Virginia Officials Support Housing Project at Centreville
By Deborah Fitts
June 2002, Va

Despite stalwart opposition from preservationists, Fairfax County supervisors voted 7-2 in April to approve a controversial development that will impact the small historic district in Centreville, an oasis in this heavily developed suburb outside the nation's capital.

Developer Stanley Martin had sought to rezone 7.8 acres at the heart of Centreville, including 2 acres within the village's historic district. The approval hikes residential density from one unit per acre to as many as eight, providing 47 large-scale homes. Ten of the homes would go in the historic district.

Preservationists turned out at a Fairfax County public hearing March 18 to oppose the plans. They focused particularly on 225 feet of east-west-running Civil War earthworks that lie along the northern edge of the 2 acres.

According to historian Ed Wenzel of the Chantilly Battlefield Association, the site hosted the 40,000-man Confederate occupation of Centreville in the winter of the first year of the war, when commander Joe Johnston had his headquarters nearby at the 1750 home known as Mount Gilead.

The district also includes St. John's Church, built in the 1850s, and its cemetery, as well as Mount Gilead, which is owned by the Fairfax County Park Authority.

The developer's plan calls for saving the earthworks. A spokesman for Stanley Martin noted that they will be maintained as part of the county park system.

Opponents objected that the "Village at Mount Gilead" will place nine homes adjacent to the earthworks outside the district and 10 more inside, rendering the earthworks little more than a play area for the neighborhood.

The county's Planning Commission recommended approval of the plan last December. Wenzel rapped local officials for failing to protect the county's historic resources. If they are "not going to take seriously the most important historic district in Fairfax County," he said, "then we might as well drop the pretense of protecting historic districts."

The development plan, he said, demonstrates "no concern for old Centreville, only a desire to cram as many large homes as possible onto the site."

Representatives of St. John's Church also objected that the homes to be built inside the district would cut off the church from the historic viewshed.

Historian and preservationist Brian Pohanka, and Edwin Bearss, former chief historian for the National Park Service, also spoke against the plan. Bearss said the fortifications, located on high ground in western Fairfax, "are important on a national level."

John McAnaw, president of the Bull Run Civil War Round Table, said the supervisors' vote was "very, very disappointing." Twenty-one of 24 speakers at the public hearing were opposed to the development, he said, and yet the supervisors chose to support the project.

"We won't drop it," said McAnaw of the preservationists' opposition. He declined to elaborate on what steps they may take.