Private School Seeks Special Use Permit
Neighbors in the area of Browns Farm Road and Gordon Road in Spotsylvania County are concerned that The Summit Academy's plans will increase traffic in the rural area.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
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Update: The Spotsylvania Planning Commission’s Public Hearing on this permit has been moved to August 17, 2024.
The Summit Academy, a private Catholic secondary school, is seeking to open a permanent location at the corner of Gordon and Browns Farm roads in Spotsylvania County — but nearby homeowners fear the surrounding infrastructure can’t handle the potential traffic.
“There are in total about 150 properties back here. We’re backed up to Spotsylvania Courthouse National Battlefield. There’s one way in and one way out and that’s Browns Farm Road,” said Mike Bosco, a resident of Stuart’s Crossing subdivision. “It’s a 25-mph road that the school is also seeking to use as the main entrance into their property.”
The Summit Academy has applied for a special use permit from Spotsylvania County to operate a private school on the property, which is zoned rural.
The application will be subject to a public hearing before the Planning Commission on July 17. There will be another public hearing before the Board of Supervisors at a later date.
Plans for a Permanent School Home
According to the project narrative, The Summit Academy is “a leading provider of independent Catholic, private education in the classical liberal arts for students in grades 6-12.”
The school’s mission is to prepare students who are “rooted in faith, equipped to serve, and prepared to lead.”
The Summit Academy was established in 2016 with 16 students and now enrolls “more than 100,” according to its website. The school currently leases space in Zoan Baptist Church on U.S. 3.
The proposal for the permanent location would house up to 350 students in a two-story, 28,000-square-foot main building with a combined cafeteria/auditorium.
There will be a 655-square-foot chapel; two practice fields; two high-school athletic fields; and one middle-school athletic field.
The general development plan also shows construction planned for the future, including an 11,232-square-foot “future primary school” building, but enrollment will not exceed the stated 350 students, a Summit spokesman said.
The school had a traffic impact analysis prepared for the site in November of 2023 by Bowman Consulting Group. According to the analysis, the proposed development is expected to generate 679 vehicle trips—340 in and 339 out—during an average weekday.
The proposed entrance to the campus would be from a driveway across Browns Ford Road from Bloomfield Court. According to the traffic impact analysis, “exclusive turn lanes from Browns Farm Road into the proposed site driveway/Bloomfield Ct are not warranted under Build Conditions.”
Bowman’s analysis calculates that daily pick-up and drop-off operations will cause a line-up of vehicles 841 feet in length and up to 1,094 feet. It recommends that the driveway be constructed to accommodate a car queue of at least 1,094 feet on the property, to avoid a backup spilling onto Browns Farm Road.
Currently, there is a stop sign on Bloomfield Court at the intersection with Browns Farm Road, but no other control. According to the general development plan, the school will apply with the Virginia Department of Transportation to install flashing “school zone reduced speed limit” signs along Gordon Road.
Community Concerns
Bosco said the surrounding community has concerns about the traffic projections.
“It isn’t just morning and evening [pick-up and drop-off traffic],” he said. “There will be sporting events and weekend events. It’s a Catholic school so there will be Sunday events.”
The community also has concerns about environmental impacts of the development.
“The property is a hill that goes up from the reservoir and there are wetlands behind the property,” Bosco said.
The property sits directly across Gordon Road from the Ni Reservoir, which is in a Reservoir Protection Overlay District, according to Spotsylvania County GIS.
A tributary of the Ni River runs along the rear of the property and a portion of it lies in a Resource Protection Area, according to GIS.
According to the general development plan, the northern portion of the site drains ultimately into the Ni Reservoir and the southern portion drains into a floodplain surrounding the tributary.
The development plan proposes to collect stormwater runoff and discharge it into stormwater management ponds.
According to the project narrative, “There is no anticipated adverse impact on environmental or natural resources.”
Bosco said about 200 members of the surrounding community attended a March 2023 information session about the proposal to express their concerns to the applicant.
Since then, he said, he and other neighbors have had multiple conversations with members of the Board of Supervisors and Planning Commission. They hope an alternative location for the school can be found.
“To be clear, we’re not against Summit Academy,” Bosco said. “But we are against it being here. This is not the right spot for it, for a litany of reasons … this neighborhood is not the right place.”
‘We love this area for the same reason’
The Summit Academy’s headmaster, Julian Malcolm, said the school community “love[s] this area for the same reason that the families in Brown’s Farm love this area.”
The school “places a huge emphasis on nature studies and getting kids outdoors,” Malcolm told the Advance. “Our Outdoors Program is central to our curriculum, which is why it is important for us to be in a more open, rural area. We are convinced that the best way to learn about nature is to actually be in nature.”
Malcolm said the campus master plan will leave “80% of the [property] open with rolling hills and mowed fields,” maintaining its rural nature.
Regarding increased traffic and congestion, Malcolm said the school community “[doesn’t] want that either.”
“We’re working closely with the county and VDOT to ensure that traffic flow is optimized to run smoothly and safely. We’ll implement and maintain new traffic controls for student drop-off and pick-up that will make it much easier and safer for families to pull in and out of Brown’s Farm Road,” he said. “We believe the proposed traffic improvements will be a real win-win for the school and the community.”
He added that main school operations will be closed during the summer and during holidays, and that many students carpool, reducing the number of individual vehicle trips generated.
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Again, it seems, Spotsylvania County BOS and other officials need to talk with citizens and discuss the future schools, roads, sheriff and fire department needs before adding additional housing and other zoning changes. I am pro education and pro country planning.