Rural Crescent options presented as decision clock ticks down

PRINCE WILLIAM COUNTY — Residents got a look at new plans for the Rural Crescent.

The 117,000-acre landmass in Prince William County, stretching from Quantico Marine Corps Base to Manassas National Battlefield, has been the topic of a years’ long debate over how to best develop the land.

One plan calls for allowing property owners in the Rural Crescent to transfer their development rights in exchange for keeping their land. That means they retain and preserve the land for farming, but are legally prevented from developing it for housing, subsiding the property.

The development rights to those properties — in what’s called a sending area — would be sold to property owners in a receiving area, identified as a newly identified transition ribbon that is mapped on a narrow stretch of land from Interstate 95 at Quantico to Manassas Battlefield.

It’s land that’s already inside the Rural Crescent where, since 1998, property owners have been limited to building one house per 10 acres, with no water or sewer hookups. It was meant to preserve open space, but it has limited the amount o cash developers will pay for land due to the restrictions of the number of homes that can be built.

On Tuesday, July 30, county officials held the second a series of meetings on the Rural Crescent at the Hylton Performing Arts Center. Residents were invited onto the stage of the concert hall to view proposed development alternatives.

Under a plan dubbed TDR-A, a total of 2,643 lots on 23,050 acres would be eligible for the transfer of development rights program. Those development rights would be purchased by property owners developing in the 4,011-acre transition ribbon.

Homes would be located on 1.5-acre lots in the ribbon. Property owners in the sending areas would need to own at least 20 acres of land to eligible for the TDR program.

Under a TDR-B plan, the proposed density is higher with 10,390 lots in the 20,050 acres being transferred to the 4,011-acre transition ribbon. Homes would sit on property sizes that are just shy of an acre.

In both Plans A and B, water and sewer lines would be extended to the transition ribbon. Under current development rules, these utilities are banned.

The density inside the sending areas would be reduced from one home per 10 acres to one house per 50, under both plans.

The idea of a transition ribbon is a new concept to those who have been following the Rural Crescent development for years. Many were surprised to the ribbon on land inside the Rural Crescent.

In recent years, supporters of a TDR program in the county said receiving areas should be in the eastern side of the county, to include Route 1 in Woodbridge and Dumfries — areas that are already marked for high-density development.

PDR estimates top $300 million

A Purchase of Development Rights program was also discussed, with a suggested total of 10,000 acres of land being purchased by the county and/or state government for preservation.

Similar to a TDR, a landowner who sells his or her property development rights to the local or state government may keep the land for farming or preservation but may never develop or subdivide the land.

In today’s dollars, it’s estimated it would cost $137 million to purchase 10,000 acres of land in the Rural Crescent. If the county were to buy all of the nearly 23,000 acres of rural area, the estimated price tag soars to $314 million.

Clustered option

There were two cluster development plans discussed, where a large number of new homes are clustered together to preserve open space.

One cluster plans call for leaving the current Rural Crescent density limitations of one home every 10 acres for by-right development but call for adding up to nearly 2,800 new homes on properties that are at least 50-acres large. That would leave 8,100 acres of land in the 23,000-acre rural crescent preserved.

A second cluster plan calls or as many as 5,000 new homes on properties that are at least 20 acres large. New sewer lines would be added, and as many as 13,700 acres of land would be preserved.

Residents were asked to give their comments on all of the options presented to them. They have until August 16 to make their voices heard. A final presentation will be made on September 24, where Prince William County Planning Department Director Rebecca Horner is poised to make a final development recommendation to the county’s Planning Commission.

Next steps 

The Prince William Board of County Supervisors will have the final say for the plan. It’s not likely to take up the measure until the New Year. There will be at least four new sitting members of the board following a Nov. 5, 2019 election, as two decided not to seek re-election and two others lost their bids in a June Primary Election.

Tuesday’s meeting follows a contentious meeting held on June 24 at the Prince William County Government Center in Woodbridge. Residents who came to that meeting were asked to share their opinions but became angry after many of the same residents participated in an extensive study of the Rural Crescent and development options five years ago.

On Tuesday, four Prince William police officers were on stage to help keep the peace. The meeting was, at times, contentious, but calmer the June session.

The newly laid out alternatives give activists ammunition to fight the proposed changes.

“Now that they’ve shown what they’re going to do, now we have the tools to act,” said Elena Schlossberg, with the Coalition to Protect Prince William.

The group is made up of residents who want to maintain the rural character of the land. They were also successful in forcing Dominion Power to devise plans to bury a new power line it had initially wanted to build above ground.

Neighboring Fauquier and Stafford counties have successful PDR and TDR programs, respectively, while Prince William currently has none. Farmers in Fauquier County have used the PDR program to their advantage by investing the money they get in exchange for their land back into their farms, said Julie Bolthouse, with the Piedmont Environmental Center.

One farmer and the owner of the popular Moo-Through dairy bar at the intersection of Routes 28 and 29 recently invested $25,000 from a PDR sale into the construction of an advanced dairy barn, she added.

By the numbers

In total, there are 117,000 acres of land in the Rural Crescent. A total of 44,000 acres includes an area for Quantico Marine Corps Base and other protected land like Prince William Forest and Manassas Battlefield national parks.

With farming on the decline in the region, only 10,000 acres of the land is currently being used as farmland, split mostly between two farms. A total of 27,000 of Prince William County’s 460,000 residents live in the Rural Crescent.

The county’s total population is expected to balloon to 656,178 by 2040, according to the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service.