Despite hours of outcry, Prince William Supervisors approve Ray’s Regarde housing development in Woodbridge

WOODBRIDGE — Frank Principi stayed true to his record of denying every newly proposed housing development in Woodbridge.

On Tuesday night, he sided with the majority of residents who filled seats at a public hearing, and nearly four hours time speaking against 325 new homes to be built as part of Rays Regarde, a four-year-old project slated for construction at the end of Horner Road at Interstate 95.

But his motion to deny, seconded by Gainesville District Supervisor Peter Candland and also supported by Potomac District Supervisor Maureen Caddigan, failed.

The remaining Supervisors voted to approve the project that, according to county planners and the county’s comprehensive plan, is just the type of project that is needed in the dense eastern section of the county.

“This area is screaming for redevelopment,” said Occoquan District Supervisor Ruth Anderson. “We want to put development in this area of the county because it’s close to the highway and transit. If we don’t vote for some density here, which is much lower than what is called for the [comprehensive] plan, where are we going to put it?”

With their vote, Supervisors rezoned 56 acres of land on which Ray’s Regarde will be built, changing it from land previously zoned for agriculture and suburban medium and high density uses to land zone ford planned mixed-use development.

Of the 325 new homes that will be built here, 150 will be condos and 175 will be townhomes, averaging about seven homes per acre. The comprehensive plan — the document that guides development throughout the county — calls for more than double that amount.

Descendants of the Ray family, which once lived on the land more than 100 years ago, urged Supervisors to approve the rezoning. This, they said, would allow the family to receive fair market value for their land from Ray’s Regarde developer Gary Garczynski, a successful businessman and former member of Virginia’s Commonwealth Transportation Board in Richmond.

The property is situated on a dead end, two-lane Horner Road, which abuts the highway. Trash heaps and a blighted burned-out house and just some of the things Ola Thomas Smith, a member of the original Ray family, and who still lives on the out-of-the-way property, sees every day.

“I beg you to approve this plan,” she said. “My reason is that, because on a daily basis, we patrol the area. We have to wait until people get dressed after having sex before we can go home. Cars are set on fire… we find drug paraphernalia…”

Coles District Supervisor Marty Nohe sympathized with the Ray family and their desire to sell the land to a developer. He grew up near the Ray farm on nearby Greenacre Drive.

“I’ve struggled with this case for a while,” said Nohe. “We’ve reached a point where we’ve had this in the [comprehensive] plan for 25 plus years. It would be unfair for this Board to now say we are going to do something different with this land, and the right thing to do is to let the Ray family move forward.”

Principi said Ray’s Regarde has many drawbacks:

• More students coming into increasingly crowded schools
• Nearly all of the children who attend Kilby Elementary School, nearby the Ray’s Regarde site, walk to school
• More traffic on Horner Road which saw 80 crashes between 2016 and 2018
• Increased demand for public safety services
• An incomplete process to study the ground soils at the home site, which served as a debris landfill that closed about 30 years ago

“[County planning] staff is looking at this project through a narrow list of legal rules and the Board of County Supervisors must look beyond proffer amounts…the taxpayer is going to be left holding the bag to pay for the increased services residents of this project will demand.”

The rezoning application project was filed with the county prior to the 2016 statewide proffer law change, which meant the county could, under the old proffer laws, ask for monetary contributions from the development to offset costs for schools, transportation, public safety and more.

Garczynski’s firm agreed to pay $11.3 million in proffers in exchange for the rezoning approval, to include building a new roundabout at Horner Road and Summerland Drive to ease traffic congestion, to add a new entrance to the Kilby Elementary School parking lot, and construct a new left-turn lane at Prince William Parkway and Summerland Drive, increasing the capacity at that congested intersection.

“I don’t know what more we could do for this application, or what more we can do as a corporate citizen than what we have already done on this application,” said Garczynski. “If you separate the emotional rhetoric you’ve heard here tonight and dwell on the facts of this case, you’ll find it worthy of your approval.”

Those who opposed the plan said they would rather see the land be developed into an office park, or used to for an indoor recreational center.

“It’s only going to make traffic worse if you put houses at the end of that road,” said Bruce Smith, who lives near where the new homes will be built. “We should have a commercial development there. It should be offices, not houses.”

Board of Supervisors Chairman At-large Corey Stewart fired back on that notion.

“I’d love to say we’re going to build a large town center like Reston, with lots of office space…but we’re not magic… and retail is in the dumps, it’s not coming back, and a lot of you know because you’ve probably made some transactions on Amazon today.”

A construction debris dump that once occupied the land has been closed and “capped in place” since the late 1980s. Concrete and building materials are lying beneath the surface, which was cause for concern by members of the county’s Planning Commission which ordered Garczynski to conduct tests to make sure the site was safe on which to build.

A soil scientist hired by Garhinski’s firm began taking dirt samples at the site in 2014 and again 2015 and 2018, along with chemical analyses. They found lower than expected levels of methane gas, and traces heavy metals like arsenic, cadmium, and lead in the soil.

“We’ve done studies with Virginia Tech and found there are some concentrations in our soil and our groundwater here in Prince William County,” a spokesman for the hired scientific firm told the Board of Supervisors.

Garczynski and his development voluntarily agreed to participate in a state soil remediation program administered by Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality that will force developers to remove some of the poor soil and replace it with new dirt on which to build.

“Some of that dirt could go over to [the Potomac Landfill in Dumfries], some of it could go down to the landfill in King George which is accepting that kind of material right now,” said Tom Smith, who oversees operations at the Prince William County Landfill. “None of it will come to the Prince William landfill.”

Once the project is complete, the land to include the capped landfill below will be deeded to a homeowners association.

Peter Dolan, Garhinski’s attorney, laid out a project timeline for Ray’s Regarde:

• 2019 — First proffer monies from the project go to Woodbridge High and Kilby Elementary schools for school improvement
• 2020 — Construction of a new roundabout at Horner Road and Summerland Drive, a new entrance to Kilby Elementary School parking lot
• 2022 — First home ready for occupancy
• 2023 — Construction on new turn lane on Prince William Parkway at Summerland Drive
• 2027 — Project completed