Fairfax County Public Schools won the Fairfax County Planning Commission’s support yesterday (Wednesday) for construction of a new Dunn Loring Elementary School.
The zoning recommendation, which now goes to the Board of Supervisors, will help support “decades of [student] growth to come,” Providence District Commissioner Jeremy Hancock said.
The vote came after a contentious public hearing in late October, followed by more discussions in November as FCPS officials sought to make their final proposal palatable to commission members.
The Jan. 15 meeting was make-or-break time for the effort at Gallows and Idylwood roads.
“We have deferred this application just about as far as we can” without starting the process over, Hancock said, acknowledging that “significant constraints and competing priorities” at play had hampered efforts to create a plan acceptable to all interested parties.
FCPS is seeking to raze the existing 1930s-era, two-story school building at 2334 Gallows Road, which has been used in more recent decades as an administrative office. In its place, the school system has proposed a new, four-story school building that could support 900 students and 100 staff.
At the Jan. 15 meeting, John McGranahan, a land-use attorney hired by FCPS, laid out a list of changes that had been made since November to address concerns of both neighbors and historic preservation groups.
Perhaps most significant: School leaders will preserve the pediment and entranceway of the existing building, incorporating it into an interpretive exhibit that will be housed inside the new school.
McGranahan said that will be “easier said than done” because of the sheer size of the architectural element to be preserved, but it could be accommodated in a two-story-tall area where the history of school will be highlighted.
School leaders also agreed to give the county’s Architectural Review Board (ARB) and historic-preservation staff access to the site before demolition of the existing building, add ethnographic research to the planned interpretative exhibit, and include the ARB as a reviewing party for the interpretive exhibit.
Sully District Commissioner Evelyn Spain told school leaders that the changes made her “confident you have adequately addressed” issues related to preservation.
FCPS also added a number of proffer conditions they would adhere to in response to other community concerns, including:
- Fencing to prevent cut-through foot traffic in the nearby Wheystone Court community
- Noise and lighting restrictions during construction
- A $50,000 contribution to address missing sidewalk links
- A community meeting during construction
- A plan to communicate with neighbors when special events occur at the school
- Attempt to stagger events, such as back-to-school nights, so the surrounding area won’t be overwhelmed with traffic
“We’re absolutely open” to working with the neighboring communities, McGranahan said.
Commissioners suggested the efforts by FCPS were adequate, and acknowledged a real need to create additional student capacity in the county’s Dunn Loring/Vienna/Falls Church areas.
“I know we need this school,” Franconia District Commissioner Chris Landgraf said, but he remained uneasy about the “very significant” concerns of neighbors.
The vote to recommend approval of the request was unanimous except for Mount Vernon District’s Walter Clarke, who abstained because he wasn’t in attendance for the October public hearing on the proposal.
Hancock said the raze-and-replace strategy was the best option available, since the site in question is “the only viable location” for a school in the vicinity.
The original Dunn Loring Elementary School opened to students in September 1939, having been constructed by the New Deal’s Public Works Administration.
Serving only white students during the era of segregation in Virginia, the school was integrated in the early 1960s with the arrival of some students from Vienna’s previously all-Black Louise Archer Elementary School.
In March 1978, the school board voted to close Dunn Loring Elementary at the end of the school year in June. Students were reassigned to nearby Stenwood Elementary School.
The rezoning application for the new school is now scheduled to go to the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors for a public hearing on Feb. 4.
