Justice Park advocates blamed for potential delay of Justice High School addition
 |
| Playtime in Justice Park. |
Retaining all of Justice Park for recreational uses shouldn’t have a negative impact on the construction of an addition to Justice High School, park advocates say. The community deserves both – an intact park and an expanded school.
Now that both Fairfax County Public Schools and the Park Authority have officially stated they oppose constructing a parking lot on Justice Park, some Justice HS parents have complained that the school addition will be delayed.
FPCS is hosting a virtual community meeting Oct. 12, 7 p.m., to provide an update on the addition and discuss parking alternatives. Register for the meeting here.
Several parents are blaming the Justice for Justice Park group for causing the addition project to be stalled. “I’m frustrated that a small vocal group has caused all these problems. I don’t like the lack of transparency any more than other folks, but to keep our kids from benefiting from additional space and resources is short-sighted and IMHO not worth the fight,” one parent posted on Facebook.
Related story: FCPS will not use Justice Park for a parking lot
According to another commenter, “Repurposing the basketball court and paving the small hill by the courts is such a small consideration for how much benefit the students will get from the new building.”
“The park group is absolutely responsible for any additional costs to this project and for students not getting much-needed support on time,” someone else posted.
Others defend the activists. “FCPS approached this too late, with little imagination, and no transparency,” states a Facebook commenter. “It’s not reasonable to have a one-size-fits-all parking ratio when the county is so variably developed. We shouldn’t have to lose parkland to address this urgent problem.”
Misinformation
Park advocate Kathleen Brown, a Justice HS parent who lives near Justice Park, blames the criticisms on an email newsletter from school board member Ricardy Anderson (Mason) that included inaccurate information.
Anderson’s newsletter stated that the now-defunct plan for the parking lot would have used just 1.1 acres in Justice Park. That is incorrect, according to a statement by the Justice Park advocates. “According to FCPS renderings provided to the public, the plan would have impacted 2.1 acres, including the only open grassy area in the Seven Corners area that is open and flat enough for pickup soccer.”
 |
| A picnic in Justice Park. |
Anderson’s statement that “Over half of Justice Park has been rendered unusable due to insufficient management of invasive species,” is also incorrect, the advocates say. “The lesser-known western half of the park consists of steeply graded, valuable woodland with a stream and a trail; as such, it is highly usable. At issue are patches of tall, thick weeds that inhibit people’s awareness of the woodland trail and access points.”
They also dispute Anderson’s suggestion that in exchange for the parking lot, “the school division proposed enhancements to the park, such as clearing over eight acres of invasive species, to increase usable green space to 14.7 acres from the current 7.7 acres available for community use” and providing a walking trail and outdoor classroom.
“It is not clear what these numbers are referring to, since nothing like this was indicated on any site plan or put into writing, as far as we know,” the advocates say.
Currently, the wooded area takes up slightly more than half of the 18-acre park, and the invasive species are primarily located on the margins of the park and between the recreational and wooded areas. The parking lot would have displaced recreational space, not the areas overgrown with weeds. Also, the park already has a trail and outdoor classroom.
The Justice for Justice Park advocates say it’s not an either/or situation. The addition is absolutely necessary to address severe overcrowding at Justice High School, they say, and can easily be accomplished by reducing the number of parking spaces, promoting other transportation methods, and finding other places for parking – without demolishing green space.
“This is a false dichotomy,” says Brown. “Our efforts to preserve the park don’t mean we oppose the addition. We can have both.”
A flawed process
There were problems with the school addition months ago, before FCPS and the Park Authority dropped plans for the parking lot in the park.
FCPS has not submitted a revised site plan since the county’s Land Development Services department rejected the plan in January 2021 on the basis of 23 outstanding design issues unrelated to the proposed parking lot.
Those issues dealt with stormwater management, the tree canopy, insufficient details on construction, and other deficiencies in the plan.
Related story: Del. Kory wants to improve Park Authority transparency in light of Justice Park parking lot conflict
According to the park advocates, “the 2232 land-use decision-making process that has been followed by both FCPS and the Park Authority has been unusually difficult in its lack of transparency.” The Fairfax County Planning Commission is re-evaluating the 2232 process over concerns that it was used to avoid a lengthier rezoning procedure.
Parking alternatives
The Justice for Justice Park advocates came up with alternatives to the parking lot in the park months ago. Those recommendations include designated street parking in the neighborhood; allowing angled and parallel parking on Peace Valley Lane; encouraging students to ride bikes, walk, takes buses, and ride e-scooters to school; organizing carpools; and restriping the existing parking lot to accommodate more compact cars.
There are currently 329 parking spaces at Justice High School. The addition will increase school capacity, requiring an additional 46 spaces. The initial proposal called for 65 spaces located in Justice Park.
In a Sept. 24 email to the community, FCPS Region 2 Superintendent Fabio Zuluaga said the school system is considering seeking a waiver of the parking requirement, as well as changes in the design of the addition to incorporate more parking.
The current parking requirement calls for one space for every three students. The Justice for Justice Park group suggests reducing that to one space per 10 students, the ratio used by Arlington County. Currently, just under 80 Justice students have parking passes.
Related story: Public officials failed to inform public on Justice Park land negotiations
FCPS has been planning the addition for at least four years “and obviously knew about the site’s limitations,” says Whitney Redding of Friends of Holmes Run. “They wouldn’t be in the difficult position they’re in today if they had engaged the community and understood its needs from the get-go. That’s the whole point of public engagement.”
More than 1,400 people signed a petition opposing a parking lot in Justice Park and demanding the right to be brought into the discussion. The petition states: “We should not have to choose between quality schools and quality parks for our children who deserve access to both.”
I want to point out while there may only be just under 80 student parking passes, far more students drive, and utilize off-street parking, probably due to the cost of permits. I support reduced parking for students with more stringent pass requirements, for example, priority for students who carpool, and students who work after school. Maybe hard to police, but if parking is scarce, priorities need to be set.
It seems to me that this is a teachable moment. My child graduated from this school (under its previous name) in 2010. As a young adult she is very much concerned about climate change which is exacerbated by the non-chalance rationalization which we all apply to the use of carbon-spewing automobiles. It seems ironic that students, who will be affected most by climate change, feel the need to arrive and park at school in single-occupant carbon-spewing vehicles and perpetuate conditions that contribute to climate change. Justice HS and FCPS should take this moment to explore how they can increase the use of car-pooling, public transportation, and other alternatives to use this as a teaching moment for dealing with climate change.
Did it ever occur to those highly compensated school planners to simply purchase a couple of the properties directly across from Justice HS and convert them into parking? It might require a zoning change, to be sure. But in Fairfax County anyone can get any plot of land rezoned for any purpose with a little help from the development-friendly folks on the Board of Supervisors.
I don't think those "highly paid planners" are compensated very well in Fairfax County. That is why this hold situation was a complete debacle.
The missteps and lack of creative solutions to this problem could probably have been avoided if they had engaged the public and sought out additional professional consultants in the problem solving, and whether or not you think they're being paid heftily (based on what?) doesn't excuse poor job performance.
This article is incredibly one sided. Comments against the addition of the parking and slight adjustment to the vast Justice Park from Ms. Redding and Ms. Brown, BUT NOTHING FROM MS. ANDERSON which the article refutes constantly? This is not journalism. The article also makes several mistakes in it's reporting without fact checking and just takes the opinion of a couple of people and anonymous posters.
Corrections:
1. Fairfax County Public Schools did not and does not oppose its own proposal. The Park Authority rejected the proposal, and FCPS and Fairfax County developed an alternative solution.
2. The proposed parking plan would have used just 1.1 acres in Justice Park. The construction work required to build the final product would impact 2.1 acres, albeit temporarily, with the final plan including 1.1 acres of hardscape.
3. FCPS has not resubmitted the revised site plan as it requires parking/FAR to be accounted for (ie- we were awaiting the FCPA agreement), and will do so with the new plan later this month.
Please print these corrections and attempt to get non-anonymous quotes from both sides of an argument moving forward.
Thank you so much!
#JusticeParkingforAll
Dr Anderson has been and continues to use her ability send mass communications from her FCPS newsletters and communication. In her latest note on the matter, 3/5 of the space she spent discussing the addition was dedicated to defending herself and FCPS’s handling of the matter, with only a passing mention of community opposition to the plan which doesn’t even come close to describing how large the opposition has been (1400 signature petition, NAACP opposition, multiple media outlets covering said opposition).
It is absolutely critical that we have people like Ellie and this blog who are not only willing to distribute the county’s narrative to a wider audience, but then also willing to be a voice of those who challenge the narrative when it doesn’t add up. This article is also important because it highlights some of the proposals that the opposition has proposed as alternative solutions. There are some in the community who have attacked them unfairly as nay-sayers without proposing solutions, and while it is debatable about how appropriate some of the solutions may be, they ARE approaching this constructively.
Regarding your #3, I certainly hope you are not speaking as a member of FCPS staff. If the plan truly is for FCPS to create and submit a plan without truly working with the community to ensure that the next plan they go forward with is an acceptable compromise, then they will have learned NOTHING from this experience.
What FCPS should have done all along is, present a few different options to the community, gather community input through charettes or small groups (which could have happened if they did this prior to the pandemic when this all started, or it could have been done virtually after the start), and then consolidate the plan taking into consideration community feedback into something they take action on.
Such styles of community engagement is not new to local government. It is how a lot of land use work is performed. Once FCPS realized that the project would require parking and their own ideas were going to break zoning or comprehensive plan guidelines, they should have seriously engaged the community to keep the project on schedule. Instead, they blew their timeline by going it alone, and now they sow division in the community instead of accepting the fact that they limited community engagement from the start, and that was a mistake.
On the bright side, I find it promising that the Planning Commission is re-evaluating the way it handles 2232 applications from FCPS, and I hope that FCPS will approach this going forward with a more open attitude towards community input so that this important initiative can get on track.
This article contains direct quotes from my Facebook page. Since my FB post was not public, it is clear that one of my Facebook friends copied direct comments from my post and shared them with the Annandale blog without asking or notifying me of their intent. I have been a reader of this blog since 2009 so I was shocked when I started reading the article and seeing word-for-word comments from my friends on my post. The underhandedness of this speaks for itself, but I wanted to address some of the comments in the article.
To be clear, I do not have a problem with people advocating for a park. What I am frustrated with is, what I find to be the hyperbolic messaging about the FCPS proposed plan by some. If you read some of the petition comments, it is clear that many people signing haven’t looked at the proposed plan. My goal in my FB post (that I thought I was sharing only with my friends) was to share what the proposed plan was and to encourage people from the Justice community to attend the October 12 meeting so that our community can come together and make an informed decision going forward.
My comments:
———————————
“According to FCPS renderings provided to the public, the plan would have impacted 2.1 acres, including the only open grassy area in the Seven Corners area that is open and flat enough for pickup soccer.”
• To clarify, the 2.1 acre figure being cited by some is the land that will be impacted during construction. However, at competition, the total hardscape will be approximately 1.1 acres out of 17 acres.
• The grassy area will be reduced from 1.5 acres to 1.36 acres and is still large enough for pick-up soccer games.
• To see the plan explained, click here: https://youtu.be/hg9NlhRx0UM?t=982
———————————
“The parking lot would have displaced recreational space, not the areas overgrown with weeds. Also, the park already has a trail and outdoor classroom.”
• The “displaced recreational space” goes from 1.5 acres to 1.36 acres. The proposed FCPS plan included removing acres of invasive plants. The trail is hard to access and when you are on it, it is difficult to follow. It is not well marked and is overgrown in many areas. The outdoor classroom is currently several wooden benches. FCPS proposes building a small pavilion.
———————————
“…. can easily be accomplished by reducing the number of parking spaces.”
Fairfax zoning currently requires that Justice HS have *750* spaces. The new proposal currently asks zoning to cut that down almost half to 392 spaces.
———————————
“There is huge opposition to the use of Justice Park for a parking lot,”
• From a teacher during the May 6 meeting: “I’m not sure it’s fair to say the whole community is against this or for this – I am a teacher and I can say with confidence most of my students are not aware of this.”
———————————
I have more quotes from the article that I’d like to reply to but I think this is already too long and the most important thing people can do is to go back and watch the May 6 meeting and view the previous proposed plan. Then come to the meeting on October 12 at 7pm and listen to the new proposal with a clearer understanding of the situation. Also, please help spread the word—especially to community members who may not be easy to reach. You can register here: https://www.fcps.edu/node/43388
I am reluctant to share my name because I do not want to be doxxed.
When we found out about plans to put a parking lot in Justice Park, back in January 2021, we essentially began with the hypothesis that in principle, parking lots for schools should not be put in parks. We the did a thorough analysis and had no idea what we would find out to support this principle. We also as an aside learned more about the history of the land, such as finding out over 93% was owned by African Americans in what was in effect a small neighborhood when it was acquired by the Park Authority in the early 1960's, and that Blacks owned some of the land since as early as 1902.
As Fairfax County becomes more urban, one can look across the county line to see in Arlington they recently built a rec center and recreational areas in a park (Lubber Run) and a school near a park (Alice West Fleet) with parking underneath to conserve park land. Even Baileys Upper Elementary School uses parking under a building.
What our analysis with respect to the above comments from Facebook which I read for the first time here at the blog found include the following:
(1) One has to look at the topography of the land and contours, which unfortunately the views referenced video does not show, but the slides that we showed on the science boards in the two park events and on the primary election day did show. We even showed a slide with reference to the size of a football / cricket / soccer field on this area. The entire grassy area has portions with a significant grade, and the relocated basketball court takes away from the flatter area, taking directly from the open space rec area for these kinds of activities and others.
(2) We also learned there is a legal term called "parkland alienation" under the "public trust doctrine" as interpreted by the courts for over 100 years in New York and which is described at places like www1.nyc.gov/html/mancb2/downloads/pdf/alienationbrochure.pdf and sets a high bar to alienate park land. Use of park land for parking lots is one example specifically cited. The concept also appears in Virginia law recently for at least one park (Fort Monroe – Virginia Code § 2.2-2340, 2011 to 2014) where "It is the policy of the Commonwealth that the historic, cultural, and natural resources of Fort Monroe be protected in any conveyance or alienation of real property interests by the Authority. And in Title 22.1 – Education there is a specific code section § 22.1-80 on "Development of park areas adjacent to public schools" that seems to align with some of this when it says "Whenever an undeveloped or unused public park area owned by the Commonwealth or any of its political subdivisions exists adjacent to any public school, the school board is authorized and encouraged to develop or improve such area in extension of such school's programs or facilities, subject to the approval and cooperation of the Commonwealth or political subdivision, as the case may be." Both the existing basketball court and the open play area are neither undeveloped nor unused, and FCPS in emails even stated it is developed land.
(3) The improvements to create the trails and even install a bridge over the stream are things normally funded by park funds, like park bond funds and cell phone tower revenue, not school funds. And trails and a bridge for Justice Park have been in its master plan from at least as far back as 1986 master plan, so at least 35 years in the waiting, yet other parks (e.g., McLean Central, Mason District) have nice trails, bridges, and even stream bed restoration, and apparently not paid for by school funds.
We can list other issues, like (1) how putting open parking lots and heat islands goes against the Fairfax County Comprehensive Plan Baileys Planning District Plan and other Comp Plan policy plans and LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design green building rating system) used by the county (2) how the county signed a memo stating the parking lots and spaces in the park "should be considered a “feature shown” [on the county comprehensive plan] pursuant to Section 15.2-2232 of the Code of Virginia" yet without analyzing the change against the Park and Recreation Policy Plan or the Baileys area plan or general land use goals (like open space development), only the part of the plan for schools, yet the state law requires a change to the Comp Plan to be one "as being substantially in accord with the adopted comprehensive plan or part thereof" — which is not the case for putting parking lots in Justice Park; and (3) how the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and principles of public notice and outreach were not followed, so that citizens were not informed way back when planning started.
Another NY State document states what seems to be the original Justice Park situation, to avoid paying more for parking on the more urban school site: "The doctrine is defined by 150 years of State court decisions, which explain when municipalities must seek State legislative approval to alienate public parkland. Otherwise, it would be tempting for municipalities to view parkland as a fiscal resource that can be sold or leased to raise money or used for other government purposes to avoid paying for private land."
OK. So can we build the parking lot? It’s 67 spaces. That’s it.