. The compact nature of this project delivers the much-needed housing to the county.

[07:43:58] One of the things that was so disturbing, as I read through the Unmet Housing Needs Report, you have a really clear chart that indicates to anybody that can read it that there is a $250,000 gap between what the average household income can afford to spend and the mean price for homes in Loudoun County.

[07:44:19] This is a travesty. That's all I can tell you about. It makes it very difficult for me to ever think that my children are going to live anywhere closer than 30 or 45 miles away from me. The housing shortage in 2019 was forecasted to be, over the next 20 years, 20,000 units.

[07:44:37] That shortage has risen to 50,000 units by your own publication. I don't know how, when you get the opportunity to deliver 1,000 homes, approximately 2% of the shortage that the board could pass on that opportunity. I've been involved as a commercial real estate agent with more than one assemblage.

[07:44:58] They are notoriously difficult to hold together. People's minds change over time. They run out of emotional currency. They don't want to stay in the deal. To put together homeowners or property owners for 250 acres is a truly Herculean task, and you have to applaud the applicant for being able to do that and have those people come here and speak in favor of this project this evening.

[07:45:24] The very difficult items of keeping people together is because their lives change. People get sick, they grow old, they grow out of interest, and they go away, either by death or they move out of the area. It's very hard to keep these things together, and I would certainly encourage you to approve this application at your earliest opportunity. This is a great mix of housing types. It's an excellent economic development opportunity to bring the Tennis Association here and to help deliver new types of physical activity. Mr. Sisk, thank you, sir. Thank you very much.

[07:46:03] JC Sylvie, followed by Donna Hammond. Hello, how are you? Thanks for allowing me to speak. My name is JC Sylvie. I live in Leesburg. I'm a member of the Airport Commission here in Leesburg. I'm a commercial airline pilot and have flown with United Airlines for the past 30 years.

[07:46:29] Previous to that, I was a Navy attack pilot. I've literally flown all over the world. And Whenever I've flown, wherever it may be, noise abatement is a huge issue. Decades ago, Dulles Airport was built on farmland.

[07:46:49] There was nothing there. Now there's an over 55 community a half mile off the departure end of 3-0. And you're dealing with noise abatement right now. Now we're in a position of considering a development of 1,000 homes right underneath Leesburg Executive Airport traffic pattern.

[07:47:15] I don't know where they're getting their information, but I can tell you right now, that's not an insignificant amount of traffic. On certain days, there's going to be an airplane flying over that neighborhood every minute at 800 feet.

[07:47:30] Think about that. For the past six months, we've been getting hundreds of noise complaints from residents around the airport. It's becoming a huge issue. Now the major issue that's coming up before us is lead poisoning.

[07:47:49] Airplanes fly with leaded fuel. It's not unleaded, right? So there's a big concern now with people who are feeling, and we get these complaints from neighbors all around here.

[07:48:05] you are poisoning our kids. You are poisoning the kids in Simpson Middle School and so forth. Now, these residents in this community, and I think it's awesome about the ADUs. That's great. We need more housing like that. But they're going to come in and buy these homes and they're going to sign a packet of closing documents that's this thick. And you think they're going to look at the disclosures in there and say there's a navigation easement, they're not. They're just not. But I tell you what, the people who buy that home next are going to come to you and going to be really

[07:48:45] pissed off about the noise over this airport. Now, I understand. I'm sorry. That's okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Donna Hammond, followed by Tara Novato. Hello, I'm Donna Hammond, And I'm here tonight to or this morning, whatever, to speak on behalf of the members of Bethel Presbyterian Church, which is the church that you heard mentioned that will be remaining in the middle of this development. We have been there since 1980. So we've been there since long before

[07:49:20] most of the homes in our area were built. We've seen the area grow and develop in a lot of different ways. I will start by saying I am a longtime Loudon resident. My husband and I have been serving at Bethel Church for 30 years, since 1993. We've seen a lot of changes over that time.

[07:49:38] And one other thing you should know about our church is that we are not just a come on Sunday and that's all that is. We're a very close-knit group of people. We raise our children together. We are, we're more family than anything else, and our church is our second, our home away from home.

[07:49:54] So I want to share with you that our church is very excited about this potential development around our church we have seen first of all many of our church members needing to move out of the county out away far away from our church because they could not afford to live here anymore we have our young people my own grown children included who are struggling to be able to live close to where I want them to be close to me because they can't they can't afford with living

[07:50:29] So the potential for having homes that are smaller in scale and would be more affordable is precious to me and to all of us. We have witnessed Evergreen Mill Road transform from a country road to a heavily traveled commuter through way. So the improvements that would be made on this, you know, many days, we have to wait at any given time of the day for a long time to get in and out of our church parking lot and out onto Evergreen Mill Road.

[07:50:51] It's a real struggle. So these improvements would be extremely valuable, and the safety that it'll afford is priceless. I am happy, and the rest of our church membership is too, to have the potential of this quality-planned community surrounding our church and providing the much-needed housing, while at the same time, we've always been surrounded by green space.

[07:51:13] And they've worked very hard to preserve a lot of open area, 50% open area in this new development. So we have the potential of still maintaining that special quality around our church. I respectfully ask that the board approve this I was going to say something about the air noise, because for all the hours I've spent in the church, and I'm done.

[07:51:35] Ms. Hammond, I have a question. Are you speaking on behalf of your church? I am speaking with the... No, no, no. Are you speaking on behalf of your church? Yes. You are? Yes, I am. Okay. Tara, thank you, ma'am. Yes. Thank you very much. Tara Fitzpatrick-Navatova, followed by Josh McAuliffe. Good evening.

[07:51:55] Hello again. Nice to see you. I am a Loudoun County resident. I'm in Ms. Tikrani's district. Nice to see you. I have already gotten a chance to speak to you, so I'm not going to say I'm going to be brief because everybody does that and then they're not, but I'm really excited for this opportunity so that people in Loudoun County can live, work, and play. Play is so important to our emotional and physical health, And that's what we do at USTA Mid-Atlantic Foundation.

[07:52:32] We're a nonprofit, and we create opportunities to build community, character, and wellness through tennis and pickleball. And we care very deeply about access and are actively involved in the Loudoun County community already, particularly in our Title I schools, providing after-school programming and girls' rule-the-court programming so that we can continue to make tennis the sport for everyone for a lifetime.

[07:53:02] And that's what this tennis campus does. We have 1.2 million players in this region, and we do not have nearly enough places for them to play. I literally cut 54 programs off of my docket this morning because I have no indoor court space.

[07:53:20] I need this, but so do all of the residents of Loudoun County. This will make such a huge difference in living our vision of an inclusive and accessible area for wellness.

[07:53:37] And we're just really hopeful that we will have your support and approve our application. So thank you so much. Thank you. Josh McAuliffe, followed by Robert Gordon. Good evening.

[07:53:53] Hi. Hi. How's it going? Josh McAuliffe, Leesburg. uh i live right across from this property on the on the northwest corner there's four properties there i'm one of them uh so i'm on the fence about it but i'm you know i actually think it's a really good plan overall my main concern is the median in the road i don't know if i'm gonna have to make a u-turn and blah blah blah you know do the u-turn thing so just want to you know bring that up hopefully i don't have to do that and the other three of my neighbors don't have to you know make a right turn to make a left turn just when the road's designed and and VDOT is thinking about

[07:54:32] it hopefully they will consider that uh and I don't I'm not a pilot but I'll just say I live you know right there and we never hear the aircraft any aircraft except for during the air show for what it's worth um and uh that's pretty much it other than I do think my kids should be going heritage. Thank you. Robert Gordon, followed by Beth Erickson. Hello, Mr. Gordon. Madam Chair, members of the board, thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Robert Gordon of Gordon Law

[07:55:07] PLLC. My partner, Kate Gordon, and I have represented the assemblage of landowners who own the preponderance of land in this application since 2019. I will say I'm so impressed by the hard work you guys are putting in on all these applications. I've lived here in the Catoctin Election District currently but I've lived here for 35 years and I see that being on the board hasn't gotten any easier.

[07:55:31] This is the culmination of a 10 year process. Five years in the comprehensive planning process and five years in the rezoning process and there are half a dozen people in the room who have participated in all of that and are very eager to see this to come to fruition.

[07:55:48] Listening to the staff's comments about inconsistency with the comprehensive plan and Mr. Meyer's comments. I would just say this was the process that took five years to come up with a plan that said, give us something that's up to five units per the acre with 50% open space and a wide variety of housing opportunities and road improvements. And that's what this applicant has delivered. I think that the staff sought guidance on many of these issues, the USCTA, multifamily, the use of verms along Evergreen Mills Road. I think that a 7-2 recommendation from the Planning Commission

[07:56:25] says a lot about the guidance that they provided after eight submissions. So I don't really have much more to say. This has been a very thoughtful process. To paraphrase something that Mr. Letourneau said earlier tonight, we don't want to sacrifice high quality in a search for elusive perfection, okay?

[07:56:48] We could debate these issues forever, but I think this is a really high quality project. As Mr. Sisley said, it's hard to hold these things together, but the landowners who are involved here feel that this is a very high quality developer and a very high quality project, and we urge your approval at the earliest opportunity.

[07:57:08] One final comment, we have not received, the applicant has not received any comments from the county attorney's office on the proffers. I know they're extremely busy, but I would say we, in order to sign the proffers, which we did in preparation for this hearing, we have to get 45 signatures.

[07:57:25] And no matter how enthusiastic everyone is about it, that takes time. So we respectfully request that the county attorney's office provide the comments at the earliest opportunity. - Thank you, Mr. Vorton, thank you. Beth Erickson will be followed by Cherise Cashin.

[07:57:42] Thank you so much. This USTA facility aligns with Visit Loudoun's strategic vision to further position the county as a top-tier sports destination. It will open up additional opportunities to attract new tournaments and create jobs as well as drive demand for our hotels, restaurants, and attractions. Projects like the USTA Mid-Atlantic Tennis Campus highlight the importance of this level of investment within our county and help diversify our economic tax base.

[07:58:10] The USTA could have selected any number of destinations for their state-of-the-art facility, but they chose Loudoun. With Dulles International Airport, players from across the country will be able to arrive quickly and get on the courts.

[07:58:28] Visit Loudoun looks forward to working with USTA to bring both youth and adults tennis tournaments as well as non-tennis tournament and events to the facility. I may have nodded off right before I came up earlier, but Supervisor Umstad, my files were back there.

[07:58:45] 44 tournaments and special events is what we are projecting. My apologies for not having it there, and my apologies to everybody around me, as I may have snored. But thank you all so very much. I appreciate it. Therese Cashin. And then our last speaker is Stephen Rippelata, I think. Hi, Therese. How are you doing?

[07:59:13] Good morning, everyone. I have to echo what the other gentleman said. I haven't been up this late in like forever. So I hope I get through this. Hi, I'm Therese Cashin. I am president and CEO of Loudoun Habitat for Humanity. I am also a 19-year resident of Loudoun County, and I currently live in the town of Leesburg.

[07:59:34] As a long-time resident of Loudoun County and as a strong supporter of Attainable Housing for All, I'm here tonight to show support for the rezoning application for the Village at Clear Springs. The Village at Clear Springs will bring a diverse housing mix that will include up to 192 attainable and workforce homes, or approximately 18% of the total number of residential units proposed.

[08:00:00] This project includes plans for 12 attached multifamily units to be constructed by Habitat for Humanity using the Village of Clear Springs design guidelines. These homes will provide much-needed homeownership opportunities for current Loudoun County residents that live in the 30 to 60 percent area median income.

[08:00:22] The land for these homes will be donated by the developer and will be placed in the Virginia Community Land Trust, guaranteeing at least 99 years of permanent affordability for these homes. These homes will become part of the county's attainable housing inventory long past all of our lifetime.

[08:00:42] The Village of Clear Spring establishes a way forward for the county to successfully meet the housing goals approved in the Unmet Housing Needs Strategic Plan. If we're serious about attainable, affordable housing, it's time to support the development of neighborhoods like the Village of Clear Springs so that the county can soon begin to see the impact of new attainable housing that this project will provide.

[08:01:08] Through my work with Loudon Habitat for Humanity, I understand that providing housing for all is key to the success of our communities and neighborhoods. It's time for the county to take action to address the shortage of housing. We can no longer push this issue into the future or say that all housing must be built in the suburban policy area.

[08:01:30] Thank you. Thank you very much. And our last speaker is Stephen, I think it's Rippalada. Rippalada. There you go. Thank you, sir. No problem. Good morning, Board Supervisors. Thank you for the opportunity to address you today.

[08:01:48] As a longtime Loudoun County resident, I'm proud to voice my support for the village at Clear Springs rezoning application. As an active parent with two children who enjoy sports, my family and I often are on the go throughout the county. Therefore, I've been following the project since its inception.

[08:02:06] The proposed road improvements, which include an additional two lanes on Evergreen Mills Road, addressed a congestion issue that is all too common for the commuters in the area. The new lines will significantly alleviate traffic flow, especially for those accessing the SportsPlex or the future USTA Center.

[08:02:26] With this new development, it would be a long time before transportation improvements make their way. Without this, it would be a long time before they make their way through this region. As someone who values being outdoors and active, I'm pleased with the active lifestyle that Village of Clear Springs is proposing.

[08:02:46] The project will bring over five miles of linear trails that will be integrated into Loudoun's trail system. Additionally, the development of the new neighborhood park and USTA Center with tennis, pickleball, and the fitness center will undoubtedly benefit not only the residents of the community and the entire county and surrounding neighborhoods.

[08:03:06] Lastly, I commend Mr. Mitchell's track record in preserving open spaces and safeguarding natural habitats in his prior development, such as South Riding and Lansdowne. The project's dedication to preserving open space seamlessly aligns with the creation of the new trail network.

[08:03:27] In conclusion, I strongly suggest that the Board moves ahead with the approval of this rezoning application. Thank you for your thoughtful consideration. Thank you, sir. And that is our last speaker for this public hearing.

[08:03:45] I know, right? Mr. Kirshner, would you like to make a motion? would madam chair i just want to make sure my understanding is that the critical action date will have to be extended ask the applicant is that the applicant willing to do that uh march yes we are willing to extend the critical action date until march supervisor kershner thank you thank you i move the board of supervisors ford leji 2023-017 village at clear springs z map dash

[08:04:13] 20 21 0 0 0 8 specs 20 21 0 0 2 8 specs 20 21 0 0 2 9 specs 20 21 0 0 3 0 specs 20 22 0 0 4 4 Zmod 2 0 2 uh excuse me 2020 it's late guys all right I want to get through this 0 0 3 5

[08:04:39] ZMOD 2021-0036, ZMOD 2021-0091, ZMOD 2022-0036, and ZMOD 2022-0037 to the March 2024 Board of Supervisors public hearing for action.

[08:04:57] Second. Mr. Kirshner. Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. It's late. I'm not going to talk long. I just want to say a couple. First of all, thank you for all those of you who came out and stayed, regardless of whether you support the application or not. I don't think we've had a public hearing this late, maybe once or twice in my terms.

[08:05:15] But it takes a lot, and it shows you're committed to it, and I appreciate it. We have to be here. You don't. So that says a lot. I don't think at this time we've had this many people in the room this late. So usually it's pretty vacant, as you can only imagine.

[08:05:32] I just want to say I think Mr. Gordon said it right. This is a high-quality project. It really is. No project is going to be perfect, but it's pretty high quality. Everything from, you know, the consistency with the comp plan, you know, you could argue, as staff pointed out, maybe the types of units that are being provided.

[08:05:53] The density is consistent. I mean, I'm not, I wasn't a huge fan of the level of density, but, again, this consistency is accurate. The affordables that you provide, the mixture of housing, 55-plus affordable and market units. I think one of the most important things that really strikes me and I think is really important to point out, as was mentioned by many others, the improvements on Evergreen Mill.

[08:06:14] I will tell you, when I lived at Hamlets at Red Cedar, I would sit on my back porch and hear accidents happen on a fairly regular occasion. And this is a very dangerous road, and it needs these improvements. I know we have other applications coming in perhaps later in the year, and I anticipate they also will bring similar improvements to this applicant.

[08:06:32] So I appreciate it. But I think the biggest thing and I really think what sets this apart is, as Beth pointed out and others, and that is the USTA and all the perks that it brings to the county and the opportunities it opens up for our sports programs and for opportunities for this development as well.

[08:06:53] So I would hope my and I would ask that my colleagues support it. I'm certainly supportive of it and I will look forward to hearing anything else any public has to say between March between now and March did I actually put that just the March meeting March 2024 you did yes Mr. Letourneau all right I'll be really brief um for staff I'd like to dive into this issue with the airport noise a little bit and see if we can get some data sort of flight tracks so I've been sitting up here I mean no disrespect whatsoever to the gentleman that was a pilot, but I've been looking at flight tracks of planes, even like the Dassault Falcons and stuff

[08:07:29] leaving Leesburg, and none of them are flying over this. They're all going way up and over, and when they're coming in, they're coming down and around. So just this is almost horizontal to the runway. I have a community like that in the Dulles District. I did. Latin Valley Estates 3. It's the closest residential to Dulles Airport. They don't get any overflights because it's too close. So just immediate proximity does not mean overflights. So I want to dive into that issue a little bit and see if there does need to be attenuation or something like that.

[08:07:58] Otherwise, thank you, everybody that came. Some of the groups that oppose every application oppose this one. The landowners want us to support it. Heard from some of the neighbors. Always helpful. We need to dive in. There's a lot here. I'll definitely follow up on the issue on unit size, but appreciate everybody coming out, sticking with us until 2 in the morning.

[08:08:17] Ms. Glass. Thank you, Madam Chair. I also want to thank everyone coming out and staying until after 2 o'clock in the morning. I've had a lot of, even constituents from the Broadman District that are excited about this facility coming to Loudoun County.

[08:08:38] And I want to thank one of my constituents to excitedly talk about her excitement of us having this facility here. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. I don't know where I'm at in this application yet.

[08:08:57] I think I'm leaning toward it, but I do agree that I think I'm leaning toward it because of the ADUs. I'm very excited about the ADUs. Aside from tennis, aside from tennis, I'm very excited about the ADUs and the homes that are being built by Habitat.

[08:09:15] I think it's a good-looking application overall. I also do not believe that I think it's a very high density for the transition policy area, And so I don't know that I, this feels like it's very high density to the rural policy line, which is not really what transition policy area is supposed to be.

[08:09:38] And so that's kind of my unrest right now. And so I'm going to take a drive down there like I often do and look around and see what I see and ask questions and think about it. If I need to call the applicant, I know how to get a hold of you if I need to call the applicant. I just don't know yet.

[08:09:54] I just don't know yet. But I am certainly an open mind on this application. So thank you. Mr. Yu, do you want to close? In order to avoid the risk of being run out on a rail, I'm not going to say anything else, and I have to be in court at 9 tomorrow.

[08:10:13] So let's vote. Yeah. All right. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? That motion will pass, what, 7-0-2. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. We are adjourned. Announce your departure.

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