With economic activity, especially new construction, at a low ebb and with increasing concern about Northern Virginia's transportation and environmental challenges, one might imagine that county governments, landowners, and developers had lost interest in more construction. Or at least one might imagine that they were thinking about different kinds of development. One would be wrong on both counts.
As the Washington Post reported, Loudoun County asked stakeholders in the Route 28 corridor for their assessments of the corridor's development potential and for suggestions about encouraging more development. The County wants more commercial development in order to broaden its tax base. The staff report makes it clear that the key players are thinking about development as usual. The stakeholders imagined a corridor filled with commercial office space, especially near Dulles airport. They envision large mixed use developments around metrorail stations and so on. They suggest that Loudoun County has to offer more incentives and a more lenient planning processs (like Fairfax's, says the report) if it wants more development. The report praises the corridor's transportation facilities, pointing to easy access to the airport and the interstate system. Other than mentioning metrorail stations as the sites for future development, the report does not mention public transportation or efforts to get workers or residents out of their cars.
For Reston, this report is relevant in at least two ways. First, it indicates that we are likely to see more development (and more traffic and pollution) to the west once the economy improves. It also means that we cannot count on county officials, landowners, or developers torecognize on their own that "development as usual" is not good enough and that we need something better
