Loudoun losing It's Brain Power

http://loudounextra.washingtonpost.com/news/2008/feb/18/aol-exodus-effect/?local

This article says it better of what I have been trying to say the last several years about the deep problems facing our economy.

We are replacing this with one huge industrial complex after another. Full of Science fiction electronics that takes just a few techs to operate. Gobbling up prime land like crazy.

The secret but not so secret huge new Visa data industrial electronic complex gobbling up prime land does not bode well for the future of Loudoun's economy .

We are replacing brain power with electronics that takes few to operate. We are gobbling up land land at the speed of light for these industrial complexes. Soon we will see are prime land gone and some of the exciting new developments change direction such as One Loudoun and Moorefield. Have we destroyed the goose that lays the golden eggs????? I think we are close. I don't see anything replacing our trophy companies we are losing with anything that can turn this alarming trend into the science fiction world of mega industrial complexes that produce few high paying jobs do nothing to enhance the landscape or build roads. Most of these mega huge complexes are by right so give little back to our county. Further they are now destroying prime land so class A developments would be hesitant to build next to them as we are now seeing. I starting to think the future of Loudoun is even more grim them what I thought a year ago. Lose the brain power and the entrepreneurs and the support businesses and we are starting all over again, and as we are we are losing the valuable real estate to the industrial electronic mega complexes that is making it harder and harder to attract the exciting startups of the late nineties and early two thousands. Sad very sad.

There goes the lanscape and with it Loudouns future as an high paying area, destined to the si fi look of the ugly mega electronic industrial complexes with few workers compared to their size gobbling up Loudoun forever. bye bye Loudoun as we have known it and moved here for.

Lee j

 

Well Lee, I guess you should just pack it in and move, given how utterly horrible it will be here.
I think I'll stay.

 

You "gobble" more than a turkey farm!

So we are losing comapnies left and right and you are complaining about it, yet you do not want HCA to come into Broadlands????

This is not meant to be a "hospital vs. hospital" thread but about incoming business.

 

8 years, 4 months, 7 days

That's how long it will be before my son graduates high school and either joins the military, begins a Derek Jeter like rise to fame as an amazing athelete, or goes to college. it happens to coincide with the day we sell our house, get a cool funky little condo in a place that doesn't have and elementary or middle school within 25 miles nad is already established with everything a 40 something empty-nesting couple needs.

Until then- I will support beautiful growth here as much as I can- one restaurant at a time!

 

Nope not going to get rid of me that easy. ha ha ha I have a lot of extended family here so my roots in the area are far deeper then most of you all. I also so instrumental in the beginning of the boom of this county both in country side development and ashburn farms. Then I lfet for a few years to purse a movie career, that did not work to well so I am back with a vengence as you have seen . I am not going to roll over and drop dead and allow people to further destroy the beauty of this county. Cliff I am just getting started as I have on a development today that could make a huge difference on how to transition from one type of development to another without destroying the character. I doing more behind the scenes then just talking here. I may complain here but in the real world I have gotten several major developers ears on how to better use and design their properties. I am not talk like the non existent waxpool task force was and still is. Talk does not get things done alone, but talking with action to the right people does. The wheels of the government move far too slow here and is killing the golden goose, that needs to change. I have had a far bigger influence on this county from back in the eighties then you can ever imagine, but lately the new people are hell bent on destroying this county with their amateur and myopic thinking. Just look what is being built around here lately mostly out of place development. Too much shallow thinking here and too much for my development only thinking and too much in those developments my home is protected so who cares what happens on the perimeters.

Lee j

Lee j

 

It is all about putting the right development in the right place. The rt 50 corridpr is where the hospital should go. and a small hospital half the size proposed in the broadlands. T* and Cliff you thinking is very myopic. Which is fine because you are from the broadlands and that is all you are concerned about and to take it a step further you both don't live near the hospital in the broadlands so your thinking becomes even more myopic. That is not the way to good developments or land planning.

 

Steve these giant electronic industrial complexes don't have many jobs in them for their size and land use. Not only are they a blight on the landscape they are taking land that could of employed thousands of high paid workers that could started whole new businesses and set in to an beautiful setting.

In case you have forgot the industrial revolution is gone and replaced by robots. The ugly complexes we are building are being torn down in other parts of the country and even here around the new baseball stadium. We are building the new wasteland which is and will prevent the nicer developments from happening or scaling back the ones proposed.

Lee j

 

Well good luck in eight years because the way things are going your home may not be worth more then it is today and even less. The growth of this county lately has been frighteningly horrible and if continues on the present track we all will be living in a si fi movie not the utopia you moved here for. ha ha ha ha

 

It's hard to respond to a post like this, but here goes. You're actually complaining about Loudoun County having some of the most sophisticated and cutting-edge data centers in the world?? They demand very few public services, cause very little traffic congestion, and yet generate HUGE sums of tax dollars.

The Zoning of the land is really inconsequential. When you look at the tax revenues that will continue for decades (because companies are always replacing servers and infrastructure, which are taxed at $4.20 per $100 assessed value), I think the value is really significant. You can't stop data centers from coming here, as 80% of the world's internet traffic runs through Ashburn (rough estimate, I'm not in the know).

I don't see how this affects a One Loudoun or Moorefield at all. Sure, we're losing AOL bit-by-bit, which is a shame, but it's also a testament to their corporate issues (merging with Time Warner, not understanding the broadband revolution, too late to the search/ad component of the Internet). I don't see how one company's missteps spell doom for Loudoun as a whole. Other companies are thriving, and we continue to have companies move here - and we have such a broad base of industries that we're not dependent on just the tech sector.

Don't forget that ~80% of Loudoun's business employee 25 or fewer employees. That means a lot growth potential. Oh, and Dulles Airport isn't shutting down. That's our Ace in the hole.

 

the utopia i moved here was to raise my kid- as an adult with no school aged child- I can honestly say this is NOT where I would choose to stay. LOVE IT NOW though- it is exactly what I want for my family, warts and all.

and regarding my home value- by the time that day comes I will be a self made entrepeneur and the value of my house will just be gravy! I won't rely on its value to move up in life- I am putting that ALL ON MY OWN SHOULDERS.

 

I grew up in Loudoun County and have lived here most of my 46 years of life. I care MUCH more for MY county than just the Broadlands. I have seen it grow from a true rural landscape to a prototypical suburbia and I STILL love it. It is my home and will be for a long time. While I wish traffic would be better and we would get more TAX PAYING businesses to come in, I am not going to whine and moan about flex space, road names and other MINUTIA.

As for living across the street from the proposed hospital, I would honestly and gladly trade houses with someone else.

 

The problem is our zoning in the eastern part is so screwed up we are becoming an hodgepodge of drastically different types of developments starting to adjoin each other without any kind of decent transition.
Class A will shy away from building next to industrial complexes. Good zoning allows for these different uses and groups them together and hides the less appealing ones for industrial uses. Believe me I am hearing this from the developers themselves and many business owners.

Again it is the zoning being screwed up industrial next to class A does not work well, unless you can screen the industrial off and hide it. Then you still have the problem from what you see from the upper floors. If the county was zoned right groups of visually undesirable buildings would be grouped together and screened properly. Take a look at an recent aerial of the rt 28 corridor and several miles on each side and you will see visually what is happening. Rt 28 should look like the front door ours is starting to look like the service entrance to the county. Fairfax has done a far better job on their section of rt 28. We are staring to look like manassas or woodbridge and we are becoming pockets of beautiful development connected by junk architecture. Proper zoning would not allow that. Don't forget Loudoun started as a beautiful clean slate in the eighties and the first developments were extremely well done and now we are destroying our front doors to these beautiful developments.

Nope I must use news articles because most of you have no vision or scope of what is happening to our area and how it is going down hill visually while creating one of the worst traffic nightmares in the country. ANd I think you still don't have a clue which makes the visual problem and traffic problems only worse. One most be pro active with the proper vision for the future to make change happen. I don't drive to work to an office everyday. My canvas is the land I must design for and figure how to screen off the improper crap next to it. I see every inch of loudoun and northern Virginia all the time..

I bet the scope of one loudoun will change if the industrial complexes keep encroaching upon it, we will see.

 

Davis I am not complaining about the data centers just how they are placed into the landscape. I am complaining our zoning sucks so bad that they are popping up on land better served for class development. Hell we don't even design or screen these industrial buildings. As I said before proper zoning and you group like industrial all together and screen it, so we don't visually pollute the county when we don't have too. We should look at many examples across the country that have done this properly.

 

Lee, honestly, you have not had a positive post on ANYTHING in the past few months except for the HHs (can't blame you on that!). Why do you stay here, since you work from home and you can do it most anywhere.

And as you are now into real estate and you predict more doom and gloom, there is another reason for you to leave.

Honestly, I do believe you care about Loudoun but jeez, it seems like you take some sorta pleasure in being the person to post every negative news link, like you are the sole "Harbinger of Doom"!

For those who watched the 70's cartoon Gulliver's Travels, Lee reminds me of Glum - "We're Doomed, we'll never make it"!

 

Actually I care so much I hate to see development which we would have anyway hurting development that could be here because of horrible zoning and transition. Visual pollution and poor zoning is just as bad as horrible traffic.

The developers pf planned developments do a far better job then the county does in planning. Now we have people wanting to change the planning within the planned developments for the worse not the better.

Move sorry T8 not a chance too much work to do here.

Actually some of these horrific poor placement of development, is actually helping my business. Just got a call today for meeting later this week how I can design an beautiful development for this developer and how he can screen off the junk development next door which is relatively new so his will not be affected by it.

Moving T8 is not an solution but voicing your opinion that makes sense does. Nobody ever complains about an well placed beautiful development such as the broadlands until you try to change the original developers vision for the worst.

 

Just because you think something doesn't look nice, doesn't mean other people share your opinion.

Example: I have seen a few hospital renderings and they look perfectly lovely to me. Now, from an architects viewpoint I may be missing something, but Lee, you are probably the only architect that most of us know and it is only ONE opinion. I think you have a lovely home from what I have seen, but others COULD (not saying they do) view it as a monstrousity as it compares to the other homes on your street.

I am willing to go out on a limb that 75% or more of us do not care what a particular building looks like.