A home construction project has people in Fairfax County talking — and leaders reexamining building rules.
A three-story addition going up in the Greenbriar neighborhood towers over most of the surrounding homes.
“I just saw the house. It’s interesting. It’s this big huge wall,” one woman said.
“It would be ugly in a field all by itself. That’s how bad it is,” a man said.
Those are just some of the reactions from people who drove down Marble Lane on Tuesday to see what everyone is talking about.
For Courtney Leonard, the home addition is no drive-by spectacle; the enormous addition is right next door to her single-story home.
“I think the real concern came when the second level went up,” she said.
Then, when the addition grew to three stories — the real impact hit.
“A lot of people say it looks like a motel or a Red Roof Inn,” Leonard said. “The amount of light that comes into the house has been greatly reduced. When you look outside from the windows, all you see is a wall of plywood at this point, even from the backyard.”
Other neighbors told News4 the project doesn’t bother them.
Fairfax County issued the permit for the home in August. Michael Nguyen owns the home, where he lives with his parents, wife and young children. He said he’s adding an office, more bedrooms and a playroom to give his family more space.
“In our culture, we like to take care of our parents, and we don’t want to send our parents to a nursing home, so that’s the reason why I’m doing the addition, so we can have the grandparents stay with the kids, spend time with them and stuff like that,” he said.
Some elected leaders said they sympathize with Leonard.
“A 30-foot-high wall, 60 feet long has no place 8 feet from somebody’s property line,” Fairfax County Supervisor Pat Herrity said.
A resolution Harrity and two other supervisors sponsored directs county planners to re-examine zoning restrictions on home building heights. It won approval Tuesday.
“We can’t legislate common sense or aesthetics, which we wish we could, but you can’t legislate that, so we need to come up with a ratio that will work, and again, other jurisdictions have done it. We can do it,” Herrity said.
The county said there is a violation with the addition in Greenbriar, but it’s not the building’s height: It’s the side yard setback. It doesn’t meet the 8-foot requirement, they said.
The county sent News4 a statement noting the violation, writing, “Staff notified the property owner and is meeting with them to determine the plan to correct this issue and bring the construction into compliance with the county’s regulations.”
Nguyen told News4 he met with county officials on Tuesday and another site survey will be done after Thanksgiving to see if his side yard setback is in violation of rules.
For now, the county issued an order for construction to stop.
Leonard said she spoke with her neighbor on Monday night about the addition.
“He was very regretful, didn’t mean for anything like this to happen, but he feels strongly he is building within the zoning regulations,” she said.
She said if her neighbor has to seek a variance to keep the existing construction, she plans to oppose it.
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