- Updated
The Prince William Planning Department has released its recommendations for changes to the county’s rural crescent that could add about 475 additional homes in the rural area while sending more than 3,400 “development rights” to more populated areas of the county – all in an effort to preserve a maximum of about 20,000 acres of open space.
The recommendations, first released online on Tuesday, Sept. 17, were formally presented during a county planning meeting at the Hylton Performing Arts Center on Tuesday, Sept. 24.
The county staff’s proposal marks a sharp reduction in residential density that might have occurred under some ideas they presented at a similar meeting in July. Those options included changes that could have added as many as 10,390 homes – and an estimated 33,000 people – to the rural crescent. The area is now home to about 27,000 people living in about 7,800 single-family homes, according to county documents.
Some of those initial ideas sparked a quick backlash from rural crescent residents and others opposed to adding significant population density in a rural area.
Three county supervisors hosted a townhall meeting to hear residents’ concerns, and the Prince William County School Board considered – but rejected— a formal resolution to oppose such changes.
Rebecca Horner, director of the county’s planning department, said public feedback received in the wake of the July meeting made clear that residents do not support such a high level of new building in the rural crescent. Residents also voiced their opposition to a proposed “transitional ribbon” – an area of about 4,000 acres on the edge of the rural crescent that was initially targeted for more homes.
There is no transitional ribbon in the county staff’s recommendation for the rural crescent.
“Those are the things we heard [from residents] that we incorporated into the recommendations,” Horner said Monday.
The rural crescent is a swath of about 117,000 acres along the county’s western and northern reaches where connections to the public sewer line are generally prohibited and development is limited to one home per 10 acres. County officials established the rural crescent boundaries in 1998 in an effort to put the brakes on booming residential development.
The Prince William County Board of Supervisors hired an outside consultant in 2013 to study existing development in about 72,000 acres of the rural crescent area – some of which took place before the 1998 rules – and to recommend zoning changes aimed at preserving more large tracts of open space for agriculture and other uses.
The supervisors have delayed taking action on the study since it was completed in 2014 but restarted discussions earlier this year.
PDR, TDR and ‘conservation residential’
So what proposals will move forward for further debate?
The staff recommendations include a mix of strategies already under consideration – including allowing the “purchase of development rights” and the “transfer of development rights.” The plan also suggests pairing cluster developments with conservation easements under a new zoning designation called “conservation residential.”
The plan also calls for the county to establish an “arts and agritourism overlay district” to stimulate the rural economy. Some details:
Purchase of development rights: The county has identified more than 20,000 acres eligible for a PDR program that would use taxpayer dollars or state or private grants to purchase development rights from owners of large tracts of land. Eligible properties would have to be 20 acres or larger.
Conservation residential: The county would create a new zoning designation – “conservation residential” — that would allow “clustered” development at a density of either one home per five acres or one home per three acres provided that at least 60% of the total area is preserved in a conservation easement. The homes would be allowed to connect to public sewer lines but would be “buffered” by acres of open space.
Transfer of development rights: Properties that do not currently have a structure or are 20 acres or larger would be eligible to transfer development rights to private residential developers. Three locations within the rural crescent and four locations in the county’s development area have been designated to receive the development rights.
Receiving areas in the rural crescent would have to develop according to standards in the proposed conservation residential zoning districts. They must be single-family lots with a minimum of one home per acre with 60% of open space dedicated to a permanent conservation easements.
Receiving areas outside the rural area include Potomac Mills, Potomac Shores, Virginia Gateway in Gainesville, Innovation Park and some areas outside Manassas along Va. 234. In those areas, the residential rights would have to develop as multi-family units, the plan says.
A total of 3,453 multi-family development rights would be created by the plan, according to county documents.
Fewer students: Despite the extra development rights the plan creates, county officials estimate the plan would generate fewer students countywide than current rural crescent rules would at full development.
That’s because the bulk of the development rights from the rural crescent could be transferred to the development area as multi-family units, which generate fewer students than single-family homes, according to school division projections.
The planning department estimates that status quo rules in the rural crescent could eventually add 1,242 students to county schools. If the TDRs are fully implemented, that number would drop to 1,211 students, according to the plan.
If PDRs are implemented, the number of students generated would be further reduced, Horner said.
Reservations
Supervisors Pete Candland, R-Gainesville, and Jeanine Lawson, R-Brentsville, were already expressing reservations about the proposal Monday. Both represent western Prince William districts that comprise large parts of the rural crescent.
Candland said he wants to know more about how areas in the rural crescent were chosen to receive development rights under the TDR program. He also expressed concerns that establishing such areas would immediately attract the interest of housing developers.
“In the short-term, we’ll get a boon of construction, bringing kids into the schools and people onto the roads — all in areas where we don’t have the infrastructure to support it,” Candland said.
Still, Candland called the staff’s proposal “a step in the right direction” and an improvement over the original options, which he said were a “non-starter.”
Lawson, meanwhile, said the only proposal she supports in the staff recommendations is the PDR program. She said she remains opposed to any cluster developments that would extend public sewer into the rural crescent.
“Once those sewer lines go out there for housing, … it’s Katy bar the door,” Lawson said. “Maybe not in our lifetimes, but eventually, sewer lines will be all over the rural crescent if we open that door.”
What’s next? The Prince William County Planning Commission will hold a work session on the proposal on Wednesday, Oct. 23, after which the plan could be modified, Horner said.
The planning commission is then expected to hold a public hearing and could take a vote on the plan in December. The Prince William County Board of Supervisors is not likely to consider the changes until sometime in 2020, Horner said.
This article has been updated to note that the number of students generated in the rural crescent would be reduced in accordance with the number of development rights both transferred out of the rural area and/or expired through a purchase of development rights program.
Reach Jill Palermo at jpalermo@fauquier.com