Occoquan Condemns Oaks III Development in Tense Town Hall Meeting

After nine months of secrecy and another three months of waiting, the town of Occoquan finally got the chance to respond to the planned for the corner of Old Bridge Road and Tanyard Hill Road.

In a June 20 town hall meeting laced with tense emotions, Occoquan residents and business owners shared their concerns about having a new development in their backyard, occasionally interrupting representatives of the developer to speak their minds.

Developer Ken Thompson first filed for the on June 29 of last year. He then submitted a drawing of the plan to the Lake Ridge-Occoquan-Coles Civic Association (LOCCA). But Occoquan did not hear of the plans until March of this year, when the called a meeting on Oaks III and the nearby Vantage Point development.

In the June 20 town hall meeting, Thompson and his representatives presented his plan to the Occoquan public. In this plan, he said he will use 2.8 acres of the 18 acres for a 32,500-square-foot low-rise office building. An additional 1.5 acres will be used for the parking lot. Finally, he wants to build one home on a one-acre lot. (The plan allows for “up to” 34 houses on the plot.) He claims that the remaining acres will be put into a conservation easement “for perpetuity.”

Both residents and business owners responded to the issues they saw in the development plans, including traffic, safety concerns, the viewshed, economic development, and the conservation easement portion of the development.

Thompson said the traffic added to Old Bridge Road and Tanyard Hill Road as a result of the Oaks III development would be minimal, with 560 new cars on Old Bridge Road each day, and 11 new cars on Tanyard Hill Road each day. According to these numbers, during peak hours, 100 extra cars would fill Old Bridge Road and two extra cars would add to Tanyard Hill Road's traffic.

Residents questioned this math and whether the numbers stated would actually be an insignificant addition to traffic.

“We can’t let our little children out to play in the morning and evening because of the traffic,” said a resident on Washington Street. Sometimes cars turn onto Washington Street to avoid Tanyard Hill Road. “This business about two cars is ridiculous. I am going to fight tooth and nail against this, especially after all the false pretenses.”

With even more traffic on Old Bridge, residents fear that more and more drivers will turn onto Tanyard Hill Road to escape the long lines. The company that Occoquan resident Andrea Coles works for outside the town employs more than 400 employees. In a poll she conducted with her fellow employees recently, about 190 live in Woodbridge, Dumfries, Dale City, Manassas, Stafford or Fredericksburg and 90 percent of those employees cut through Tanyard Hill Road as part of their daily commute.

Resident Harry Heim said that so many cars go through Occoquan in the morning that “you can’t turn half the time at in the morning.”

The developer said that these numbers were worst case scenarios. “The worst possible scenarios in traffic plans are generally not only met but exceeded,” resident James Phelps responded.

A resident on High Street who has lived in Occoquan for 40 years said she sees tractor trailers going down Tanyard Hill Road. “It scares the hell out of me,” she said. “We’re here, we see the traffic. I’d hate to see anything happen to this town.”

Tanyard Hill Road is the last of the three main entrances into Occoquan that has been left green and lined with trees. The planned development would take away the viewshed on the left side of Tanyard Hill Road heading into Occoquan.

“Tanyard is a bright spot in my day because of the green space,” said Kristyn Gleason, owner of and head of the . Gleason drives Tanyard Hill Road as often as four times a day, as she commutes from Montclair.

“We did an immense amount of work with the Vantage Point development and preserving the viewshed,” council member said. “And now you’re taking all that away. We’ll have a viewshed on the left and on the right we won’t.”

Thompson wants to straighten out Tanyard Hill Road because he said it will improve the line of sight.

“The very curvature of Tanyard Hill that the developer wants to straighten out is a natural traffic calming that keeps our town safe,” Phelps said.

“You’re going to straighten out Tanyard Hill so it can be more like Dale City,” resident Joseph McGuire said to Thompson.  

“If we straighten it out, it makes it more attractive for people to speed up,” Occoquan Mayor Earnie Porta said.

A councilman asked if Thompson had considered bringing in traffic from the opposite side of the development from Tanyard Hill Road.

“If we do that, we lose the viewshed on Old Bridge Road,” Thompson said. “In all my years as a developer, I always say, ‘Save the trees.’”

Residents also worried that the development would hurt, not help, the town economy, as regular customers who drive into town might decide not to visit their favorite shops as traffic increases in the area. And even the clients who visit the new office building, residents argued, might not return a second time after trying once to turn onto Old Bridge Road during rush hour.

“So we have the pleasure of a new office building?” Heim said.

“The economy of our town is paramount, and we should consider it, but not at the cost of one of our entrances,” Phelps said.

Finally, the developer promised that about 12.5 acres out of the 18-acre plot would be turned into a conservation easement “for perpetuity.”

“A ‘conservation easement’ frankly doesn’t mean anything unless there’s a third party overseeing the easement,” Porta said.

Many members of Occoquan see the “conservation easement” as temporary, and fear that the developer will later have it rezoned in order to build the rest of the 34 houses mentioned in the original plan.

“In perpetuity doesn’t mean anything,” McGuire said. “Once they get a foothold in Occoquan, they’ll keep moving in. Occoquan is exceedingly unique. This will change Occoquan more and more. We have to protect our community.”

This story is the second part in a continuing series on the Oaks III development.