Neighbors Upset over Location Chage of Baseball/Soccer Stadium

Sunday, December 2, 2012

Neighbors Upset over Location Chage of Baseball/Soccer Stadium

The Washington Post reports that when Loudoun County agreed in 2009, after much study and negotiation, to allow a minor league baseball stadium to be built, it was carefully situated along Route 28 in Ashburn near the intersection with Route 7. No neighborhoods too close, part of a gradual mixed-use development, general acceptance all around.

Suddenly in October, the planned Loudoun Hounds baseball team shifted their proposed stadium location about a mile west, to the corner of Loudoun County Parkway and Route 7, now six-tenths of a mile from several large Ashburn neighborhoods. The residents were stunned. Fearful of the traffic, the noise, the lights and many other effects of a new stadium in their midst, they are rapidly organizing opposition to placing a 5,500-seat ballpark, with room for another 4,500 standing, in the nascent One Loudoun office-retail-entertainment development. They’re calling themselves “No Stadium on 7.”

One Loudoun was “originally approved as a town center,” said Roy Richie, a resident of the Potomac Green neighborhood. “All of us who bought in here knew that and bought accordingly. But now it’s going from a town center to a special activities center, and they’re pushing this thing through. The process should be slowed down.”

Above: An artist's rendering of how the new baseball-soccer stadium at the One Loudoun development in Ashburn would look. The stadium would face Route 7 to the north, and Loudoun County Parkway would run along the east side. (One Loudoun, as published on The Washington Post)

Read the complete Washington Post article.