Final Westpark passive park design continues to vex homeowners

News Analysis

I've been following this story for a really long time now. To be exact, three years. I can say with certainty, this is not only a deeply flawed development project on its face, but is also fallacious, overly expensive and one that seems to categorically dismiss the will of the people who will be most impacted by it - the homeowners whose houses line the park boundaries.

Instead, it caters to the LOCO Golf Disc group whose members are not homeowners affected by this park. Oddly, reading through the public comments submitted to Loudoun County early on in the design process, a large amount of comments were submitted by disc golf players who don't even live in Loudoun County, but are advocating for the build of an 18-hole disc golf course at Westpark. Disc golf players from Reston, Centreville, Chantilly and Fairfax submitted comments in support of the disc golf course for Westpark.

This project was peddled to the community by J2 Engineering and County project staffers as a "passive park" in 2023 at two public hearings that year. The community envisioned a minimally-disturbed park to retain natural, nature features.

I attended both public hearings in 2023 and specifically asked about parking lots. I was told only one would be built "with about 10-12 parking spaces." That seemed reasonable.

The project now includes a 57-space parking lot with pavilion and restroom 100 feet from Country Club Green Condominiums and a 21-space parking lot, pavilion and restroom in the Leesburg Country Club single family home subdivision off Clubhouse Drive within 100 feet from the nearest home.

The County said it wanted to use an existing, but deteriorated, old golf course parking lot as the imprint and access way for the new 57-space parking lot, pavilion and restroom.

The condo and homeowners are 100% justified in being upset about the parking lots. Whenever there are free amenities offered to the public, increases in traffic, noise and loitering occur - a well established fact.

Loudoun County has made no provision for these problems that their parking lots and pavilions will create. The homeowners are just being asked to absorb this - period.

The 57-space parking lot Country Club Green Condominiums is being asked to absorb is even more problematic, considering the Westpark Tech flex industrial project currently being constructed with a completion date of August 2026, will build 173 parking spaces of its own.

Between the Westpark Tech and passive park projects, this is a combined additional 230 parking spaces along Clubhouse Drive SW - a two lane residential road built in the late 70s to minimally carry residential traffic in and out of the neighborhood.

As has been previously reported, J2 Engineering, working as a contractor on the Westpark project for Loudoun County, also failed to adequately provide proper notice as is required by law to the entire Country Club Green condominium community in the summer of 2025. Only while doing research on the park did I catch the mistake and it took two months of repeated pressure to get J2 to finally send out the required notification, which was done in October 2025.

The "traffic statement" provided to Loudoun County by its contractor Gorove Slade, uses incorrect information. First, it's not a traffic study. It's a traffic statement.

A traffic statement provides a brief evaluation of potential traffic impacts for developments with low expected impacts; a traffic study is a more detailed analysis required for developments anticipated to have significant traffic effects which includes comprehensive data collection and modeling to address all traffic and transport issues related to the development.

For something as large as a 134-acre park, perhaps a full traffic study is warranted.

Secondly, the contractor self admits it used the wrong days of the week and times of day in its evaluation.

Then, the Town of Leesburg's traffic engineer, Niraja Chandrapu, was sent a copy of the traffic statement to review, and approved the document on behalf of the Town of Leesburg without question.

Park users will travel to the park during evenings and weekends, predominantly by car. A real, and comprehensive traffic study should be done and replace the errant traffic statement submitted by Gorove Slade and approved by Chandrapu.

Disc Golf Course

I met with three members of the LOCO Disc Golf Club in late February. All three live in Leesburg and said they are interested in Westpark having a disc golf course so they don't have to travel far to play. This is seemingly self serving. There are a number of disc golf courses in Loudoun County already - both a mix of public and private courses and another coming online soon at Veterans Park at Balls Bluff.

Additionally, here is a map showing the availability of disc golf courses in Virginia:

On the Disc Golf Scene website there are 67 listed: https://www.discgolfscene.com/courses/top-rated?state=VA

I asked the club members whether they would work with the homeowners, in mutual compromise, by supporting only a 9-hole course rather than an 18-hole golf course to mitigate impact on homeowners.

The answer was no.

$30 million price tag

Again, when this project was pitched to the public in 2023, the original price tag was $13.4 million. Now it has ballooned to $29.1 million, more than double its original estimate. County staffers say they will be asking the Finance/Government Operations and Economic Development Committee at tonight's meeting to approve the additional money.

Today from Glen Barbour, Loudoun County public information officer: "The increases in project cost are associated with expanded site-wide demolition, erosion control, landscaping; mass earthwork within the environmental improvement areas, fine grading for the trail network, and utility infrastructure costs."

The amount of park land hasn't changed. The amount of park amenities hasn't changed. In fact, Barbour additionally states that "there have been a variety of small changes due to addressing permit review comments or to provide value engineering, but the overall park amenity and program recommended by staff have remained materially the same."

So then, is the County paving the trails with gold? $30 million is an incredible amount of TAXPAYER MONEY to be spent on something the TAXPAYING HOMEOWNERS affected by this project don't even want.

Willful neglect

A barrage of emails have been sent from both the condominium and single family neighborhoods since the final designs and staff report were posted to the County's website on March 10. Many have been shared on a Facebook group started a few months ago to keep the homeowners affected by this project up-to-date:

facebook.com/groups/westparkpassivepark

Many of the emails have said this: "While Kristin Umstattd has been communicative with the community and updated us along the way, none of the other Supervisors have responded whatsoever about this project."

In one instance, a homeowner on Janney Street SW, whose back yard abuts the park, had to write to Leesburg Mayor Kelly Burk asking for help to even be responded to by the County.

Government - whether it be federal, state or local - are entities by and for the people. Politicians are elected to represent the majority will of the people.

I have repeatedly seen the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors and Town Council approve data centers that the public has repeatedly testified against - just dismissing their concerns outright.

I understand there are competing interests and everybody has a say in public projects. But when does ethical leadership, common sense, fairness and protecting the rights of those most affected come into play?

A letter with 106 homeowner signatures on it was emailed to the Board of Supervisors, Tim Hemstreet, Steve Torpy, Sherene Dorazio, Logan Baird, Mark Novak, J2 Engineering, Gorove Slade, and Town of Leesburg leadership, among several others on Dec. 4, 2025 laying out the concerns of the community and asking the Board of Supervisors to remove the disc golf course and parking lots.

106.

Let me repeat that again.

106.

And that letter was completely left out of the March 10 staff report, while others were included. When asked why, Barbour said, "The comments in the packet reflect only those comments that were received by staff through the online comment form. Emails received directly by the Board are not typically re-transmitted to the Board through staff reports."

So I will, again, provide that letter here:

patch.com/virginia/leesburg/open-letter-loudoun-county-board-supervisors-concerning-westpark-passive-park-nodx

(The 106 signatures were included in the email to the Board, but are not being published here out of respect for homeowners privacy since it is directly related to where they live.)

Placing an 18-hole disc golf course and two overly-large parking lots with pavilions and restrooms is intrusive and will create new problems for the neighborhoods affected. It is anticipated that Leesburg Police will be called on more frequently to drive out loiterers who do not leave the park at sunset and for those who will park vehicles and commercial trucks overnight in the parking lots.

Increased trash will become the problem of General Services. Increased volume from family reunions, music at the pavilions and unruly teens will become the headache of the Leesburg Police Department who will have to respond to complaints from homeowners.

The Board of Supervisors should vote to remove the disc golf course and parking lots from this project, and include only amenities that are nature-supportive because it's the right thing to do and it's the will of the majority.