July 18, 2002
<bt>Acreage: 5
Location: Spring Hill at Lewinsville Roads
Acquired as parkland in: 1999
Originally proposed for: 49 houses and an assisted living center on 25 acres
Present use: Two soccer fields, 35 houses and an assisted living center.
Strategist: Jane Edmondson, 56, stay-home mom and president of the Lewinsville Coalition, with the backing of the Coalition and the McLean Hamlet Citizens Association. She is the former vice president of marketing for the National Captioning Institute.
Length of effort: 1997 - 98
How it happened: Holladay Field is the colloquial name for a regulation-size soccer field that was formed from citizens’ negotiation of a developer’s proffer.
In the summer of 1997, the Holladay Corp. in Washington sought Fairfax County’s approval to build 45 single family homes and an assisted living center on 25 acres of land west of Spring Hill School near the Dulles Toll Road.
To do so, they needed a rezoning from R1, one house per acre, to PDH-3, or three residences per acre with special concessions.
Fairfax County’s Comprehensive Plan would allow two to three houses per acre.
Edmondson, a resident of McLean Hamlet, had been active in the effort to block the Gannett Corporation’s request for special exceptions to allow a 310-foot tall building at the intersection of I-495 and the Dulles Toll Road, across eight lanes of traffic from McLean Hamlet.
That effort convinced citizens they needed to remain organized, so they formed the Lewinsville Citizens Association, Edmondson said.
Almost immediately, the proposal from Holladay Corp. was put forth.
The association formed a subcommittee that negotiated with Holladay for a year.
The citizens won several concessions: the assisted living center was moved further away from homes and closer to the Toll Road.
The total number of houses was reduced from 49 to 35.
In negotiations with Edmondson, Holladay vice president, Jon Cox, “proffered” to deed five acres to the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors as a “proffer” to be used as open space.
Later, the board leased the property for five years to McLean Youth Soccer, which maintains it, manages it, and is developing it as a regulation-sized, tournament-quality soccer field.
“Everybody assumed it would go to the Park Authority,” Edmondson said. “I had no idea about McLean Youth Soccer (MYS) and Adopt-A-Field.”
Now, said Edmondson, she wonders about the broader issue of who controls and uses public land.
MYS has proposed sharing the cost of artificial turf on a soccer field at Lewinsville Park, with Marymount University, a private college in Arlington County. In return, Marymount would play 16 college games at the park.
“To me, that is a major policy issue that the McLean Citizens Association and all citizens associations should be involved in,” Edmondson said. “At least there needs to be a discussion.
“It should not be an eleventh-hour kind of deal that has been struck with a single-issue group. When you inject that a non-Fairfax County group uses the field, that raises a red flag for me,” she said. “You’ve gone down a slippery slope, and you’ve established precedent.
“Inevitably restrictions are going to arise. Is the county saying it is OK, particularly when the citizens are the ones who have gotten the public land?”
But Edmondson is proud of the end result.
“We negotiated, and negotiated, and negotiated,” said Edmondson. “We always stayed calm and rational.”
When she drives by the intersection of Lewinsville and Spring Hill Roads now, she said, “It gives me such a good feeling to have that open space on what is, in essence, a country road.
“When you see the Shiloh Baptist Church standing there proudly with the Tysons skyline in the background, and know that could have been million-dollar mansions next to Spring Hill School, it is a tremendous sense of pride,” she said.
“I just love seeing the church there; that historic church standing on the Hill. It’s just a beautiful landscape.”