Background Points on Key MetroWest Objections:

Fairfax County officials could have shaped MetroWest to enhance our community, but instead have allowed numerous gross practical flaws to undermine its “Smart Growth” aspirations. For example:

1) The county says that timely construction of such key elements as office buildings and a grocery store are vital to the healthy and balanced  functioning of MetroWest, but the actual plan allows these critical elements to be delayed for years.

More than 65% of all units can be built before an office building is completed, and construction of a grocery store has no timing attached to it.  The long-term absence of these elements will push more cars on the roadways for years and directly sabotage automobile reduction goals.

2) In moving to a denser housing model, the developer and county have failed to upgrade crucial community facilities, such as schools, roads and parks. This problem will worsen greatly as urban populations are shoehorned into underserved neighborhoods, unless the county addresses broader neighborhood effects now.

- The only school improvements paid for by MetroWest are new modular classrooms. These won’t help facilities like cafeterias, where lunch now starts as early as 10:30 a.m., and modulars will take away already scarce playing fields.
- The 5000+ new residents will be funneled into already stressed county parks, particularly Nottoway, and placement of a four-lane road next to the county Connector Trail will degrade this important county asset.
- A last-minute inclusion of $750,000 for field improvements, made in the face of citizen pressure, is inadequate. Money dedicated to a $6 million community center is better spent on open space acquisition and improvements. Moving community-center functions to the high-rise buildings would also prevent destruction of five acres of trees.

3) The project is too dense and lacks balance as a place where people will live, work and play.

- Ensuring adequate green space is one of the primary tenets of "smart growth," but ground-level green space, where children can play, is seriously deficient in the MetroWest plan. Residents, including children and many young professionals, will have to go elsewhere for basic recreational needs. Trading some density for balance would make MetroWest a better place to live.

4) MetroWest and other transit-oriented projects continue to be pushed forward without any overarching policy in Fairfax County to evaluate such projects. Why approve a project, only to find a few months later that it might have violated newly approved policies? Plan first, build later. The opposite ethic, of decide first, plan later, has prevailed at virtually every stage of MetroWest.

5) The three-year loss of 1,295 Metro parking spaces and eventual addition of only 800 over current capacity ignores the fact that Vienna is the terminus of the Orange line, ignores current parking demand far in excess of capacity, and pretends that no future additional parking demand will materialize, even as westward communities develop. Intense future ridership needs will compound traffic problems at MetroWest and burden surrounding communities and commercial centers with commuter parking.