Smarter Growth. John H. Spiers

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      Figure 6. Scott’s Run Nature Preserve, formerly the Burling Tract. Source: Fairfax County Park Authority.

      The firm of Miller & Smith proposed building a luxury residential community on the Burling estate, whose southeast corner was conveniently situated at the intersection of two major thoroughfares, the Capital Beltway and Georgetown Pike. The plans included three hundred homes clustered on half-acre lots rather than distributed across the entire tract as was common in many suburbs at the time. This left half of the land undeveloped, including strips along the Potomac waterfront to the north and Scott’s Run to the west. In July 1969, officials in the county land development office offered the first approval for preliminary site plans without a public hearing, which was possible because the plans did not conflict with existing single-family zoning. Nearby residents, however, soon became aware of the developer’s plans.²⁵

      In the fall of 1969, Betty Cooke, a local artist who lived across from the Burling tract in a 150-year-old pink house, noticed a small green sign on the property announcing a hearing on the development plan before the county planning commission. On September 18, twenty of her friends and neighbors met at the home of Graydon Upton to review the plans and organize a “citizens committee” to advocate for reducing the proposed density and thereby the impact of the project. The membership drew from that of the Old Georgetown Pike and Potomac River Association and included Sharon Francis, a former aide to beautification advocate Lady Bird Johnson; David Dominick, head of the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration; John Adams, a Washington lawyer for a Richmond firm who was a conservationist and admirer of the Burling tract; and Townsend Hoopes, a former official with the Air Force.²⁶

      As middle- and upper-middle-class homeowners living in an affluent community experiencing rampant development, the members of the citizens committee sought to buffer themselves from sprawl while preserving access to the natural amenities that made their communities desirable. Many also had conservation or environmental interests that were piqued by the ecological sensitivity and natural amenities of the Burling tract. Finally, they could draw on their professional knowledge and connections to the community and government to adeptly navigate the political decision-making process that would shape the site’s destiny. Thus this group of citizens was well positioned to influence decision making in the Burling case.²⁷

      The citizens’ committee from the Old Georgetown Pike and Potomac River Association moved quickly to raise objections to the environmental impact of Miller & Smith’s development proposal. First it commissioned a siltation and erosion study, which discussed how a large-scale project would degrade the site’s slopes and pollute the Potomac. The county government was attuned to these concerns and had instituted a policy requiring developers to control erosion and sedimentation during the land preparation and construction phases of projects. At the first public hearing for the Burling tract project in late October 1969, members of the citizens committee used their study to criticize the developer’s inadequate conservation safeguards and the lack of much usable parkland. They recommended reducing the number of homes to be built on the site from 309 to 100 to lessen the project’s impact, but also asked for another hearing to give them time to possibly secure funding to buy the property for use as a public park.²⁸

      By the next public meeting on December 15, the Old Georgetown Pike and Potomac River Association was in talks with Walter J. Hickel, Udall’s newly appointed successor at the Interior Department, to seek funds through the Land and Water Conservation Fund to preserve the Burling tract for the public. Hickel, continuing a long tradition of federal officials commenting on development matters in Greater Washington, urged county leaders to reject Miller & Smith’s proposal. In his words, a large-scale residential development near the Potomac “‘would entail destruction of the natural area and, by eroding the steep slopes, add dramatically to the pollution of our national river.’” Hickel recommended preserving the site for the community and hinted that his agency might help buy the property.²⁹ The interests of the citizens committee and Hickel at this point were strongly influenced by the recent national attention to ecological concerns such as erosion and pollution. Over time, however, their discourse shifted to highlight the Burling tract as a landscape whose wilderness and open space amenities should be preserved to counterbalance the loss of nature to suburbanization.

      Before moving forward with its plans, Miller & Smith was required as a condition of Burling’s will to consent to a conservation agreement with the property’s heirs. In January 1970, the developer submitted a proposal to the Fairfax and Northern Virginia park authorities for preserving several dozen acres of land. The local park authority declined to sign on, presumably because it could not afford the maintenance costs given its shoestring budget. The regional park authority, however, approved the conservation agreement in late February. It stipulated that twenty-five acres would be reserved for the westward extension of the George Washington Memorial Parkway, which was intended to preserve a low profile landscape along the shoreline. In addition, it transferred to the park authority a twenty-six-acre strip of land along Scott’s Run and the Potomac for a park. Last, it placed permanent conservation easements on the entire tract including limiting it to single-family housing, restricting development of the crests of the slopes, and preserving most of the land ceded to the park authority as open space. In exchange, the park authority agreed not to take or support the taking of the property by any government agency through eminent domain.³⁰

      The regional park authority accepted the conservation agreement for several reasons. It wanted the land to be preserved and had taken the lead over the past few years to create larger parks throughout Northern Virginia and in Fairfax in particular, using matching funds from the Land and Water Conservation Fund to acquire land in a county where development pressures inflated its value.³¹ The agency’s five-year capital improvement program also did not include enough money to buy a significant part of the tract outright. In addition, the agency felt that the agreement was the best deal it could get without going into condemnation proceedings to take the property through eminent domain, which would be quite expensive.³² Once the park authority accepted the agreement, the developer had to submit it, along with its plans for the entire Burling tract, to the county planning commission and the board of supervisors, the county’s top elected leadership. This subjected the plans to multiple stages of public review, giving residents the opportunity to influence the decision-making process.

      The Burling case generated considerable attention in Fairfax and Greater Washington as an opportunity to redress the environmental impact of suburbanization. A writer for the Washington Post captured the heady mix of environmental concerns and political interests in a February 1970 article. “There are questions of siltation and erosion of land, removal of fully-grown trees to make way for new homes, placement of homes on steep slopes, establishment of parks in a burgeoning metropolitan area and the Federal government’s role in preserving what remains of undeveloped America.”³³

      Right before the planning commission met to consider the developer’s site plans and the conservation agreement, Interior Secretary Hickel offered to contribute up to 50 percent of the costs for purchasing the Burling tract and conserving it as a park. His offer, valued at up to $1.2 million, was nearly 40 percent of the Land and Water Conservation Fund’s contingency reserves.³⁴ While the ecological impact of development had previously motivated Hickel, his interests now were more rooted in open space preservation. СКАЧАТЬ