County reveals design concepts for Lorton Community Center at contentious meeting
A preliminary design for the Lorton Community Center. Click to enlarge. (Fairfax County image)
Residents of Lorton — many from neighborhoods surrounding the Lorton Library at 9520 Richmond Highway — packed the local Moose Lodge last Thursday evening for an at-times contentious community meeting led by Mount Vernon District Supervisor Dan Storck about the new Lorton Community Center, scheduled to open in 2022.
The community center — currently in its design, zoning and permitting stage — is intended to co-locate multiple services in one location and provide a place for residents of all ages and abilities to meet, learn and play, according to Fairfax County materials. Specifically, the facility will house the Lorton Community Action Center (LCAC), the Lorton Senior Center for Active Adults, a gymnasium, exercise and fitness rooms, art and multipurpose rooms, a game room and a kitchen in a new building that’s adjacent to — but will share a common entryway with — an enlarged Lorton Library. Designed to meet ADA requirements, the community center is expected to provide fitness classes, indoor basketball, after-school programs, senior activities, STEAM/technology/computer classes, seasonal camps, therapeutic recreation and other classes.
Based on initial design concepts presented by architectural firm Grimm + Parker, the 33,000 square foot, environmentally friendly Lorton Community Center will front directly on Route 1 to avoid infringing on surrounding neighborhoods, although the building’s main entrance will be in the rear, adjacent to a “right-sized” (greatly expanded) parking lot, according to architect David Whale, a principal at Grimm + Parker. Behind the lot will be a relocated playground, existing walking/jogging/biking trails, and open space for outdoor recreation, carved out of the existing Lorton Park.
It’s precisely this open space that’s a point of concern for residents who say the county’s plans will reduce the parkland to the size of the existing parking lot at Lorton Library. County drawings show the park’s current “usable grass area” of 1.68 acres being reshaped and reduced to 1.42 acres due to the parking lot expansion, though the space will incorporate some new land freed up by the removal of the old LCAC building and trailer housing the food pantry. Homeowners point out, however, they also will lose some parkland and a trail on the south side of the library.
Click to enlarge. (Fairfax County image)
While several trees near the existing parking lot and future community center will need to be removed, the park’s landmark white oak tree will be preserved, as will most trees located along the edges of the park, providing screening against neighboring housing developments.
Clad in bright green t-shirts and “Save Lorton Park” stickers, neighborhood activists accused the county of failing to hold public meetings early in the process, shutting them out of decision-making, and trying to squeeze a sizable community center into a small area in a way they believe will worsen traffic congestion and take away valued green space.
Chris Ambrose, president of Shepherd Hills Home Owners Association (HOA) — one of two HOA representatives to the Lorton Community Center Steering Committee — said they were excluded from the committee until late last year.
“As far as getting the community input, it was shut out — I mean shut out of the process until November,” said Ambrose.
He also questioned why public hearings weren’t held before the county’s $18.5 million bond was put together and eventually approved by referendum in November 2016, and what will replace the sense of community that Lorton Park has afforded local residents over the years. Besides serving as a play area for kids, the park routinely hosts events like the yearly Hope & Health Festival, which LCAC held there this past weekend.
Storck responded that the two HOA representatives were invited to the steering committee’s second meeting in October, although it wasn’t until the third meeting in November when they officially became members. The 10-person committee — which also includes several individual residents of neighboring communities, the executive director of LCAC and the president of the Lorton Senior Center among others— had evaluated three other potential sites for the community center but ultimately selected the Lorton Library site by consensus. Other county-owned sites in the committee’s original consideration set were the Noman Cole property across the street, the park/tennis court on Pohick Road (eliminated from contention) and the Lorton Road/railway track site.
Storck tried to reassure residents that the community center is still in its early design concept stages and that there will be ample opportunity for the community to weigh in on both the services provided by the center and how the open space is used. Public hearings will be held during the upcoming public facilities review process according to county officials.
“What I’m here to tell you is that [Lorton Park] is not going away,” said Storck. “It’s important that we have a true community park and facility.”
Storck also noted that site designers and traffic engineers will be considering traffic and parking-related issues, and that the entire process will require the Virginia Department of Transportation’s sign-off. In 15 to 20 years, said Storck, the Richmond Highway service road in front of the library will be eliminated as part of the road widening planned under the Embark Richmond Highway initiative.
Mount Vernon District Supervisor Dan Storck speaks during last week’s community meeting. (Erika Christ image)
Not all residents attending the community meeting were opposed to the facility’s placement at the Lorton Library site, including a woman who introduced herself as Kathy Turner.
“In 1985, I was president of Hagle Circle,” said Turner. “I was promised this community center and a library right there. I want it,” she said to scattered applause.
County officials said the design, zoning and permitting process for the Lorton Community Center will continue through Spring 2019, with construction slated to begin in early 2020. New county positions will be created by the center’s opening, and they eventually will be posted here.
Until the next community meeting or public hearing — date yet to be determined — the general public is encouraged to share input and comments by sending an email to Ipek.Aktuglu@fairfaxcounty.gov.
Over 1,000 people who live around the park have signed a petition, and all four HOAs that are within walking distance of the park have passed resolutions, calling on the County to re-evaluate the direction of this project.
The County has been playing with numbers in an effort to mislead the community. For example, they claim that the only “usable space” is the 1.68 acre field. The fact is that park is six acres. Of the 7.7 acre parcel of land that contains the park, library and LCAC, 5.93 acres are parkland that was purchased as part of a 1981 bond referendum which was held specifically to create a “six acre” park in an area that, at that time was planned for dense development. Today that development is complete and it is the only park in Lorton, south of Pohick Road between I-95 and Richmond Highway.
The wooded areas with trails and grass that make up most of the six acres have even been referred to as “wasted space.” According to the County, only the active 1.68 field is “park.” County officials have actually stated that “the park is being preserved” when the vast majority is clearly being eliminated. Even that 1.68 acre field is being reduced to half an acre.
This misinformation campaign is an effort by the County to confuse and mislead the residents in the area into believing that the impact on the park is insignificant when it is not.
After the half acre field is removed from the calculation, we are left with 1.06 acres, much of which will be nothing more than landscaped areas that will surround the community center. The six acre park, paid for with park bonds, serves as the “back yard” of over 700 townhomes. It will be reduced to the size of the yard of a large single family home. This is a significant equity issue and flies in the face of the recently adopted “One Fairfax” equity policy that guarantees an equitable distribution of park resources.
It is also not true that three other sites were evaluated. It is correct that, after the initial community uproar, Supervisor Storck asked the staff to inventory county owned properties in the area. This raised the hope of many people in the community that he was serious about trying to save the area’s green space.
That optimism was quickly dashed when it became clear that there was no serious effort to look at those other spaces. While the space on Pohick Road was eliminated immediately because, like the Lorton Park, it was surrounded by a dense development that made it unsuitable for a project like this, the other two sites remain perfectly viable alternatives.
While one of those has some issues, none are insurmountable. The staff indicated that the other remaining site had no development issues at all. In fact, it may be more cost effective to develop than the park which requires the relocation of a gas main and has significant transportation issues.
At the very meeting that the staff gave the positive analysis of the prospects for this property, Mr. Storck announced that they were not going to look at it and would move forward with development in the park. If there had been any doubt that the “evaluation” of those alternatives was a charade, it was clear at that point.
The lack of community involvement has been staggering. It is misleading to suggest that the committee Storck set up “includes several individual residents of neighboring communities.” That may be true, but whether they live in neighboring communities or not, the initial people on the committee were nearly all picked to represent the organizations that will have space in the facility, not the communities around it.
We asked Mr. Storck to include representatives from the community on the committee three months before its first meeting. He refused. It took us four months of bugging to be able to just attend the meetings and nearly six months to get the committee to finally contain two representatives from the community. Once on it, the community representatives had no real say in the project.
The lack of public hearings is also disturbing. While you reported what was said at the meeting, that public hearings will be held in the coming months, the fact is that the county has not decided whether to hold them and it is rather late to do them at this stage. In fact, at yesterday’s South County Federation meeting Storck said that they had not determined whether hearings would be held and said that it was premature to make that decision until they took the design to another level.
He was rightfully called out at that meeting for that comment. After all, why would the County wait until most of the design was completed to hold public hearings on what should be in the facility or where it should be located?
It is not too late for the County to do what is right by listening to the community and preserve the green space.
For the record, the communities surrounding Lorton Park are in FULL full support of building a Lorton Community Center.
However, the communities request that the County refrain from depriving the community of a current heavily-used resource, as the County offers this emerging additional capability.
There are other options readily-available to the County to enable this as a “win-win” situation.
Most importantly, the comment that “Lorton Park will not be lost” begs clarification.
Though building the Lorton Community Center on Lorton Park will not cause the park to close, the project will result in REDUCING the 5.93 acre park down to approximately 1.06 acres — a little more than the size of a large home’s back yard.
The 1983-89 Park Bond Referendum funded 96 community-serving and 21 district-wide park improvement projects, which included $256K to acquire 7.7 acres for a community park (Lorton Park), in a joint park/library/center complex, for use in accordance with the adopted Fairfax County Comprehensive Master Plan.
Moreover, there was also an additional $100K funding for the actual construction of the tot lot, the picnic areas and the open play areas of the envisioned park.
The Fairfax County Master Plan allocated approximately 5.93 acres of space for the parkland.
The balance of the 7.7 acres was to be split between the Library and the Housing Authority (for space allocation to the Lorton Community Action Center [LCAC]).
The three parties involved consummated a County Inter-Departmental Memorandum of Agreement regarding respective allocation and use.
Everything, including the Lorton Park Plan developed in 1985, refers to the fact that LCAC will get an upgrade and the structure envisioned as 3K-4K SF. It never used the term “Community Center”.
It is clear from the Lorton Park Plan that the Library and the LCAC/Community Center property were limited to a total of 2.2 acres.
Now the County has received funding, via the November 2016 Bond Referendum, for a much larger project than what was envisioned — a new Lorton Community Center that would be over 10 times the current LCAC space.
This construction would significantly reduce the park from approximately 5.93 acres to a little over 1 acre.
Furthermore, and without loss of square footage capacity, we just learned that the original two-story building concept is now being spread out to a one-story structure, requiring an even larger sprawling layout, with little architectural appeal.
The new center is a five-year “continuous construction” project.
At least one of the three alternate sites (which was not given much consideration by the County) might help reduce the time to complete the project, since the County would not have to deal with significant issues at the Lorton Park site, such as relocating a gas main; preserving a 200-year old oak tree, while destroying the habitat around it (it is not even clear if that is possible); and overcoming transportation, traffic safety and congestion obstacles (that don’t exist at the other sites).
The Lorton Community is almost unanimously against the proposed siting of the new facility on Lorton Park. Over 1,000 people have signed a petition opposing the project’s proposed elimination of so much park space.
The surrounding HOAs have also passed resolutions opposing the project, as currently contemplated. There is serious concern about the loss of this heavily-used park in a densely populated area that is so short on parkland.
Fairfax County’s Plan calls for MORE, not less, parkland in this planning sector. Related to the concerns about losing the park is that better alternate sites for the proposed facility readily exist on other County-owned parcels.
Fairfax County has earned the Arbor Day Foundation’s Tree City USA designation — the County will celebrated its achievement on Earth Day, 21 April 2018. Amongst the row of trees within Lorton Park, is a 200-year old oak tree that is precious to the community.
Since this park’s inception over 30 years ago, that tree and the park provide a sense of community that is not replaceable. That tree could be at risk due to this development.
Both the County Park Authority and the County Arborist opposed a much smaller project on that property 10 years ago because of the very risk to that grand, old oak tree.
The County’s 2 November 1982 Park Bond Referendum handout, which led to the funding of Lorton Park, states that “Parks are a major reason why Fairfax County is a good place to live and work. National studies indicate that real estate adjacent to parkland increased in value manyfold. Eight-six percent of the Virginia Commission of Outdoor Recreation survey respondents rated recreation as very important compared to other activities.”