For some unknown reason, the National Conference Center land purchase for HS-8 was “fast-tracked” and presented as something the entire Lansdowne community supports. The 120-day due diligence phase for Loudoun County’s $20 million contract to purchase 45 acres for the school expires Jan. 18.

As Lansdowne homeowners, we know that most of our neighbors have little to no knowledge about HS-8 and its potential impacts. Among those who do know about it, many have simply given up and put their homes on the market.

According to the latest plan, the school will not actually be built on the NCC site, but adjacent to Belmont Ridge Middle School in the center of an established neighborhood. Current homeowners bought their homes with reliance on proffers approved with Lansdowne’s development plan. One of those, Lansdowne Sports Park, is adjacent to Belmont Middle School. It now appears that these proffers will be swept aside to make way for this high school.

Many issues were not addressed in the haste to approve HS-8:

•  HS-8 would bring 1,600 new students and 200 staff to the existing middle school campus, which already has 1,413 students and 160 staff. Start times for these two schools are separated by just 30 minutes.

•  Half of the new HS-8 students will come from Broad Run High School. They live south and east of Route 7 and would reach Lansdowne via intensely residential streets like Kipheart and Riverpoint Drives.

•  The National Conference Center will continue to operate; it will need a three-story parking garage facing Kipheart.

•  The heavy volume of traffic to be generated by the confluence of these three institutions overwhelms the promised tradeoff that 300 to 350 of the new high school students will walk to school – at least, when weather permits.

•  Four expensive, dangerous, traffic circles will not reduce traffic volume. Parking on side streets will become a greater problem than the middle school already causes.

•  The HOA maintains Lansdowne’s infrastructure of private streets and sidewalks. The school would encroach upon this privately owned network at residents’ expense. Residential taxpayers already provide 68 percent of the tax revenue in Loudoun County.

•  High schools schedule night and weekend activities from August through June. Neighbors of Belmont Ridge Middle School already hear the rumble of air-handling equipment from the middle school roof all summer.

•  Kipheart and Riverpoint Drives are populated with families with small children. These streets will become thoroughfares for buses, cars, and pedestrians. Safety issues are a grave concern. Cruising speeds of 40 in 25 mph zones are already the norm in Lansdowne.

In some jurisdictions, public officials make decisions after significant public comment and input. But the contract for land at NCC for HS-8 was executed in stealth. Three of our elected boards –supervisors, schools, and HOA—kept silent rather than engage ALL Lansdowne homeowners in discussions about a custom-designed high school on a site that is too small and too expensive. We must ask: Why?

If the “new” supervisors are serious about imposing fiscal discipline on Loudoun County schools, the pending NCC contract is an excellent place to start.

Sincerely,

Lila I. Ashear
Mitchell J. Ashear
Gregg Beyer
Janice Downs
Diane Lasicheck
Paul Maneesilasan
Debbie Piland

Signed above

Lansdowne