McLean's makeover
By Monty Tayloe
“What's the plan for Main Street of McLean?” ask some colorful posters that have started to show up all over McLean.
The question and the posters come from the McLean Planning Committee, which will hold two public forums at the start of April in the McLean Community Center to get citizen input on revamping the comprehensive plan for McLean.
"It'll be an open forum for people to get together and talk about what they want to see for the downtown area," said the committee's Doug Potts.
Ten years ago, what people wanted was a walkable downtown with mixed-use retail and attractive landscaping. That was when the last meetings to consider McLean's comprehensive plan were held, and the current comprehensive plan reflects those desires.
The 1997 “comprehensive vision” plan earmarked the area around the Giant supermarket and the Old Firehouse Teen Center as the location for the proposed main street, which would include wide sidewalks, a mix of retail and restaurants, and a plaza-style gathering area.
A decade later, little of this plan has come to fruition. Potts and others active in the McLean civic arena blame the inertia on a lack of cooperation among landowners in McLean's central business district.
“Before, there were disparate landowners, and we couldn't make this happen” said Dranesville District Supervisor John Foust (D). “Now there's a lot of optimism.”
The reason for Foust's optimism is that several of McLean's central parcels have been consolidated under the ownership of a single individual, McLean local Dan Montgomery. Montgomery is president of the massive construction firm Clark Construction, and over the past year he has reached agreements to either purchase or represent the owners of several parcels in central McLean. According to Montgomery, the purpose of these business deals was to make McLean's revitalization happen.
"Stu [Mendelsohn] came to me and asked if I would help in getting landowners in the revitalization area to participate," Montgomery said.
According to Montgomery, the plan is to gradually redevelop these parcels to realize the Main Street concept for McLean.
“We want the community to decide what's going to be downtown," Montgomery told The Times last year.
First, however, it needs to be established what that vision is.
At the MPC forums, attendees will get the chance to talk about the kinds of things they would and wouldn't like to see in a downtown McLean. The planning committee will take that feedback and work with Montgomery to draft a new comprehensive plan.
The committee, comprising McLean citizens and local business owners, strongly favors a mixed-use Main Street concept and believes that somewhat higher development densities in downtown McLean are necessary to make that work.
While Montgomery has declined to comment on his preference for the area, his close work with the MPC seems to indicate that he agrees. Higher densities are likely to mean higher profits for Montgomery as the principal land owner.
Still, Foust says that the public's wishes will direct the process.
“I am the guarantor of the public's voice in this,” Foust said.