Best Cities: The Two Loudoun Counties
Can a place that's good for business survive as a great place to live? A look at the two sides of Loudoun County, Virginia.
Too Much Growth?
Can a place that's good for business survive as a great place to live?
Eleanore Towe is proud to represent what she calls "my Loudoun." Towe, the Loudoun County supervisor for the Blue Ridge district, walks into the office of Scott York, chairman of the Board of County Supervisors, and points to her right, to a cluster of pastoral photographs on the wall. Horses, green grass, and barns portray the bucolic essence of her Loudoun -- western Loudoun County, an area grounded in agriculture and small-town living. On the left side of York's office are photographs of the other Loudoun -- eastern Loudoun County, with its glass-walled office parks and sparkling new housing developments. Eastern Loudoun used to be as genteel and unhurried as western Loudoun. But as the high-tech boom that has transformed northern Virginia cries for more room, the borders between east and west are blurring.
Drastically different in culture, industry, and landscape, the two Loudouns are bound together by geography and must work as one for tax dollars and state appropriations. Towe and seven other county supervisors were swept into office on a slow-growth -- or "smart-growth" -- platform, which favors saving Loudoun's rapidly disappearing green space. The board of supervisors must bridge the divide between those who champion residential development -- Loudoun's population has doubled since 1990, from 86,100 to 172,200 -- and those who want to keep their green space and unobstructed views.
The county's expanding business community, which depends on Loudoun's increasing population for employees and customers, must adapt to an economy that -- in a line that flows from east to west -- is leaving its agricultural history behind in favor of a future fueled by fast-growing start-ups and information technology. Family farmers and small retailers are closing up shop, making way for national chains and billion-dollar corporations. The traditional businesses that remain are finding that in order to compete, they must adjust.
The split between eastern and western Loudoun doesn't fall exactly in the middle. If there is a border town in this clash of old and new, it is Leesburg, the county seat, which is located somewhat east of center. From that point west, the county has retained much of its colonial and agricultural charm. Holstein and Angus cattle graze behind white-slat fences and old stone walls. Horse farms back up to old country roads, helping the area maintain its red-jacketed, fox-hunting, jodhpur-legged equine heritage.
What Towe and her colleagues call eastern Loudoun is actually a piece of the Dulles Corridor, a proportionately small area that lies 16 miles southeast of Leesburg and 27 miles from Washington, D.C. Clusters of housing developments and glassy office parks encircle the Washington Dulles International Airport. Before the airport opened, in 1962, little had changed in Loudoun since 1757, including its population, which remained static at 20,000.
Even now, the abundance of agrarian culture in the west makes it seem laughable that 50% to 60% of all Internet traffic flows through northern Virginia, but it does, thanks to giants like AOL, PSINet, and WorldCom, which are all nestled in or on the edge of the Dulles Corridor. The area also boasts a hearty start-up community and a support network of venture-capital and law firms that followed the money to Dulles.
Western Loudoun is the kind of place where longtime residents such as Asa Moore Janney are as well known as AOL's Steve Case is in eastern Loudoun. Janney and his brother, Werner, wrote a few small books about the area's history -- with titles like Ye Meetg Hous Smal and John J. Janney's Virginia -- which reveal a fondness and respect for the Loudoun of old. Janney, 92, sells the books, as well as replicas of an 1853 map of Loudoun County, from an old building next door to the Quaker meetinghouse. In his authoritative tone, Janney will happily engage any visitor in a tutorial of Loudoun's rich agricultural history.
Janney grew up on a 300-acre farm and surrendered 50 acres to development. About the rampant growth, he says, "You can't stop it, so let 'er rip."
But letting 'er rip has increased the demand for schools, wider roads, and county services -- most of which Loudoun has been unprepared for. Just this fall the county had to hire more than 400 new teachers to meet the needs of the families moving into the area. It also needs to build more schools and beef up its volunteer fire department with professionals.
And there's no sign that the economy is cooling off. Attracted to the human, service-oriented, and capital resources that eastern Loudoun promises, 243 new businesses settled there in 1999. Most are led by entrepreneurs like Jim Fox, who started EqualFooting.com, an online marketplace for small businesses, in Sterling in 1999. "In terms of people, there are lots of companies out here that breed the kind of skills and talent base that you're looking for," Fox says.
But while Fox may have found a tech-employee nirvana, Loudoun's real estate market is so red-hot that office space is difficult to come by. "If there's an empty field in Loudoun County that's off a major road, there's a sign on it that says Future Office Park," says Fox.
Some company owners are finding that all that space pressure has transformed Loudoun from a place they wanted to settle in to a place they'd rather leave. Take Chad Akhavan, president of Allied International Corp. of Virginia/Papillon Stores. He chose to house his $50-million specialty foods and accessories import and retail business in Sterling six years ago because of the proximity to the Dulles Airport and the Port of Baltimore. His current, albeit temporary, headquarters is an expansive warehouse.
Akhavan had planned to build and occupy his own office building. Three years ago he purchased enough land to be able to build an executive suite of offices and a separate warehouse. But now he has decided to lease the property to someone else or sell it altogether at a potential 40% profit over his initial investment. "By force, we got into building development as well," he jokes.
Space isn't the only crunch in eastern Loudoun. For Jeffery Payne, CEO of Cigital, finding top-notch, reliable service contractors can be tough in the Dulles Corridor's booming labor market. "They turn over like mad," he says. For instance, Payne tried to hire a law firm to help his software-security company with intellectual-property and patent dealings. "Both times, the sales pitch sounded great, we got started, and we spent a lot of time getting them up to speed on business," he recalls. "And within a week, the key lawyer on the account left the firm."
