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Residential rezonings plummet while county considers Comp Plan update
As the housing market collapsed during the last two years, the number of residential rezoning requests approved by the Prince William Board of County Supervisors has also significantly decreased, according to numbers released by the county planning office.This year, eight requests have been granted, the last of which was July 9. That is down from 10 in 2007 and 26 in 2006.
In 2004 and 2005, the board approved 19 residential rezoning requests each year.
Of the 82 approved residential rezonings during the last five years, about 80 percent have been on land previously zoned for agriculture.
That means large swaths of land with few or no houses already on the property are not being purchased by developers intent on turning them into housing communities with the same frequency they were just a few years ago.
The eight approved rezonings this year may not grow by much according to 2007 numbers. Since 2004, the county has not approved more than two rezonings in either November or December of any given year.
Last year, the county issued zero for those two months combined.
One aspect that has changed since 2007 is that the average acreage request is the highest it has been in the last five years. Developers have asked to build on an average of 56.79 acres per project, up from the five-year low of 9.89 in 2007.
Overall, the board has allowed 3,170.95 acres to be rezoned to allow residential building since 2004, according to the planning office report.
Land previously zoned as agricultural does not necessarily mean it is farm land, though some of it is.
“You have land that is designated agricultural, but it could be 75 years ago the last time it saw” farming, said Supervisor Wally Covington (R-Brentsville).
Between August 2007 and August 2008, the average home price dropped from $395,233 to $251,384 according to statistics provided by Ron Tardif, a Realtor with Weichert Realtors.
That has caused home sales in Prince William County to double, however, from 419 to 838 during that same time period.
The problem is that it is building houses, not selling houses, that grows the local economy, according to Stephen Fuller, director of George Mason University's Center for Regional Analysis and an expert on the regional economy.
This comes at a time when the county is debating what land-use changes need to be made to its Comprehensive Plan.
Six community and commerce centers, including one directly north of the Town of Haymarket at Piedmont Station, have been the epicenter of controversy for several reasons and may not ultimately be built.
One complaint from the Town of Haymarket is that the arc of influence extending from the proposed Piedmont Station center crosses into the town's borders. Thus the county's land-use plan would overlap the town's..
Another complaint is that two of the county's Land Use Advisory Committee members (including the CEO of Rector Construction Co., Charles Rector, and the CEO of Classic Concept Builders, Mark Granville-Smith) are developers whose companies could potentially profit from the developments.
As of last week, the county attorney planned to ask the commonwealth's attorney to investigate whether whether that presents a conflict of interest.
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