The Tallest Building in America

By Charles Houston

Years ago, I was a young project manager for a major Atlanta developer and one day was invited to join the partners’ meeting to report on my first big project. I kept it short: The infrastructure was almost finished, the first six-story building was halfway complete. That project is now UPS’s world headquarters.

Feeling cocky, I tossed out an idea to the partners: “Let’s develop the tallest building in the America.” My logic was sound. There was a great site in Atlanta where two interstates met, two television stations and a radio studio were in the area and could take many floors. So would a major corporation. Add several floors of retail, dedicate twenty floors for a hotel, plus around thirty floors of office space to lease. Finally build twenty floors of fancy residences. Top it off with an antenna spire and it would easily be a thousand feet tall.  

The chairman wasn’t thrilled, “Are you out of your mind?”

I had failed to socialize the idea. I should have convinced my boss first, then with him, approached the five partners individually. In other words, carefully pre-sell the concept. Instead, I blithely assumed that they would immediately grasp my brilliance. I was wrong.

A ZOC Alliance That Never Happened 

The Zoning Ordinance Committee frustrated me. Members from western Loudoun made up about a third of the committee. Business interests held another third. The last third of ZOC members were presumably neutral. I had learned from my long-ago mistake in Atlanta and so I envisioned small meetings for us westerners to coordinate strategy. Instead, I got a quick “You can’t do that!” from the County, citing the state’s Open Meetings law, which forbids any meeting of three or more people unless the meeting was posted and open to the public.

The lack of coordination hamstrung efforts to get ZOC to endorse western goals.

Anti-populism on ZOC

I’ve written about populism – that government belongs to the people. I knew that business members would be busy little beavers in trying to block protective measures for the west. The key would then be the remaining third group of members who were not from the business world and also were not conservationists.

I expected these folks to chime in on every question, including those that would affect only the west. I generally recused myself from matters affecting the suburban and transition areas, with the hope that the west would get reciprocal recusals from members from those planning areas. In other words, please abstain on western Loudoun questions.

That request was ignored as most “neutral” members rarely seemed sympathetic to western Loudoun.

Trees vs. Forest

Given the length and complexity of the zoning ordinance, a ZOC member could have made thousands of comments. Actually, it seemed that one member did just that. I took a different approach and focused on the forest. Moreover, people usually can follow only a few points at a time.

I made three major requests: Protect our mountains. Reduce the size of cluster lots and thereby save thousands of acres from development. Designate intense uses (e.g., breweries, event centers) that would no longer be available to promoters on a by-right basis. Under this third concept, these uses would require review and special exceptions from the Board of Supervisors.

Failure

I didn’t effectively socialize these ideas, and was thwarted by the Open Meetings law from coordinating with fellow westerners. Later, I was shocked when the representative of a conservation group voted against my motion for additional scrutiny of intense uses. That was dispiriting; I became fatalistic.

Staff Bakes the Zoning Cake

Permanent bureaucracies effectively control governments; they outlast the terms of elected officials. That’s a truism with every government, including Loudoun. Here, Planning and Zoning staff controls the zoning rewrite. It writes the suggested text and can perhaps influence the supervisors, who have the final say.

Loudoun’s planners are nice people with good intentions. They have been diligent in getting input from many sources – the Zoning Ordinance Committee, ordinary citizens, special interest business cabals, and perhaps from supervisors’ offices.

Staff looks at all those comments and decides which, if any, it will bake into its zoning cake. Ultimately Staff produces a new zoning text. It has listened to all the ingredients – all the various comments – but the new text will be only what Staff itself thinks is best.

Staff Proposes Something Good

Staff has recommended that the maximum size of cluster lots be reduced from four acres to two. This is huge. It will make it easy to protect prime farmland soils. More importantly, it should save some 20,000 acres from the bulldozers while not changing land values or the economics of conservation easements. It’s a major win-win idea.

That idea was paired with a recommendation to preserve 70 percent of prime agricultural soils. Support, but also controversy, was in full cry at the Planning Commission’s public hearing on November 14. As expected, people’s wishes clashed with commercial avarice.  

Because of the complexity of the issues, the Commission deferred the matter to a future work session. Between now and then, expect businesses and their flacks and shills to be going full tilt, seeking special favors. I’ll hold off on snark until we see how that work session goes.

I’m Out

I’ve become pretty fatalistic and I resigned from ZOC. I’ve never been a quitter, but I’m a realist: western Loudoun will not get most of the protection it needs.   

I’m In

There may be a better way. A group of conservation-minded people are trying to form a political action committee – a PAC – that would focus on the 2023 Board of Supervisors elections. 

Money talks, after all. I’ll donate to this PAC if it becomes a reality. So should you.

Charlie Houston lives on a farm in suburban Paeonian Springs. In his prior life, he helped develop over six million square feet of corporate office buildings and worked with planning staffs from Miami to Louisville, and from New Orleans to Richmond.