It won’t look like this, and actually.. yes.

Last night, the East Falls Church Planning Task Force overwhelmingly endorsed the draft plan to transform the East Falls Church Metro area into a mixed-use, pedestrian, bicycle and transit-oriented community.

Next, the plan will go to the Arlington County Board. If you support the plan, sign CSG’s new petition to the Board.

It’s particularly friendly to pedestrians and cyclists through wider sidewalks, on-street parking and bike lanes, as well as narrower streets to reduce car speeds. It will improve bicycle and pedestrian connections across I-66, creating better connections from the west. And the Metro station itself will get residential units, neighborhood retail services and a public square.

However, a local group opposed to the East Falls Church Area plan has been distributing flyers encouraging local residents to show their opposition. The flyers contain misleading information and statements that spread uncertainty about the project and its impact on the community.

Since the proponents of the development plan bear more of the burden of proof when it comes to advocating change, it is often enough for opponents to raise vague concerns about issues, rather than actually prove that there will be a problem.

The flyers exaggerate the impact this development will have on our community and dismiss the benefits we will get in return. This exaggeration misleads the local residents about the benefits of the plan. We’ll get some retail we can walk to, and improvements in pedestrian and bicycle conditions. The traffic racing through our community will be calmed, proceeding at a much more reasonable pace.

We’ll return a little bit to what we had before the highway was built, with a walkable community centered on its train station, with local amenities within a short walking distance, not a mile away at Westover or Seven Corners.

One flyer has a picture of a boxy tower with the caption, “Do you want a 9-story neighbor?” It states that the plan would allow “buildings” up to nine stories. The truth is that the plan would allow one building of up to 9 stories, but only far from houses and in exchange for a significant community benefit.

According to my discussions with a task force member, the task force was unhappy with the blocky look of a 6-story building, and agreed to allow some height farthest from Washington Blvd to allow the project to be shorter in areas closer to single family homes.

In exchange for the added height, the developer would construct a second Metro entrance on the west side of the station, estimated to cost $50-60 million. Without this increase in height, a developer could not afford such a project.

The flyer states that the task force has been working for several years, but that the process has recently accelerated. I suppose the perception of acceleration is because the process is now moving from the task force toward official approval. In the timeline put out by the task force in 2007 and 2008, the plan is years behind schedule.

In 2007, the report was scheduled to be before the Board in December 2008, and in 2008, it was expected in March of 2009. Even the schedule on the task force’s current website has the plan slated to be before the board for approval last summer.

The flyer states that the actions would mean “Major changes to the character of the neighborhood.” Building an interstate highway through the neighborhood also significantly altered the character of the neighborhood. There used to be a small commercial district surrounding the train station here. The plan would help restore some of what was lost when our neighborhood became centered not around a train station, but a freeway exit and a parking lot.

The flyer warns of “increased traffic congestion and spillover,” but according to the transportation impact study produced as part of the planning process, that’s what we’re going to have even if we do nothing. According to the report, traffic conditions will continue to get worse through 2030, with more intersections and streets experiencing delays and congestion related problems. The study says the development would add very little to this traffic, and the local street and transit improvements are expected to reduce the effects of this addition.

The flyer warns of an impact on neighborhood parking. But we already have an issue with neighborhood parking where people might be tempted to park and use the Metro. This is already being managed by the resident permit program, and should continue. If the new development brings new challenges to parking in residential neighborhoods, the resident permit parking program has flexibility to allow the hours of enforcement, time limits, or other variations to handle site-specific conditions.

The plan adds quite a bit of on-street parking, which will provide some additional spaces for short-term use. On-street parking is also an important element of traffic calming, because it tends to visually narrow the streets and provide psychological clues to drivers to “slow down.”

The flyer mentions pressure on local schools. However, the schools impact study stated that most students in the Arlington Public Schools system come from single family homes (57%) and “garden” apartments (21%). The new development units anticipated by the plan are mostly elevator apartments and townhouses, which have very low student occupancy rates.

According to the study, it’s expected that the new development would likely bring between 34 and 38 new students, spread out among the various local elementary, middle and high schools, and would be mitigated somewhat by transfers into specialty, private or other choice schools. While I agree that the impact is not zero, I would argue that the number is surprisingly small.

The flyer states that the upcoming County Board meeting “is the only chance for the public to be heard,” and “only a limited number may speak for two minutes,” but the schedule posted on the county website provides many opportunities for public input. The Board will advertised the plan on Saturday June 12, or at the recessed hearing on Tuesday the 15th. Then it is reviewed by various citizen commissions, including a public hearing before the planning commission in late June. Final Board consideration comes mid-July. There have also been many chances at all public meetings of the task force since 2007, at the public meetings about the plan in April or May 2010, and there will be four more chances between now and adoption.

The flyer warns that we might “become another Clarendon or Ballston,” but the densities in the plan are nowhere near that level. I was just in Ballston and Virginia Square last night and counted 18 stories at least for many buildings. Nowhere in the plan is there anything close to 18 stories. When I was in Virginia Square, I noted how much better the traffic was compared to where we live. It’s not the tall buildings that bring traffic. It’s the fact that we live inside a freeway interchange.

Overall, there are significant community benefits to be gained, and when you look at the effect this development will have on traffic, schools or parking, the issues brought up by local opponents turn out to be not as bad as one might fear.