Jim Duszynski:  I would like to welcome you to the third meeting in a series of presentations that we have been doing on the Hunt Field.  We have a lighter crowd tonight than we have seen at the other meetings that we have had.  I will hope that is good news, that we have been answering lots of questions in the community.  If there is anybody in the back that can’t see or would like to move up, please feel free.

 

Tonight, we will spend the first part of the evening sort of reviewing the things that we have talked about over the last month at the previous two meetings and wrap them into a presentation of the community impact statement that we submitted last week.  If you came in through the front door and picked up a copy on the table, that is the text portion of the community impact statement that we submitted to the planning commission.  There are a variety of other documents that went to the planning commission with that, but this is, as I said, the text portion of the community impact statement that is required under the ordinance.

 

In addition to that, we submitted a marketing study.  We submitted what we call a ‘design process summary booklet’, which is a large, color book that contains 11x17 versions of most of the boards that you see behind us and many of the slides that you will see tonight.  But what we wanted to do was, in addition to providing text that people could read and sort of wonder, perhaps, in their mind exactly what we meant and what our intentions were, we also wanted to provide visual images of the type of community that we are planning to build.

 

As I said, the CIS was submitted, the Community Impact Statement was submitted, on the 19th of April.  This was part of our agreement with the planning commission.  We originally were supposed to submit it earlier, but we had wanted to delay that in order to have a couple of these public meetings.  We are scheduled for a staff review with the planning and engineering department on May 4th and then we have our public hearing before the planning commission on May 8th.  I would invite everyone here and everyone in the community to come to that meeting and let your comments be heard.

 

After the Community Impact Statement is approved, we will move forward with the first phase of the project, which is approximately 90 lots.  We will actually talk a little bit more about that later this evening and show a slide of what we see as that first phase to give you an idea of where we will be headed early in the project.  That submittal for the first phase, what the county refers to as a preliminary plot, will probably occur sometime in June.  Then, there will be a planning commission hearing sometime in September or maybe early October.  But, we hope that we will have approvals and permits by October so that we can actually start the Hunt Field project and engage in home sales for the spring.

 

With that, I think that I will just turn it over to Lee and let you do your portion of the presentation.

Lee Quill:  Thank you, Jim. It is a little smaller of a crowd tonight, but we thank you for coming in on such a beautiful spring night.  Driving up here, this will make the fourth season that our planning team has been coming up here and it is wonderful to see the changes in the seasons and see the beauty of this place.  That is partly why we are paying so much attention to this particular proposal.

 

How many of you went to the first meeting?  Okay.  How many to the second meeting?  Okay, so most of you have been.  How many is this their first?  Okay, good.  Welcome tonight.  There is a little bit of a summary that I am going to take you through but you will kind of catch up.  Most of the people who have been here before will see what we have been talking about.   At the end of the meeting, a lot of the boards that you will see in front of you tonight talk about the process that we have been going through to evaluate and study the project and we will take you through that. 

 

Tonight we are going to try to take you through, those of you who have been with us before, you know that we spend a lot of time on various issues trying to understand the context we are in, how you should be responsive to that.  How do you deal with an idea of making compact design and reinforcing the special places such as Charles Town and Ranson?  Based on the models of Charles Town and Ranson, Shepherdstown, Harpers Ferry and others, which are urban settlements so that you preserve the rural legacy and character of a particular place rather than put subdivisions throughout the area eating up a lot of land?

 

The CIS, what we are going to do is take the discussions we have been having for the last couple meetings and private conversations, etc., and take you through how we have taken your comments, your input, our analysis, and put that together in a package that is much more informed and much more focused than what you all saw last year.  If there is one thing that I can compliment this developer on is that after last year’s effort, they re-evaluated things and they hired us, which we were very excited about because we have really enjoyed working on this project and will continue to enjoy working with you all on that.  But, they said let’s look and see what we can do to do things better.  They have gone out and really worked to try to do a project that is much more responsive to what this special place is about.  What we have tried to do is take that now and put it into a CIS so that you can see the framework that we are all talking about moving forward with and we will have a dialogue after, a little presentation today to continue that discussion.

 

Now, the CIS, which there are copies of the text in the back and some of the diagrams, basically is outlined to do one thing.  It says here, the purpose of the CIS is to provide sufficient detail of a proposal to permit an examination of the scope of a particular development and proposal and to permit an evaluation of that proposal’s impact on a particular area.

 

Now, how we have structured this and what I am going to take you through is trying to show you the things we have been talking about regarding this project and how they relate to a CIS format so that when you are looking through it, you understand how the two start to come together.

 

The first part of the CIS really deals with basic descriptive information.  The second part deals with community impact, and then the third part is social impacts.  The fourth part is economic impacts.  I am going to kind of go through various elements of this as we go through our presentation. 

 

Why don’t we start with the slides.  We will bring the lights down and start to go through this and I will take you through some of the issues that we have been dealing with that relate to the CIS.

 

The first question on the CIS is:  Where is the project located?  We’ve talked about this.  For those that are new, what we have put together, we talked about the context of the natural and rural beauty of the particular area and how the location of the project is directly adjacent to the town of Charles Town.

 

It also asks you about topography and the site conditions itself.  One of the most important things about this particular site is it’s direct relationship to two very important historical areas.  One, being the city of Charles Town itself and a visual connection to where you can see the Courthouse Tower, and the other is, in this diagram.  We show here it’s direct relationship to Claymont, which is at the center of these spires.  In our response the plan, what we have done is try to make sure that on the high points of this particular piece of property, you are not viewing from Claymont the back of someone’s deck and their Weber.  We are being sensitive to that particular area so that the high points become the public and significant civic spaces of the part of the new neighborhoods of Charles Town.

 

It is a rolling topography, but as you can see in this particular slide right here, right above my finger right here, that is a view from the high mound, right in the center of the site, back to Charles Town.  So, there is always a visual link back to town.  It is very, very close.  So, sensitive to that context, but also we have some lower lands, some wet lands, some wonderful stream beds next to Claymont and down in the other area.  We want to make sure that we are responsive in that particular method of site determination.  Part of our open space has to be active recreation for ball fields, etc.  But, we also have to provide passive, open space where you can have a contemplative type of space, a space where you can go and enjoy the natural environment.  So, we are going to work with that also.

 

How does the project relate to the context that we are in?  One of the questions that the CIS asks:  How does it relate to the comprehensive plan and how does it relate to the proximity of other projects?  Hunt Field’s property is this area right here, which is right on the edge of an urban growth boundary that has been established in your master plan.   This is a good thing.  This is a good thing because the model for this is this example, a national model, in Portland.  Those of you who study these types of things, this marked growth, know that there are boundaries that were set up that say, “These are the areas where growth should occur.  Outside of that area, we want to preserve that pasture land.” 

 

Believe it or not, Jefferson County, by establishing this urban growth area is really very progressive in trying to address the issues of how sprawl works.  The problem here in Charles Town, and it is the same in Portland, what type of development happens within that particular area and making sure that it happens in that particular area.

 

As I said, this particular property and how it relates to downtown, it is a project compatible to downtown or to an adjacent piece of property.  We have a number of things that we have to relate to.  One is the historic property, Claymont.  The other is the residential neighborhoods to the north and of course, Charles Town, just the northeast.  We also have, as I said, if you remember the boundary comes down through here, we have other developments, which will in fill into hat area over 20 years.  But, what we are trying to show is that future development that also comes around this particular project needs to go to the same standard and high quality of development and understanding of the context here so that it is more informed and more like Charles Town.

 

Again, historic resources, they ask how you relate to these.  We have related to it from the understanding of how the tow projects visually connect.  Also, if you come up here and look at some of our boards on the historic context over here and how we are working with the plan, what we are working with area areas of identifying historic resources and making sure that these are not going to be areas that are just kind of wiped over and forgotten.  We are going to be continuing to look at how special places, such as Prospect Hill, Washington’s original house right here, how views from Claymont back into the site look.  There is also Braddock’s House, which is back over in here, another potential historic site in this area.  We are continuing to do more extensive research on the sites so that these special places become part of our open space and part of our natural and historical resources so that the history of these it is not left behind or forgotten.  This is a very important area. 

 

As I mentioned once before, I am from Alexandria, Virginia.  The Washington Family is big in our area.  He went to my church.  We want to make sure that we give the respect to these historic references here so that they become part of the natural space, or sometimes part of a neighborhood, part of a regional open space system that people will be able to enjoy in the future.

 

The model for our development is really the historic fabric and wonderful special places in this region.  If you were with us in our earlier meetings you know that we spent a lot of time talking about Shepherdstown, especially Charles Town.  But, what we have done in our analysis early on and in some of the boards here, is we have studied the block and street structure and development plat plans in Charles Town, in Shepherdstown, the streets, and the development pattern there, as well as Bolivar and Harper’s Ferry, and we have really looked at the urban settlements.  These are much more compact.  It puts people together in a little different pattern than your typical subdivision, but these are the special places that we all travel to up here and we love to go to them. 

 

What we are saying is that in this new development, as it is evolving over the next 20 years, the pattern of this development should be based on patterns of development in this region that have worked for over 200 years.  We are not looking for patterns of development that have worked for the last 40 years which gobble up the land and don’t become responsive to the wonderful places.  Eventually, if this place is developed right and everything within the growth boundary is developed in a pattern that is sensitive to the historic pattern of town-making that we all love, whether it is here or in other areas, eventually this just becomes a little bit bigger.  You know, this town was not always that large.  It started smaller, it grew.  But, they stayed with the same pattern.  What we are saying is that we need to be true to the patterns that have worked and eventually, within that growth boundary, if we do that, the pattern will be more dense, it will preserve more open space, it will be of a character where eventually it will be a new neighborhood, but it will have the richness of some of the older ones.

 

These are our guiding principles that we have been using throughout much of our work, but also into his particular area.  Some of them deal with smart growth, the opportunities of mixed use, creating housing opportunities, fostering distinct, attractive communities with a sense of place.  That is why this is so strong in Charles Town, Shepherdstown, and Ranson, etc.  Providing a variety of transportation choices, making sure that we preserve open space and concentrate the developments so that you preserve farmland.  Again, that is within that boundary, not outside.

 

In urban design, it is okay to concentrate things, but you have to do it right, within the boundary.  Part of it, the wonderful nature of neighborhoods is that they are walkable.  You run into your neighbor, you see people, you experience people.  You walk to places because they are close. 

 

What we want to do with this development is set up a series of neighborhoods, we have talked about this in some of our earlier meetings, six neighborhoods essentially.  They will have a five-minute walk from the center.  They have an open space, a civic component as its center.  That also incorporates major open space, both passive and active.  So, within a five-minute walk, you are in a park.  If you have kids and you want to go walk to a park, great.  If you are grandparents and you have your kids coming over for that, great.  If you have no kids and you like parks, you can go walk to it.  We are also talking bout making a series of connections back into town as another series of kind of the multi-modal capability here, of getting on bikes, etc., so that we can get people out of their cars, walking, biking, and using the facilities of the neighborhood.

 

One of the basic questions that comes up under the first part of CIS is:  What is the plan?  How does it evolve?  What is it like?  What are the lots like, etc.?  So, I am going to run you quickly through what we have done, as you recall.

 

Again, the site, we have set up these six neighborhoods.  AT the center of these neighborhoods are civic spaces or open spaces.  Many of them are set up along the model of trying to take these high places and putting civic buildings in those high places so they become points of reference.  That is what our clock towers and church spires, and in this particular community the spires a block and a half over here of the courthouse, they become physical references and markers.  They become places that orient one to the development and to the community.  This one is in Nantucket, but it is very prominent as you come in.   This is what we want to do.  We want to use these as markers in the high spaces as well as open spaces.

 

At the center of each neighborhood will be a park.  You can see that we have started to do some diagramming in the left early on this year when we talked bout that and this is the kind of nature of some of the arks that could happen.

 

We looked at a couple models of what happens in the east and what happens in the west.  There is more residential-oriented in the west and in the east there is a little more mix of some commercial as far as around the square or a circle.  The other important thing to keep in mind with this development is that if we are going to get people into a different mode of transportation and a different way of thinking, we have to have centers of the neighborhood hat people can walk to so that they can have a convenient way to get on some kind of a shuttle or some kind of a vehicle such as a fast tram here or pan-tram bus that can then take you to downtown.  It is the intention of this development that where there may be some small neighborhood retail, like the dry cleaners or small corner grocery or something that you find in many communities, that it is not to erode downtown.  Downtown Charles Town has tremendous potential if it starts to bring the community together.  Shepherdstown is pretty rich.  It has everything from dot com groups down there to engineers that do engineering projects in other states, to restaurants, to bakeries, to coffee shops, to bookstores, etc.  That richness can come to Charles Town.  We want to reinforce the downtown and get people either bike-riding or going by shuttle so that they are not all driving. 

 

Again, the center of each neighborhood will have an open space.  Some of those will have churches where they are markers, such as this, with the development blocks around them.

 

Again, this was the eastern way of looking at it.  This was modeled off of a small village idea of buildings with 2 ½ levels, similar to a Nantucket condition right here, where you have a few areas of retail on the ground floors which has the opportunity for live/work above.

 

We have also looked at other opportunities on a site.  We have a rail line that cuts right through the site.  Part of thinking out of the box a little bit, we are exploring, and we have hired a consultant whom I will introduce in a few minutes, some of you have met him already.  We are looking at the opportunity of bringing either an extension of the MARC train or a shuttle to the MARC train station right to the center of the site so that the opportunity can exist for getting people that are commuting into Washington to come right to this particular station. 

 

Now, if we can get this to work it would be wonderful.  If not, we still want to make sure that we have established a center in the center of the project which becomes the heart and also becomes a hub for transportation which then can be a shuttle back through neighborhoods to take people back to the MARC station. But, we are very encouraged.  There are some opportunities that are there.  Al will speak to kind of a general, big picture of things that might happen and we are going to continue to explore this and we will be talking with you as we evolve this idea.

 

Again, in this particular one, the center would have a civic space, a train station and some other civic buildings.  This is a space in Leesburg, for those of you who have been to Leesburg which most of you probably have, you know that having that open space in the center of the town really helps center one as far as where the center of the whole town is as it grows out into the neighborhoods.

 

We did an extensive analysis of the block structures of Charles Town, being the downtown blocks, the neighborhood blocks, judicial blocks, and then how the zoning works in Jefferson County.  We have an 80 foot frontage requirement and a 6,000 square foot lot requirement.  How can that work backing into the models of blocks such as what we find in Charles Town.

 

In the next slide, what we have started to develop then is an understanding of how the individual lots work.  There are different lot sizes in Charles Town that run from anywhere from 40 foot wide to 50, 60, 70, 80, 110, those allow for a variety of housing types.  What we have done is studies of how those might work with block structures here and also how those houses may work in different sizes.  Part of what you will see in the boards over here, when you see an analysis of Crosswinds and building typologies here, the purpose of those boards are to tell you that we have studied not only the historic buildings, which are wonderful, here in Charles Town and Ranson, but also what is being built and how does that fit on a particular lot.  How can you make that better and fine tune it slightly to get the car orientation taken care of a little bit so you get a better street, a better house.  We are working with traditional typologies while trying to make them a little bit better.

 

These are two streets, one being in Charles Town, the housing and here in Alexandria.  In a plan like this, we have been talking big and everyone is saying, Oh my God! This is a huge plan.  It is big.  But it is also a 20-year plan.  You aren’t looking at little incremental things that are going to gobble you up.  You are looking at trying to plan and set up a framework for what will happen on a very important piece of property for the next 20 years.  The advantage of this is that you know what is coming.  You are seeing it right here.  You are helping to shape it and you will continue to help shape it.  You won’t have to go out there and fight the battle every couple months or whatever worrying about what is going to happen to this area, this area, this area, this area.  Trying to control some sprawl.  But, the thing is also, we are going to be looking as I said, at the houses anted getting down to that quality level.  When we walked the streets of those places that I talked about of Charles Town, Ranson, Shepherdstown, Bolivar, and Harper’s Ferry, it is the buildings and the way that the streets work that really are the key elements of the plan.  We have to pay attention to everything, down to how buildings relate to the street, what they are, all the way up to how the big area is planned.  So, it is always a change of scale and getting down to the details in order to get this.

 

If you take a look at these two houses, this is a house in one of your subdivisions, and this is a house in Charles Town.  I want you to look at it very closely because this is the level of detail that we are talking about.  This has a center hall, this has a center hall with a peak.  This has two windows above two windows.  Two windows on this side.  This house has the same.  This has an appendage right here, this has an appendage right here.  What is the difference?  It is a garage door.  Now, which one do y our want to live in?  Well, some will pick either one.  But, which one makes a better street?  I think this one does.  What we are trying to do is look at houses and say how do you de-emphasize this black top, that big garage door, things like this, so that the car becomes a little less intrusive in your community so you create a better street.  But, that house, with a little fine-tuning over there, takes on the character of this. So, we aren’t that far apart.  It is not that all of the houses being built we can’t work with, it is just that we have to be sensitive to our historic context.

 

Again, here we started looking at blocks, and working with blocks of about 220x600 which is basically a little tighter than a block in Charles Town.  The Charles Town block is about 330x600 or 400 and 500.  We are dealing with an 80-foot frontage by 100 foot deep lot.  We will have time for questions in just a few minutes.  What we are developing is a series of blocks that will work with the typologies of an 80 foot frontage and then if we want to change it some day in the future we can play with that too.

 

The next part of the CIS gets into, really an area which is called the social impact.  It gets into things such as traffic, demographics, emergency facilities, fire, police, housing supply, recreation, etc.  We are going to talk about a few of those issues now too because those are impacts of what we are doing with a project like this and we have spent a lot of f time thinking about that as I have talked about.

 

Once again, we have talked about the historic resources and the importance of it’s location on this particular piece of property.

 

These are the two drawings, this guy here and this guy here, these are the two project drawings that are going in with the CIS to give the general concept right now.  This is the first stage of a series of drawings that go in.  It is not the final plan because the steps are that you have the CIS, which sets an overall framework, it gives you an understanding of where things are going.  There is then, a preliminary plat, which is really the first portion of what you are going to do.  Then, there is a final plat.  The final plat comes before the planning commission.  We don’t just disappear once this would go through.  There is an ongoing, important dialogue and relationship with this community of making sure that the plan reaches where it needs to go.  By taking these initial neighborhoods that we are studying with, we go forward and help to develop those into the models you have seen and can see around you.  There is public dialogue that we will have with you in future meetings as well as public hearings so that there is a chance for dialogue.  I just want to let you know that it is very much a public process and one that we are very excited about and engaged in and really enjoy.  It is a two-way dialogue that enriches plans such as this.

 

In the CIS document, the basic plan that they call for is basically a concept plan.  It asks for something that is relatively fluid to kind of set the framework of what it is that we are trying to do.  Essentially with this plan, which is the one that is right here, the green spaces that you see on this are generally the open spaces in the neighborhoods.  You will see end numbers which talk about essentially six neighborhoods, the green spaces of recreation around the lake, the school sites, the passive areas, the forests, down in the wet lands.  This is all set up as well as our connector road which we will talk about which is also meant to be a boulevard instead of a freeway.  We have a certain number of single family, townhouses, multi-family, essentially in the first neighborhood we are looking at an initial total acreage of 83.  I think this chart is into the back.  If you look at Table 2 in the handout that we have, in the back you can follow along.  This will give you more depth, but essentially we have broken the plan out.  It is 83 acres, open space of that is 15 acres, percent open space is 18%.  Single family, we are looking at about 236 dwelling units in the first phase of this plan.   We then go to 34 townhouses in that.  So total unit would be about 270 and probably about 50,000 of commercial which is a neighborhood-serving community retail that we talked about in our earlier plan.

 

As you go through the schedule you will look at this diagram and you will see that we have broken it down so that you can follow the open space, the number of units and see that it is going to be a series of incremental changes.  This is not one big swipe where all of a sudden in four years you have this whole site developed.  It is over a period of 15-20 years that this area will be developed. The good thing, again, is hat you know what is coming.  You can see the framework, you can understand that, we can all deal with that, it brings in the positive aspects of how we deal with the facilities, how we deal with the open space, etc.

 

The core, again, of every neighborhood is a neighborhood park.  This is a proposal on the right in Potomac Yard, a project of ours in Alexandria.  This is a neighborhood park in Richmond.  This particular park is an amazing structure.  It is a little triangular piece of land, but in this particular idea of putting in a neighborhood park, people really come together.  This particular one, you can see a couple sitting right here, not necessarily focused on the kids very much, maybe focused more on themselves, and of course, these guys, focused not their kids.  It is an idea of bringing community together and it is very important to the richness of our fabric of urban places and it is what we experienced when walking the streets in a particular place such as Charles Town.

 

Other open spaces that we talk about, whether it is large open spaces around the lake or large greens are part of the plan, part of the foundation that again will give you that open richness.

 

This is what we are not talking about doing.  There is open space in many subdivisions today which is open space and you can go out and throw the football.  It is also your BMP pond.  It is kind of that space that looks like, “Well, I gotta put it in there.”  What we are talking about is dealing with BMP issues, but also designing the open space so that it can be actively used as recreational space or a passive collection of filtering environmental areas through wetlands, etc.  All we are saying is that we are going to design the open space.  It is not something like, “Oh my gosh!  I have got to put it in.”  It is going to be the foundation of our plan and it is going to part of a connected open space system that can be tied back to Charles Town.

 

The civic component, what is the richness of Charles Town, Ranson, Shepherdstown, Bolivar, Harper’s Ferry?  It is the mix of buildings within a context.  If you walk out of this building right here and turn around, you are sitting in a school.  It is right next to some residences.  If you go over a block, you will see a church.  If you go back another block you will see another church and a graveyard.  There is a rich fabric of multi-structures of different civic uses.  If you go around the corner another block from here you see the city or town hall.  The courthouse is across from it. What we are talking bout doing is taking our civic buildings, whether they are churches or synagogues, whether they are fire stations, or whether they are schools and making them part of these civic spaces that we are talking about and making them part of the fabric of our neighborhoods so that they are not isolated somewhere else in the county.  We have needs that will be having to be addressed here.  There will be needs for additional fire facilities.  We will be providing a site for fire station public safety on site.  Even though we are very close to two, right here, it will be on site so that it can serve the community.  The idea of coming in with a potential library which was brought up at the last meeting.  There is probably a way that we can work that into a civic building, a small branch library.  We are going to explore that further with the members that we talked to last week.

 

Jim will sit here and talk for a moment if you would like to about the schools because the schools have been a really hot issue.  We know, we have been talking with the schools extensively about what should happen there so that it is not overburdened.  The problem is here now, we aren’t going to add to it. What we are going to try to do is solve part of that problem and definitely address ours, and Jim is going to talk a little bit about the success that we have been having with that effort.

 

Jim Duszynski:  Maybe I will go back just a little bit to a couple of the things that Lee has talked on a bit first.   That is the long-term nature of this project.  Last year, and even through particularly the first meeting that we had here, but not as much anymore because I think that people are starting to accept and understand a little bit better what we are talking about here.  But what we constantly heard was, “It is so big.  It is just too big.  Three thousand homes, oh my God!  We can’t have that here.”  The same thing when it came to schoolchildren.  The school board calculates school children at .5 children per single family home.  So, .5 times 3,300 at that time, 3,200 today, is 1650 kids.  We are going to need three new schools and we are going to need them now.  If it is traffic, it is 24,000 vehicle trips a day.  Oh my goodness, there are going to be 24,000 new cars on the road.  We can’t do that. 

 

But, again, what we have tried to talk to people about and what Lee has done, I think, a good job of talking to you tonight about, is the fact that this is a long term project.  The advantages that we see as developers of master planned communities is that once that plan, that framework is set, everyone in the community knows pretty well what to expect.  AS Lee said, you don’t have a new battle to fight every month.  “What are they doing over there?  What is happening on the farm down there?  What is happening between Shepherdstown and Charles Town?”  Or the kinds of things that I know that you are dealing with on a regular basis.  Again, Hunt Field is big, but it is long term.

 

Table 1  which is just behind page 16 for those of you who have a copy of the CIS.  Table 1 gives the project schedule, basically by year, by the types of houses that we anticipate to sell on an annual basis.  It is an anticipation or an estimate on our part, but one that we think is based in some current trends of population growth, of the number of building permits that Jefferson County is issuing on an annual basis.  AS we look at the census data, which has just been released for the state and particularly for this area and we talk to the economic development authority here in Jefferson County, to the school board here in Jefferson County, in the ten years between 1990 and the year 2000, the county grew by about 17%.  When I talked to the economic development authority, they use an annual growth rate of 1.5% per year.  When I talked to the school board, they look at the school population growing by 2% per year. 

 

So, what we looked at, when we developed our business plan and when we first looked at Hunt Field and looked at what made sense, would the project be a viable one financially?  Not one that we would come up and do a lot of presentations, start it, and then not be able to finish it, but how to make it viable.  We took a long hard look at these kinds of data to make sure that we weren’t creating some sort of pie-in-the sky dream that developers are sometimes known for.  But clearly, when you look at the schedule and you look at the number of building permits or the number of houses that we are talking about occupying annually, it fits within the overall growth rate for the county.  Whether we are talking about households that annually come into the county or whether we are talking bout school children that annually come into the school system, or traffic on the roads, or whatever it might be.  The proposed community fits within the anticipated growth for Jefferson County for next year and for the next 20 years.

 

Just for an example, I think the current trend is for the county to issue roughly 400 building permits per year.  What we saw at the beginning of the year, there was a little clip in the Hagerstown Herald that showed that the average number of days on the market for a new home in Jefferson County had literally dropped by half.  I want to say it was about 160 days last year in January, to about 70 or 80 days this year.  I see a couple realtors in the room, but I won’t make them speak to me on this subject.  But, we see that in fact, houses are going a little bit faster, but again, the historic trend is for about 400 building permit’s a year to be issued.  You see here that in our first year we are talking about 90.

 

The high years that you see here which are significant in terms of looking at a number of 400, which again, remember, is probably going to increase on an average of 1.5-2% every year.  The high years are years that we have plugged in the multi-family and the community.  Currently there isn’t really any multi-family development in the county so I am going to look at those and sort of present those to you as anomalies.  They are really not a trend where suddenly there is going to be a large spike in the amount of housing that comes on the market every year, but it will just be a year in which we anticipate that we would bring on, and I think that we anticipate about 150 units in each of those years.  But, you can see, except for those years, 100-150.  Then, as the project goes on 10, 11, 12 years from now when you will start to see more in the range of 450-460 building permit’s a year, again based on current trends of growth in the county.  Hunt Field consistently stays in probably the 25-30% range of the growth that is anticipated within the county.

 

If you go to Table 3, we looked at Table 2, it is a table that I have put together with he school board.  David Markoe, the former school superintendent, and Nancy Johnson, the school treasurer, and I have looked at these tables and I have had a number of meetings with the school board and Mr. Markoe over the last year to talk about how many students are in the school system, what their anticipated growth is, what their issues are.  Certainly one of the major issues that we have heard about and we continue to hear about, we understand it is a significant issue within the county, is schools and school capacity and the level of education in Jefferson County.  There is no doubt in our minds that it could use some improvement.  We will talk a little bit about that in a minute.

 

This table reflects, if you look at the first column it is basically Year 1 of the project.  You can assume that is the 2002-2003 school year.  But it is Year 1 of the project.  In the second column, you have elementary school, middle school, and high school.  Then, the third column is single families.  The fourth column is townhouses.  The fifth column is multi-family.  Then, the total number of school children in the right hand column that is generated in each year of the project at each grade level.  So, for elementary school, if you go back to Table 1, the project schedule, which indicates that 90 single families and 30 townhouses would be developed in Year 1, that generates, from that number of townhouse sales, 16.2 children.  We will round up to 17, and 3.3 or 4 more children from town homes for a total of about 20 or 21 schoolchildren at the elementary school level for the first year of this project.

 

In middle school, you see under single families, 7.2, townhouses 1.2, 8.49 children  in the middle school in the first year.

 

Then in the high school, 6.6 and 6.9, and again, there are no multi-families in that year because we didn’t anticipate developing any.  But, you see, then again, looking just at the right hand column, we are talking in the first year of this project at about 20 elementary school students, 9 middle school students, 8 high school students.  We aren’t talking about 1600 kids here.  These are the school board’s numbers.  They are numbers that I have worked on over the last year with them that give you the annual enrollment rate for the project and how it will impact the school system.

 

Now, what needs to be looked at and what I am in the middle of discussions with the school board about is what is the cumulative effect, because, clearly, the schoolchildren come in during Year 1, but they go someplace in Year 2.  They either stay in the school system or they graduate from a school.  It could be elementary school to middle school, middle school to high school, or if they were in high school, they graduate out of high school.  But where do they go?  How long are they in the elementary schools system which right now is K-5.  How long are they in the middle school system, which is 6-8?  In the school year 2002-2003, the ninth grade center will be open.  Kids coming out of middle school will go to the ninth grade center and kids in the ninth grade center will go to the high school level and so on.  Where we are in the process is trying to understand if this is how many students we expect to generate annually?  What can we anticipate in terms of how long those students are in the school system and then we can really start to talk seriously about the real impact, monetary, financial, fiscal impact of the students that are generated by this project.  We have committed since the beginning, and at each of these public meetings and again tonight, that we want to do what we can do to mitigate the financial impact of the students that are generated by this project.  We haven’t really been able to get anybody at the school board or at the county level to say to us, this is exactly what the impact is, we have already calculated it, we know what it is, and this is how we got there.  Nobody seems to be there yet. 

 

I know that there is a lot of discussion in the community about impact fees and about the local powers act and all of these.  There is a lot of work that needs to be done so that the county can get to the point where they can logically, reasonably, legally, and defensively calculate impact fees.  I hope that they get there sooner rather than later because right now we are the only developer committing to pay impact fees.  But, we are committed to that and we would like to see everybody doing it so that we aren’t at a disadvantage in the marketplace.  But again, we included this table which is supplementary to the CIS.  It is not required by the county, but we wanted to show the planning commission and the community that we have given this some thought.  Again, as I tell you tonight, we are in discussions trying to further refine it and better understand it, but I can tell you from what I have seen so far is that obviously, if you look at it so far, is at the elementary school level. 

 

So, for the first five or six years of the project, it would appear, and again, not understanding and not getting the data that tells me how long an elementary school student is in the elementary school system in this county. That is really the crux of the issue right now.  But when you look at it, clearly, you can see that the major impacts are on elementary schools.  But in the 6th, 7th, 8th year of this project, the elementary school that is impacted greatest by this project will graduate more students on an annual basis than will come into that school.  So, suddenly you will see a shift, a very significant shift based on the spreadsheets I have worked on so far, from elementary school population into middle school population.  And you will see that sort of rolling population.  And then it recycles about 10 or 11 years into the project.  But again, you have a significant amount of children that graduate from the school in the 6th or 7th year and you are still only graduating 15 or 20 students a year.  So, all of a sudden those impacts shift and they move away from the elementary school level.  But, we are clearly focused on the elementary school and knowing that is really where we need to focus in the early part of the project and then we can look at the other grade levels as the project goes on.  I think that is all I will talk about right now, thank you.

 

Lee Quill:  I think that the importance of this is also, as Jim has been working with the school board continually so that we can understand the impact, part of the reason for understanding this is because this developer has worked with school boards and said, okay, there is going to be 75 acres set aside for school sites.  Now, should that be one big site or two?  We think right now that it probably ought to be two.  What we have been looking at is one potentially in this particular area down here,  We are only talking about this being a third of the development that will be coming in over the next 20 years.  What we are trying to do is to see what is our part and how can we help?

 

By making the school sites part of the community, we want to establish them, as you can see in how we have set them up, as major elements within the community just like (inaudible).  They front on the streets.  They aren't hidden away someplace.  Paige Jackson, I am sure, is a wonderful school, but how many people can find it easily by coming in on old 340?  Our model is more like the building, we are in right now where the building is front and center, the play fields are behind or on the side.  And it is really part of the hub of the community that you can walk to, and really, it is a wonderful building.  again, that is part of the rich fabric of a really wonderful neighborhood.  So, a lot of this data will continue to inform when this should come on and what type of school it should be.

 

Part of the major building blocks of good neighborhoods and good communities are our streets.  When we walk the streets of Shepherdstown, on this side, or Charles Town, there is a special place and characteristic feel to each one of these, a special feel to each place.  Shepherdstown has a unique situation where they don't have so many curb and gutters, but they still have magnificent trees in many of their neighborhoods.  They have the sidewalks and then the trees, and then the road.  It is just missing the gutter.  But it has an amazing series of old trees that really provide character to the street.

 

In certain streets in Charles Town you have the trees inboard.  But again, you have that long row of trees.  Now, these trees were planted, they were designed and put there to help contribute to the neighborhoods over a long period of time.  That is what we are talking about doing.  But, it is a conscious decision.

 

There is a big difference between creating a street such as this, which is the Kentlands, and creating a street like this, which is a typical subdivision of what you see a lot of around the country.  What we are saying is that we think we can do a little better than that.  We can learn from the models that you saw before and do more of that to try to make the street a little richer. 

 

One of the major streets that we have going through the project we are talking about is a major collector piece, it connects to neighborhoods.  We want to make this a boulevard.  It is modeled after two boulevards in the region.  One is Monument Avenue in Richmond.  I don't know if you have been there but it is wonderful.  This is the street on this side; it is a tree-lined boulevard with a 40 foot median.  It has parking, wonderful houses.  But, guess what, how many of you all know where this is?  Ranson.

 

Believe it or not, when I first came up here and looked at this plan I kept looking at this plan and there was a circle in this long boulevard.  I said, "What is this?"  Finally, when I got back up here, because I had been to Charles Town, but as a young kid I didn't really focus on the urban issues as much.  I was going camping as a Boy Scout, etc.  All of a sudden, coming up as an architect and a planner I said, "My God!  Look at this wonderful street!"

 

It is really defined, instead of having so many gas stations and things, if we put a few more buildings around it and a few more trees that could be a little better.  But it is a wonderful street.  What we are saying is that we want to pick up from the patterns here and in other places to create wonderful streets like this that become major thoroughfares, but are not based on a by-pass.  They are not based on a high-speed road.  They are based on being building blocks of a community where people can cross the street and they have people living not the street so that the traffic goes slowly, but it contributes.

 

This is what Monument Avenue looked like when it first got started.  Everybody says, "Well, how are we going to do that?"  This is what Monument Avenue looked like before all of the trees were planted.  This is Commonwealth Avenue in Alexandria.  This used to be a trolley line at the turn of the century in the early part of the 20th century and then they came in and put the trees in when the trolleys were taken out.  So, all it is, is making a conscious decision to make good streets that contribute to your neighborhood.

 

Streets, the hierarchy of streets, whether they are neighborhood streets or whether they are collector streets is all based on kind of creating a character of a place.  But you are going to say, "Well, what about the capacity, what about these things?" 

 

One of our consultants, Mike Workosky, from Wells & Associates, is going to take a few moments right now to talk about what is it that generates traffic, how does it generate traffic, and what are the issues that we are looking at from the traffic and transportation components that are going to start to influence these things.  Again, the components of character versus what do you do with the streets to control it.

 

Mike Workosky:  Thanks, Lee.  Good evening, my name is Mike Workosky.  I am a Principal and a Traffic Engineer at the firm of Wells & Associates.  We are a Traffic Engineering/Planning Firm.  We conduct traffic studies and parking studies for projects, primarily in the Washington, D.C. area, but also around the country.  We are based in the Northern Virginia area, but we have other offices in Suburban Maryland.  We have been asked by Greenvest to take a look at this project from the traffic impact side and also review some of the previous studies that have been done on this project and have been submitted to the county.

 

We also have worked with Jim at Greenvest and Lee on other projects in the area so there is some cohesiveness between our teams as we come together building these plans.

 

The first thing that I wanted to touch on is the plan itself.  Lee has eloquently led you through how the plan is being designed, how the streets are being laid out.  These are very, very important concepts to a plan because we are invoking smart growth principles.  How we are doing that is having integrated uses.  From a traffic engineer's standpoint, we want integrated uses.  We want people to be able to combine their trips.  We want people to be able to walk to different places.  We don't want every person to have to get in their car and drive to the grocery store and then drive back home.  That, from just a conceptual level, helps to decrease the amount of peak hour traffic that a project will generate and that lowers its impact on a road network itself.

 

Also, you can see from these slides and some of the previous ones, the boulevard concept and streets with parking on them.  Again, these are very basic, very good internal designs for a project of this nature.  What this does, parking on a street of that nature creates some side friction.  It helps to slow traffic down.  We try to strike a balance on these projects and it is the most difficult part.  We want to serve pedestrians, we want to serve transit uses.  We also need to serve vehicles and we need to do that safely and we need to do that efficiently.  That is why there is a trade-off in these designs.  Through our experience on other projects that are similar in nature to this one, we have found that those types of designs are very important.  From a pedestrian standpoint, we look for connections.  We look for connections throughout the project.  We make sure that different ends of the project are connected through a central path.  We would like to plan for other facilities such as bike lanes, those sorts of things.  Those are what make, what we would term, “a walkable community”.

 

When I evaluate a project myself, I think about a person with children.  I have some children and I take them out, I put them in a stroller, and I do all of the things that a mom would do, or a parent would do, or a disabled person would have to do to get around that project.  It gets down to very detailed designs of where ramps are located and crosswalks are located and pavement treatments and those sorts of things.  Those can really help make a project a community itself.

 

Some of the other features that this design affords are features such as a circle.  Those become focal points in a project.  Those become things that people enjoy and they find that they can identify with those sorts of things.  Also, remember that we are looking at a 20-year plan.  This is a plan that is going to evolve some over time.  There are opportunities for transit.  There are opportunities for TDM or transportation demand management measures.  These are things I know that it is difficult to conceptualize them now, but as planners and engineers, these are that things that we have to think about because we are going so far into the future.  There are several design principles that I just sort of touched on and now I would like to just give you the brief discussion about the traffic study itself, some of the things that have been done and some particulars about the site.

 

Whenever we conduct a traffic analysis, similar to the one that has been submitted on this project, we start off with the basic conditions.  We look at the existing counts of traffic.  How are things working today?  How do people drive?  What is the capacity of the road system today?  We do that by collecting background traffic counts and primarily during the peak hours.  Those hours are essentially the morning peak hour when people go to work and the evening peak hour when people return.  We identify those hours as a function of the traffic counts that we take.  Then, we look the growth in traffic that will occur over time without the project.  That is, other planned projects in the area, other road connections that may affect the roads surrounding the project.  Historical growth rate information. 

 

All of these things we put in the background of a project.  Then we estimate the amount of traffic that the site will generate itself.  We have heard the comments about 24-25,000 vehicles a day.  From a sheer traffic standpoint, a project that is integrated and has uses that are integrated with each other, it will generate lower trips together than a project that would be calculated separately.  You’d have no interaction between these uses.  You do capture trips within your project and not on the external road system.  In general, this project would generate about 24-25,000 vehicle trips per day.  That is on a 24-hour basis.  Half of those trips come into the project, and half of those trips leave the project.  Those trips are not there at the same time.  Generally, the peak hour, peak demand, peak direction, is normally about 10% of the average daily traffic volume.  In this case, that would translate to about 1300 to 1400 peak hour, peak direction trips.  What I mean by that is people who are leaving in the morning and coming in in the afternoon, or in the evening. 

 

Once, we have determined the amount of trips that a project is generating, based on the land use densities and where they are located within the site, then we apply those trips to the road network.  And we do that by looking at population and employment densities and where these things are located in relationship to the site itself so that we can forecast where people will work and where people will live.  People who will work on site and people who will be coming to the site to work, hopefully.

Then, we prepare capacity analyses at the intersections and the roadways that surround the site.  Those analyses lead you to a set of roadway improvements that can accommodate site-generated traffic as well as the traffic generated by background developments and the traffic that is on the roads today.  So, generally this is an incremental process.  Right now, like I said, there has been a study that has been submitted to the county.  It outlines a number of roadway improvements that can adequately accommodate the traffic that this project will generate over three different stages.  I believe that the study has three different conditions in it.  That is really a prudent way to analyze it.  Our firm has been looking at this study that has been prepared.  We have been doing our own evaluation of the improvements and the ability for these improvements to handle the traffic of this site.  We will be in the coming months working with the West Virginia Highway Department as we go through the permitting stage and we get beyond the zoning stage.

 

I think that is the extent of my comments and, Lee, I will just turn it back to you.

 

Lee Quill:  Thank you, Mike.  Mike will be available for more detailed discussion.  Again, he is part of the team that will be with us during the duration of this project as we try to make refinements and understandings of how this project will have it’s impacts, to make sure that we get more people off of the road.

 

One of that things that I did want to point out again, is part of what we are doing with the measure of open space and recreation is, not all of the trips are just going to work.  A lot of them are you come home, but it is the quick trips of running to the store, or if you have kids, it is running the kids to a soccer game or baseball game or something like that.  What we are working on very consciously is putting major recreational, regional recreational facilities on the site so that if you are living here and your kid is in one of these leagues, he or she can either walk to it if it is close enough, ride their bike,  Or if you have to do a short haul, you can take a trip within the site, never impacting out.

 

What we are trying to do is again deal with the mix of uses, the mix of what we deal with in our lives everyday and enriching this community so that we can keep people in the different modes of transportation, walking, biking, transit connections that we talked about, maybe short trips in the car.  But we are trying to get them out of their car as much as we can.  There is not getting out onto the road network and having to drive to some other facility.  Another component as you may recall that I mentioned early on was looking at the center of the site and in this particular drawing right here, exploring what can happen with transit and what can happen with on the site transit as well as off site. 

 

I just want to introduce Al Eisenberg who is a consultant that has been brought on and I will just give a little background quickly on what he is doing.  Al is heading up the effort to look at transit opportunities for this site and what we might be able to bring to Charles Town and this site.

 

Al Eisenberg:  A number of you have met me before, I think, at one of the other sessions and I am glad to be here tonight and reacquaint myself both again and anew for the group that is here tonight.  It is a great privilege for me to be a part of this team.  By way of background, I was the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Transportation Policy at the U.S. Department of Transportation.  I served for 15 years as Chairman and Member of the Arlington Virginia County Board of Supervisors.  We are a community known for urban planning and smart growth.  A lot bigger scale than this one, but with the same goal in mind which is to keep the friendly neighborhood scale in every way and every place that we can.  A good project connects transportation and land use.  It is the essence of smart growth.  If the two don’t work together, then you have the kind of sprawl, which this project is trying to avoid.  In fact, as they have developed and planned it, it will avoid. 

 

If I didn’t believe that this was and will be a smart growth project, I would not have signed on to this task. I am excited about it and I think that there is something that is very important here that we can take advantage of.  Because you have two major rail lines, a Norfolk Southern line, and a MARC line, there are some opportunities, over time, to take advantage, we think, of those two lines as potential means of reducing the amount of travel, particularly by car, for those who would be traveling out of the county to get to and from work.  We want to explore these opportunities and we think that there are a number of them.  There are a large number of federal programs that are formula allocated as well as allocated by competitive grant to the states and to localities for a very wide variety of transportation uses. 

 

There is one program that you can apply directly to the state for which can actually help build bike trails, for example.  Now, that is not the mass transit that we are talking about with the two rail lines, but it is an example of the kind of thing that is out there.  There are, at least nationwide, hundreds of millions of dollars just for that program alone.  There are a whole variety of transit programs and related programs and we want to explore these to see about the extent to which over time, as this project unfolds, that these different kinds of transit options and choices can come into play.  The issue is choice and options so that people will have different ways of getting to and from where they want to go and not be tied to just one particular choice.

 

Rather than drag this on any farther, let me just say, my job is to explore this.  I will certainly be extremely interested in the views that you all have about opportunities, about things that you think will work.  What are the kinds of things that you believe are necessary in regard to this project?  I would certainly want to hear them and crank them right into the project that I am engaged in.

 

Let me make one other point that is very important with respect to the long-term transit options.  Under the law, all federal transportation programs have to go through a planning process and by law, that planning process has got to be open, every stage of the way, to very substantial public participation.  So, whatever it is that is proposed, all along the way, there is this public participation.  Because of the size of this community, you relate to a state plan and again, the state has got to consult you in terms of everything that would be done.  It is a wide-open process just like this one.  Again, I am very pleased to be part of it.

 

Lee Quill:  So, as we wrap up here and get into comment and question period, I think that what we have tried to convey as we look at this CIS as opposed to what you all have seen before, this planning effort and the open meetings and our two-way dialogue that we have been having and will continue to have.  This is not the end.  This is the beginning of a dialogue and working together to create a very special series of new neighborhoods for Charles Town that reflect and relate to Charles Town and historic patterns, so that we can learn from this wonderful place in Shepherdstown, places like this Alexandria neighborhood, and respond to a context again, over a period of time.  Here is your growth area.  Again, a wonderful model, based on the Portland model of an urban growth boundary.  But, if you notice, you will see a 20 year, need report.  Again, if there is anything that I want to stress with regards to phasing and time so that you can put this in the context of what you are dealing with. 

 

Right now you are dealing with incremental 150-200 plots of development right now.  But you don’t know what is coming down next year.  You don’t know where it is going to be or where it is coming from or what you are going to have to fight.  What we are trying to say right now is let’s plan for that portion right down in here and make it really good and raise the bar so that the other people coming in that are trying to do development in this area start to say, “Well, why isn’t it focused in a certain area and where is the quality level?”  What kind of environment do we want to create?

 

Sprawl, management of growth, happens in two different ways.  You either help shape it by determining where you want it to go and how you want it to be shaped and what quality.  Because Portland is struggling right now with the quality of its infill.  It is actually getting some cul-de-sacs and things like this within the growth boundary.  So, it is a little bit better, but we are talking at the next level, of quality.  What is it that we are talking about on the ground.  So, we either get ahead of it and try to help shape it, or it will shape us.

 

So, this plan talks about a phasing of twenty years.  This is the plan of a series of neighborhoods that we are talking about here.

 

This is probably the first neighborhood or a general idea of it.  There is major open space down here working with the new lake.  Recreation area is here and the first neighborhood going on, again, all connected, part of a short road.  This is probably what you will expect to be seeing shortly.  Within the next couple of months we will be coming back and talking to you about that.

 

It is going to be based on these models.  This wonderful mix, even the garage looks good in Charles Town because it is designed well and it fits with it.  This is a street in Kentlands.  It is not a bad place to live.

 

This is what we are trying to avoid.  That was not controlled and that was not shaped.  That happened.  There is a discussion out there about whether we are too early, too big.  Let me just put this thought out there.  If you know Leesburg, which I do, I have been working with Leesburg and the planning people in Loudoun for a long time about trying to protect the nature of its town and protect it with a boundary.  The eastern end of Leesburg did not deal with that and I dare you to please tell me where the boundary of Leesburg is coming in from Route 7 from Tyson’s Corner.  If you can find it, because of the little village, you win the prize.  But, I have seen it eroded because of this kind of stuff.  It just keeps growing and growing and now they have a large mall. 

 

What we are trying to do is be part of a problem-solving team to help focus the dialogue in the community, but also bring about a quality of discussion and a project that will avoid this from happening on the west end and in other areas so that you start to raise the bar.  To bring the community together and say, “Look, we don’t want this to continue.  We want it to be focused and we want to reinforce our downtown.  We want a quality development.”  It will either shape you or we can shape it together.  We will bring our tools, our experience, our resources from around various people and around the country to help solve problems here and that is why we are excited about the project just like Al.  That is why we are lucky and we feel lucky to have this opportunity with this developer because he has gone the next step.

 

These are our guiding principles that we have talked about before.  They are on the board over here.  Come over and look at them.

 

Again, this is the place that we are trying to protect that we want to reinforce and use as our model for the new development.

 

We are now going to open it up to questions and comments.  We thank you for coming to this third meeting.  AS you know, we have a CIS hearing on May 8^th.  If you can think about whether you can find some element of this plan or a bunch of elements in this plan that you think are good, please come and speak to them.  If you can swallow parts or the whole thing; come and speak to those things that you think are good.  If you don’t think it is good, come and speak to that too.  But we think that we have gone in this analysis and this study a long way to try to help shape some wonderful opportunities here of taking a  big project and instead of turning it into one big sprawl project, we are creating some wonderful new opportunities and we look forward to starting with this new project in the CIS approval and moving on to the next stages of neighborhood one and continuing the dialogue in more meetings which we will get into.

 

Jim Duszynski:  We have one person in each aisle with a hand mike so if you have a question just raise your hand and they will bring the mike down to you.  When you have the mike and the person in front of you has stopped talking, just feel free to stand up and ask your question.  So, is there anyone who has a question or would like to ask anything?

 

Lee Quill:  For the new people, what we are doing, is we do a transcript.  The reasons that we have these things on is that we do a transcript which is available to the public so that everything that we have been talking about tonight and the question and answer, if you would identify yourself, it is available.  There are also two transcripts from the other two meetings so you can go back through that.  If you like heavy reading at night, it is pretty thick, but you can go through it, look at these boards and follow along the discussions so that there is a more informed dialogue.  We learn a lot from the comments that come back also.  We try to share some information and get it back.  So, comments, questions, concerns, anybody?  No?  Okay, thank you.  (laughter)  Yes.

 

Robin Huyett Doherty:  As you just stated, if this project goes through just the beginning of a 20 year relationship with the city of Charles Town and with Jefferson County.  In my industry when we enter into business-client relationships we always look for references and past records.  How would you describe your relationship with Loudoun County?  And, or if I went to Loudoun County Planning Commission what kind of references would they give me?

 

Jim Duszynski:  We have been involved in development in Loudoun County since 1996 when we purchased the balance of the Cascades Development from Chevy Chase Savings Bank.  For those of you who are not familiar with it, it is a project that was originally zoned and approved for over 6,000 homes.  The original developer lost the project to the bank.  The bank held it for several years and then we purchased the remaining, roughly 2100 lots from Chevy Chase.  So, we have about a  5 or 6 year relationship with the county.

 

I think that we have a good relationship with the county and the county planning staff.  Last year, when we were first getting into this process, some people were  curious about the same sort of thing called Loudoun County and the report that I heard back was that we got fairly positive reviews about being a good developer, following the rules, going the extra step in making sure that our developments met all of the requirements.

 

Additionally, I think that perhaps while that is obviously very important, another thing that I would say is that our record as a developer working with Homeowner’s Associations. People who move into our communities and we are really in a very tangible partnership with for many years is quite a good one.  I recently asked some homeowners at Cameron Station which is our other Alexandria project to contact the homeowners at Cascades and they got a  couple of questions answered.

 

We currently have a couple of lawsuits in Loudoun County in case you are not aware and I thought that you might be since you asked the question.  The two projects, the two land use projects that we filed, basically are appeals of the planning commission decision and the Board of Supervisor’s decisions, not unlike the appeal that we filed here in Jefferson County last year with the planning commission’s decision. 

 

We proposed to develop two projects, one on about 400 acres with about 800 homes, roughly two to the acre, one for about 400 homes on 200 acres.  Again, about 2 to the acre.  Both plans got the recommendation of the planning staff for approval.  They got fairly high marks in the hearings from both planning commissioners and even some of the supervisors.  But, they were denied anyway and they were denied for reasons not because they didn’t meet the requirements of the current regulations, but because the planning commission and the board felt that growth and the way that they want to deal with growth in the area referred to as “Dulles South,” which is a planning area in Loudoun County, they didn’t want to approve any new subdivisions.

 

 As businessmen, again similar to what we did here in Jefferson County, we have made a very large investment based on the current rules and regulations and felt that it was unfair and unreasonable that we wouldn’t be approved under those rules and regulations which were on the book.  In fact, rules and regulations under which other developments were being approved by.  Similar, again, to Jefferson County. 

 

So, while we have that appeal in the system in Loudoun County, I think that if you were to call the planning staff they will tell you that the plans that we proposed on those two projects specifically were very good plans.  The comments that we got repeatedly were that both staff and the planning commission said that they wished that more developers would come forward with plans like this.  Then, they denied us.  So, we are filing an appeal.

 

Lee Quill:  I think what is important with this particular project here though is that there was an evolution of what happened a year ago and then there is a transition since then.  I am relating back to a year ago, not so much where we are today here in Jefferson County.  I think that what is good is that we were hired by this developer and we care about this area a great deal and are excited about this project.  Hopefully, if you have been coming to our meetings and seeing what we have been going, we spend a lot of time trying to understand the nature of this.  We have a big dialogue.  These meetings are very important with the dialogue going back and forth.  We try to give you a little bit of information, but if we sit up here and say, “Okay, here is our presentation,” and then you all say, “Great,” and go out the door, then what is that?  You have to inform us, this is your community.  We live nearby, but it is a constant dialogue.  The evolution of the project, the beginning of a project, is key to really successful plans.  There is a partnership that has to be built here because the issues that you care about are the issues that we care about as architects and planners and as developers.  So, I think what we should be looking at is them model that we are talking about right here.  Loudoun has got its own issues now that they are dealing with. 

 

Jefferson County is a little bit different.  What we are trying to do and the reason that we took this job with Jim is because this is a very special place and we have an opportunity to really make a difference here.

 

Loudoun has tried to deal with conditions that they have already created.  You have a little bit of that here, but you haven’t been blown away yet by sprawl.  But, that is why we are here, because we think that we have an opportunity to help bring together problem-solving teams, to keep that kind of problem from happening here.  I think that the dialogue that has happened in this community and the evolution of dialogue on the street because of this project, and hopefully some of the boards that you re seeing has really enriched a lot of people that maybe saw things a little bit differently.  But we see a real opportunity here and that is why we are excited about this project and I have to thank Jim for that opportunity.  That is why we took this one.

 

Jim Duszynski:  I would just add, I don’t have any problem with the question and I don’t have any problem with acknowledging the appeals that we have filed.  The land development business, which is where it all starts, is part philosophy and social engineering, I will say in a way of phrasing that.  It is part public relations.  It is part politics.  And it is part legal.

 

Land use ordinances by their nature are legal mechanisms and they are adopted, they are legislated, they are regulated.  So, part of the business is that legal aspect.  Again, going back to last year, all we are asking is be treated fairly, be treated by the rules that are on the record.  We think, as we think we have shown here, that we will do a better job than anybody else.  I think that if you talk to John Merrifield or Linda at the planning staff in Loudoun County they will tell you exactly that and I would invite you to call them.

 

Lynn Porges:  My name is Lynn Porges.  On the same topic, the reading that I have done on Cameron Station, I guess it is a matter of trust in that certain plans were made and then instead of having a seven-foot leeway, it went 70 feet.  I don’t know the exact figures.  Then, I just wonder if we are being sweet-talked and then certain things will be ramroded, so, I have a little bit of doubt with trust in fancy words that are said.  I was told that this thing was going through no matter what way before all of these meetings.  So, I don’t know what powers…

 

Lee Quill:  This thing needs to be voted on.

 

Lynn Porges:  I understand that, but I don’t know who the powers really are, who the commissioners and how they pass things and all of a sudden we read in the paper.  I just have trouble with that trust issue.

 

Lee Quill:  I actually met Jim at one of these meetings.  Our firm was working on a plan in Alexandria called Potomac Yard.  It has been recognized as a smart growth, good plan.  I have given some speeches and some talks at some conferences from that.  When we heard about the uproar about some of the problems that you are talking about at Cameron Station we were going, “What is this going on?  I better check this out to make sure that something doesn’t happen at ours.” 

 

What ended up happening was something that was misrepresented in the press blew up to where I actually met him at a meeting where a developer was so concerned about what was happening with this notification issue.  Because the planning staff had approved it, everyone had been notified.  I wanted to go find out so that we would avoid the same problem.  It turned out the problem was this big versus this big, but the press had blown it up.  What this developer did was hold a meeting with the city council, the planning commission, the whole community, the press, I went just to find out what was going on, in this big room at their sales center and that is where I met this gentleman.  What he did was try to solve the problem by bringing everybody back together to explain here is what happened and here is what we did.  All of a sudden it went down.  But, of course the press kept going back.  One council member made an inflammatory remark and said, “Oh my God! This is a big problem.”  He then rescinded and it became a big deal.  The way to solve these problems, if you go back and you follow these things and if you look at the press today, in fact the Washington Post just had a piece on Cameron Station.  It was very, very positive.  The people that are moving into the community, what do they think about it, how are they being treated, and how is this development fitting with the rest?  If you talk to the mayor of Alexandria, talk to Dell Pepper who is a council member who lives right next door on Duke Street, they love the project.  They both live in the West End of Alexandria because they have made the investment.  The only reason that these people love it and it is working well is because this company has continued that whenever little bumps come up to go out and work to solve them.  That is why we signed on with these guys because they want to do the right thing and that is why we are here.   If you think that any kind of development isn’t going to have some bump or ripple, then you are not aware of how development really works.

 

Lee Quill:  There will always be some blip.  The problem can either be solved or it can go away and what we want to do as part of a team is be aggressive in positively trying to deal with things that come up.  I challenge you to please talk to some of these people and look at the Post article that came out and how positive the people who live there are.  I hope that answers and kind of gives you perspective because that is how I came into it.

 

Jim Duszynski:  The only thing that I would add and this came up at the last public meeting that we had.  I know that all of the articles were posted on the listener’s home page and they get top billing which is nice.  The issue there in my mind was about communication.  The residents, actually not the residents, but the owners of some office condominiums in a project immediately adjacent to Cameron Station had been involved at the early stage of the project and seen a preliminary plan which was approved by the city.  The city of Alexandria has a process where you do a preliminary plan, what they call a SUP or a special use permit.  From the special use permit you go to site plan.  Both plans have a public hearing process.  You go through the planning commission, you go through the city council.  From a special use permit to the final site plan, the original, the special use permit showed townhouses about 65 feet, I think that is probably the number you are referring to, about 65 or 70 feet from the property line.  It was effectively a small wedge of open space that was tucked behind some townhouses. 

 

Now, that is the way that we looked at it and that is the way that the city staff looked at it.  Now, the way that the people on that side of the property looked at it was that it was their green space that sort of separated them from the townhouses.

 

City staff actually asked us to move the townhouses up against the property line to bring the open space into the front of the community not unlike the couple of slides that Lee showed you.  That process was a very public process, but the people who owned the residences or the condominiums next door didn’t stay involved.  What I said to the gentleman last week who brought the issue up, I said it is a very public process.  We have a CIS and we have final plats.  Each final plat has to look something like this plan, very close to this plan.  If it doesn’t then the CIS needs to be revised before that plat can be approved, that is my understanding of the process.  So, my advice, and if that is your concern, stay involved.  There is a fairly large group of people, some of whom I have gotten to know, some of who I only know their names, who watchdog the development community in this area. 

 

That is not a bad thing.  But I would say stay involved, that way that type of miscommunication where a plan changes while nothing untoward occurred, doesn’t create a situation that gets blown out of proportion.  But that is the explanation that I have.

 

Katherine Cimaglio:  My name is Katherine Cimaglio.  My question is:  Twenty years is a long time.  People die.  Companies go out of business.  The economy, what it is, who knows what is going to happen in the next five to ten years.  What is our guarantee that you all are going to be on the scene for 20 years?  If Greenvest goes under in 10 years are we left holding the bag?

 

Jim Duszynski:  Well, as you said, 20 years is a long time, people die and companies go out of business.  I don’t know that there is a guarantee that I can give you that I will be here or that Greenvest will be here 20 years from now.   What I can tell you is that if this is the plan that is approved, then the plan and the approval runs with the land.  So, that is number one.  Whether it is Greenvest or someone else, that approval runs with the land and if someone else comes behind us and wants to change it, again, there is public process.  The CIS revisions that would have to occur, the final plats that would be in front of the planning commission.

 

As far as the comment about holding the bag, I am not quite sure what the exposure to the community is, at least financially.  When I hear “holding the bag” I think of some sort of financial exposure.  Clearly we are here, being honest and straightforward about what our intentions are.  Again, as I said at the beginning, we not only provided this text to the planning commission, but we provided all of these images because a picture is worth a thousand words.  We wanted the planning commission, we wanted the community to see, what is it going to look like?  This is all fine; I can read it.  We can all read it and have a different picture in our minds.  So, we have given this to the planning commission.  Again, that is your guarantee.

 

The property will be developed in the way that we intend it to be developed and if it is not for some reason, it will have to be changed, there will have to be a public hearing to change that plan.  That is all I can say for you.

 

Lee Quill:  That is the benefit of the open process right here.  It is not behind some closed doors where you don’t know what is happening and something is sprung on you and you are supposed to react to it quickly.  Then it goes away.  The intention of this effort, and what we have been doing, this is our 3^rd meeting.  We have the CIS and we have more meetings, which we will be having with the community after that.  There is an intention to do an annual meeting to give you updates of where things are going and how things are evolving and to get comments back.

 

The plan, as Jim says, by doing all of this, I doubt that you have seen this much on some of your other projects up here.  If you have, I would love to see them.  These are your guarantees as Jim said.  Because it is out there in the public record, it is part of the exhibit of the CIS so that if someone, suppose these guys run away and some bank took it over at 15 years out.  The successor organization or owner is tied to this and the only way that it gets changed is through the public process, which is the right way. If they want to change it, they have to come back and they should go through the same thing that we are doing right now to make sure that you all buy into what they are doing, and make sure that the impacts of the changes that they may want to make, if they want to make some, are consistent with protecting the neighborhoods and protecting the developments that are there, but also the historic fabric.  So, that is why we put it all out there. 

 

Less development information is not the answer.  More is and that becomes your record.  It is out there and you will have it and that is how you can track it to make sure, if anything did happen, that you can make sure that they follow the guidelines that everybody has agreed to.  Next question.

 

Betty Steinflick:  My name is Betty Steinflick.  I have a question concerning the privacy or lack thereof of the roads.  Are these going to be private roads or is the state going to take care of the roads.

 

Jim Duszynski:  My understanding is that all subdivision roads in Jefferson County are private roads.  We are preparing our homeowners association budget to account for the reserves that are required for maintenance on an annual basis of the roads in the project.

 

Betty Steinflick:  In many of these communities, they have private roads, and the lots go to the center of the road.  If so, in your community, you have your lots listed here as 6,000 to 15,000 square feet.  If it goes to the center of the road, that part of the road, the sidewalk, and the lot that the house is on, is 1/7^th of an acre.  You have been showing us pictures up here of very grand homes and I don’t think that you can put houses like that on any kind of a lot that size.  Will it be included in the 6,000 to 15,000 square feet?

 

Lee Quill:  The answer is no.  As we are currently designing and starting to design in the first phase, we have already talked with the engineer about laying out the road right-of-ways which will be forty or fifty feet.  Back of sidewalk to back of sidewalk is a right-of-way.  That will end up being an (inaudible) that will be owned by the homeowners association.  The 6,000 square foot minimum lot size of the Jefferson County zoning ordinance is all outside of the right of way.  It is all building lot and the house will sit within that.  We will have some larger lots, but again, the minimum lot size under the existing zoning ordinance is 6,000 square feet with a minimum 80- foot frontage.

 

Betty Steinflick:  You have a largest as only 1/3 of an acre and the grand houses you have shown us on the pictures will never fit into that.

 

Lee Quill:  If I can direct you to these diagrams here when you come down I can talk to you in more detail.  Right now you have an 80 foot frontage requirement in Jefferson county.  That is your minimum lot.  Right now you can go 80x75 which is the minimum requirement of 6,000 or you can go 80x100 and our basic block structure that we have been looking at is basically working with the 80x100 and plus a little bit, 110.  What we are looking t with these block structures are then looking at what if you put in a crosswinds house.  The width of the houses are listed in this particular analysis of 67, fifty-some, 47.  And what these diagrams will show you here is that we have actually looked at what happens if you take these prototypes, of course we want to modify them sighting, but take these and put them down on a series of lots.  So, that is what it is. 

 

Your question is a great one because if the lot was to go into the middle of the road, we wouldn’t be able to do this.  But what these diagrams are showing you is that we are working with the actual plat, just like downtown of what the housing plat would be and then there is a right of way for the road.  There are setbacks, etc., right here of 25 feet which is required here in the county.  That is what we are working with.  It is a good question because if you are assuming one thing and then you are seeing this, there would be that question.  But we are setting it up on the model of having a right of way and then having your actual 6,000 square foot lot working with all of the set backs, etc., and working with the sizes of the houses that are being developed today so that we can have a variety of different sized lots.  Thank you for your question.  Yes.

 

Katie Fibler:  My name is Katie Fibler.  I had some questions regarding the block layout.  Are you running into any problems with the zoning ordinance that keeps you from doing that type of plan?

 

Lee Quill:   The answer is no and the reason is because we have a mix of different types.  We have some that are going to be more angular.  We have some that are going to be curved with topography.  They aren’t going to all be rigid.  Some of these are going to be curving as they come in here, etc.  So, we are responding to the context which is 200 years old, but we are also responding to the zoning ordinance so that we have that flexibility of not everything just being completely rigid and taking a grid paper and laying it down on the site.

 

Katie Fibler:  What is the likelihood of putting alleys in the blocks?

 

Jim Duszynski:  I will add to the first part.  Again, as Lee said, the minimum lot front is 80 feet, the minimum lot size is 6,000.  We can put, under the existing zoning ordinance, townhouses next door to single families, which is again sort of a major component of the traditional neighborhood design, to mix the different types of housing products. 

 

Alleys, I have had some interesting conversations with the planning department and they don’t like grid streets.  They don’t like traditional neighborhood design.  They don’t like alleys.  And none of these are permitted under the zoning ordinance.

 

At one of the early meetings, I told him to stop doing it, but I will drag it out again, Lee called the Jefferson County zoning ordinance, the Handbook for Sprawl.  And it is.  I have had some further conversations with people that are working on the comprehensive plan and believe that after the comprehensive plan process, that there will probably also be revisions to the zoning ordinance.  We believe that where Jefferson County’s comp plan is headed and where their zoning ordinance is headed is everything that is right behind you.  A lot of the things that are behind you will be permissible under the new zoning ordinance.  So, I think that by the time we really get started and get underway, while we can do exactly this and we can do exactly this as we are showing you tonight, we will probably have some flexibility to maybe do some narrower lots, to change and bring some variety into the streetscape.  That we will have the ability to do alleys.  A lot of that is going to be market-driven as well.

 

Lee Quill:  And if I could just make one comment.  What we have tried to do is build in flexibility in this for change over time.  We can do the development that meets the zoning ordinance currently today and we will still have a good one.  We talked about the streets, we talked about the blocks.  We have an 80-foot frontage.  We have it so that it will work.  But we have also built in the depth of the lots so that if at some point in the future there is the opportunity for an alley in Jefferson County we can accommodate that within our block.

 

Now, would I like to see it?  You bet I would, but I have to meet the zoning ordinance now.  But as a good urban planner and urban designer and community planner, if you can not preclude things, but create opportunities for multiple lots, the 600 will allow for divisions for smaller lots and larger lots.  Right now we have to be 80, but we have designed it so that we could have some flexibility for a more diverse housing stock.  It could accommodate an alley, but right now if we went in they would say, “What are you doing?  This is not the ordinance.”  So, what we are trying to do is build in flexibility within the plan to go to an ultimate.  And if you all think that is important, then we need to get together with the community and come forward to planning commission during the comp plan and say, “Hey guys, let’s do some of this stuff.”  That is what Charles Town is. 

 

It is so funny because when we do planning, like in the City of Alexandria, I had weeks of discussions with the transportation department about alleys in Alexandria, which is a historic city.  They wanted a 44-foot wide right of way for an alley.  It started with just a walkway.  You park your car behind the alley and you have to get the fire truck through.  Then it became 44 feet.  The roads are 66 foot right of way and the roads are 40 foot curb to curb.  So, sometimes even in a community where the whole community, people come from around the world to come study someplace, trying to get the basics are very difficult.

 

Again, it is part of the dialogue and it is part of us all working together.  If you think that it is a good idea then we will bring it forward.  Otherwise, we are going to get a good development from this.  It is just that we have some opportunities to do it even better if we want.

 

Jim Duszynski:  Similar to that, how does the corner store concept fit into the current zoning ordinance?

 

Lee Quill:  On the eastern end, we have no problem with doing a corner store as part of a mix.  On the west end it is more of a challenge because it is pure residential.  So, again, this is depending on how you all feel and whether we think it is a good idea we could have that kind of mix on the east.  It is no problem on the west with our civic spaces.  We can put our churches; we can put our civic buildings, our firehouses, our libraries, all of that can work, our playgrounds, our parks.  It will still work.  But we are just saying that if we can get it in the western end, a corner store, great.  If it isn’t, it isn’t going to destroy the plan it will still be a strong plan.  It will just make it a little richer.

 

Jim Duszynski:  The front half of the property is zoned residential, light industrial, commercial, so as Lee said, we could really do anything over there.  The back half, the west half is residential growth.  Now, there are, the zoning ordinance does say some commercial uses.  It doesn’t list retail, like the corner store or the type of ground floor retail with live/work units above or potentially residential apartments above or something like that.  That is probably a stretch.  But we think that perhaps the corner store, we might be able to get by without any major changes.

 

Katie Fibler:  Just one more unrelated question.  I don’t think that your previous plans showed a lake.  Is that what you are showing there now?

 

Lee Quill:  Yes we are.  Previous plan being which one.

 

Katie Fibler:  …the last time you had it.

 

Lee Quill:  Last year?

 

Katie Fibler:  No.

 

Lee Quill:  We have shown it in different sketches.  This is an older sketch, sort of a study that we did and couple of others.  But right here we are really refining it and starting to talk about it. 

 

 This is an earlier sketch and some of the other diagrams.  What we are looking at with the water feature and I think we talked about it, at least in the second meeting because I showed you Maymont Park in Richmond which was the one with the water going down the grass.  We see this as an opportunity for being a wonderful recreational amenity and also dealing with the BMP.  So, you can either have it as left over space or you can create something.  So, it has been out there a couple times.  Do you like it?

 

Katie Fibler:  Definitely.

 

Jim Duszynski:  Thank you.  Actually we thought about it in terms of both amenity and park area, obviously, could be the major feature to the entire community.  It is interesting, in the history of the property, which was formerly owned by Senator Harry Byrd from Virginia.  There was a little pull-off, a little access road, along Old 340 that was known as the Byrd Park.  And we may actually keep that name to sort of speak about this open space here, but as it is drawn here, this is about a 21-acre lake, so it is really sizable.  It is about a ½ mile from old 340 to the top of it.  So, it is really a significant body of water and we are just pleased to be able to do it.  We are in the sort of preliminary engineering study phase, but right now, I anticipate that we will have to overcome some hurdles but that we will be able to incorporate that into the plan.

 

Lee Quill:  Thank you for your questions.  They are really good, challenging but good.

 

Paula Miller:  Hi, my name is Paula Miller.  This its the first meeting that I have attended so I may be asking a question that may have been asked before.  It relates specifically to the amenities that you seem to be showing that you are going to offer in this community.  Specifically, I will lead to the diagram that you showed showing a baseball diamond and a couple of soccer fields.  Are you planning to dedicate the land and someone else would have to come in and develop that or are you planning to actually develop those baseball fields and soccer fields and if so, then who takes care of them once they are done?

 

Jim Duszynski:  Over the last year we have had a number of meetings, not only with the school board, but with the parks and rec commission.  Clearly there is a need for ball fields in this county.  There is something like 2,000 kids in Little League playing on 7 fields, not to mention adult leagues and other things.  So, one of the things that we thought we had an opportunity to do here was to build some ball fields.  To build them, not just to dedicate the land.  But, when we talked to parks and rec commission and we talked about dedicating the land they kind of said, well, it doesn’t really help us.  So then we talked about suppose we build them and dedicate them for county-wide use, I don’t really know what agency they would go to necessarily, and then you maintain them.  They said, “Well, I don’t know if that will work either.” 

 

Again, funding is a major issue.  So, at this point, what we are showing here is that on the two school sites, schools to be built at some point in the future, hopefully sooner rather than later.  On these two school sites why don’t we as the developer take the opportunity while we are building the very first phase and get on to this school site, build a few ball fields that can be, hopefully we can coordinate with the school board so that we can build those ball fields in a location where they will remain and then the school board just comes in and sits the building down.  That is really the commitment that we have made to the school board into the past.  We will provide the roads, the utilities, the grading, everything that they need so that they can come in and just set the school building down. 

 

It is a pretty significant savings when you look at particularly the high school site.  It is about 10% of the total cost of the high school and similarly on the smaller schools.  But in the first phase, as you see here, and really this plan sort of represents what we are going to do in the first phase.  We hope to build the lake.  Also at that time, a couple of ball fields, a couple of soccer fields that we will grade, seed, mulch, and then maintain if that is what we have to do.  We have also heard from a number of people who have children in soccer leagues who are involved in the soccer leagues.  Again, there is just a real need in the community for ball fields, and it is something that we can do.  I won’t say cheaply, but we can build it into our overall expense of the project certainly cheaper than anybody else has the ability to do in the community so certainly we want to do that.

 

Early on, again on this site, here along old 340 and then as we develop towards the back and if the school site for particularly the high school would come on sooner, we would get in and do that site in the first few years of the project.  But the first ball fields in the first year.

 

Lee Quill:  That is critical.  Maybe that is the only thing that you love about the plan, but I think that we have people out in Potomac Yard and that was their mantra, “I want the soccer fields.”  So, they came out and supported us and said you have to support this plan because we will get our fields.  This is not everything for everybody but hopefully it has enough of something for everybody that makes sense.  Whether it is the sensitive design or the recreation or how we have put it all together.  We are trying to build support and say, “Look, this is a big project, but there are some good benefits over a long period of time and some can come right away.”  The one thing that I got out of it when Jim and I were meeting with Parks and Rec, there appears to be, and this is part of the dialogue, a critical shortage of active playfields, both in soccer and in baseball.  That is where this developer again in our dialogue said, “Look we really ought to do something up front because that would really help.”

 

What is great about this, and not to pat ourselves on the back, but when we were looking at how to work with this, here is 340, here is old 340, it is located right here so that again, we are not dragging everybody through Charles Town to get to the site.  You can get on the bypass and come around and get right off and come to the field.  So the purpose is in the long term to make sure that we are taking care of active recreation needs for the community.  But then the community is also a regional thing, this is a regional thing that we are dealing with here and by putting it right there it is right on the edge.  It doesn’t drag traffic through sensitive neighborhoods, etc.

 

So, again, that is just another level of kind of trying to be appropriate in the design and how things are located and where they are located and contributing.  So, we are very excited about that opportunity if we get the opportunity to do it.

 

Walton Stowell Jr.:  My name is Walton Stowell, Jr.  I am from Harper’s Ferry West Virginia.  Lee and Jim, I would like to thank both of you for a wonderful presentation.  I attended architecture at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island and then down in Savannah Georgia at the Savannah College of Design.  I got a Master’s there.  I just graduated, so right off of the bat I would like to volunteer to communicate and negotiate between you and anybody in the community.  I can offer that service for as long as I am here.  I have lived here all of my life, besides going away to college.  I am speaking from the heart.  I mean, I have lived here all of my life.  I love it here.  I love how the park service has preserved the mountains here.  The Appalachian trail, just all of the things around Harper’s Ferry that there is and the rural Jeffersonian, the way it is, it is beautiful.

 

I appreciate your project and it is definitely top notch, really one of the better, what do I want to say, presentations that I have seen developers, certainly developers, do.  I desire to talk with you in person.  I don’t want to overly offend or publicly embarrass you any further so if there is any other question, I would like other people to talk before I get into more architectural specifics.

 

Jim Duszynski:  Sure, we will both be available afterwards and if we don’t have enough time tonight we would be more than happy to meet with you on another date.

 

Lee Quill:  Thank you very much for your comments.  For those of you who don’t know, for those of us who work with the students that have just come out of the academic environment, they can be some of the most focused on how professionals that have been out doing the work are doing the work.  They challenge us a great deal.  We have a lot of relationships with the universities in the Washington area.  We appreciate those comments.  We try to make it so that it does make sense.  It is challenging and it is pushing the envelope a little bit.  It is wonderful to hear from you because we do want to preserve the rural character and the way to do that is the concentrate your growth around the historic settlements instead of allowing it to happen everything.  Again, the quality of what happens within that particular focus is making sure that it responds to the historic precedent that has worked for 200 years, not the last 45.  That is why we are so excited.  We look forward to working with you on this.  That was great, we appreciate that.

 

Robin Huyett Doherty:  In the discussions you focused mainly on single family homes.  You have touched on the townhouses, but I don’t remember much discussion on multi-family.  Can you talk about that and where it will be located in this development and what that really means.

 

Lee Quill:  Yeah, if you look at traditional town-making, this is more of a settlement that has some sort of apartments, and also in the sense of grouping together of houses sometimes there are multiple units in them, but there are a number of ways that you can handle it.

 

Sometimes it can be duplexes, sometimes it can be townhouses that come together in urban settlements like Alexandria.  What we want to do here is actually investigate things a little bit further with regards to multi-family and how it can work because there are models in places like Richmond, Washington, Georgetown, Alexandria, the neighborhood of Del-Ray where I live where we have four story apartment buildings next to one and a half or two story residences and a mix of townhouses within that.  It is all how you are citing them and making sure that they are part of the fabric.  They aren’t this isolated pod of a bunch of development over here.

 

The idea is to integrate the uses.  I just came back from Salt Lake.  A friend of ours is working on the Olympics out there and she lives in an apartment building that is four stories tall on one of the major roads in downtown.  It is this wonderful L-shaped building that has one unit in each L and has a center hall.  What we try to do, and when I go to places like this and the rest of our firm, I know that Jim is the same way, we try to find good prototypes that will fit in other places that can be set in the appropriate setting.

 

This is on a corner, which is with the L, so it is two streets and the main entrance.  But the idea is buying prototypes that are not overbearing but have a quality of design and good units inside, as well as how they present themselves to the community and how that mixes with other units.

 

There are some apartment buildings right next to that and then there are some single family and some commercial.  I think what we are talking about in locating these is going to be in some of our later phases.  We are talking about townhouses and kind of creating a street here, but once we get into this area in here and maybe some over in here, we are going to be looking at how these start to relate with the other uses as we evolve it and we will be bringing those back.  Our public process and the plat planners are saying here are the ideas that we’ve got with regards to how these elements will work.  The idea is not to do this complex of apartments that is all of the apartments clustered in one little area.  There may be a cluster to some degree, but it has to work with the street grid and create a real street so it is not an individual pod.  That gets back to the idea of sprawl which is the separation of uses where you have a little pod of this, a little pod of this, a little pod of this, with a little road going in and the only way to get there is by driving out. That is what we are trying to avoid and we will probably be around in those areas if that answers your question.

 

Jim Duszynski:  I will just make two comments if I could.  I think that when we look at the plan, particularly this framework plan, the potential for commercial employment use, again, the first phase, as you see on this plan, sort of runs through here, but we are sort of looking at this area here.  And it is within the table, the site tabulation, the possibility of some commercial or retail might be concentrated here and then as Lee said, in the center of the site, as reflected on this plan here, a higher density housing, probably near the employment centers, the commercial, the retail as part of the traditional neighborhood design and part of the urban planning concept.

 

The only other things that I would say is that it is going to be market-driven.  When we look at the marketplace in Jefferson County, it is predominantly and I could almost say exclusively, a single-family market.  There aren’t a lot of townhouses being built and there aren’t a lot of multi-families being built and we are taking something of a, I don’t know if it is a risk, but we are certainly stepping out in front in just one more way by including townhouses in the single family part of the community.  It is something that is not being done anyplace else.  Part of this is going to be market-driven as well.  Everything Lee said is accurate in terms of looking at architecture and the placement of the apartments.  But again, when we look at our phasing schedule, which was the table that we talked about early, we have put them in, in the third or fourth year, the fifth or sixth year, the seventh or eighth year, just sort of spacing them out.  It might be 150 or something like that.  It may be the smaller buildings of 40 or 50 units may want to go in and then that is the way that they will get developed.  It just really depends on the marketplace in a lot of ways.

 

Robin Huyett Doherty:  What are these in terms of rental or are these condominiums in terms of sale?

 

Jim Duszynski:  Right now we are thinking about rental apartments, but again, if we find in the marketplace that it is the condominium, multi-family that people want, that the developer or builder wants to come and build, then we would go that way.  But, I think, again, this is really a predominantly single family home market.  We will start off with some townhouses and then we will see sort of where things go.  But our thinking right now is that they would be rentals.

 

Robin Huyett Doherty:  So who would own the building?

 

Jim Duszynski:  Well, an apartment owner/operator would mostly likely come in, again under our auspices and under our architectural control, but multi-family development is just sort of a different end of the business than land development which is what we are in or home building which is what the builders or our customers will be in.  Again, we see ourselves, and we will play the role of master developer, building the roads, doing all of the things that we have talked about and contemplated in the CIS.  But then look at selling individual lots to the builders or a small pad to the apartment builder and then most likely he would own it, operate it, manage it, and lease it.

 

Lee Quill:  A big part of this is what Jim gets back to when I was talking about the individual understanding of the building.  Remember I talked little bit earlier about going from a large scale down to a small scale of understanding the buildings and what they are and the quality level of the buildings and how they relate to the street.  You start to get into blocks and into the neighborhood and into the development as you go out.  We talked to Jim about developing some guidelines that will kind of shape the development of these projects as to housing whether it is from the house or the townhouse or multi-family, so there are some guidelines to keep it within the same quality level and the framework of the design, of these projects.  That they understand how it should be placed in the street, how he materials should work together.  We aren’t going to restrict them so they aren’t saying, “Oh my God!  I don’t want to come to Charles Town.”  Or if they are here that they don’t want to do it.  But on the other hand, we want to help guide them.

 

Most developers are builders.  If they come in to do a project and they understand the constraints and the playing field that they are coming in to they can make a decision and there is less guesswork so they can actually price it out and see what they can do.  Those who can’t do a quality project will say, “I don’t want to do it,” and those who say, “I can work within this framework,” will come in and do it.  What we want to do is just set up the guidelines enough so that the quality level is established at a level so you aren’t getting poor buildings that come in and don’t contribute to the fabric.  That is the worst thing that could happen.

 

Robin Huyett Doherty:  Are there architectural standards that tie in with the surrounding architecture?

 

Lee Quill:  We talked with Jim about developing some general standards.  Again, this is early in the phase.  It is not going to be the historic district standard because we aren’t going to be historic, but it will be enough, I think, that we are talking about just trying to help shape things to a degree.

 

When we did Potomac Yard in Alexandria, we put together a booklet, which has guidelines and talks about and shows a lot of what this is.  We also got down and talked about the buildings.  How many times have you seen a building where you have brick on the front and then vinyl siding all around.  One thing that we made a suggestion on that was that if you are going to do it, take the brick all around on two sides.  If you are on a townhouse, make sure the end unit is wrapped in brick.  These are not things that are going to change the market dramatically.  We will see how the market is.  We are going to talk to them about how to perceive whole buildings (inaudible) a little more richer, a little more fabric, and you start to perceive the building a little more in three dimensions, so you aren’t putting the rear buildings right on the front of the street or something like this. 

 

These are the kind of guidelines that are urban design, a little prescriptive, but not very much, but a little prescriptive with regards to the building that will give the guidance to the future people that are doing the buildings themselves so they can avoid creating conditions that you don’t want.  We are going to save some of that.  We aren’t going to be restrictive where we choke off the development.  So, we will be talking with them and saying, “Here is what we are thinking about.”

 

Jim Duszynski:  I would add, and I think that Lee has been a little bit afraid to say something that I might not want to hear, but we will have Lee develop a set of design guidelines and that will address single family buildings, apartment construction.

 

Lee:  That is what I wanted to hear.

 

Jim:  The projects that I have been involved with with Greenvest and before Greenvest, The Kentlands in Gaithersburg, the land planner was the town architect and the town architect and land planner, again, when you look at the board and what we are talking about today, it is not just about this plan.  This plan with the wrong architecture isn’t going to be anything special.  It isn’t going to be anything that different except that streets will run straight instead of running in a curve.  So the architecture, Greenvest, and I believe from my experience that the architecture is a very, very important part of the land plan, the streets, and the feel of the community.

 

Design guidelines are important, they will be developed.  At the Kentlands we had them, at Cameron Station where we are now, we had a pretty extensive set of design guidelines and I would expect to see something that is quite detailed up here as well.

 

Jennifer Paige:  My name is Jennifer Paige.  I live in Bolivar and I am hearing you talk about examples of other places that you have built and giving examples of boulevards and avenues.  These are places that are really developed and have been really developed and really dense for a long time, Richmond, for example.  I am also thinking of Kentlands.  These are places where a lot of people are moving faster than we’ve got it right now.  It is not necessarily that you are too far ahead, but my question is, what kind of prices can you possibly afford to not charge or charge.  I know what kind of prices Kentlands are and they are significantly more expensive than I think our market would bear.  I know that you have looked at this issue.

 

Lee Quill:  Absolutely.  Probably the most significant difference here is the cost of land.  The Kentlands was 1/3 of the size of Hunt Field, 300 some acres, and 8 times the land cost in Montgomery County, Gaithersburg.  That contributes significantly to the price of a house.  One of the things, just from a business standpoint, a builder will look at the developer across the table when we sit down to contract for their purchase of lots from us. 

 

First of all, we are going to give them this design book and they are going to scream a little bit and say, “Oh my goodness, you want us to do all of this stuff, and it is going to cost us a little money, and we aren’t going to be able to get the price.  But the lot price needs to be in the 25-30% range of the final sale of the price of the house. 

 

So, in Kentlands for example, on a half million-dollar house, you are looking at 125-135,000 dollar lot.  Here, we will probably be looking at 200,000 as sort of an average price.  I think that we will run from 150 to 250 for single families.

 

Jennifer Paige:  That is over the 20 years or in the beginning for single families?

 

Jim Duszynski:  In the beginning we will actually offer some single families for as high as 250,000.  Next door, at Locust Hill, Ryan homes is selling starting at 180, but the homes that they have been selling have been pretty optioned out.  They are full of all of the options that a buyer can purchase and they have been selling at 230.  It is our anticipation based on all of the work that we have done, based on where we see this project evolving that we will be above the market.  We think that we are going to offer something that nobody else has.  But single families are 150-250, townhouses 100-150, apartment rentals will be more whatever the going rate is, that kind of thing.

 

Lee Quill:  One thing that I would like to say is when you go around some of the more standard subdivision developments around here.  In some of them you will find a sidewalk, you will find a curb and gutter and you will find a street.  You probably won’t find the street trees.  You may find a little water, maybe not.  A lot of it deals with the proportions of the streets, how you start to create the buildings coming up to the street.  The level of detail that we have tried to go through and understanding this down to this and how the buildings start to relate to each other, that is not really so much a monetary thing, but it is just paying a little more attention and trying to create something a little different.  You know where that comes from?  Right here.  It comes from Charles Town, it comes from other traditional neighborhoods and other wonderful settlements. 

 

So, when we talk about other denser places, yeah, we look at some other places, but the foundation f our planning and understanding here has been based on Charles Town and Ranson, on Shepherdstown and Bolivar and Harper’s Ferry.  The wonderful special places that we all love and have been coming to or living in for many years now.  I mean, Ranson has a very sophisticated block structure.  If you go over there and look at the plan.  It is a dumb-bell plan, meaning basically it is, an I-form alley system.  Now, not all of the alleys have been developed out.  But that is about a 220x600, if I recall, block pattern which is traditional.  I mean, you could find that in any city.  The lots are basically the same thing that I’ve got in Alexandria.  Very sophisticated plan in Ranson.  It is the only one that has the boulevard.  You know the boulevard I talked about and the circle.  It is unbelievable to find that kind of thing in a place here.  You have to go and understand the context that you are going in to and pull from that so, we are not pulling something from Europe to place down here.  We are pulling from Charles Town and Ranson and all of these wonderful settlements here to develop a grid that reflects and responds to orientation and site views, etc.  So this is part of the place and when it comes together over a few years and trees grow in, you will know that it is a newer neighborhood, but you won’t say, “Oh, that is that neighborhood.”

 

I think we have time for just one more question.  We are supposed to be out by nine.

 

Walton Stowell:  Here is a real general question that I guess I would have hoped that you would have addressed.  Maybe in an earlier meeting.  Why would, why should, Jefferson County residents accept your very dense suburban, urban proposal in addition to the city of Charles Town.

 

Lee Quill:  Good question.  I will answer it quickly.  The plan that we talked to earlier with regards to the growth area, this is our piece of property right here.  It is in the growth area, this red area right here.  This means that the county has decided that this is where it should be, which is the right thing.  The alternative to the plan that you see today is suburban development that you can see, just go out anywhere in the subdivisions that have been popping up around.  So, over a 20 year period, your choices, if you think that we have some things to offer that will be a little bit better, if not a lot better and will relate a lot better to the pattern here because of the grid and the relationship and the sensitivity to the historic resources.

 

The question is do you think that is better than letting it go by helter-skelter chance and be developed by a bunch of other people that may do pretty traditional development.  If this gets turned down, there is going to be no impetus for these other developers to come in and raise the bar and be more appropriate with the design.  They are going to come in and eventually this area will be all gobbled up by little cul-de-sacs and things like that.  So, I will take the challenge.

 

Walton Stowell, Jr.:  As a threat?

 

Lee:  You are asking is it a threat?  No.  I am just saying that natural development will happen.  It is occurring now.  It is not a threat from us.

 

Lee Quill:  Yes, they are not shown here in the master plan, but in the design summary and in the street section, sidewalks, clearly called out.

 

Walton Stowell:  But in the master plan, will that be revised and the sidewalks added.

 

Lee Quill:  This is the CIS, which sets the overall framework.  We want to come back with the guidelines for the streets and the street sections in more detail.  We have some over here.  You have to get to the first step.  If we don’t get through the CIS there is no reason for doing all of the final street sections because we have them there.  But those street sections are all part of the documentation so they will be real streets, real sidewalks, real street trees and houses that face on it, just like the wonderful streets that we are showing on the images behind here.  We are showing some sensitivity for what we are dealing with as far as prototypes.

 

Jim Duszynski:  Just real quickly to wrap up and sort of address that.  We really do believe that the plan that we are proposing, the 20 year master plan, falls in line with what we see nationally in terms of the ways that communities are planning growth for their next 20 years.  This isn’t for all of Jefferson County but again, if our absorption schedule runs along the way that we propose it and the current growth pattern continues, which I don’t think anyone can expect not to continue.  In fact, if anything, it will probably accelerate some.  If it continues, then Hunt Field could accommodate 25-30% of all of the growth, focus, concentrate all of the growth in Jefferson County on this 1000 acres close to Charles Town with infrastructure.  That is the way you preserve farmland.  If that is one of the focuses, which it clearly is, to preserve the rural feel of Jefferson County.  This is one answer. 

 

The other thing that I would say is that Charles Town, we don’t have the note here, but I saw a sheet that showed this map.  I think that the density of this plan is over 14 units to the acre.  Hunt Field is about 4-5 for the single -family areas.  Clearly, when we do a multi-family component that will jump higher, but on average for 2/3 of the property which is what we are proposing for single family, at 4-5 to the acre, it is much less dense.

 

Jim Duszynski:  Hunt Field just by way of history for those of you that don’t know it, it is a property that has been slated for development several times over the last 10 years.  A developer bought it and was not able to develop it.  The bank took it back under what they call a deed in lieu of foreclosure.  There was not a bankruptcy, but the developer basically said, here are the keys to the car.  That is something that happens.  That is part of the business.  That farmland is leased acreage.  It is not the family farm that so many people are concerned about and that is a whole other topic of discussion.  I see Marty in the back, but family farming is tough.  It is real tough.

 

 But I just want to clarify between this piece of property and I have heard several subdivisions recently named which are considered by those outside, it is easy for those of us on the outside to say, that is family farm and you can’t let that go away.  If the family farm is struggling and can’t make ends meet then who are we to say that it can’t go that way.  With that said, I think we need to wrap up.  Thank you very much.

 

Note:  Names are spelled phonetically when correct spellings not available.