Current Affairs - Cloverdale Heights
Current Affairs
Greenvest Presentation
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GREENVEST L.C.

HUNT FIELD COMMUNITY MEETING

INDEPENDENT FIRE CO. - APRIL 4, 2001

Transcript of Meeting

Jim Duszynski: I’d like to welcome every one here tonight to our second public meeting to talk about the proposed Hunt Field development. We’re going to spend a little bit of time this evening recapping last month’s meeting and then go on and show you some of the new things that we’ve been working on since last month’s meeting.

But again first I’d like to welcome you. I appreciate everybody’s attendance. I also want to say thanks to the Independent Fire Company for having us here tonight. I asked you all to come back and play BINGO because that’s the way that they support the Emergency Services here in the county. So I want to put a plug in for that. I also want to just make sure that everyone’s aware that there is no smoking in the fire hall. There are a couple of firemen out there with a fully charged fire hose if anybody does. So please no smoking.

We’ve brought out a few additional members of the project team this evening in case there are some more detailed questions. And I certainly hope that after last month’s meeting some people have come prepared to ask some tough questions and get involved in a dialogue. And just real quickly there are members here from Greenvest. I am again Jim Duszynski, Senior Vice President for Greenvest. We also have Cunningham + Quill and Associates here, several project team members, Lee Quill who will be doing the presentation tonight. Holmes Communications which handles all of our community relations and who really is responsible for setting these meetings up for us and taking care of the logistics. We couldn’t do it without her.

I also have Greenhorne and O’Mara here. Greenhorne and O’Mara is handling all of the archeology and historic resources issues for the community. And then finally we’ve also brought our traffic engineer out tonight in case people have questions about traffic.

As I said a moment ago the format for tonight’s meeting is to do a brief recap of the last meeting that we had for those of you who couldn’t make it out to sort of familiarize you with how we started and how we get to the design that we’re proposing for the Hunt Field project, and then to move fairly quickly into some further refinement of some of the concepts, some of the plans that we showed. And then also as I said to show you some of the new ideas that we’re working on for the actual plans for the community.

We will probably take about 45 minutes for that presentation. And then hopefully allow about an hour and a half for questions and answers. Last meeting we had about an hour for questions and it didn’t seem to be quite enough. So, again, hopefully people have come prepared tonight.

A couple of thoughts I would like you to keep in mind, or I’d like to leave you with as you listen to the presentation tonight and I’ll sort of phrase them as questions. What is the most desirable pattern of development for Jefferson County? Assuming again that growth is an occurring and the census from 1990 to 2000 shows about 17.5 percent growth in Jefferson County one can expect at least that, I think through the next ten years what is the most desirable pattern of development? How do you want to see your community grow?

The next question is how can a development, how can any development proposal address the concerns of the community? Jefferson County is at a time when you’re doing comprehensive plan revisions. The County Commission has hired a consultant to help with that process. And there are a lot of residents that are involved with it. So there are some changes that are going on in the way that the county wants to plan for its future. So how can a community like Hunt Field that’s coming in sort of before that’s done, how can a proposal address those issues today? And, again, as we present I think you’ll see some of the ideas that we have and we’re very interested in hearing the ideas that you have.

And then finally can a large planned community like Huntfield, a mega development as we’ve been called, actually help with the planning for the future of Jefferson County as opposed to hurt it or hinder it? One of the ways that I think that can be done is that we can provide a location for growth to occur, one that is predictable, one that helps the county to plan for infrastructure.

Also a large planned community can provide a lot of infrastructure internal to the project. It’s a thousand-acre community. So in the next 20 years parks can be built, school sites can be donated. Schools hopefully will get built. Civil uses, potential fire stations, police stations, emergency services. All of these kinds of things that make a community a real community can be provided within a large planned community.

So, again, as we look at tonight’s presentation and we go through questions and answers I just ask you to keep that in mind. With that, I’ll turn it over to Lee Quill. Thank you.

Lee Quill: Thank you for coming tonight. We’re in a little different venue. How many of you joined us at Wright Denny a few weeks ago? Okay. So how many are new then tonight? Most of you guys. Okay. Again, my name is Lee Quill, Cunningham Quill + Architects and Planners.

Last time when we got together we talked about a range of issues. Tonight we are going to do a recap to bring all of you up quickly to where we were at the end of that meeting to some degree. And then we ask you after your question and answer if you want to come up and talk to us about what’s in front of you to please take a few moments and do that.

You are not here to critique a plan for Hunt Field tonight or even last time or even the next time totally, because what we’re doing is we’re setting these meetings up to enable a dialogue, a two-way dialogue. You don’t know everything that we have that we bring and from our experiences and studies of urban areas and our work and we don’t know everything about this place. And every time we come up and every time we talk and do more research we learn more. So a two-way dialogue is critical to doing a successful plan that addresses many of the concerns of you and addresses hopefully some precedent and some things that we can share with you.

We’re asking you … we’re new to the team, as you know. We came in this Fall. We’re asking you to do what we did which was to take a fresh look at this piece of property. There’s been a long history up here. The research we’ve done is we notice everything from a CIA to children’s parks whatever to form a proposal. But we’re asking you to take a look at this project in a slightly different way, as a site that could possibly offer an opportunity for solving some of your problems. Now many of you may be scratching your heads when I say that. But when I take you through tonight I’ll tell you where we’re coming from, what we’re thinking about and then we’ll talk about it later.

What you see before you in the boards they represent the analysis and the study and thought process for Hunt Field and the region. And a lot of what you see up in front of you all the way through is going to be in the slides. Now it starts over here with an understanding of the region, the urban growth boundary, historic resources that go through patterns of development which we’ll talk about and it works through how those patterns might start to form and create a special place on that piece of property.

And then it starts to work into the building blocks of a community, being the block and street structure, and then topologies that are current in this region. And they deal with historic topologies or types of buildings, as well as what’s being built today. And there are strengths and weaknesses in those, as you know. And I’m going to talk to you about how we can actually use those topologies to make a better place.

So on this particular start why don’t we turn the slides on, I’ll get started and bring you through where we were and where we are today. Okay. Bring the lights down up front. We started off essentially as you know Jefferson County and this region is a region that is full of natural beauty. Its rural heritage is rich. It is also an area of very special places and significant historic resources. These elements have to be incorporated into the thought process of any project that would take place in this area.

You are also an area that is facing some challenges. We just showed you the beautiful side. You’ve also got this. You’ve got sprawl. You’ve got the creeping of new development coming in and not necessarily the same pattern that I just showed you. And these are issues that you’re all grappling with, have been, thank God. But you’re also starting to address them more focused and especially in forums such as this.

What we talked about last week was don’t miss what’s right under your nose. There are historic precedents in this region, which are very, very special places that we should not forget what lessons they can teach us. They teach us about compact form, of special villages. They teach us about quality of building. What it’s like to create a street. And what it is that is so wonderful to walk along the street, whether it’s Shepherdstown or Charles Town.

Or whether it’s a residential neighborhood. These are really wonderful places to live. That’s why you’re here, for many of you anyway. But in the new development that comes in if we don’t pay attention to this, if we don’t learn from this, we are going to miss out on some amazing opportunities. And we’re going to carve up the land a little different than what was successfully done for 200 years. That’s in brief what we talked about last time.

And part of the study that we’ve looked at one was an understanding that there are areas that you can compact growth into. You know, our towns of Charles Town and Ranson, Shepherdstown have been pretty compact. There has been incremental growth over the years, but it’s all been around the urban center. That’s very, very important to learn, such as over in this particular area. But as you’re growing out, you’ve started to address up here through urban growth areas, a way to focus growth.

The other thing you have to look at as I said is really get down to the street and block patterns of the environments that we have studied and understand what it is. What is unique about Charles Town? What is unique about Ranson? What is unique about Shepherdstown? Harper’s Ferry with its unique topography? There are lessons as I said to be learned from understanding how the blocks are going together. What the houses that happen there? What are the buildings? How do they relate to the street? And how do you have such a rich variety and diversity of the environment rather than the sameness that we see in many typical subdivisions, built not just in this area but everywhere?

Another important aspect to keep in mind is the historic resources. We have an amazing piece of property right next to the one that we’re doing this study on. It’s called Claymont. Most of you all know it. It’s part of Charles Washington’s family. I’m from Northern Virginia. I was born in Alexandria. I know Washington pretty well. He hung out in Alexandria quite a bit. We like him down there. You like him up here. That’s where Charles Town came from. Part of the Washington family.

But we understand that the last thing that you want to do is have Claymont sitting there and have somebody looking out across this wonderful rural, this wonderful diverse area of trees and valleys at the back of a deck with somebody with a Weber. We understand that. There have to be buffers. You have to be sensitive to that piece of property with what happens on the Huntfield piece.

This piece of property also provides an amazing connection because it is very, very close to downtown. This view right here is on old 340 and you can actually see the courthouse tower as you’re driving in. You all know that. But standing on some of the hills of Hunt Field you can actually see, you can’t really make it totally out, but right here is, in this area right there, that is the tower also. So literally from the hills of Hunt Field you are directly connected visually with downtown.

The other thing is if you look at one diagram that’s up here later on there are high points within Hunt Field that are visually connected to Claymont. So we have a two-way visual connection between history but also that it makes a very, very important lesson of what you do with those high points and what is the role of topography in anything that happens on that property?

We believe and traditionally if you look at good towns a lot of places a high ground has always been for the very special spaces. That’s where your church steeples are. Those are the markers of society, such as up here in Nantucket. They are where the green spaces should be. You don’t want to be looking at a bunch of roofs. You want to get them off. Some of you are familiar with the book Rural by Design. Some of the lessons come out of here also in the sense of how you handle high ground, how you handle low ground, and a sense of nestling things in within a particular development.

So what we were looking at is if you were to study again quickly this was a full presentation, I’m condensing it so that we can talk more to the boards. But essentially what we did is we picked up places that had the high points from downtown Charles Town and from Claymont and then started to establish a series of neighborhoods. Right now the beauty of Charles Town and the others is that you really have a series of neighborhoods where people live and interact and can walk to stores, etc.

In looking at Hunt Field we need to set that up as a series of neighborhoods, five-minute walking neighborhoods that have a center. And a center should be a civic space with a church or a playground or something that brings community together within the neighborhoods. And we figured if we put the high point as that particular open space you would get about six neighborhoods within this piece of property.

Additionally there are two ways that you can look at this property. One is if you dealt primarily with a residential component on the western side and a little bit of commercial on the eastern end, how would that work. And what I mean by commercial I’m talking about neighborhood serving retail, a little bit of center surrounded by a neighborhood. And what we’ve looked at here in these little vignettes, which you will see up here, is trying to establish a pattern that starts again dealing with that center area of a corner store, a green space, activity. Part of this is getting back to things such as you can establish a place where a bus, where a connector can connect you from one neighborhood to the next or downtown, because that’s a very important element of connection to downtown.

Again, by establishing a series of blocks around a green, by putting a major building or element on those greens, you have a real sense of community, a center of open space to that. It could be a place for a church. It could be a civil building. It could be a firehouse. It could be a school. It doesn’t matter except that if you have an opportunity you may want to market. And traditionally churches have held a lot of the high ground.

In a commercial aspect we’re talking about a very low scale, small component that could happen on the east. The idea would be not to compete with downtown Charles Town, but to provide just a little bit of service that people could walk to within the neighborhoods of Hunt Field, again, the idea being some kind of centered area that is then connected to the surrounding residential fabric.

There is another idea that we’re exploring on this piece of property that maybe is a little bit out of the box for some of you, but we think that we need to look at it. You have Marc coming into Duffield and into Martinsburg. We have a rail line here, which actually connects to that line, just around Shenandoah Junction. We’re going to explore and we have brought on a consultant in the last two weeks from the former high official in the secretary’s office, Secretary of Transportation, to explore the opportunities of whether some kind of extended Marc to this site or even a shuttle from Duffield to here, could provide a transit oriented design approach to this particular piece of property.

Now why would you do that? If we know that there are going to be at least some people that come to Jefferson County from Washington. We know a lot of people do now, take the Marc. Why not at least explore if there is an opportunity and a way to bring this to this site to get the people off the road? You’re only talking about five or six miles from Duffield to this piece of property. So it could be an extension. It could be a short little haul.

If nothing else we want to make sure that we’ve explored it. Because if you could do that, the development pattern could be a little bit different if we could focus this one here. With the rail line that runs through the center of the site we could actually establish a center of the commercial and the residential hub right in the center of the property and create a feeling of a little village, such as what you would find in Nantucket or in the next slide.

A commuter type train building, such as the one that is just north of the site, on Summit Point Road. The idea being that you have a place that is part of a center of a community that is really transit oriented and gets people thinking of a different mode of transit.

Again, if this were to happen the idea of how the center would work, how major buildings could work, like in the center of Leesburg with a green in front. Again, it’s about place making, about places where people can come together.

The other component of the meeting was the second half of that which dealt with what we’re going to have at the end of this, which is a question and answer dialogue. Where we’re just telling you about some of our ideas and thoughts on the site, we want to hear what your thoughts are about everything.

So what we’ve done is we know that there are a number of issues that deal with just CIS issues but there are other issues too that are far reaching in the community. So what we have done is we’re recording tonight. We’re going to take a microphone around and we provide transcripts. You can get a transcript for last week’s meetings. You can get one for this one, so that you can keep up with what was said. If you missed last week’s you can come look at the boards, you can pick up a transcript. And essentially you will have been there.

So the idea is to really have a two-way dialogue. And a lot of the issues last time dealt with what is smart growth? Is there a difference between a rural smart growth and super urban smart growth? What about schools, etc., CIS issues? So we’ll get back into those.

We’re putting together a list, which we’ll have at the next meeting which really lists out all the comments that people have made that will be taken down again during your question and answer. And, of course, this will be the highlights of the transcripts.

Tonight what we want to talk about are a couple of issues that were recurring themes last time as well as issues that you are dealing with. A big one right now really focuses on where are you with regard to growth? Are we equipped? Being we, Jefferson County to deal with this? Are we dealing with it at all?

And believe it or not Jefferson County is not so behind the eight ball as one might think in dealing with these issues up here. If you go to look at the zoning map, which is shown over here on the right slide, you have established what you call an urban growth district. Sometimes it’s called a growth area. Sometimes it’s more fixed and it’s called a boundary.

But essentially what it does is establishes an area around an urban core, a more urban core, city or a village, in those cases, and focuses your activity around that to keep the open farmland out of development, or at least to a minimum.

The slide on your right is Portland, Oregon. Portland is probably one of the most well-known and well-respected models of suburban or even rural smart growth of understanding how you concentrate growth around the urban cores. They have a growth boundary, which is very hard. And if you look on the left slide that’s Jefferson County. So you’re not too far off.

What’s interesting is in these urban growth areas … let me read what a definition from Portland of what an urban growth area is. The boundaries mark the separation between rural and urban land. They are intended to encompass an adequate supply of buildable land that can be efficiently provided with urban services, such as roads, sewers, waterlines, and streetlights to accommodate the expected growth during a 20-year period. By providing land for urban uses within the boundary rural lands can be protected from rural sprawl. Now this comes off of their web page so if you want to go … it’s called Portland Metro. It’s great stuff to be reading.

What’s interesting is if you look at that … the other thing to keep in mind is in smart growth we try to concentrate development within the urban area. But even in Portland, which is a national model, only 30 percent of the development that happens is redevelopment or in-fill. They are struggling with the same problems that you all are, and the whole region up here, in what happens to growth. Seventy percent of it is in the growth boundary. Seventy percent of that is dealing with what you would call green fields or farmland.

The key here is where do you focus your growth? Do you focus it further out into areas beyond what’s even on this map or way up here? Or do you keep it within the growth area, close to the city where the services are and then discourage the development outside of that because of the long extensions?

This is what we think the project that we’re looking at really has as an opportunity. If you remember I talked about reading from here and I talked about a 20-year growth period. Some people were asking the question about this development, well, why should we take on this huge development? Because it is big. We’re not denying it’s not big. But the reason that it’s big is that you’re looking at a plan, something that you can shape, you know what you’re going to get. There are no surprises out there, because it’s a plan that’s evolved and you see it. You know what you’re going to get for the next 20 years.

Right now you’re looking at four or five months you may not know where the next development subdivision is coming in. What we’re trying to say is that by focusing development in a 20-year envelope of a build out in an area that is an urban growth area, which I will go and show you again, you really have an opportunity here to get not only what development is called for of concentration and compact design, but dealing with it so that you know what’s coming down the road.

These two documents are an ordinance on the right and a diagram on the left. It talks about this 20-year build out. And I have copies if you would like to see up here.

This is what’s coming. There are questions out there. People are saying well, we’re not quite ready to deal with this Hunt Field thing. We’re not ready to deal with any of this. So just go away. Well, the only thing that I’d like to just ask you to think about is that if we go away we think that now with this new team, the new approach, what we’re trying to do, that we can do some pretty good things on this piece of property. If we go away the likelihood of these continuing to come is probably pretty high. What we’re trying to say is right now the option of do nothing will give you Leesburg on the eastern edge. If you know Leesburg and what a large shopping center it is, I’ve lived here in Northern Virginia all my life I’ve watched a poor little wonderful city lose it’s eastern edge. No one can tell me clearly where that boundary is. You are dealing with the same issue on your eastern edge.

So all we’re saying is that if we can focus a dialogue, pieces of property where people can do the right thing, not forget about what the historic precedence have told you. We have an opportunity to try to grab hold of the things that are coming our way in the sense of growth. This is happening across the country. You are not unique here. But it’s also a problem across the country. And all we’re saying is let’s grab hold of this and try to help shape it instead of having it shape you.

This is what you have. This is what could happen if we don’t grab hold of it. Again, back to the patterns things in Shepherdstown or Leesburg or the next slides, dealing with patterns of Charles Town you can’t forget those. What we do is we go in, as I said, and study these patterns. Right now if you look at this particular piece of property, here’s the Huntfield piece of property and here’s Charles Town. From the center of town George and Washington to this point is a mile and a quarter. That’s the same distance out to right here where Norborne Glebe and Crosswinds is. So it’s very close to downtown. And if the wrong thing is done on that piece of property, you’ve lost it.

We’ve gone back and studied Charles Town because we think it’s a wonderful model for what can happen out there. It’s not that we have forgotten Shepherdstown and Abulava, Harper’s Ferry, Ranson, because we’re not. But we’re looking at basically Ranson at the top and Charles Town to tell us some clues about how the blocks have gone together and how Hunt Field if you look at a 20-year build out to that urban edge and what gets filled in we have some clues.

Part of the thing to remember is in this urban growth boundary or urban growth area is it’s not just that you concentrate your growth in an area. That’s number one. Very, very important. Secondly, and equally important however, is what happens within that boundary? What fills it in? Is it the big box or is it something that’s more like this? We think it ought to be more like this.

So in studying the blocks we looked at everything from what the block structure was to what traditional block structures are. We have boards on that up here. And essentially we looked at lots and different sizes of lots, which give you a variety of housing and what the urban blocks are downtown. In short, Charles Town the block is 330 feet wide by either 600, 500, or 700. And within that dimension of the long dimension there are a series of lots that range anywhere from 40 feet wide to 50, 60, 70, 80 or 100.

What that does is allows you to have different size houses, all mixed together. Some have large yards. But what this does is gives you that wonderful variety of development that you see in the towns. Sometimes it’s even more dense, like over in Shepherdstown in some of those wonderful neighborhoods that we’ll show you some slides of. Those are even more densely packed. But the key is of creating these special streets, special blocks, these special places that have a variety of housing so that it’s not just one social group or economic group that can afford it.

The traditional street in a traditional neighborhood can look like this one in Alexandria or this one in Charles Town. The first thing one has to understand and what we’re looking at is what are the building blocks of a new community. What are the building blocks of a community in general? The first one is literally the block. It’s a street and block.

And as I told you we did the study on what the block sizes are in Charles Town and Ranson. Ranson being about 275 by 500. We also went back and looked at what it means to have different size lots opposed to what the zoning allows now, how you may modify that, and what is a traditional lot.

Currently in Jefferson County you are required to have an 80-foot frontage. And what I mean by that is the front of your lot sitting on the street has to be 80-feet wide. No shorter. You can’t have a 40. You can’t have a 60 or 70. So you’ve got 80-feet. It’s a minimum size of 6,000-square feet, which means it has to be 75-feet deep. Now 75 by 80 is a pretty narrow lot, which is this guy right here, at this end.

What you normally would do in a traditional development is have at least 100-feet deep. And Charles Town is 155. So what happens is that you make it a little bit larger. This is a traditional 50 by 100, which is the building block of many cities, such as Alexandria’s older neighborhoods, Washington and many others.

So what we started to do is look at how the houses sat on these lots, the side yard setbacks, the front yard, and how they work with smaller. And then start to look at what happens if you go with a 60 and start to work with something like a garage potentially in the back as a pattern, which is seen around here also. And what happens if you have an 80?

So we’ve really, as you start to look at the boards … when you are looking at these, these are studies of the actual lots. You can see how houses started to work with the streets.

Next. This is the variety of housing that we have today. There is the older housing of Charles Town and then there’s the newer housing of Charles Town. Actually, if you can close your eyes and put your hand over that garage, that house isn’t so bad. There are some things that could be very nice about that. It’s not quite that. But it’s not that that is totally horrible, it’s just that you have a huge path of garage and asphalt.

Take a look at these two. Again, if you were to change this, right here, to this, right here. Two windows, a center gable, two windows, two windows, a center gable, two windows, you are pretty close. So part of what building community about is not only dealing with what the pattern of development is versus just sprawl type things to a block. It gets down to literally the building block of a house and understanding what it is about the houses that if you can fine tune working with today’s builders and say hey look guys the garage is up in front. Let’s put that back a little bit, let’s make the garage not the focal front of the house, but make it less. Let’s allow the houses to face the street. And we’ll talk in a minute about the other component, which are real streets.

Minor modifications to the built environment out there today is these builders will not have a lot of heartache over can really create better places even within what we’re talking about right now, with builder tract housing.

So the next studies that we went into were what happens if you start to work with 100 by an 80-foot or a 110 in this particular case lot size and put houses of traditional development potential on there? Right now you will see over here a couple of boards on some of the subdivision housing that’s going up around Charles Town. The reason those are there is we’ve done studies to see how big they are. What do they look like? What are their plans? How do they front onto the street? What are we dealing with? What do we need to modify, if anything?

And what we’re finding of course is obviously the garage. The other thing we’re finding is that the zoning will not allow us to do anything within the front yard. Traditionally in neighborhoods where you have a front porch, if you look at the street next time you walk down you will notice the front of the houses all line up. And they are all going to line up at about 20 to 25 feet, sometimes closer, but back from the right of way.

But a lot of times you will see porches on some houses projecting out into that and others may not. But the line of the houses will be the same. That’s established in the zoning here in Jefferson County, but you’re not allowed to put a porch out front. So what happens is that you’ve got these incredibly wide streets with no porches on houses or very little porches because they don’t make sense because you’re cutting into it.

So what we did is we took a look at these developments to see how they might start to work as a block. This one being a 220 by 600, which is pretty close to a traditional mix of kind of a Charles Town block to a near traditional or traditional neighborhood. And then when you start to see whether you move the house close to the street, like this, to create some real sidewalks, bring some trees in, you can really start to change a place to just being a bunch of houses.

There are also things we’re looking at at some places like in Shepherdstown and in Charles Town, not so much in Charles Town, more in Shepherdstown or in Harper’s Ferry, we have very dense housing where the houses are very close together or they’re like they are townhouses. If townhouses are done well, they can look like this or they can add to a fabric. If they are done poorly you are not going to want them, but no one is going to want them.

So what we’re looking at is how mixing these in with the development and also looking at options of an alley, which we’ll talk about in a minute, can create a street where you have no curb cuts. Whether it’s a housing area or townhousing or whatever, the idea of the curb cut is a big deal. As you know in Charles Town there are a lot of alleys that run through the lots. It really produces a wonderful streetscape instead of a bunch of curb cuts. Something again to think about as you are looking and studying what can happen on these blocks.

The other thing we’re looking at is how things start to develop with special streets, special conditions, what happens with these streets. And then how they start to relate to open space in a series of neighborhoods. I’ve just started giving you a little bit of flavor, studying blocks and the elements of the blocks, whether they are houses or townhouses or whatever.

But let’s talk about streets for a moment. We know that in every community there are a wide range of streets. There is kind of a main street. There are superhighways. There are neighborhood streets. And then also some very narrow streets and a lot of time alleys. What we’re looking at on this particular development is we know that we will probably have as you can see through here we will probably have one major street. What we’re looking at right now is that can take on a couple varieties of approaches. We’ll show you what we’re looking at.

In Alexandria and in Richmond these are cities that have what we call a boulevard approach, with a center median that is fully planted. Now this is in the neighborhood of Del Ray. And this is a wonderful 1920s neighborhood. This is Monument Avenue in downtown Richmond. And they are both the same streets, about 130 feet wide, the right of way, which includes the sidewalks, about 10 feet.

It includes two lanes of parking or two lanes rather of travel, a lane of parking, about a 40-foot park in the center or strip full of trees. Whether it’s a single row or double and the same thing on the other. And they become incredibly wonderful places to not only drive through, but also to live on.

We know the alternative to that, which is a high-speed road. No road that should happen on Hunt Field should be dedicated to the car. It should be community first and a passageway. And even if it’s going to carry more traffic … Monument Avenue in Richmond carries a heck of a lot of traffic, but because of the parked cars, because of the way it’s designed, it slows the traffic down and creates a wonderful street.

This is the alternative. I know which one I would like to have. It’s not this. This is Route 1 in Alexandria. This is the center strip of Monument Avenue. Again, it’s getting down to the details of what we’re talking about, of what a block is, what a street is. How it can be done. Taking it out of the strict highway interpretations and turning it back to community and creating places.

You are going to say why do we want a boulevard here? We don’t have anything like that. Actually, you do. Right out front. There is a boulevard right out here in Ranson. And if anybody … I love maps. And when we come in here I kept looking at this map and seeing this circle and this long what looked like a boulevard. And I said what is that doing in Ranson? And I came up here and it was unbelievable. Right now in Ranson you have a boulevard right here, right in front of us, going up to an amazing circle, right next to a municipal center of the City Hall.

The only difference between what I just showed you in the other communities and here is what’s along that road. Right here you’ve got a gas station and you’ve got a few Gaps and things. But if you were to think about future in-fill of what would be facing on this magnificent road out here, it could be amazing. The fabric and the framework is there. The sophistication of the planning believe it or not is here in Charles Town and Ranson and any other cities, you just again you start to see it when you really investigate.

The other kind of street … we’ve talked about the boulevard which carries more traffic, the next one down would be essentially your main street. Your main street would be a road that would be around one of the squares. It would be running through as a major connector point from the boulevard over to a public open space or something. They are normally about 66 feet from right away from face a building to face a building.

And down here you’ve got this in Charles Town, you’ve got this in Old Town Alexandria. Again, opportunities if you look at the plan in the sense of how you arrange buildings and how you end a visual vista. This is Christ Church. There are wonderful opportunities to make special places, even on a major road.

These are two more main streets. These are wonderful places. They carry a fair amount of traffic. They don’t carry as much as a boulevard. But they are very busy.

The next step down is a residential street. Now obviously the residential as we’re going we’re getting smaller in size, we’re also changing the character a little bit. The residential street you’re going to find more and should be a more tree-lined street. It will have parking. It can have a character such as this in Shepherdstown, which is a wonderful … it’s a little more fuzzy on the edge with the curb. It’s got the trees that are growing out of it. It’s a wonderful street.

This one in Washington has a strict curb. But the feel of these tree-lined streets … someone had to make a conscious decision to plant those trees at 30-feet on center. The key is that you’re not going to see that tree blossom into one of these in two years. But believe it or not if you set out and you create real streets and you plant the trees and you put the sidewalk down and you put the curb down if you want it, you can create an allay of trees, of parked cars. You can have some amazing streets, as long as you make a conscious effort to get down to the level of detail that you see here, because this was not just by happenstance here at Shepherdstown.

Next. Charles Town on the left. Shepherdstown on the right. I mean, this is an amazing sequence of trees. These are not 30 feet on center. But if you notice you see how the houses are all lined up. See how this one does not. The red one does not have a porch. But the one here does. And the next one does. And the next one does, right here. This has a little portico. But the whole idea is that there is a flexibility within the built setback in the front yard that would be something that we would want to get a modification to the zoning on to allow for that to happen.

The problem is with today’s highway construction. The highway engineers try to drive the streets. The zoning rules don’t allow you to do what we all love. We have to try to work with that.

The next road is a little bit more rural. There will be some places in this particular development where you get next to more of either historic resources or more of the edge where roads like these can take place, where the sidewalk is minimal or non-existent and it has more of the country lane.

And the idea is within this piece of property of having a full range of streets and of types of housing and types of blocks so that you are not looking at what you’re seeing out there as subdivisions today. If we can make one point, we are not talking about creating a mega subdivision. What we’re talking about are creating new neighborhoods for Charles Town with its growth boundary so that as things build out over a 20, 30-year period, depending on what fills in, that at the end of that, you have a wonderful fabric that looks like it grew up with the town.

The last element of streets is the alley. This is Shepherdstown, over here. And this is Nantucket. Depending on how you handle the alley, the alley can be a very special place too. Not only does it allow you to have continuous frontage along the street without a bunch of curb cuts or driveways going in. You can do that in some cases. You can do curb cuts in others. But having that variety would be a key element. That would be another thing that we would want to push because if you look at Charles Town, Shepherdstown, Ranson, all the blocks that are the fabric of these cities and town have alleys.

There is a big difference … this is a new development called the Kentlands. You have probably heard of it. And this is a new development in Prince George’s County. I think that it’s pretty obvious to see the difference between the care of this street and that street. And that’s closer to what you’re getting in your subdivisions up here.

So all we’re saying is that if we pay attention to these details, which we do and we will and we are, it’s not what can happen over a 20-year period has to be bad. It can be. We’re just saying that we think it has a real opportunity if we pay attention to details to get back more to our pattern language of the towns.

The facilities we’re talking about also … there has been a discussion about schools, fire, inadequate this or that. Yeah, it’s inadequate right now. But as this is built out, how many of these subdivisions that are coming in right now are going to be building new schools? How many are going to be providing land for fire stations or EMS? What we see as the project comes on and as you look at these things are making these civic elements part of the community.

Right now the beauty of Wright Denny is it’s sitting right in the middle of Charles Town, facing the street, and providing a majestic frontage to Congress. This is an amazing school. It’s beautiful. And I have no idea how wonderful that auditorium was until we were in there. But that is a community resource.

This mix of churches, of civil buildings of government buildings. And this is a firehouse in Chestnut Hills, on the left.

So the last component in looking at an urban design element of what is really wonderful about the towns and the cities is open space. The slide on your right is Maymont Park in Richmond. It’s a wonderful water feature, but it also collects a lot of runoff from that area. You know what you have around here collecting runoff from most of these developments. It doesn’t look like that. Sometimes it’s got a fence around it. Sometimes it’s just rock lined. If we’re sensitive to how we handle our requirements for the Bay we can create water as an element that is a positive element and we can also use it as a recreational element.

The open space that we’re talking about working into this community, and we’ll talk more about it as we get into the plans here in the next meeting, is essentially working with establishing zones that are active recreation areas and some that are passive. But it needs to be a connected open space system. And what I mean by that is you either need to be walking to it or riding a bike. Not that you have to get in your car and drive five minutes to this open space. It’s right there.

The plan that we’re working on and the development we’re going toward and the things and ideas that we’re explaining and discussing with you and getting your feedback on is about the idea of having a park or an element of recreation or passive open space in the center of each one of these neighborhoods, all within a five minute walk of your house. So it’s very, very important because you want to be able to have these elements within your neighborhood for the smaller venues. And on the larger venues you want to have the larger recreational spaces.

So we’re looking at the idea of being able to provide, not the idea, being able to provide soccer and baseball in a regional context on this piece of property so that you don’t have to get in a car and drive five minutes to take your newer families or younger kids or whoever to a soccer game or a baseball game. The more that you can incorporate as a mix in the community so that people can walk to the community, because this is what it’s about. It’s about a walkable compact designed community, just like downtown Charles Town and Ranson. That’s where the strength of all these come together.

Whether it’s a neighborhood park, like this one here in Richmond, or the illustrated one for one for a development in Alexandria at Potomac Yard we’re heading up about two years ago now, it’s critical to have these elements in the center of the development, in each neighborhood.

There is a big difference between the open space that we now see in many subdivisions and the open space that can be sensitively treated or adequately treated, appropriately treated, however you want to put it, by not leaving it just left over. The problem with open space what we’re dealing with many, many times is now the open space is kind of left over space. Open space and true open space that contributes to a community is not left over it’s designed. It’s thought about. Its function is thought about. You can still accomplish what you need to here by doing things like that or creating it with bio-retention, other treatments, which we’ve done in similar developments from our planning aspect. The key is making sure you pay attention to the details.

In final closing here, what our whole effort has been about in these two talks and dialogues, which we will now here from you, is that these are very special places. And the reason they are very special places is because you see the rich mix of housing, of institutional, of churches, of rolling topography and buildings that relate and streets that create real streets and wonderful places to walk. Even in the dead of winter when we were up here a few weeks back, walking in Shepherdstown, it was still great, because you had this amazing street to walk along.

All we’re saying is that we think that we can do better than what we’re seeing in our traditional developments out there of the cul de sacs gobbling up the land approach. We want to create a series of neighborhoods that are an extension of Charles Town. And we see an opportunity within this 20 year build out to provide a framework that shows you what you’re going to get, so there are no surprises and that you can watch it grow but you knew where it was going to go. And that is of a fabric and of a pattern and of a quality that is of Charles Town and the other settlements here so that we don’t forget what 200 plus has taught us.

Right now we’ll go on and we’re going to open it up to a dialogue from you. We’ve shown you some of our thoughts. Heather will be over here writing comments down. We’re going to be bringing microphones around if you can just state your name so we can put it in the transcript as far as who is speaking. And then that will be available in the next … when will that be available? In the next couple of weeks. Ten days. Okay.

So we’ll go around. She’ll be taking the microphone around and we’ll have questions, answers, comments, thoughts, whatever.

Nance Briscoe: Thank you. My name is Nance Brisco. And I live in Cloverdale Heights, opposite the proposed development that Greenvest is going to bring to our community.

Lee Quill: If I can just say this is Hunt Field and Cloverdale sits right here at the end of 340, 340 bypass, just for everybody’s …

Nance Briscoe: Would you permit me to ask two questions. May I ask two questions?

Lee Quill: Certainly.

Nance Briscoe: First I asked Lee and Jim Duszynski a week ago to please bring with them tonight a definition of what is going to affect Cloverdale Heights for public sewer and water? This is critically important to us as an environment in Charles Town and Jefferson County. They have part of the answer tonight. And I hope that they will enlighten us tonight and perhaps at the next meeting.

The second question that I have if I may be so forward I bring this question as a new person to the state of West Virginia. I’ve been here since 1990. I consider myself new, a transplant so to speak. I start out in Los Alamos, New Mexico. This question bothers me a great deal. This question is directed to the developers of Greenvest and including their architects, co-associates and any subcontractors or friends involved with them for the developing activities in the counties and/or state of West Virginia.

Have you donated, generated, allocated funds for any elected official or appointed persons, campaign who may or may not have been elected or appointed or a true volunteer? If you have would you please provide the names, offices, county and or state locations of those who have or are enjoying your financial contributions and support. I have been asked this questions about Greenvest and any associate of theirs several times. I cannot answer this question myself. Only those involved with Greenvest and their associates can do this. I thank you personally for your open response. And please know that your open communications are and will remain the quest of all of us as citizens. Thank you.

Jim Duszynski: Last week or at the last meeting when we spoke you had asked about sewer and water. And as I indicated then we’re in the very early stages. Again, we are in conceptual planning stages. We are not at a point where all the sewer and water extensions, which are contemplated for the project, have been final engineered. And, in fact, haven’t really even been conceptually engineered for the entire project.

But what I understood to be your concern was that if water and/or sewer were extended further down in front of your community, there’s a concern on your part and perhaps other people in the community that you would then be required to hook up. I have not been able to find out and not because they haven’t answered me, but because I haven’t asked the question of the PSD what their policies are regarding sewer and water extensions that pass in front of existing communities. I’ve read a lot of the e-mails that are out there on the open Jefferson and the Listener group and people’s concerns about whether or not they are going to have to hook up to public sewer and water. And I don’t have my arms around that issue, but it’s clearly one that we want to get involved with. And we have no desire to create a situation that forces any community to hook to public sewer and water.

Because of your proximity just to give you a quick understanding and I can point this out to you later, the water main extensions that are contemplated from the city of Charles Town will most likely come down old 340 into Huntfield this way won’t be coming up the 340 bypass or down the 340 bypass, near the frontage of Cloverdale Heights. So I don’t see any scenario where Hunt Field’s water main extensions would pass along the front of Cloverdale. So I don’t think that’s a concern.

As far as sewer and water goes, the majority of sewer drains down through to this low point where the little stream and the low point in old 340 is, just beyond the driveway to Page Jackson. I am sure that most of you are familiar with. What’s contemplated for the design there is that there will be a pump station at that location, which will send the sewage up the hill to a point where it will gravity flow down to the city’s waste water treatment plant.

In that case again, sewer facilities don’t extend anywhere near Cloverdale Heights. So I don’t anticipate a situation where Hunt Field public sewer and water extensions will be anywhere in the immediate vicinity of your project. And, again, we’ll continue to talk with the PSD and try to get a little better understanding of that issue.

The second question about political contributions. The answer is none. We’ve given no money to any planning commissions, county commissioners, state senators, representatives, etc., etc., etc. We attended a luncheon last year for the Citizen’s Fire Department fundraising. I think we gave $500. We’ve paid for tonight’s facilities and refreshments, around $700.

And I’ve given about $700 to Claymont, to the Walker Foundation for the restoration of a chimney on the old caretaker’s cottage, which actually sits on our property. And we’ve talked about that one day that will become part of the Claymont complex. And they’ve come to us and said, can you help us out, let’s get the chimney fixed.

Other than that I can’t think of any other checks that we’ve written here in Charles Town. So no political contributions have been made. And we’ll be happy to keep an open book on that.

Lee Quill: That’s also true from us. We’re engaged in this community. We love it up here. But we have not spent any money on any elected officials’ campaign or anything. Our focus is on the plan and trying to make the best plan that we can for this area.

Jack Snyder: Jack Snyder from Shepherdstown. I wanted to comment. I like what I’m seeing here. I think your head is in the right place in terms of the development approach you’re taking and your idea of approaching the details very carefully and very thoughtfully in terms of history I think makes perfect sense. And I am entirely in support of that.

One thing that I am concerned about is this particular piece of property, this 1,000 acres that you’re proposing to develop has some very strong historical associations which are enormously important I think not only to this area, but I think the case could be made that they have a wider importance in some sort of minor key national sense. And that is that for one thing not just the Claymont next door but on the thousand acres you have there are some Washington family homes.

And also on a hill there is a substantial well, which I think is now surrounded by trees which was dug by the two regiments of Irish troops that General Braddock brought through in the French and Indian War. It was actually after the battle in Pennsylvania that they were coming back. They were digging that well on that property and at that time I believe the property was owned by Lawrence Washington, George’s brother.

So I’m concerned about that and I’m concerned about what plans you might have or hopes you might have to interpret that, perhaps create some sort of museum or some sort of interpretative outreach, which would not only serve as an historic resource for the community you’re building but also from a part of the fabric of historic interpretation, you might say for this whole area and this whole community. That’s a key element issue. Another one tourism which is a very important economic factor in this county. So if you can respond to that, I would appreciate it.

Jim Duszynski: Sure. Let me respond first. When Cunningham Quill got involved with the project last fall and we made our first site visit. I obviously had been here many times before. But we made our first site visit to Hunt Field and they wanted to get an idea of the lay of the land. The first place we went, the first stop we made was to Claymont so that they could understand through really Kevin Walker’s interpretation of the history of the Claymont property, the adjacent Washington family homesites on Prospect Hills, as it was known then and I think as we’re going to adopt that name for our proposed community.

Again, the first place we went was to Claymont. So that contextually I wanted Lee and the team to focus on the importance of the historic aspects and the historic resources in the community. My first visit to Claymont I will never forget. And it continues to really sort of inspire me today.

We are also aware of the Braddock House and the Braddock well. And it’s our intention that the historic sites for the Washington family home sites, the slave cemeteries that we’ve been told about, other Washington family sites that are particularly just east of the Claymont property will be fully preserved. Also the Braddock House and the Braddock well will be preserved.

One of the things that Keven Walker again … I don’t think Keven is here tonight. One of the things that Keven has emphasized to me time and time again and we’ve spent a lot of time together over the last year is his idea as you suggest that an interpretive educational aspect to these resources is a very important one. And Keven and I have talked many times together and intend to move forward with the idea that the historic resources on the Hunt Field property can provide a tool, a learning tool. That students and professionals as well can come out and do the interpretation, do the identification, do the basic delineation that’s so important before we plan our community.

So I really think that we’re very aware of the issues that you’ve raised. I don’t know is Jim Surkamp here tonight? Jim anywhere in the room? Jim certainly has raised those issues with us in the last couple of months with the studies that he’s done and the reports that he’s done, most of which we were aware of. But we’ll also add those to our files and our documentation along these lines. As I said earlier we’ve got our team historian/archeologist here from Greenhorne & O’Mara. She’ll play an integral part in the continue work that we’ll do on Hunt Field.

Lee Quill: I’ll just add thank you for your comments. Because as I said coming from Alexandria, the Washington family holds a very special place in our world and in our work. If you come up after we’re talking, the boards are coming down. These four boards kind of talk about a number of issues we’re looking at. As you know there is a wonderful axial relationship. They are across from each other Blakely and Claymont.

And that type of relationship we’re looking at trying to establish with visual connections. If you look at this diagram right here there is Claymont and we’re looking at trying to put a significant building at the end of a green here. So that we start to set up a relationship between Claymont and the new development. Again, instead of the Weber and a deck, let’s make sure that the views are right. And then of course the view back to Blakely.

There are other things that you can pick up from these wonderful pieces of property too. And one of them is this little house. Now if you look at Claymont there are two outbuildings, there’s a garden, and then there’s the main manor house. And it’s an amazing place. But this little building right here if you look at the end down there you will see some historic precedent in the color boards, second one in from the end, on the top, that house is dimension 30-foot by 30-foot, two floors.

And if you go in most of the older neighborhoods, like where I live or Chris lives or my partner Ralph Cunningham in Washington, our houses are all in that 25 to 30-foot dimension. We’re on a 50-foot lot, normally, 50 or 60 by 100. And if you could think about some of the homes in this development, learning and being that prototype. Things like that, you can bring these elements to the development so that you make a difference, so it doesn’t look like you’re just lifting it. But if we forget the lessons even on little outbuildings, we’ve kind of missed something. Again, we just try to peel back the layers and learn from everything. So anybody who has continued information on this piece of property from an historic nature, please get together with our consultant and get together with us, because we see it as a weaving of the two together. And thank you for your comments.

Audience Member: Do you anticipate having to expand the Charles Town sewer treatment plant? And when?

Jim Duszynski: It’s my understanding from my conversations with the city that the current excess capacity of the plant is roughly 2,000 units. Last year when we came in with our CIS, the plant was experiencing at that time some quality problems that it was under violation for from the Department of Environmental Protection. That project I think is well underway, if it is not completed. And most of you have probably seen the activity down along Route 9.

Is it unusual for a municipal sewage treatment plant to have that kind of excess capacity. The reason that it’s got that kind of excess capacity is because that plant was designed with the service of Hunt Field in mind. Again, as Lee mentioned earlier you know about the CIA, the potential siting to the CIA ten years ago. Mr. Yonkers owned the property for along time, proposing thousands of units to be built on Huntfield. And here we are today proposing thousands of units again.

Clearly, if there are 2,000 units of excess capacity today and there is so much growth on an annual basis, Huntfield being part of that, then at some time in the future an expansion will be necessary to accommodate continued growth. And that would include part of the Hunt Field property.

So, yes, at some point I would say maybe ten years out would be my guess. Current building permit activity in the county is roughly 400 a year. So, again, my mathematical calculator is falling apart on me. But you would see a time at some point in the future where in fact expansion would be required before the end of the Huntfield project.

Actually, if you would like to keep your hand up until you get a mic, then we can sort of keep things moving along a little better so that Kathy and … yes, ma’am, go ahead.

Dot Osterman: At the courthouse you had a diagram of the proposed types of housing with the projected time frame for their construction. Is that available at all to us?

Jim Duszynski: Is this from last year?

Dot Osterman: At the court zoning meeting.

Jim Duszynski: So that was the previous stuff.

Dot Osterman: Right. You had for instance on Route 13 that would be maybe 18 years from now and it would be single family housing and it showed where the townhouses, apartments would be.

Lee Quill: Could I just make a comment on this?

Jim Duszynski: Yes.

Lee Quill: What you saw last year, last spring, in the courthouse, forget it. It’s not there anymore. Hopefully what you’ve seen is this is where …

Dot Osterman: That doesn’t show the individual types of housing at all. Is there anything available?

Lee Quill: It’s coming. What we’re trying to do is instead of just plopping down a plan in front of you and saying well, what do you think? We’re trying to have this dialogue where you can inform us about what you think is good, what you think we may need to take a look at a little bit more. And what we’re talking to you about is an investigation of an area and about how blocks might start to be formed. And that’s what these diagrams show about the plots and then these are some of the blocks how they could come together.

And what we’ll start to bring back to you are, after we continue to look, are diagrams such as this one. Here’s a portion of it, of how it might be realized, where you would have single families, you would have some 110-foot lots, on the end with some larger houses could go. These could be 80. If we could get it subdivided even more to get a variety we would do that. And the idea of the block structure being very similar to Charles Town and Ranson. Along the boulevard, which would be a connector road, which we’ve talked about going through here. Again, we could have either a linear type of townhouses or more of a Shepherdstown street where it’s densely packed or it could be some larger houses. We’re looking at that. We’d like to hear what your thoughts are on that.

As we evolve the plan, we’ll evolve it with you so you’re not sitting there saying oh, man, I’ve got to react to 3,000 homes or 2,000 or whatever units at a particular time. It’s an evolution and a plan is evolving so we want to hear from you. But we’re showing you the thought process we’re going through and you’re bringing to us your information so we can make it much richer.

But as we keep going we’ll be bringing more to you so that you can see what the framework is. This is starting to be the framework right here, with these elements, and with the potential for a first neighborhood as you come in here, with part of a boulevard, a school site, an interaction maybe with the lake. A major boulevard here and neighborhood streets. So we’re trying to put down what we’ve been talking to you about, listening, etc.

Jim Duszynski: The document that I think you’re referring to was our original submittal with the original community impact statement, which basically is what’s called a bubble plan. And it showed, for instance, that single families were in this area, that we had some multi-families here, we had some townhouses here. And it was a yellow and a brown and a pink. And I think that’s what you’re referring to. It also had a project schedule, which is part of the CIS submittal, part of the requirements of the ordinance.

We will be submitting, resubmitting our CIS in mid-April. And conceptually Lee is referring to a more detailed plan, but conceptually we will be supplying with that submittal, and we don’t have it today, a new revised land plan which will as Lee said reflect really today what’s our vision for the project. And instead of showing single families here, townhouses here, as Lee said and pointed out here, we now have the idea that it would be nice to mix in some townhouses with some single families and that is allowed under the current zoning ordinance.

So we’ve got to in the next several weeks put together a conceptual plan for that CIS submittal. It will have with it a new phasing schedule. I don’t ever really recall submitting a document that showed when various phases would be built, but I can tell you that our general concept for how the project will be built remains pretty much the same. And that is is that in the first years the project will enter off of old 340, near the intersection with the 340 bypass, and it will effectively over the years build in a westerly direction. At some point building a bridge over the existing freight line to connect a road all the way out to Locust Hill. But I think that at this point, at least conceptually, our thought is that the westernmost end of the project gets built last.

But once we make that CIS submittal and we have our next meeting, subsequent to that, we will make copies of that available for everybody that comes. And it’s also public record at that time, so you can get it at the Planning Commission. But we will have it available at our next public meeting.

Lee Quill: One of the things to keep in mind is that we see in some developments again that get people’s concerns up is you see the little pods … it’s kind of like townhouses are over here, single families are over here, the clump of apartments over here. And that’s not how Charles Town, Ranson, Shepherdstown, other cities such as Leesburg or Alexandria … the neighborhoods, you mix them together in an appropriate way.

So what we’re trying to do is again go back to the precedent that’s here. We have 200 years of development that has a variety of housing types and placement of civic structures, etc. We’re drawing from that to help create that fabric here. So if we’re looking at this development as this area fills out … and this is Hunt Field right here and the growth boundary area, right on the edge, rural beyond that. Claymont sits right here.

As this fills in, say in another 100 or so years, the trees have got that huge size by then. There is a patina of a little bit of age. At the neighborhoods there people are looking back on them as wonderful neighborhoods, instead of oh, yeah, that’s where the old city was and here’s where the new sprawl was. We don’t want that. We want to make sure that fits much better together.

Kathy Holmes: Ladies and gentlemen I would just like to make a suggestion so that we can make this microphone distribution process go a little more smoothly. As Jim suggested Denise is working that half, I’m working this half of the room. What I would like to have happen is that after each question if each of you that have a question raise your hand. In this instance I’m going to hand the microphone to this gentleman. If hands can go up so that Denise can identify someone and have the microphone in their hand as soon as his question is asked and answered then we can get the next questioner going and we’ll try to make that go a little bit more smoothly for us.

Jim Duszynski: Thanks, Kathy.

Tyler Mayhew: Hi, my name is Tyler Mayhew. And I’m currently a student at Jefferson High School. And I have two questions of concern. My first is what impact your community will have at any point in time after its completion on the current school system. How many students you’re expecting will be entering in any given year? And how many will be currently in this system when everything is completed?

And my second question is exactly what you plan to do to aid our current situation. As a student at Jefferson I can attest to the fact that we are barely able to support the number of students that we have now. And as also a person that attended Charles Town Junior High, which I’m assuming, is where the students from Huntfield will eventually find their way to, that school also is having some population problems.

Jim Duszynski: Certainly. Let me speak to that. Over the last year I’ve had a number of meetings with Dave Markoe, a couple of different members of the school board and other people in the school administration to try to address this exact issue. I actually met with them this afternoon, since I was up here this evening it seemed appropriate. Unfortunately, at least in my opinion, Mr. Markoe is leaving and we’ll be dealing with a new school superintendent who hopefully will be as good to work with, but from perspective, again, as Dave has been.

The first thing that we’re doing is we are contributing or intend to contribute 75 acres to the school board for school construction. The value of this land was finished with roads, utilities, wetland permitting, wetland mitigation, storm water management, site preparation that we’ve talked about with the school board is probably getting close to $3 million. Significant contribution.

But I don’t want to sound like I’m doing something well above and beyond. Because when you’re in Northern Virginia or you’re in Maryland these are requirements of large planned communities. So we came to Jefferson County with the understanding that this would be required. When we first asked about the Huntfield property, when we first approached F&M Bank about the sale of the property, they told us if you buy this property you will give 50-acres to the school board, it’s already been decided previously. When we met with the school board they said make it 75. And we said okay.

Unfortunately, I think for the students and for others in the county, the school construction bond was defeated last Fall. And clearly that would have been one answer to part of the issues that you are dealing with in terms of over capacity schools. Again, the cost of a high school is roughly $39 million. I understand that the high school is not the only school dealing with capacity issues, but that really all the schools in Jefferson County currently are.

And, again, growth has occurred over the last ten years and we’ll continue to grow over the next ten years. So it’s a situation that everybody here, ourselves included, needs to deal with. From our perspective you need to have good schools, good education, reasonable classroom sizes to attract people to move into an area. So from a businessman’s perspective it’s very important to us to do what we can to work with the County, work with the community to try to resolve this problem. There are no easy answers. I spent an hour and a half with Dave and with Nancy White who is the school board’s treasurer today. And we talked about a lot different things.

I’ll jump back for a minute. Over the last year I’ve done a lot of spreadsheets, which based on different periods of absorption annually, 100 houses a year, 120 houses a year, 80 houses a year, using student generation numbers that the school board uses. For a single family home, for instance, and I just remember this because I was there today, .27 elementary school students per single family house. .12 middle school students per single family house. .11 high school students per single-family house. Different ratios for the townhouses, different ratios for the multi families. These are the numbers that the county has given us to use.

So we’ve looked at that and we’ve tried to ascertain, depending on the number of houses that you sell in a year what then is the number annually that goes into the school system as well as cumulatively that goes into the school system? And we’ve created some spreadsheets. I don’t think they’re accurate at this point.

One of the things … some of the information I received today was statistics on the length of time elementary school students are in an elementary school. It’s not necessarily six years. They are not in there from kindergarten through fifth grade, or first through six grade. Same with middle school. Same with high school. There’s attrition, there’s kids leaving the county, kids coming into the county. So we’ve got some work to do to really nail it down. But we’re making progress in that way.

The last thing that we’re doing is that we’re offering to pay an impact fee. And that impact fee, part of it probably goes towards police and emergency services and perhaps some other services, but the bulk of it seems to want to go towards education. And certainly our experience in Maryland and in Northern Virginia is that that’s where the majority of an impact fee is allocated is towards education, specifically towards capital improvements - the building of new schools.

So, again, understanding what the costs are, what the numbers of students generated are, is all part of figuring that out. But we’re in that process. We’re committed to that process. And we’re offering to pay that impact fee even if the local powers act isn’t resolved, even if Jefferson County isn’t in a position to require impact fees to be paid. Once we come up with a number then we’ve got to figure out who to write the check to and how it gets allocated and so on and so forth. But, again, we’re committed to doing our part. Does that answer your question?

Lee Quill: The only other thing that I would like to add if I could, is that subdivisions that you see going in today are not putting schools as part of … school land and schools as part of their design or infrastructure. They are not putting in for the most part large regional recreational facilities.

And what we’ve been hearing over the months as we’ve been talking to people up here and in these meetings, prior and last time, is how important that is. And that is the other benefit that I’m asking you to look at this in a little bit different light is because this is a larger project, and again it’s a 20-year period, we can plan these elements. This developer has the capacity to put the infrastructure in, to put the schools there, to put the recreational fields and the neighborhood parks, the things that you don’t get in a traditional subdivision.

Again, the Wright Denny scenario of being right in the town, as part of the community, where the kids can walk to school instead of being bused to another facility, is really what establishing a neighborhood and community school is about. There will still be people that come in from other places. But we are very excited about these opportunities to present themselves.

One of them that we’re looking at that we would you to think about is that we have an opportunity to establish a disconnector through here from the lake down to here, and establishing on this intersection … this is 340 bypass, old 340.

Jim Duszynski: I don’t think most people can see that Lee.

Lee Quill: Let me hold this up. In this particular area when you come up, at this juncture down in here, an area that can have either a recreation center or a school and then recreational fields, directly located next to an access point off of 340. What this does is provides part of the interaction with the community, the neighborhoods that would be part of this area, but it also puts it close to other people.

So this is something that is very, very important to this plan because it provides that mix of uses, the mix of institutional infrastructure that is really what the older pattern of development in each of the communities that we call special today is all about. That’s what has to happen here.

Jim Duszynski: I would just also add real quickly, as Lee pointed, and you will be able to see after the meeting when you come up and look at it, once we designate where the school sites are going to be the ancillary ball field, soccer fields, football fields, softball, baseball field, whatever it is that goes with that facility, we at least want to build the first of those fields, hopefully three or four fields, one of each kind or something, in the first phase of this project.

We’ve had a lot of people come to us. We’ve met with the Parks and Rec Commission. We’ve met with Mr. McVicar who is involved with one of the soccer leagues. We met … I forget her name … a woman at the Charles Town Town Council the other night. People are really crying out for ball fields, for places for kids to play. And real ball fields. Many of them have said what we basically do is set up a couple goals out in a fairly flat field and that’s a ball field.

So that’s something that we’re committed to is creating that really regional facility early in the project. Sir?

Richard Bell: I’d like to ask you a question about your plans for the water supply. Last year you stated that at least in the initial phases of the development that water would be supplied by wells. I’d like to know do you plan, or have you already reviewed hydrological survey data, or plan to do drawdown recharge studies so that you can assure neighboring landowners that the water level in their private wells won’t be adversely affected.

Jim Duszynski: Yes. Absolutely. There are two existing wells on the property, which were drilled I want to say about five years ago by F&M Bank with Snyder Utilities. And I can’t really speak to the tests that were done at that time. But we’ve been informed and in working with the City of Charles Town and their engineers, all indications are that those two existing wells would be used. But clearly prior to doing that you need to do a pumpdown, you need to do a recharge test, you need to monitor the neighbor’s wells to make sure that when you’re pumping at peak capacity they don’t lose all their water pressure. But that’s fairly typical.

We’ve got a number of communities in Northern Virginia where we’re doing exactly the type of hydrologic testing and reporting that you’re referring to. And so it’s something that we’re pretty familiar with.

In the initial phases of the project the city is still contemplating using those wells for the first 3 - 400 units, something like that, and then a water main extension from the city’s water treatment plant would be extended. Those wells would be capped and abandoned at that time. But that’s the current plan. And again the due diligence needs to occur.

Fred Wells: My name is Fred Wells. My question has to do with how well you’re going to inform potential buyers of the pesticide problems and the removal of soil and putting it on railroad tracks. Are they going to be fully informed of the problems that this was an orchard at one time?

And the second part of my question is what long run mechanism does Greenvest envision if there are health problems or other problems? Or is Greenvest a simple project and as soon as they sell the lots they end, there is no longer a Greenvest? Or is there a longer-term commitment if health problems do develop in 40 or more years?

Jim Duszynski: Sure. Let me address that. Over the last year and really going back to the initial CIS, and I see Mr. Lateral in the audience. Mr. Latterell brought to our attention the prior use of arsenic on the property and the existence of high levels of arsenic on the property.

Since then we’ve done extensive testing. Some, I want to say 600 samples have been taken. We’ve been working with the Department of Environmental Protection. And we’ve identified roughly one and a half, 1.6 percent of the total property on 1,000 acres, about 16 acres, of the property that will require remediation.

Just by way of background, lead arsenic was a pesticide that was used in the 40s. When we became aware that that was problematic we came up with a better solution and that was DDT. So I don’t know how much progress we’ve really made over the years. Clearly we don’t use DDT anymore. But it may be that in years to come we’ll find that the current approved pesticides are as problematic as the ones that we’ve used in the past.

At any rate, the arsenic is a heavy metal. It is a potential carcinogen. The pathway of transmission which is what health department officials look at, what environmental officials look at, is how is it that somebody would get this arsenic in their system? And the way that somebody would get the arsenic in their system is by eating the dirt. The greatest concern, and that may sound a little farfetched, but the greatest concern is in a residential neighborhood small kids. I’ve got two and three year old boys. I can’t take them in the yard without them having dirt all over their faces when they’re done. So I have first-hand experience of the transmission pathway issue.

We have again been doing extensive sampling. We have identified and delineated specific areas, down to literally 50-foot increments, horizontally. The arsenic rests within the top two feet. We’ve taken tests at 12-inches and at 24-inches. And there are no high levels at 24-inches. So we’ve been able to pretty well delineate areas 12-inches deep where we’ve got these higher levels.

And those areas two-feet deep shall be removed. It’s about 50,000-cubic yards of dirt, which may not make any difference to most of you in the audience. But it’s a fairly significant amount of dirt, which we would remove, put in basically berms.

We had always contemplated initially that along the railroad tracks, and I don’t know if we have the board up. It doesn’t look like we do. But along the railroad tracks here, we always anticipated that some significant buffer, and we looked at a 200-foot, both sides of the railroad track would not be an area that we would develop. In fact, early in the project we would probably look at trying to plant some pine seedlings and things like that so that over years you would create a green buffer that would also help to mitigate noise.

We are proposing that in that area we would lay those soils with the higher elevations of arsenic in that 200-foot buffer and then cap them with clean dirt, or clean topsoil, approximately 12-inches. That is the standard in the industry for remediation, mitigation of arsenic. It’s the one that the West Virginia DEP has agreed to with us in terms of how we are going to take care of this situation. And at the end of the process we’ll have effectively a clearance from DEP that says there is no potential health risk related to the occupation of the property.

I can’t really respond to what happens 40 years out. We don’t anticipate it. We’ve worked closely with DEP, all of the environmental specialists that are involved at our end and at their end who say this takes care of the problem. Again, we can do the best job that we can do. This is a long-term project. One that we will be involved with for 20 years at least. And, again, I don’t really know how to address what might happen 40 years out or longer.

There will be full disclosure. There is no doubt that in the homeowner’s association documents and sales documents for all of our communities here and in other places you have what’s called a disclosure package. It will talk about the previous use of the property as an apple orchard.

Again, this is not atypical for Jefferson County or any of the Shenandoah Valley. I don’t know of any other developer who is doing what we’re doing to ensure the safety of the community.

Joe Coakley: I have a question about your Cameron development. I understand that there was a high degree of controversy surrounding that.

Jim Duszynski: Everywhere I go, Joe.

Joe Coakley: No doubt about it. But I understand according to a lot of the neighbors that you were less than considerate to put it mildly with your changes that you made in that project without.

Jim Duszynski: I think what you may be referring to is the commercial condominium association, office condominiums, small shops that abutted part of Cameron Station. When we were under construction, this is long after the plans were revised and approved and we were actually building, they became concerned that what they thought they were going to get wasn’t what they saw us building.

So we went through a process, and it ended up in the press, and we were effectively I’ll say accused of having occupied homes without occupancy permits, of having made changes without notification, etc., etc., etc.

All I can tell you is that all the notifications that were required to be made were made. These residents felt they hadn’t gotten their notifications. But when we went back and looked at the city records, in fact those notifications had been made. There seems to have been some confusion as to whether as a condominium association, the president of the association was the party to be notified or whether each individual was to be notified. But what was at the end of the day shown is that we followed the required guidelines. So there was confusion. There was miscommunication. But we did nothing wrong.

Again, my understanding is that once we get the CIS approved and we have this concept plan as I referred to earlier when I was talking to Dot, that we then go through a preliminary plat process with the Planning Commission, with planning staff first. And then once planning staff recommends that for approval then we got to go to the Planning Commission for each final plat.

Similar to our original submission with the CIS, I expect that we will submit roughly 100 lots per year, probably two sets of preliminary plats and final plats. And that each year as we go through that process, if we want to make changes that don’t conform to our approved CIS, we then have to revise the CIS.

So, again, I believe that there is a process in place. And as long as people are involved and as long as people are paying attention and looking at what’s being proposed, and I’ve learned over the year there is a very active group here that’s watching everything that goes on, I don’t think that there is going to be any problems or any miscommunications. I’m pretty confident of that.

And I’ll just add to that that over a 20-year project like this, there will probably be changes from our original concept. But full open book. I’m hoping that with our last meeting, the meeting tonight and other meetings, the provision of transcripts. And by the way, I know that the transcript from the last meeting is now on a website. Whoever did that we would be happy to provide an e-file so that they don’t have to scan 96 pages. Yes, Nance, contact me, we will give you an e-file and you can get that on.

But, again, an open book. Joe. I really want to emphasize. You are going to be here a long time. We need to have that relationship with this community.

Joe Coakley: Is there any possibility your build out will be accelerated down the road?

Jim Duszynski: The question was will the build out be accelerated down the road? Okay.

Jim Duszynski: When we look at a 20-year project and we provide an absorption schedule as we will and as we did with the original CIS, it’s a bit of a crystal ball, quite honestly. We look at to be economically viable, to fit within the current demographics and growth pattern of the jurisdiction that we’re in. Where do we think we fit? And that’s what the schedule that we propose reflects, that we proposed a year ago. And again it will basically reflect that understanding when we submit it in the next few weeks.

Over the 20-year period we anticipate that there will be what I’ll call boon years, where in fact we may beat the absorptions that we anticipated. We also expect to see a couple of recessions. I think that over the last 20 years, if that’s any indication of the economic cycle, the housing market, we’ll see some years when we beat our projections. There will be years when we don’t even get close to our projections.

And so it’s really an average over time. But my experience is that these projects take every bit as long, if not longer than we anticipate them to take.

Jim Duszynski: But the key element on this again is establishing the framework and the understanding of what you’re getting. That’s why we’re talking to you about all these things. So that it’s there and as it comes. If it slows down a little bit you still know what you’re going to get, even though it might take a little bit longer. Yes, sir?

Jack Snyder: I’m Jack Snyder from Shepherdstown, again. I know there are many people in this room, and I’m sure many people out in the community at-large that are concerned about impact of your development proposal on the roads and the general traffic problems in the county. This is an issue that comes up constantly, over and over and over again as you very well know.

And in line with that I’m interested to know what your plans and your thinking are in terms or providing business areas, walkable business services within your planned development. And what types of businesses you’re hoping to attract? The kinds of services you hope to provide for the community?

And I’m also interested in knowing what your thoughts are in terms of being able to provide long-term employment within the context of your overall community. Not just in terms of retail clerk jobs and simple things like that, but also perhaps a little bit more substantial employment so that among other things there will be a lessened impact of people getting into cars and driving all over the local road network. They can get the services they need, they can have the employment they need close to home, so to speak. If you could discuss that issue.

Lee Quill: If I could take a stab at that. What’s very important is whatever happens at this piece of property with regards to retail or office, that is not competing with downtown Charles Town and contributing to a decline, we want to reinforce downtown.

So in looking at that, what’s been wonderful in this dialogue is that there’s been a lot of good dialogue that started weeks and weeks ago, was reinforced in our meeting about what about this community, what will we be providing? And we’re actually talking with people up here in economic development scenarios and in Washington about what is the nature of the types of retail and the types of office or whatever type jobs in industry or whatever, may be appropriate here that can have people walk to it within their community or whatever?

The live/work scenario and the job scenario, what can this development help, how can it help that scenario, we’re spending a lot more time because of the good dialogue that we’re having up here. I think in our next meeting we will be able to address that more succinctly.

Let it just be said that these neighborhoods and the commercial components of them are meant to be walkable. We’re talking about during this build out in being able to have the corner store. If you go into … I’ll use Alexandria because without our Georgetown or others, there are still in places like that vestiges of a small cornerstore and maybe a drycleaners or something that you can walk to. It’s a small market. It’s not your Food Lion. It’s not your big component. We’re talking about smaller scale stuff. We’re not talking about putting in Wal-Marts in the corner or something. We’re talking about smaller things.

But we’re also looking at opportunities for the work balance to see what more we can do from that perspective to balance it out. And we’ll have a better handle on that I think next time.

Jim Duszynski: Maybe I can add to that, Jack, we’ve had several inquires from Jane Peters at the Economic Development Authority and we would welcome a large employer assuming that whatever the programming for that employer was would fit into the sort of residential context of the community that we have planned. The current zoning for Prospect Hill or Hunt Field project is that the front or eastern half of the railroad tracks, between old 340 and the railroad is residential growth, light industrial.

So the potential under the existing zoning without any variances, at least to the zoning category is that in the front half, which is roughly 500-acres both sides, that we could have a significant employment center there. The question is who are they? Where are they? When are they coming?

But, again, I think we can even look at it and set aside, and we’re trying to sort of get a sense from the Economic Development Authority even if they don’t have somebody ready to move in today or next year or five years, who are the kind of employers that are coming to them. So if we understand that they look for a 20-acre site for some low rise office or 100-acre for a research and development type campus, we could set aside that piece of ground and maybe in this corner here or whatever and basically earmark it for some sort of employment center. So I’ll just add that to Lee’s comments.

Lee Quill: We just have to make sure it’s not going like this with the plan. It has to blend. I mean, that’s what’s beautiful about the towns. Again, as long as it’s within that context, it’s open a lot.

Kathy Holmes: Ladies and gentlemen, may I get a show of hands, again, so I can get the mic to the next questioner to follow the lady in lavender? Okay … please.

Marian Buckner: And I have two fast questions. One is how many schools by build out? And secondly my experience having lived in something like this it has its attractive features, but it also is a magnet for sprawl. And our county cannot handle … I am sure that they will not do anything to prevent the big boxes, the copycat developers that want to use your amenities. So I just want to make that observation.

Lee Quill: You’re saying that this development because people are coming could be a magnet?

Marian Buckner: No, I’m saying your existence of an attractive development of this type. A community of 10,000 people would be very attractive to big boxes, Wal-Mart and all that. And I’m saying that it will be attractive to copycat developers who want to use your amenities. So that means a lot of sprawl that you’ll be attracting. Our county does not do … we don’t turn down things like that. So my guess is that this will be a very attractive community with a lot of sprawl around it.

Lee Quill: Let me comment on that because that’s a very good component. We’re talking about a major piece of property. But it’s not all that’s left in the growth boundary. We’re talking about in this particular area, this piece right here.

Now is it a magnet for sprawl? Is it a guiding for showing what can be done differently? Part of when we get involved in communities is that we don’t focus just as you can see just on that piece of property. What we try to do is be engaged and help in a process and a dialogue. I think one thing that if we have been able to succeed in, we’ve succeeded in many, but one I think that we’ve been able to do is heighten the level of understanding about some of the issues and a dialogue. There’s been a tremendous amount of dialogue up here.

And it’s been focused on more about the plan and what’s happening with growth and what happens about sprawl. You’re at a crossroads right now. And, yes, there is the danger that there could be a magnet for sprawl. But whether this is a good project or it’s a sprawl project, is determined by who does it. What we can help is give your elected officials, people like all of you a continued dialogue. We don’t go away. This is the beginning of a process of working together. We can help bring our experiences and the people that we work, their experiences, to help share in how other people have solved problems.

Really what we’re talking about here is how we solve a problem of growth. Which I said is across the country. It’s not just this county. The key is what are the tools that other people are doing, are using, and how are they doing it? What we would hope, when you said copycat, what I would hope is that this development would be copied. But it would be copied in a sense of here’s the right thing to do versus the wrong thing to do.

We can also then talk and bring our experiences with how do you start to deal with the properties around it? One is hold firm on your growth boundary. Treat the edge as the edge. Focus the majority, if not all, of the growth within the boundary. And then focus on the quality. If you all have tools and you say well remember I went to that meeting at Hunt Field last Spring or last year and they talked about doing something a little bit better than what you’re seeing, you all are engaged in this community, why stop just here?

This should be the beginning for bringing dialogue to every development that happens in this community to demand a higher quality of development, a more sensitive approach to that, what’s appropriate, what have they learned. So that you raise the bar. That’s how everybody … it’s all of us working together. It’s not just one person going out there. It’s all of us working together to focus and raise the bar and get the dialogue going to demand the good quality development.

Again, remember what I said, even if you focus it within that particular growth boundary, you can still have a gazillion Wal-Marts and a gazillion sprawl developments within if you’ve accomplished half, but not total. And even Portland is dealing with this.

So, again, it’s quality, getting down to the houses, the streets, the patterns, all this. Hopefully what we’re doing by having these meetings and these open dialogues and you sharing with us your concerns … we start to raise the dialogue so that things just don’t happen. That you’re engaged. You’re finding out what’s going on, and you’re shaping it and saying, look this is important. And that’s how you stop it. If they think they are just going to get through, then they’ll do it. But if it’s a resistance and they’re not committed to doing the right thing, then it may go somewhere else. Which you probably wouldn’t mind. We engage on this.

Jim Duszynski: Let me just add to the subject that Lee’s addressing and then I’ll speak to the schools. One of the points that I brought up when I was finishing my introduction was that maybe think about how a community can address the concerns of the county in a planning context. And I think this is what you’re speaking to is that okay, Huntfield might be doing that, maybe partially, maybe very well, maybe poorly, and I don’t believe for a minute that what we’re proposing is everybody’s cup of tea. But we think that we’re doing a good job to address those kinds of issues.

As Lee said hopefully if it is the right thing, if it is a better alternative, then it will start to set a standard. And it will be something that as you’re going through the comprehensive plan revisions and subsequent zoning ordinance revisions, which really go hand in hand, that you can start to look at what are the kinds of things we like, what are the patterns of development that we want, and hopefully start to avoid the concerns that you have that okay, you’ve got a nice project here, but look at all the stuff that got built around it.

Again, that’s something that you as residents of the community, future residents of Huntfield and the Planning Commission on the County Commission need to be addressing today in moving forward. Ideally we’d like to think that we’re sort of setting a new standard or a new bar with some of the smart growth principles that we’re talking about.

I was project manager for the Kentlands in Gaithersburg for five years, basically built that project start to finish. And I really believe sitting here looking at what we’re proposing today that like the Kentlands, which really has received national recognition, that this project can be a standard, not only for Jefferson County but for the state, and we’ll probably receive national attention. I really do believe that. And, again, coming from my experience at the Kentsland, I think I know what I’m talking about.

On schools, as I mentioned earlier when the young man asked me, we’re working on student generation numbers. But generally speaking you continue to accumulate students over the years of the project. And the very end of the project you have your largest numbers of students in the school system at one time.

So looking at a 17-year schedule, which is how I’ve structured the spreadsheets that I’ve done, you basically have, and I don’t remember the exact numbers, but basically you fill one elementary school, some 580 students. The school board is looking at 600 student capacity in an elementary school. So 17 years out you achieve that kind of number.

The middle school is roughly the same number of students. I think it’s a little bit less. And then the high school is fewer, as I’ve looked at the type of absorption that we have contemplated, the student generation numbers that we’ve been working with. So one elementary school, half a middle school, half a high school. Seventeen years out.

Clearly, as the project goes on, just to give you an idea in the first year using the student generation numbers that Jefferson County uses 100 single family homes, if that’s what’s sold in the first year, 27 elementary school students, 12 middle school, 11 high school. Each year that you do 100 you add that many kids to the school system. That accumulates and of course in certain years those numbers start to roll over because kid graduate from elementary, move into middle school. But cumulatively, that’s basically what we’re talking about.

Audience Member: Are these the same numbers you use for the Kentlands?

Jim Duszynski: The question is is this the same number ratio that was used for Kentlands? We never did any studies like that for Kentlands. Schools were not an issue when the project was developed. I will tell you that Jefferson County uses a slightly lower number for student generation than Frederick and Loudon County. I’ve shared those numbers with the school board. And, of course, Dave Markoe came from Frederick County, so he’s familiar with those numbers as well.

It appears looking at the number of persons per household, which is roughly 2.6 to 2.7, if you’re looking at a half a student per household, with a two parent family, again, just sort of speaking generally, that you are in the ballpark. Not every household is going to have students in it. So I think there’s some balance there. But it would be probably I think in Loudon County they are using a .7, .73, something like that. I think Frederick County is a similar student generation.

But, again, in talking with the school board they are saying our demographics, our student population just isn’t showing us that we’re at the same rates as those communities. Over the years if the demographics change, then potentially you could be looking at student generation numbers that are that high. We’ve got a range if you look at .5 students for 3,300 homes it’s about 1,650. It is 1,600. If you go to .75 it gets to 2,100 or something like that. So, again, you’ve got a range in there depending on the demography and how things change.

Lee Quill: I just want to be clear when he said he didn’t deal with those numbers that didn’t mean that he didn’t deal with schools. There is a book called The New Urbanism. I highly recommend it. I keep coming out and talking about books that will be helpful. But one of the prime elements is this picture right here. It’s Rachel Carson Elementary. It received national recognition because it was built just like Wight Denny, in the community, facing on one of the major urban streets, and next to a park.

So the idea again is integration of these facilities into the community instead of being isolated. What I think we don’t want to see is something, which is isolated out on its own little parcel in the middle of nowhere. Let’s bring it back into the community where people can walk to. So this has Kentlands and many other developments.

Jim Duszynski: Many of the slides that you saw tonight were from the Kentlands, actually.

David Burns: My name is David Burns. I wanted to ask in your marketing plan for Hunt Field who you envision selling these homes to? Are these people coming from the Frederick area? Are they coming from Martinsburg area? Or locally or further into D.C.? What type of advertising do you plan to sell these properties?

Jim Duszynski: Jefferson County, like it or not, really is sort of a bedroom community. I think most people who live here already know that and so that is the sort of population and the sort of market that most likely is going to fill the housing supply at Hunt Field.

I think looking at the census numbers and we’ve been looking at a lot of numbers over the last couple of weeks, I think about 40 percent of the working population in Jefferson County works out of state. So my guess is is that those trends are going to carry fairly consistently.

We talked last month or last meeting about some of the pressures that we see in Loudon County regarding housing prices, regarding down zoning that’s occurring. Similarly, in Frederick County, particular housing pricing that generates what we believe the movement towards Jefferson County. And, again, I think that people have seen that over the last ten years, that growth pattern.

But my expectation is that many of the buyers will come from Northern Virginia, from the Loudon areas, and many from Frederick. There will be some local people who will want to live there. Martinsburg surely and Winchester are other employment centers when you look at this sort of major employment centers. The Frederick area, the 270 corridor, the Dulles corridor, Martinsburg and Winchester as well. So I think that there will be some of that in addition.

Lee Quill: One thing we talked about though is that not everybody is going to be coming from out of town. There will be people here that want to move. And this gets back to the work generation and making sure that this is going to be the best it can for generating employment up here. We know that there will be some component of travel. There is actually a fairly large contingent also using Marc and going into Washington and into suburban Maryland.

And that is, as I mentioned earlier, why we brought in our special consultant to deal with the transit issues, looking at the markets and where these are going to go. And that’s why this particular scenario of the transit-oriented design is particularly of keen interest to see whether we can generate that.

Again, people if they know they are going to have … if there is enough built up there that makes sense, that we can get some kind of system, either that or even if it’s a shuttle to Duffield, you set up the series of neighborhoods which you have a center to. You walk five minutes to the center, you pick up your shuttle, and if you know you are going to go straight to a metro or a rail station you will take the bus or a clean bus or whatever it is.

If we can do a train in our commuter line that would be great because that means that people that would be coming here would be buying in this particular project because they know that they can get from here to there.

In metro developments … it’s interesting in transit oriented developments in Washington those housing developments that are built next to a metro station today, 70 percent of the people that will buy or rent in those facilities do so because they are going to another place on the metro line and they want to have their proximity and leave their car. And that’s for the newer developments. So we know that there will be some … if we can do things like this … that we will be able to capture some of that market to get the people off the road.

So we’re going to be investigating these elements of the transit and how we can get people out of their cars, how to keep them in Jefferson County. We know that there will be some off-site. But that’s why we’ve got our consultant to help us on how that works with the regional transportation plans, where monies are available for transit oriented designs and whether we can actually do it or to what level. And we’ll have more to report on that in our next meeting. Yes?

Charlie Slusher: My name is Charlie Slusher. And my question has to do with schools again. As you just stated there a while ago, we will probably have to build what three different elements of schools, different levels of schools. So what you’re asking the citizens or the property owners in Jefferson County is to build you three schools in the next 20 years at $25 to $39 million a pop. I find that hard to accept.

Jim Duszynski: Okay. I don’t think that’s at all what we’re asking the citizens of Jefferson County to do. As I indicated in my response over the next 17 years at the 17th year you basically have one elementary school, one half a middle school, one half of a high school that is generated by the Huntfield development.

If you look at the growth that’s anticipated, just basically carrying the last ten years forward over the next 10 years and over the next ten years, Jefferson County is probably going to have to build three or four of each of those schools to meet the growth that’s come in the last ten years in the next ten years and the next ten years.

So surely Hunt Field will fill 20 percent, 30 percent of that school capacity. But what we said was we’re giving significant land to the school board for the purpose of building schools. We’re working with the school board to figure out what an impact fee ought to be.

If Jefferson County doesn’t get the Local Powers Act enacted before we start. If they haven’t gone through the motions or overcome the obstacles that face them. I read the paper and I read the e-mails that go back and forth. Hopefully that will happen. In fact, as I said last time we certainly hope it happens sooner rather than later. So that we’re not the only guys paying impact fees. I’d like to see everybody paying impact fees so that the market is level.

But, again, we’re committed to paying an impact fee. But also understand that impact fees are not the answer to all problems. Interesting conversation with David Markoe today. In Frederick County the school board passed a bonds with the voter’s approval with the idea that impact fees would pay the debt service. So that effectively there is no increased tax burden on the taxpayers. They looked at the growth patterns, they looked at the number of units that they would sell annually, they looked at the impact fees collected, and they said that will cover the debt burden.

I said to David I said what happens when the housing market goes flat? Well, then you raise taxes. So there’s a lot of issues to be addressed. But clearly we’re committed. We think we’re taking the lead. And I would like to think we are. But in no way are we asking the citizens of Jefferson County to build us three new schools over the next 20 years.

Lee Quill: If I could just add I dare say that if you are going to build a bunch of little developments like what are happening now over this period to fill the land up, which is the other alternative. Pretend Hunt Field doesn’t happen. But the land is gobbled up, because it will be. But it will be what you see going up now.

I dare say that those smaller incremental developments, which is kind of a slow erosion versus again understanding what you’re going to get in structuring a plan for this particular area, there will be no school sites that will be given by the developer. You will be struggling to get any kind of impact fee. There will be no integration in with the development. What we’re trying to do is create community here. And part of the heart of the community is the school.

And we say let’s make it part of the community. Let’s do our share, what we’re supposed to do, and let’s make it a better place in doing so. We’re just trying to do it right.

Susanne Koenig: I’m Susanne Koenig. And I’m on the board of a small community library, the Bolivar Harper’s Ferry library. And we have two other small public libraries in the county in a privately endowed one, obviously in Charles Town. I don’t think I would safely speak for the old Charles Town library, but I think that I could venture to say that the libraries would probably be very open as resources to … at the very least if you give us a bibliography of the books that you think are really quality books for people to turn to to … you mentioned … you got two books right there. We would certainly be welcome to donations.

Lee Quill: We don’t want to get caught on that one. Come on. The New Urbanism, Rural by Design. Just two. Another one is … propping this up right here. We use them in many, many ways in our discussions, is Suburban Nation. It’s called the Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream. This is my fun reading. Maybe you guys read novels. I read this stuff. This is good stuff. This will give you background information on a lot of the issues that you are dealing with. So we’ll make sure that you get those guys and more.

Susanne Koenig: And of course just to remind you that a library is a great civic institution to have.

Lee Quill: It is. I’ve got a question. Most of you all know Summit Point, the little village. Amazing little place. Again, think about that here it is this little hamlet and you know where the sign that says future site for the library over there and it looks like a little green … I don’t know … I haven’t asked anybody. Maybe you can tell me. But there are a couple churches and an old school building that looks like it’s gone to residential.

Even that little settlement over there compacted had the elements we’re talking about here. It’s unbelievable. It’s a beautiful little place. But they have a library coming back into town, the little building, and then there’s a site. What is the scenario and the situation with libraries up here? To kind of help inform us. Because it’s going to be a wonderful element to bring to this development. Do you know. There are three libraries in the county other than the Charles Town, is that …

Susanne Koenig: There are three public tax supported libraries. The old Charles Town library endowed. Most of the funding for the tax supported libraries is through the state.

Lee Quill: Okay. It’s more a state issue here.

Susanne Koenig: Yes. But we’ve also got some very generous monies given to us through … now with the impact … no, not the impact, the CIP process, the Capital Improvement Process. The Commission actually just gave a very generous donation to Summit Point. So hopefully they will be able to break ground in the coming year.

Lee Quill: So that site in the center of town will …

Susanne Koenig: We’re hoping.

Lee Quill: Oh, that will be fantastic. That’s the kind of thing … we’ll talk more. Because libraries were not excluded here. That’s why we’re having this dialogue. That’s going to make a major impact positive on that place.

Jim Duszynski: Can I just ask you to touch base with Kathy Holmes, or Kathy can you touch base at the end of the meeting. I’d like to make sure we get your name and number and contact …

Dick Latterell: Concerning the schools, you said you had made a sizeable, an offer of a sizeable acreage to the board of education for the construction of a school. Would this be for a single school? And would it be the only school in the proposed development?

Jim Duszynski: As I said earlier when we first approached F&M Bank they informed us that if you buy the property you’ve got to give 50 acres to the schools. That at that point was contemplated to be the next high school site. When we met with Dave Markoe the first time he said, no, I need 75 because I want to build a high school and then looking forward a middle school or elementary school. They weren’t really quite sure at the time what they wanted to have, roughly 50 acres for a high school and then 25 acres in reserve for another school, most likely a middle or elementary school.

Additionally, of course, Paige Jackson sits right there currently at capacity of course. But the potential expansion of Paige Jackson you could actually and we’ve talked about this have a complex with an elementary, middle, and high school within the community effectively.

Dick Latterell: Would you identify this area on your map up there?

Lee Quill: Right now this is what we’re talking about in the sense of … we don’t have a final plan. So we don’t know where everything is yet. But what we’re hearing … we’re saying that we probably ought to break this into two so that they become instead of one big mega plaza becomes more in the neighborhood school.

And one element that we are looking at would be potentially down in here. We will bring this back more when you come back up and look.

Jim Duszynski: You can probably see better on this plan where it’s highlighted. The potential for a school site there. Under the original CIS submission that area that was blocked out was roughly 75 acres here, immediately adjacent to Paige Jackson. But there are some issues with security and having high school kids in the vicinity of elementary school kids. It’s really more desirable from an educator’s standpoint to perhaps separate them. Also, as Lee said from a community standpoint to be able to really have two sites or multiple sites in the community is a little better land planning.

Lee Quill: As we move forward we will be bringing these ideas forward. At a next meeting we will have some ideas about some potential locations for where this can go in the input on the library as another element. So we’ll continue to work on this. Again, as we go forward it’s just not the end of the plan where you’re asked to sign off on something. We’re trying to evolve it.

Jim Duszynski: Do you have a follow up though Dick?

Dick Latterell: Yes. You may have covered this. I came a big late. And you may have covered it and I may have missed it. But I was curious out your use of the term growth boundaries. How do these growth boundaries differ from the property lines on your proposed development?

Jim Duszynski: I’ll let Lee speak to that.

Lee Quill: Currently in Jefferson County this is your zoning map. And this blue area is your residential growth district. And the lighter area is called the rural district. So essentially the zoning does not allow the subdivisions that you are normally getting, unless it’s a special … they are out there because people approve them, but you’re not supposed to generally … you are supposed to focus your growth within these blue areas.

So what happens is in places like Portland this is Portland’s boundary area, or urban development area. And what they are are lines that are delineated in a community that say we want to focus our growth around the existing center, working from the core, keeping it so that your extensions of utilities are concentrated. And then that means basically stay away from the other land.

Because the alternative to this is that a bunch of little things pop up around here and the only way that you get from here to here is by car. There is no interconnection. And this is how you control, it’s one of the tools that’s used to control sprawl. It’s to kind of focus things closer. And this is getting back to what I was talking about earlier. It’s not just concentrating it again; we’re talking about the quality of that development, what it is in the pattern. So it’s really two things that are important.

Right now you have a framework in that map that you just saw that says let’s concentrate our growth in this area next to Charles Town … there’s a little one up here at Shepherdstown. And I think now what we’re trying to do is get people thinking about these as areas that you do concentrate things and get that dialogue going so that you’re not having the problems that you’ve been having. Thank you.

Jim Duszynski: Somebody else have a mic? Go ahead and ask your question …

Tyler Mayhew: Tyler Mayhew again. Earlier in the discussion we’ve been having the man sitting over here asked you a question about the historical sites on the property. So I’m interested how do the developers of Hunt Field plan to preserve these sites and who will be footing the bill for the maintenance of these sites over a long period of time?

Jim Duszynski: Effectively through avoidance. That’s the first way that you preserve these sites.

Taylor Mayhew: Could you explain what that means?

Jim Duszynski: We don’t have that map, do we?

Lee Quill: We have the historic map here.

Jim Duszysnki: [sic] That’s a map that delineates some of the areas that we’ve been told about. They haven’t been verified. But we assume that the information we’ve been given is correct. That this is where the original Prospect Hill Family Foundation is. Here is where the slave cemetery is for those slaves that worked for the Washington family. So we’ve again so you’ll see them identified on this drawing here. So the first thing you do is you avoid them.

The second thing that you do is go through and I think as I was explaining earlier to maybe Jack was that the idea that we have moving forward working with Keven Walker again, with the Walker Foundation, is that to bring in students and professionals to do what’s generally referred to as a Phase One Recovery or Phase One Archeological Study. And basically taking shovel test pits. They’ll go in, screen, try to uncover pottery shards, artifacts, bullets and buttons if it’s Civil War type of artifacts. Things like that. But through that process, again laid out in a grid in a very methodological manner, you start to delineate the perimeter of these areas. And then those become effectively off-limits.

We’ve had experiences on other sites w