The County's Comprehensive Plan defines the long-term objectives for development in Prince William county. It provides the "big picture" for the intended growth in the county, steering it to some areas and away from others. Site-specific sector plans elaborate on the generic guidance in the comprehensive plan.
However, developers know that the zoning and subdivision ordinances, and the design and construction standards, are the key to developing individual parcels. The ordinances describe what development is permitted by right and how to obtain special authorization (variances) for additional types of development. The Design and Construction Standards Manual (DCSM) defines what sort of sidewalks, parking lots, driveways, houses, etc. the county officials will approve automatically vs. where approval may require a judgement call.
Numerous specialists in architectural and engineering businesses, construction companies, and law firms earn a living by navigating through the rules in order to maximize the profit from a parcel of land. Individual landowners, such as a farmer, rarely have the experience or expertise to prepare a "site development plan" that meets all the criteria for approval under the subdivision ordinance...
Prince William County has developed rapidly over the last 50 years. After completion of the Shirley Highway connecting Woodbridge to the District of Columbia (bypassing Route 1), the eastern edge of the county became a bedroom community. Workers in the District, Arlington, and later Fairfax chose to commute from residences in Marumsco Woods, Dale City, Lake Ridge, and other subdivisions.
After the 1989-91 recession, western Prince William also developed rapidly. As the Dulles Corridor filled up with office buildings, workers were more willing to live in Manassas, Gainesville and Haymarket. Housing in Prince William County was relatively cheap compared to Fairfax County, offsetting the costs and hassles of the commute.
In the last decade, the bucolic open space of farms west and south of Manassas has been replasced by subdivisions. When the first townhomes were built in Haymarket, the locals joked that no one would want to live there, and that Gossom's Hardware (the informal center of the community) would't have room for the increased business. Now, Haymarket is in the bulls eye for development proposals - independent of the plans for the now-cancelled Disney America theme park.
In 1998, Prince William intensely debated its plans for growth. Rather than serve as a bedroom community, county leaders sought to increase commercial development and offer jobs locally, within the county. This would increase taxes from business, shifting some of the buden from the homeowners. At the time, Prince William had the highest property tax rate in Virginia. Politicians were forced to explain, over and over, that the rate was high but the assessments of property values were lower than in Fairfax, resulting in an overall lower tax on homeowners. Still, no elected - or even appointed - official likes to justify high raxes.
One strategic objective of the 1998 comprehensive plan was to discourage developers from building low-value housing (such as townhomes), and to increase the number of "executive homes." If the county could shift development to large houses on large lots, assessed at more than $250,000/parcel (in 1998), then the taxes from such parcels would more than compensate for the additional services required. New townhomes require the county to fund more services - schools, roads, police and fire stations, parks, libraries, etc. - than the new homes pay for in taxes, increasing the burden on existing residents.
The final version of the 1998 Comprehensive Plan defined a "Rural Crecent" along the southern and western edges of the county. In that area, lot sizes for new subdivisions would be a mimimum of 10 acres, and new sewer service would be extended into the Rural Area to address public health or emergency conditions, or to service a public facility. Obviously this encouraged developers to build executive homes, rather than more low-cost (affordable) housing in dense developments. The rhetoric was clear - townhomes did not pay their own way, and were now discouraged.
Parcels already subdivided would not lose development rights; the county did not "downzone" any property and risk a lawsuit, as Fairfax had done in the late 1980's. (Fairfax ended up settling with those landowners who could afford to sue, and allowed more-intense development of some parcels.) The 1998 plan was not a no-growth initiative; it allowed for extensive housing growth in the remaining urban and suburbanized areas of the county. The plan did steer such growth away from the still-undeveloped areas of Prince William, however. As described under the "Rural Area" section of the 1998 plan:
Still, many landowners in the Rural Crescent, led by the supervisor for the Gainesville District in particular, objected to the plan. The Comprehensive Plan proposed restricting future development of, say, a 150-acre farm in the Rural Crescent to just 15 houses on 10-acre lots. In many Virginia subdivisions, houses are built on quarter-acre lots. At a density of 4 houses per acre, a 150-acre farm could be developed into a 600 house subdivision.
Think you could sell such a farm for a greater profit, if the development potential was for an additional 585 houses? Prince William County may lose money on every house that's less than $250,000 in value (in 1998 dollars)... but that farmer could lose a great deal of potential profit. The county decision to steer growth towards other sections of the county meant that western Prince William landowners would not be able to capitalize on high land values, while eastern Prince William landowners would benefit from increased demand. It may be legal, but is that fair?
The fairness issue continues to be debated. Is it fair for existing Prince William County taxpayers to absorb the burden of providing services to new residents, or is it fair that the Comprehensive Plan requires those that move into the county now to "pay their own way"? Is it fair that Prince William farmers who held onto their land, maintaining open space near Nokesville and Gainesville for all these years, should be blocked from obtaining the maximum value from that land just before their retirement?
It is rare that, in any debate, all the costs and benefits for individuals and the general community in the county are presented with equal emotion. James Madison argued that the new Constitution drafted in 1787 was fair because it created a system of checks and balances that did nnot require everyone to be angels, and allowed for good government even where selfishness was the prime motivation for a voter.
In reality, every zoning decision is a economic windfall - or wipeout - for a developer. Balancing windfalls and wipeouts geographically so individuals are treated fairly may be impossible, unless one landowner has such a large parcel to develoop that they could afford to forego development in one area in order to increase density in another. Irvine, California, has been developed recently under such a process, but in Prince William there is no way to compensate landowners in the western end with a "windfall" of increased density elsewhere. The county will permit cluster development in a Residential Planned Community, to concentrate housing in one section of a parcel and maximize acreage for open space elsewhere - but there is no program for transfer of development rights to other parcels in Prince William County.
The land use planning debate in Prince William continues to generate at least as much heat as light. Though the comprehensive plan defined a specific area for 10-acre zoning, subsequent exemptions and sector plans are increasing the density of different parcels within that Rural Crescent. "Smart growth" activists were dismayed during the summer of 2000 at the individual Board of County Supervisor decisions to increase density in the Braemar development on Linton Hall Road, to exempt Heritage Hunt from minimum payments (because the age-restricted community was not expected to create much demand on the school system), and to maintain separate sector plans for the Potomac waterfront.
The Nokesville Sector Plan deals with 560 acres (300 acres in 2 large parcels) in Nokesville, an unincorporated section of the county (described by the county as a "hamlet") bisected by Fitzwater Drive. Over half of the area in the sector plan is within the Rural Crescent. After several community meetings to draft a plan for development based on 10-acre lot sizes, there was a last-minute decision to more than triple the proposed density to 3-acre lot sizes.
By some accounts, this would create enough population density to stimulate commercial development in Nokesville. Others suggest that the density increase, if suitable for stimulating business, would be more appropriate if centralized just in Nokesville itself rather than spread out in a ring of 3-acre parcels surrounding the existing businesses.
The late decision to increase density alarmed the "smart growth" advocates and further polarized the political alignment in the county. The advocates for "smart growth" feared the Board of Supervisor was undercutting the Comprehensive Plan with site-specific exemptions. The Planning Office recommended against the increased density level, in order to comply with the approved Comprehensive Plan. After all, if an exemption is made for Nokesville, how could the county officials justify denial of requests from other landowners in the Rural Area?