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Blue Country -
I'm one of those folks that "will" be doing the commute. The 'yuppie' as you refer to them, are the one's most likely who can afford to stay closer into the DC/metro area. However, blue collar folks like myself work in the DC/Metro, but cannot afford to live there. I will be working in Reston (actually checking in this week), I looked in the surrounding areas for housing, their crazy down, half a million bucks for a modest single family home. Where as in the the EPH, the cost of living and housing is signficantly less. So, I will suck up the commute and gas prices and toll's on the greenway (can u tell I've done my home work) to move my family to nice home in from what have read on the interent is a nice area. We will most likely be relocating to the Charles Town/Ranson Area, Into one of those brand spanking new developments. It is the natural evolution of things, gotta go where the jobs are. Right now, the DC/Metro tech area is booming.
Stevenmimi,
I totally agree with everything you are saying. That's the same reason my husband and I are moving to Ranson. We work in Maryland and it's too expensive to purchase a home in Maryland. I rather just commute and have a nice less expensive home in Ranson.
katie1 - i suspect that the demise of the farms around jefferson county isn't directly attibutable to developers taking over the land. i would think that the lack of new, up-and-coming farmers is part of the problem. with the dirth of high paying jobs in the metro DC area, i can't imagine that a large percentage of 20, 30 & 40 year-olds have a desire to labor very long and very hard for a very small percentage of the salary that they can make elsewhere. simply put - there aren't any new farmers to take over from the old farmers. so a farm can fall to ruin, or it can be developed in what is hopefully a restrained and well planned manner.
i certainly don't want to see so much development that the trip from charles town to the va center for soccer practice takes me an hour. but there is still room for additional economic development within jefferson county.
Who cares if the Eastern Panhandle does become the Ashburn? Is the local economy any better with a bunch of abandoned farms sitting around for weekend tourists to come gawk at? People are always so nostalgic about yesteryear but they need to remember that it isn't 1950 anymore, our lifestyles have changed and these beautiful farms earn the owners little to no income, who are we to blame them when a developer comes down and offers them money to build on their property. One cannot expect natural progression to halt, particularly in a community right next to a thriving major metropolitan area.
First...the EP is not next to DC. It's in the historic mountains that for the good of the enivornment, and representing historical value, should be preserved.
Now...some development is understandable.
However....Ashburn is ridicoulous.
It should not completely remake the community from one of clean, rural beauty to ugly, strip mall sprawl.
Do you want mile after mile of subdivisions and neon lights?
The Blue Ridge Mountains are a delicate thing and it would be sad to see them be nothing more than a line between strip mall a and b.
Bluecountry that is your own personal opinion of Ashburn, I think others who live there might feel different. I personally would enjoy the day when my formerly rural community exited the boonies and became part of civilization. Nobody said the EP was next to DC but it is close enough for people to commute, I personally couldn't do it but the ranks of people heading over the mountains are increasing daily. I live in Arlington (originally from WV) and work in Tysons Corner, several of my co-workers commute from the EP.
If everyone is so concerned about preserving the rural economy then get on out there and start buying up these large tracts of farmland to keep them development free. I somehow think if you owned a large piece of farmland, were older, and had no offers from people interested in operating a farm (lets face it, farming provides little to no income for LOTS of hard work) and needed money for retirement you would have no problem selling to a developer.
Most people who currently live in the Eastern Panhandle have moved there from somewhere else, namely closer in DC burbs. These same people now live in those "miles and miles of subdivisions," I don't see how they are excluded from contributing to the sprawl problem. But thats right, it's never sprawl until after you moved in...
Last edited by NOVAmtneer82; 04-03-2008 at 10:48 PM..
First...the EP is not next to DC. I believe that - as of several years ago - Jefferson county at least is considered part of the Washington Metropolitan Area (WMA). While I'm not sure of the total significance of this change, I remember years ago when my medical and dental insurance plans excluded hospitals and doctors beyond Leesburg.
What you are experiencing in the Eastern Panhandle is most certainly NOT unique to your particular area. Here in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area of Northeastern Pennsylvania so many NYC transplants are moving here that our population has actually grown now for the past two years after many decades of steep decline. The adjacent Pocono Mountains are becoming paved over for strip malls, McMansions, etc. in the same manner that the Lehigh Valley of PA, Eastern WV Panhandle, South Central PA, etc. are all becoming. Housing prices throughout the BosWash Corridor are simply ludicrous now, and people are indeed making four- or five-hour round-trip commutes in order to afford their families a comfortable lifestyle. Soon you'll be able to drive from Portland, Maine southwards to Fredericksburg, Virginia, hundreds of miles away, without seeing a single tree if exurban growth continues in the way it has been.
I am one of those people moving into a new house in Jefferson. Not many commute to DC. Most of the teachers in Loudoun County seem to live in WV. It is mostly blue collar people like teachers, fire fighters, and policemen who cannot afford a home where they work. If I have to choose between renting a cramped townhouse for my wife and kids or owning a house, then the drive will be worth it. I work in Fairfax and my wife works in Leesburg. I don't want to commute into Northern Virginia, believe me, but good jobs are hard to get. I am not a yuppie, as I only have two years of college. Many of us who are moving to WV are tired of the traffic and rude people in Northern Virginia. If I wanted to own a home it was either Culpepper, Winchester, or WV. I prefer WV and wish I could work there too.
If you were to drive around Leesburg during the day you would see many West Virginia license plates, and many of those vehicles belong to cashiers and other working class jobs. Once you pass route 28 in Sterling the WV license plates tend to disappear, so I would estimate that most commute to jobs in Loudoun County. When I commute to Fairfax I don't see any WV plates, so you could probably consider WV to be a suburb of Loudoun County, VA.
Last edited by MrDerek; 05-21-2010 at 03:57 PM..
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