Leesburg legislature raises a roof

Contractors and developers – feel giveaway to lift a roof in Leesburg.

The Leesburg Town Council authorized an boost in a limit tallness authorised in a town’s ancestral district from 45 to 65 feet during a May 24 meeting. The tallness amendment was authorized by a 6-1 opinion with Mayor Kristen Umstattd casting a dissenting vote.

The capitulation allows a developer of Courthouse Square, a 1.69-acre tract owned by Courthouse Square, LLC, that houses a Loudoun Times-Mirror offices, to contention a special difference seeking capitulation of a structured parking garage and potentially dual floors of bureau space.

Designs for Courthouse Square embody a 318-space parking lot with one and one half stories of a parking underneath belligerent and 3 levels above ground. Two floors of bureau space will potentially rest on tip of a parking garage, that would supplement scarcely 57,000 block feet of space. The plan would embody a sum of 105,000 block feet of office, sell and/or grill spaces.

“This is a closest we have come to rise this site and we trust this site needs to be developed. We need to make downtown viable,” pronounced Leesburg councilmember Ken Reid.

Leesburg councilmember Tom Dunn agreed, observant a tallness boost would turn off a incompatible heights of downtown buildings.

“I consider that this is a indispensable and well-deserved alleviation to a block of skill that is only a hole in downtown,” he said.

Approving an initial strike in tallness in a district might boost a odds of successive tallness increases in a future, branch downtown Leesburg into a area allied to Reston Town Center, Mayor Umstattd contended.

“This will be a outrageous building in a chronological district and … will erase a light open feeling in a downtown district. we don’t consider that’s relocating a city in a right direction,” she said.

Bob White, boss of Landmark Commercial Real Estate and developer of Courthouse Square, pronounced a capitulation would “send a summary that Leesburg is open for business generally in downtown.”

But, Leesburg proprietor Terry Titus pronounced he was endangered that a tallness capitulation would be a mistake.

“Look during this thing from Leesburg story and tradition and it doesn’t need to be used as an mercantile apparatus for some developer to get income out of,” he said.

Courthouse block redesigns have nonetheless to be authorized by a town’s Board of Architectural Review or a city council.

Times-Mirror Staff Writer Laura Peters contributed to this report.