Lake Barcroft, Malbrook residents oppose access plan for new houses on Sleepy Hollow Road
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| The future site of a new housing development on Sleepy Hollow Road. [Larry Golfer] |
Residents of Lake Barcroft and the Malbrook community are concerned that a new housing development under construction on Sleepy Hollow Road would bring more traffic to neighborhood streets.
The Gulick Group has begun clearing land and plans to build 18 new homes on the Glavis property on Sleepy Hollow Road between Malbrook Drive, Sleepy Hollow United Methodist Church, and the Brooks Place infill development.
Related story: Housing development planned for Sleepy Hollow Road
Nearby neighborhoods are challenging a decision by Fairfax County and the Virginia Department of Transportation that would designate Brooks Place, a narrow road, as the only access point to the new development, named Hudson Quarter. The developer is proposing an extension of Brooks Place, which currently ends at a cul de sac where eight new homes were built in 2017-18.
The 75 Lake Barcroft households sent a letter to Mason Supervisor Penny Gross last week raising concerns about increased traffic on neighborhood streets – particularly Crosswoods Drive and Dearborn Drive – if the only way to get to Hudson Quarter is from Brooks Place.
That could result in up to 220 new vehicle trips a day on narrow streets used by walkers, joggers, bike riders, and parents with strollers, the letter states. And those streets are even more narrow in the fall when the roads are full of leaf piles.
Instead, they want the access point to Hudson Quarter to be directly on Sleepy Hollow Road at Tansey Drive.
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In addition, the extension of Brooks Place violates a Malbrook neighborhood covenant from 1947 that designates the stretch of that road between Glavis Road and the cul de sac as a private drive.
According to the Lake Barcroft letter, that covenant “constitutes an encumbrance that would prevent VDOT from designating that section as a state road.” As a result, the developer cannot extend that road to the new houses “without permission of the covenant holders.”
A group of Malbrook residents filed a lawsuit in 2015 to prevent the developer of the Brooks Place houses from extending that road. While the judge rejected their request for a permanent injunction, the covenant is still in place.
The judge ruled that the covenants didn’t prevent the building of those eight houses but didn’t remove the covenant on that section of Brooks Place, said Malbrook resident Darren Greundel, one of the plaintiffs.
“This is a simple property rights issue,” Greundel said.
“VDOT relies on the county to certify that land and roads are free of encumbrances. They do not check whether the county is accurate in certifying that information,” said Lake Barcroft resident Larry Golfer. The community wants VDOT to conduct its own title search.
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VDOT does not do any title research itself but rather relies on the county to certify a title as free and clear before VDOT can designate a road as a state road, the Lake Barcroft letter states. The Lake Barcroft and Malbrook residents want to know how the Hudson Quarter development got a green light to proceed while the restrictive covenant remained in place.
They also want to know whether a traffic impact analysis has been done for the streets in Lake Barcroft that would be used to access Hudson Quarter.
“Allowing access to the Brooks Place 2 development [Hudson Quarter] via Brooks Place, without the underlying legal justifications, is plainly wrong and will unfairly and adversely affect the safety of all residents of Lake Barcroft and its nearby neighbors on Dearborn Drive, Georges Place, and Highview Drive,” the letter states.
The Lake Barcroft Association hasn’t heard back from Gross yet, Golfer said. Del. Kaye Kory and state Sen. Dave Marsden said they are looking into the VDOT issue.
Long time for that much land inside the Beltway to just sit there – very shocked to see the clear cutting of the land the past 3 weeks. Terrible shame what the Woo family did to the community all those years ago.
"Oh No, I dont want common people driving through my neighborhood"
4:41 PM this has nothing to do with common people driving through a neighborhood. This new development will be $1M+ homes, so these are wealthy people, not "commoners". The problem is the traffic would be directed through Brooks Lane and Malbrook, which are super tiny thoroughfares. Almost impossible for two vehicles to pass one another on Glavis Road already. The people who bought those homes in the 2018 development on Brooks lane weren't notified that the adjacent 10 acres woudl be developed and that that traffic would pass by their own homes and not out onto Sleepy Hollow Road.
If you take a look at the site and two possible road ingresses, clearly the road off of Sleepy Hollow makes more sense. The other way is basically a cul-de-sac off a cul-de-sac off a dead-end court. Does the Sleepy Hollow entrance reduce marketability or take a lot away from the developer?
I don't know how the developer sees it, but George Glavis told me directly that he would lose the ability to develop all of his property if he could not come out through Brooks Place. So, yes, there is less money to be made (lots to build on) if they go out only to Sleepy Hollow but that shouldn't drive decisions about traffic flow or safety and has no bearing on the covenant rights held by the Malbrook homeowners. They need to use eminent domain if they want to come out through Brooks Place.