“This is just plain bad government at its worst.”
— Paul Wieland, Lewinsville Coalition
Like a soccer match in triple overtime, the West Lewinsville Heights Citizens (WLHCA) Association on Sept. 16 got a win over McLean Youth Soccer when the Fairfax County Board of Zoning Appeals agreed with its argument that Marymount University should not be allowed to use of Lewinsville Park as its home field without a public hearing before the Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors.
All seven members of the Fairfax County Board of Zoning Appeals unanimously agreed — one of them reluctantly — with 11 McLean citizens who testified that the Fairfax County Park Authority (FCPA), in the words of Eileen Larsen, “abrogated their responsibility and broke their own laws” by signing a contract that allows McLean Youth Soccer to sublease a field at Lewinsville Park to Marymount University.
The WLHCA had filed an appeal of Zoning Administrator Jane Gwin’s finding that no public hearing was required because Marymount would make “public use” of the field.
But Marymount, a private college in Arlington County, has far fewer than the two-thirds of its team members who live in Fairfax County. The residency rule is required for other teams that use public fields, and the requirement will be raised to three-fourths next year under a new athletic field policy.
“The rule that two thirds of the players should be Fairfax County residents was circumvented,” Larsen said. “It is distressing to watch our public servants align themselves with powerful organizations while the citizens are treated as adversaries and are not part of the decision-making process.”
“There has never been a hearing of any kind of this matter,” said Jack Hannon, the former president of the WLHCA who is also an attorney. “All the parties on the other side knew about it months before we did,” he said.
LIKE SEVERAL of the members of WLHCA, Hannon helped obtained 38-acre Lewinsville Park from a developer who wanted to build townhouses there in the 1970s. “We fought hard to acquire this land from a developer so our kids could play in McLean,” Hannon told the BZA.
“Marymount University has been singularly absent from all of our discussions and all of our meetings” about its controversial agreement with MYS, which allows the Arlington County private college to practice and play lacrosse and soccer games at Lewinsville Park. In return, Marymount was to foot most of the bill for a $500,000 artificial turf surface for one of two rectangular fields at the park.
Because Marymount did not want to be a signatory to the lease, it was executed between MYS and the FCPA. MYS then assigned some of its playing time — about 9.4 percent or 300 hours — to Marymount.
“[Marymount] created the problem that is before the board today,” Salzer said. “There is widespread anger and concern in this community over the failure of the county’s zoning procedures to protect anyone other than McLean Youth Soccer.”
ELEVEN McLEAN residents members testified that they had been shut out of the decision to add lights to a second field at the park and put down artificial turf.
It began with an April 4, 2002, letter from MYS Chairman Ted Kinghorn to Dranesville Supervisor Stuart Mendelsohn, proposing the shared-use agreement.
But it was June 5 before any citizens were noticed, and then, it was to invite them to appear at an FCPA hearing on whether or not lights should be added to the field.
There was never a public hearing for a special exception to the county’s zoning ordinance to allow Marymount, a private college in Arlington, exclusive use of the park during certain designated time frames in the spring and fall.
“We too have been subjected to the tyranny MYS and the FCPA,” said Paul Wieland of the Lewinsville Coalition, referring to the MYS proposal to add parking and soccer fields at Spring Hill Park. “This is just plain bad government at its worst.”
“The neighbors are responsible for the creation and existence of Lewinsville Park,” Wieland said. “Small thanks, indeed, for these residents’ prior efforts and sacrifices.
“We would lose an athletic field to two well-funded and politically powerful organizations. Perhaps the citizens could use the field at midnight in the dark, or in January and February in the snow, when not even MYS schedules outdoor games.”
Bob Rosenbaum a former MYS coach who served as president of MYI in 1988-90, protested “the deceptive way our elected representatives have allowed the process to proceed to this point.”
Lewinsville Park was intended as “a family-friendly neighborhood park,” said Rosenbaum, whose back yard abuts the park, “not a college athletic facility."
“The Lewinsville Coalition fully supports this appeal,” said Charlotte Bassett Zimmerman. “It is short-sighted, politically motivated, and just plain wrong.”
Like previous speakers, she was then interrupted because her three-minute time slot had expired, but Zimmerman concluded, “I implore you as stewards of our public land; make the right decision. It’s in your hands.”
FRANK CRANDALL, the McLean Citizen Association’s chairman for parks and the environment, objected to the lease between MYS and Marymount.
“A lease used to effectively deprive citizens of the use of the field conveys exclusivity to the lessee and subverts the Department of Community and Recreational Services use policy.”
“Fiduciary duty is the highest and most compelling of all duties,” he said. “Each citizen shares equally in all of [Fairfax County’s] recreational and park resources. The right for a private corporation to charge another private corporation money for the use of a public park, if not illegal, represents a gross abuse of discretion,” he said.
Crandall asked the BZA to “redress the abuses by the FCPA, the Board of Supervisors, and the zoning administrator.
“Nobody has clean hands in this.”
There was no testimony from MYS at the hearing.
“A CLEAR READING of the ordinance requires that the BZA basically find against the zoning administrator and support our position,” said Bill Marr, attorney for the WLHCA.
“This needs to go through the Special Exception process. [Gwin’s] trying to squeeze the use by Marymount into the public use definition is just a Kabuki dance. It just doesn’t fit.”
BZA member James Pammel agreed, moving that the zoning administrator’s ruling be overturned.
“I do not see how you can read Marymount University as a private institution to use a public park and say it is permitted by right,” he said.
“My opinion is the FCPA has abrogated its responsibility. It clearly has violated the requirements of the ordinance.”
“Anybody would avoid the provision in the zoning ordinance if they wanted to contract out” their field use,” said Paul Hammack.
“It is a limited use by a non-profit, or a college, or a sports arena, that require the special exception. I think [Gwin] just made a mistake in that regard,” he added
The BZA’s seven members are appointed by the Circuit Court for staggered terms of five years.