Granados Column: Everywhere I go . . . more of the same

When I first moved to Raleigh, N.C., it was nothing but trees and concrete roads. There were few shopping centers and fewer stores.

The big deal for me was the rickety wood gas station down the street that sold candy cigarettes.

As the population of Raleigh boomed, that corner gas station was demolished to make way for a more modern gasoline-dispensing facility, and all those trees I told you about were reduced to pulp in
order to accommodate a slew of identical shopping centers.

I grew older and saw my home city morph homogeneously before my eyes; I began to wonder if anybody was in charge of the mess.

When I drove up to Woodbridge a few years ago to interview at the Potomac News, I was struck by how similar to home the community felt. I rolled off Interstate 95 and . . . same signs, same stores,
same everything.

In the time since I moved and began work in this area, I have gained a greater understanding for developments, how they spring up and why.

Different jurisdictions have different motivations for how they shape development.

Take Manassas Park, for example. For as long as I’ve been here — and long before that — the burden of funding the city has rested on residents. There are simply more residents than there are
businesses, so residential real estate taxes are the main source of tax dollars. The city has strived to bring in more businesses so that the distribution of taxes can broaden and the concentrated
pressure on residents can weaken. This need to diversify the tax burden shapes much of the development in Manassas Park.

In Manassas, money isn’t always the prime concern.

Recently, news broke that the Harris Teeter originally slated to open in Manassas in July has been delayed until . . . God knows when.

Hastings Marketplace, the development that Harris Teeter is to anchor, was a rezoning that caused much consternation for some city residents and a great deal of accommodation and contortion from the
developer. And, after all that trouble and time taken to convince people to love the idea of this mixed-use development — which was supposed to combine residential with commercial property —the
markets tanked and the future of the property has become less than totally certain.

Part of the city’s motive in the case of Hastings Marketplace was more transformative than anything else. The council wanted to turn sleepy little Manassas into an area more fitting of the
title, “Washington, D.C., suburb.” Council members had a definite vision they were hoping to shape. Unfortunately, luck has as much to do with successful development as planning. And in this case, the
city’s luck turned bad — along with the rest of the country’s.

And then we have the county where current Board of County Supervisors Chairman Corey Stewart once ran on a platform of limited development. Commercial growth was getting out of hand in the county
and he vowed to stop it. Of course, he didn’t really have to — the economy eventually took care of that — but evidently county residents at the time were feeling a sentiment similar to the distaste I had
felt for the willy-nilly concrete explosion of Raleigh.

So, there we see the result of mostly-unchecked expansion — rebellion.

Reviewing Manassas, Manassas Park and Prince William County, I have come to the conclusion that the patterns of development are subject to many of the same chaotic impulses that fuel much of the
change in the world — money, a desire for progress, a desire for peace of mind and chance.

Those conclusions don’t do much for me though. When I look out my car window, I just see more of the same.

Alex Granados, committed to surviving the end times by hiding out in the forest, is the editorial page editor for the News & Messenger. He can be reached by e-mail at agranados@insidenova.com, phone
at 703-878-8069 or in his doomsday bunker—just clap twice and gobble like a turkey. He’ll be right with you.