SPORTS: Potomac boys, Osbourn Park girls claim basketball region titles. Page 9.
February 18, 2021 | Vol. 20, No. 7 | www.princewilliamtimes.com | $1.00 Covering Prince William County and surrounding communities, including Gainesville, Haymarket, Dumfries, Occoquan, Quantico and the cities of Manassas and Manassas Park.
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Who is the ‘rural crescent’ leaving out?
In rural crescent debate, some see conservation, others see exclusion By Daniel Berti
Times Staff Writer
There is a line in Prince William that carves the county into two halves. On one side, there is vast open space that includes the Marine Corps Base Quantico, Prince William Forest Park and the Manassas Battlefield. It’s home to about 27,000 people. On the other side, 443,000 people live in an area that runs the gamut from urban to industrial to semi-rural. The line separating the two areas is known as the “rural area boundary,” part of a land-use policy adopted by the board of county supervisors in 1998 to put the brakes on suburban growth when the county had 200,000 fewer residents. It splits the county into the rural area, or “rural crescent,” on one side, where only one home can be built per 10 acres, and the development area on the other. And while the population in the development area has increased dramatically since 1998, the rural area’s strict zoning rules have kept it sparsely populated. Now, some local elected officials and community members say the
PHOTOS BY ALFREDO PANAMENO/SKY’S THE LIMIT MEDIA, STAFF
Prince William County’s rural area, known as the ‘rural crescent,’ is home to small farms like this one, left, on Aden Road, as well as large new $700,000-plus homes like these, right, being built on oddly shaped 10-acre lots along Hazelwood Drive. policy is shutting out lower- and middle-income people and contributing to overcrowding in the rest of the county, while rural crescent advocates fiercely defend it as a land conservation strategy. Meanwhile, officials are reaching a key decision point on rural area zoning as updates to the county’s
comprehensive plan are expected in the coming months. Some supervisors have used words like “segregation” and “exclusionary zoning” to describe the policy – words that carry with them the long legacy of racist housing policies that proliferated in the United States in the 20th century, some of which continue today.
“If you have a few sections of the county where the only people that can access [it] are people ... rich enough to afford a 10-acre lot, that’s already a form of segregation in my opinion,” Supervisor Kenny Boddye, D-Occoquan, said in a recent interview. See RURAL CRESCENT, page 4
Dumfries Town Council takes a rosy view of ‘The Rose’ Casino-sized gaming facility pitched for landfill site By Jill Palermo
Times Staff Writer
Dumfries Town Councilmembers offered a mostly upbeat assessment Tuesday of “The Rose,” a proposed $389 million gaming facility the Colonial Downs Group and its parent company, Peninsula Pacific Entertainment, want to build atop the Potomac Landfill in Dumfries. The project is proposed by the same company that brought “Rosie’s Gaming Emporium” to Dumfries just last month. The storefront gaming outlet opened on Jan. 8 with 94 slot-machine-like historical horse race betting machines in the Triangle Shopping Plaza. The Rose would be much larger and grander. It would include 1,800 betting machines as part of a 50,000-square-foot gaming facility and 200-room hotel, complete with eight bars and restaurants and
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The Rose, an $389 million new gaming facility, has been pitched for the site of the Potomac Landfill off Interstate 95 in Dumfries. a 1,500-seat theater for live shows, according to a presentation Peninsula Pacific Entertainment leaders gave the Dumfries Town Council on Feb. 16, in what was the first public discussion of the project. The Los Angeles-based gaming and entertainment company is proposing to close the landfill
INSIDE Classified............................................12 Looking Back........................................8 Obituaries...........................................10
and build a 79-acre public park behind The Rose complex. The gaming facility, hotel and parking garage would be constructed on 12 acres at the edge of the landfill property fronting Interstate 95, while the park would top the closed landfill. According to an economic development study authored by Terry Clower of George Mason University, The Rose and the additional business activity it would spawn could generate as much as $10.9 million in annual tax revenue for the town. That’s enough to nearly triple the town’s current $5.6 million budget. Dumfries Mayor Derrick Wood and the six-member town council said they liked what they heard. Only Town Councilwoman Cydny Neville expressed concerns about traffic and the environmental impacts of closing the landfill and building a park on top of it. She pressed Peninsula Pacific Entertainment executives for details about an environmental assessment it completed in recent weeks. See THE ROSE, page 5
Opinion.................................................7 Puzzle Page..........................................6 Real Estate............................................9 Sports...................................................9
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