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Health & Fitness

Can Small Town Herndon Outbuild Tysons Corner?

Could small-town Herndon's Metro Area be more dense than Tysons Corner? That's the plan our Town Council approved and the rezoning process has already begun.

I’ve suspected there was something was wrong with the Herndon Metro Area Plan for a while, but I recently had an eye opening experience when I learned that the property owners in Herndon’s Metro Area were going to be gifted the right to build at densities surpassing even Tysons Corner!

According to a Fairfax Times article (November 2011): “The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors signed off on another massive redevelopment project in Tysons Corner on Nov. 27, clearing the way for high-rise office and residential buildings near the future Tysons Central 123 Metro station…The project, planned by Cityline Partners, encompasses about 20 acres that now houses some of the oldest office buildings in Tysons Corner. Arbor Row includes 2.6 million square feet of new apartments, offices, retail space and a hotel.”  

Sounds big, right? Well guess what, it’s not big enough for small-town Herndon.  The actual density, measured in Floor Area Ratio (FAR), is 3.0 for this “massive” Tysons redevelopment project. But Herndon is proposing up to a 4.3 FAR for its own Metro Area development. That’s 40% more dense than one of the biggest new developments approved at Tysons.

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It might seem absurd that Herndon could outbuild Tysons Corner, referred to by Fairfax County planners at as the next modern American City.  But it doesn’t surprise those of us that have seen the shoddy manner in which the plan has been developed thus far - the analysis that has gone into Herndon’s Metro Area Plan has been anything but rigorous.  The Town’s Planning Board approved a plan in late 2011 that had about 4 times the traffic that the area’s roads could  accommodate and had to go back to the drawing board after the mistake was discovered by citizens.

When I brought this fact about the higher density for Herndon’s Metro Area compared with Tysons to the attention of one of Herndon’s Planning staff they were unbelieving. When I showed them the evidence from correspondence with the Fairfax County Planning Department and the Tysons' developer they went silent (the public comment period has passed!).

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The current Plan is not only absurdly dense for the area, but is completely lopsided.  The high densities were only bestowed upon the nine properties on the south side of Herndon Parkway. Those property owners on the north side apparently didn’t hire the right law firm or donate to the right PAC.  

What can be done? I still have a dream that common sense will prevail and the Town will go back to the drawing board to come up with a plan that makes sense, but I’ve lost a lot of hope. We’ve tried to talk with Mayor Merkel and her “team” of councilmembers (Olem, Wolf, and Jonas) but our concerns have fallen on deaf ears. The Town Manager seems fervently devoted to his plan as it stands and is moving to put the zoning in place, after which there is no going back.

Perhaps Herndon’s relatively disengaged electorate will rise up and demand a competent and well-developed plan from their Council...and perhaps the Council would actually listen.

Hope springs eternal.

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