Dumfries Cafe to be dozed to make way for wider, improved Route 1

DUMFRIES — Residents got their first look at a wider Route 1 in Dumfries.

The Virginia Department of Transportation held a public hearing on a $130 million project to widen and realign Route 1 between Brady’s Hill Drive and Route 234 through Virginia’s oldest, continuously chartered town.

The project would widen Fraley Boulevard — the portion of Route 1 that today carries vehicles north toward Route 234 — from four to six lanes. The wider road would make room for southbound vehicles that today travel along a two-lane portion of Route 1 known as Main Street in front of Dumfries Town Hall.

The earliest construction could start is 2023. The project is partially funded to the tune of $51 million, largely with funds from the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority which gave the project high marks for relieving traffic congestion, ranking it alongside competing projects in Fairfax and Loudoun counties.

“All of this is coming because of a tax increase passed in 2013 to fund the NVTA,” said State Senator Scott Surovell (D-Fairfax, Prince William, Stafford). “Before the tax, we didn’t raise taxes for transportation in 28 years, and Route 1 fell behind.”

Surovell says he’s bullish on Route 1 improvements in Fairfax and Prince William counties. With this project and a new bus rapid transit project under development in Fairfax, the state is investing more than $2 billion into the Route 1 corridor.

In Dumfries, at least 17 properties — mostly commercial land — could be taken for the widening project. A series of eight new stormwater retention ponds will be created as part of the project, with one of them replacing a town staple — Harold and Cathy’s Dumfries Cafe, which will be torn down.

“Today is Harold’s 91st birthday,” said Kayla Julian, a cafe employee. “I’d hate to break the news to him that we are going to be a pond in 2023.”

The stormwater pond that will replace Dumfries Cafe is also forcing transportation planners to bump out a portion of Main Street where it will be realigned to meet a traffic signal at Possum Point Road. Cleveland Anderson, a co-owner of Liberty Village along Route 1 will lose the main entrance to his property and instead will have to enter through a newly created one on Graham Street.

“We’re losing about an acre of land… we can’t build, we can’t sell,” said Anderson.

Preliminary design is wrapping up, and, next year, officials plan to begin relocating utilities and purchasing land for the acquisition of right of way.

Dumfries is a commuter choke point, and the project is designed to not only untangle the mess but to also spur economic development along Main Street, which would become a walkable street once the road is widened and traffic shifted.

Arron Brown travels between Prince William County and Richmond to see family. He says this project could loosen the gridlock on the weekends.

“It’s a good idea, we just need a few workarounds,” he said.

Commercial developer Pete Singh accused VDOT’s design team of working around the town’s Architectural Review Board guidelines which profit guardrails and retention walls in some of the places the transportation agency says it will build them as part of the project. He’s not a fan of the planned stormwater ponds, either.

“When I built, I was told there were to be no stormwater ponds visible from the road. ‘Put them somewhere else,’ they said. Here, eight stormwater ponds on the road,” said Singh.

It’s taken 20 years for VDOT to get here. A study of the Route 1 corridor examining what transportation improvements would be needed by 2020 was finished in 1997.

This project had been on track to be done in the mid-2000s before it lost funding. A wider Route 1 has been on Dumfries’ comprehensive plan since 2002.