Local and state officials want to move forward with a $180 million extension of Van Buren Road — a project that’s been in the plans for eastern Prince William County for nearly two decades. But people who live nearby are sharply divided about how it might affect their communities.
About 150 people turned out for a Thursday, March 14 public hearing at Henderson Elementary in Montclair to voice both support and opposition to the road project. Several Montclair residents spoke in favor, saying the road is long overdue and badly needed to relieve traffic on their neighborhood’s main thoroughfare: Waterway Drive.
Brian Proctor, president of the Montclair Property Owners’ Association, said his community has waited nearly two decades for traffic relief from the proposed extension of Van Buren Drive.
Jill Palermo
Brian Proctor, president of the Montclair Property Owners’ Association, attended to show his support along with about two dozen Montclair residents, many wearing T-shirts reading: “Don’t be a roadblock. Stop the discussion and start the construction.”
Proctor said Montclair’s 22,000 residents have been waiting for the new road, which they believe will remove cars from Waterway Drive, improving safety and reducing road noise along the roadway. Montclair contains three elementary schools, a public library, a public park and a shopping center, all of which draw traffic onto Waterway Drive.
“The Van Buren extension is not going to solve all of Montclair’s challenges when it comes to vehicular traffic, but it will alleviate some of that pressure,” Proctor said.
Miquelle Holstein, a resident of Montclair, examines an oversized map of the Van Buren extension road project.
Jill Palermo
Residents of Cardinal Grove and Four Seasons, meanwhile, voiced opposition, saying the project would plague their communities with additional traffic and noise from nearby Interstate 95.
The new road would effectively divide Cardinal Grove in half, and it is estimated that it will bring more than 1,000 cars a day through the neighborhood, according to a traffic analysis conducted by Dewberry, a company hired to study its potential impact.
The consultant has not yet analyzed Waterway Drive to determine what impact the Van Buren extension would have on Montclair, but the project is expected to alleviate some of the through traffic on Waterway Drive, said Shelly Wynn, a Dewberry engineer.
Cardinal Grove resident Sylvia Simmons said she and her neighbors are already burdened with noise from I-95 and dread the thought of it getting worse.
“When I go to sleep, I hear all the noise of the trucks going north and south,” she said. “We hear the accidents, too.”
A view of Cardinal Grove, where a large swath of right-of-way for the Van Buren extension runs through the center of the community, in between two parks and behind several new homes.
Jill Palermo
For residents of Four Seasons, an over-55 community off Va. 234, an extension of Van Buren Road would mean the loss of a large swath of trees that buffer their community from I-95. The road would also open three landlocked, commercially zoned properties along I-95 to possible development, meaning a potential loss of even more trees.
Barbara Lidell, a resident of Four Season, said a large power transmission line runs through the area, which could make it ripe for developers of power-hungry data centers.
“Right now, all of that property is light-industrial zoned,” Lidell said. “We were told in 2019 that there would be offices and warehouses, but we also realized (it) was landlocked. Now we’re hearing the (owners) might want to build data centers.”
The road project is being proposed to connect two ends of Van Buren Road in eastern Prince William County that now dead end. The extension would create a four-lane, 2.7-mile connection that would run parallel to I-95. The project is being billed as a way to relieve congestion on both U.S. 1 and I-95 while also improving safety and mobility to nearby communities, according to Prince William County transportation officials.
The planned route of the $180 million Van Buren extension.
Prince William County
The project has gained momentum in recent years and has so far received about $10 million in funding from the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority. The planned road has also recently been realigned to run as close as possible to I-95 in an effort to retain some of the tree buffer between Four Seasons and the highway, according to Mark Brewer, an engineer with Dewberry.
But both Brewer and Prince William County Transportation Director Rick Canizales acknowledged the likely development of the commercial properties would result in the loss of much of that tree buffer. Still, an analysis of the road cannot take that development into consideration because it has not yet occurred. That means Four Seasons is not currently eligible for sound walls to mitigate the noise, Canizales and Brewer said.
The completion of the road is still a long way off, however. At an estimated cost of $180 million, the county would need to receive about $170 million more in both state and federal grant funds for the road to become a reality.
The public hearing was held as part of an environmental study that is required to make the road eligible for federal grant money.
“The money can be gotten as long as (the county) can prove the project is needed,” Canizales said. “It’s going to take a mish mash of money to move the project forward.”
Reach Jill Palermo at jpalermo@fauquier.com
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