Stafford supervisor floating idea to save Crow's Nest by allowing development elsewhere.

By RUTH FINCH

Date published: 2/15/2004

Officials hope to preserve 'precious' Crow's Nest

A Stafford County supervisor is advocating a land swap in an effort to save the environmentally fragile Crow's Nest peninsula from development.

"It comes down to how badly we want Crow's Nest," Supervisor Mark Osborn said. "If we are talking abut paying $30, $35 million for Crow's Nest, quite frankly, I don't know where we'd get the money."

The Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation and the local Trust for Crow's Nest have teamed up to try to buy the land from K&M Properties of McLean. The price for the 3,800-acre tract between Potomac and Accokeek creeks stood around $30 million when 18 months of negotiations broke down earlier this year.

When the sale failed, K&M began exploring possibilities for developing the land. But many Stafford residents and area preservationists protested and asked county officials not to give up on attempts to preserve the peninsula.

Crow's Nest has one of the last stands of virgin forest in the region and is home to rare plants and animals and a large heron rookery.

Stafford will not give the property over to development without a fight, said Supervisor Kandy Hilliard, whose district includes Crow's Nest.

"We are going to look at every possibility, every opportunity, every option," she said. "That property is too precious, too valuable to lose."

Although the county can't afford to buy the peninsula, it might be able to barter for the coveted land, Osborn said. In exchange for Crow's Nest, he wants to offer K&M an opportunity to rezone another tract elsewhere in the county to allow all the development slated for Crow's Nest.

Another supervisor, Bob Gibbons, has said he is enthusiastic about the idea.

Such a transaction would be similar to the Transferable Development Rights, or TDRs, that advocates for stronger growth-control measures have been seeking from the General Assembly for years. Many bills to allow TDRs have been introduced since the 1990s, but none has passed.

And that makes some supervisors wary.

"To say we're close to any type of deal like that is awfully premature," said Supervisor Pete Fields, whose district abuts Crow's Nest. "I am not even sure you can legally do what they are claiming."

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Date published: 2/15/2004