Rural Loudoun at Risk: Commercialization Over Community

By David Verhey, President, Friends of Paxson-Airmont

The Loudoun County Board of Supervisors recently voted to advance Supervisor Caleb Kershner’s (Catoctin) pro-industry zoning framework to expand event-based commercial activity in western Loudoun. County staff will now draft the ordinance changes needed to implement it. The Board approved the plan despite strong opposition from western Loudoun residents.

Kershner’s proposal would let wineries, breweries, and distilleries host effectively unlimited events in rural Loudoun, with real consequences for nearby residents, family farms, country roads, and water resources. More events mean more traffic, more noise, greater strain on wells and septic systems, and more commercial activity in areas never meant to function as entertainment corridors.

Most residents support local wineries, breweries, and agriculture. That is not the issue. The issue is turning western Loudoun into a commercial event district with few meaningful limits.

Kershner said he introduced the new zoning framework at the request of industry groups. But western Loudoun residents opposed it, raising concerns about traffic, noise, water, infrastructure, and the loss of rural character.

After hearing these concerns, several supervisors from eastern Loudoun acknowledged the need for limits and stronger protections for rural residents. Yet Supervisor Kershner, whose district includes the communities most directly affected, continues pushing in the opposite direction.

This raises a simple question: if supervisors from eastern Loudoun are listening to western Loudoun residents, why isn’t western Loudoun’s own supervisor listening?

This is not the only fight. Western Loudoun residents are also battling data center developer Chuck Kuhn’s Valley Commerce Center near Purcellville, which would drop industrial-scale development into the rural policy area.

Kuhn’s JK Community Farm is now pushing on a second front. It has reportedly renewed its effort to build a banquet and event center on its historic Paxson Road property, even after the Land Trust of Virginia warned the county that a building for private parties, corporate functions and weddings would violate the property’s conservation easement, which permits only agricultural farm buildings.

JK’s answer is to call the building a “farm building” and promise only occasional events for up to 245 people in the name of charity. But a different label doesn’t change the truth. Hosting private parties, weddings, and corporate functions for revenue is commercial activity, no matter whether the profits underwrite Mr. Kuhn’s charity. This is the same commercialization proposal in different packaging.

When is this going to stop?

The Board of Supervisors cannot keep allowing rural properties to become targets for commercial event expansion in defiance of community concerns and longstanding conservation protections.

Western Loudoun residents have repeatedly opposed industrial-scale and high-intensity commercial projects that undermine the rural policy area. They are simply asking county leaders to protect rural Loudoun rather than steadily carve it up for commercial expansion.

Rural communities should not be forced to absorb the impacts of unlimited commercialization so private operators can grow their event businesses and profits. That is not balanced land-use policy, and it is not fair to the residents who live with the consequences every day. 

Residents and community organizations have repeatedly raised these concerns directly with Supervisor Kershner, yet he has offered no meaningful commitment to stronger protections for western Loudoun’s rural communities.  Western Loudoun needs a representative who will listen to their constituents, respect the county’s rural land-use policies, and vote no on further commercialization and industrialization of the rural policy area. Kershner is failing his constituents.

Once rural areas are commercialized at this scale, the change becomes extremely difficult to reverse. Western Loudoun’s future should be decided by the people who live there, not by industry pressure campaigns.

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Friends of Paxson-Airmont is a 501(c)(3) community organization based in Round Hill, Virginia, advocating for the protection of rural Loudoun County’s natural resources, agricultural heritage, and quality of life.