After hearing a detailed presentation on what county staff thought of development being proposed near the planned Metro station next to Route 28, on the border of Fairfax and Loudoun counties, some members of the citizen task force appointed to examine the development proposals were left with broader questions about the wisdom of the planning process, the group’s role in it and whether any development should be approved yet.

"I think we’re talking about a radical departure from the way things are done in Fairfax County today," said Kathleen Murphy, an Area Plan Review (APR) Task Force member. "But we’re still using the paradigm of the traffic jam as the metric." Rather than talk about adding traffic lanes, she said, the group could be examining questions such as, "What’s a walkable space like? What’s a human space like?"

Jody Bennett noted that some groups had spent hundreds of hours coming up with a vision for the sort of urban-style transit-oriented development being proposed for the area between the town of Herndon and Route 28.

"I’m not spending hundreds of hours," task force Chairman John Ulfelder laughed.

Darren Ewing pointed out that it would be difficult to come up with a holistic vision for the new community, as most of it lies in Loudoun, beyond the task force’s jurisdiction. "We can’t really incorporate the larger land mass," he said.

Rich Bliss thought the county might better wait until the Rail to Dulles was operational to see how it changed transportation in the area before approving such dense development. "There is the option that the task force could recommend leaving the land as it is for the time being," he said.

But Dave Swan said the size of the project, with millions of square feet of residential, office, retail and hotel space, made it critical that the task force end up with a viable transportation plan. "We’ve got to find a great solution in all this to make things work," he said.

Three proposals to develop interlocking tracts of land north of the planned Route 28 Metro station were filed last year, as developers and landowners attempted to avail themselves of the county’s provisions for high-density land use around Metro stops. Monday night, county planners rolled out their recommendations for development around the westernmost station in the development, modifying the proposals and adding conditions.

IF THE CONDITIONS ARE MET, the county suggests that most of the densities that were proposed will be acceptable, except in the northernmost portion, farthest from the coming rail station.

Planner Clara Quintero Johnson said her department had also laid out guidelines to make the development a compact, attractive, pedestrian-friendly community, with higher densities oriented toward the Metro stop. Safe, inviting walkways are to connect residential areas to jobs, retail and rail, and a feeder transit system is to carry riders to and from the Metro. Plazas are encouraged. Parking is to be housed in structures and buildings are to be set close to roadways. Freestanding retail buildings are frowned upon. "When this comes in for development review, these are the things the reviewer is going to be looking for," Quintero Johnson said.

She said the county also recommends that, in addition to internal road grids, four though-lanes run north from the station to Route 606 and six lanes from station west to the interchange of Route 28 and Innovation Avenue.

For the development proposed by the Center for Innovative Technology (CIT) on about 25 acres of the land closest to the Metro, the county recommended approval of the requested density of 2.17 FAR (floor-area ratio). This means 2.17 square feet of floor space would be allowed for each square foot of land, for a total of about 2,400,000 square feet of development.

By way of comparison, Reston Town Center has an average FAR of just under 1, but densities reach from 4 to over 6 FAR in the town center’s urban core.

Under the county’s recommendation, 35 percent to 45 percent of the development around the CIT would be residential, with a minimum of 775 dwelling units. Forty percent to 50 percent would be office space, 5 percent to 15 percent hotel and 2 percent to 5 percent retail. The institutional use already approved for the site and currently housed in the CIT’s recognizable black glass building would remain a focal point.

Both Dulles World Center, which is to lie primarily in Loudoun, and Stout and Teague Company, which filed a proposal for a swath of land between Rock Hill Road and the county line, had suggestions for about five acres of land just north of the CIT site. The county recommended that whoever develops the land be required to consolidate the property with two small parcels to the north, which lie in a resource protection area, in order to be able to develop the consolidated parcel at 1.25 FAR. This would result in a density of about 2 FAR on the developable area, which is what was requested. Offices and hotels with supporting retail uses are advised for this site.

The remaining 20 acres or so, much of which is more than half a mile from the Metro, would be allowed residential development at a density of 1 FAR, half what the original proposal asked for. This would allow for about 420 dwelling units.

Quintero Johnson said the county recommended that all of these densities be tied to the condition that the Metro station was fully funded and included a pedestrian bridge into the CIT area, where a kiss-and-ride would be established. Development on the two southern properties would have to be oriented toward the Metro, and construction on the northern tract would need to transition smoothly into the surrounding residential areas. Other than on the CIT site, densities would also be contingent on adequate road connections with Loudoun.

THE DENSER CIT SITE would require infrastructure analysis to be submitted with any development application, and the community would have to take on a pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use character, including a street grid, plazas and open space, in the early stages of development.

"All previous conditions apply. These are just additional conditions layered on top of that," Quintero Johnson said.

She said the recommendations were based on a recent traffic analysis, as well as the need to make the new development fit with its surroundings.

Bliss said that if traffic reduction was the concern, the county might want to hold off and see how well Metro reduced traffic, instead of planning based on assumptions. "That’s the kind of planning that’s gotten us where we are," he said.

But Ulfelder said the goal was more along the lines of slowing traffic growth, and that jobs were expected to move to the area rapidly once the recession passed, not waiting for housing to be built near Metro stations.

"The language right now, it’s kind of platitudinous," Murphy said, asking whether it was in the task force’s purview to develop a holistic vision for a distinctive development. She was told that it was.

If possible, the task force is to complete its recommendations to the county Planning Commission by the end of November, although a December meeting is tentatively scheduled. The Planning Commission will decide on the matter in February, and the Board of Supervisors is to take it up in March.