Battle lines drawn in Loudoun.
Illustration by Danny Hellman
I hear the whirring din of fans and compressors as 70 percent of the world’s Internet traffic passes through the archipelago of data centers here in Eastern Loudoun County. I forgot to bring my tinfoil hat. You know that precious kitten photo you retweeted? It just beamed through my skull.
And then there is the rumpus I hear as the hulking concrete girders of the Metro’s Silver Line are erected along the Dulles Toll Road like monstrous Burma Shave billboards promoting dollar stores for the woods behind my little home out in Western Loudoun County. Insatiable D.C. stabs westward into our Arcadian neighborhood. Perhaps a Xanax is in order? Leaders here in Loudoun suggest I’m mostly over-reacting.
Loudoun County was the nation’s seventh-fastest growing county from 2010-2015 and second fastest from 2000 to 2010. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, Loudoun is third in the nation for job growth and the International Economic Development Council ranked Loudoun #1 in business investment for counties of its size.
Much of that investment is currently focused along the expanding corridor of the Metrorail, which soon will reach Ashburn and Dulles Airport, not only making it easier for county residents to reach jobs in D.C., but for people in the D.C. metro to reach the ever-expanding job market in Loudoun. Indeed, 92 percent of new office leases last year involved buildings located within three miles of new Silver Line stations, according to Buddy Rizer, the county’s economic development director.
Here is another Loudoun stat that seems a world away from my own Loudoun life: Loudoun has the highest median household income of any county in the U.S. While there are certainly pockets of million-dollar-plus homes in the west, and the gorgeous old-money equestrian landscapes (particularly around swanky Middleburg), the majority of us in the west live in more modest homes and on farms in a few small towns sprinkled among rolling farmlands, woods and wetlands. We westerners go east for Costco and, often, work; easterners come west for wine tours, bike rides, brew pubs, quaint shops and vegetable stands.
Now, the county’s board of supervisors is in the process of reviewing the 15-year-old Comprehensive Plan that dictates the course of development in the county. It was wise, measured policy that divided the county into three development zones: a pro-growth East, a mostly preservation-first West, and a transitional barrier between the two areas where development is significantly regulated (small retail maybe, another data center no).
The battle lines being drawn now are as old as America itself. Developers want restrictions loosened and transition boundaries pushed west, while those of us in the country want things to stay the same. There is a saying here that sums the fight up pretty well: “Don’t Fairfax Loudoun.” And there is a derisive acronym for those of us who love that Costco down in Leesburg, but scream when a convenience store is proposed for the nearest corner: We’re NIMBYs, the “Not In My Back Yard” set.
I must admit I am one of those conflicted preservationist/NIMBYs: I would love to reach D.C.’s core in less than two hours. But I’m already making a stink about the 40-room lodge some investors hope to build along the Blue Ridge within sight of our house.
Rizer, the guy whose job it is to keep the economy humming by bringing in new business, says the Loudoun growth issue is much more nuanced than simple big-business-versus-farm-folk clichés. “I always cringe when people talk about the divide,” Rizer says. “I think we have one economy, one incredibly diverse economy. We have the eastern success, we have the ag-based beautiful west, and they are both part of what makes us so incredibly unique.”
The concern, though, is that development interest will push that transitional development zone in the master plan farther west. Andrea Gaines, a longtime conservationist who covers county development issues for the newspaper in the western Loudoun town of Purcellville, says that without vocal opposition from western interests during this current planning transition, which will last into 2018, she “could see major development pushing the transition zone west.”
Gaines has reason for concern. In the years since the comprehensive management plan was put into place, more and more larger development projects have been allowed through special exemptions. “The developers have been increasingly using them,” she says. “The concern is death by a thousand cuts. Zoning by special exception has become more and more routine.”
My own concern is buffered by two facts: I do believe that most people in the urban east don’t want the county to lose its pastoral spaces. And what I know for sure from living here is that folks in western Loudoun love their home the way it is.
So, vigilance probably is the mindset of choice over my paranoia. I probably should just go ahead and sell my tinfoil hat on Ebay. I don’t think the folks down in eastern Loudoun will mind one more Internet transaction beamed through their skulls, even a super ironic one.
This article originally appeared in our Feb. 2017 issue.
