$12 million Surplus Spurs Competition Among McLean Residents

The president of McLean Youth Athletics attended a McLean Community Center board meeting in September 2007 to ask the board to use its $2 million surplus to build a gymnasium at the Spring Hill Recreation Center.

Joel Stillman was back at the Community Center board's January 2012 meeting with the same request: Spend the surplus --- which as now ballooned to $12 million--- to build a multi-use indoor recreation facility at Spring Hill.

In December representatives of McLean's downtown revitalization committee and the McLean Planning Committee asked the MCC board to spend the surplus to build an undetermined project in downtown.

The $12 million surplus accumulated by the MCC board has spawned a competition between residents supporting an undetermined building in  downtown and other residents supporting a gym at the Spring Hill.

"I would implore you not to give up on downtown,” Jim Peoples, a member of both the revitalization committee and the McLean Planning told the MCC board in December.

Joel Stillman: MCC also has "a mission to provide recreational facilities the definition has been more of the mental recreation. We are saying it’s more than that." Stillman was joined by the presidents of McLean Youth Wrestling, Basketball, Volleyball --- all asking for a gym that could be used by all residents regardless of age.

5 things you need to know about this issue that centers on taxpayer dollars:

1. This is really about how to spend the surplus the MCC board has accumulated over the years by charging taxpayers more than was needed to finance the community center.

The board has three options: spend it downtown to try and spur downtown redevelopment. Spend it to build a gym at Spring Hill. Give the money back to McLean taxpayers.

2. Stillman said at the January meeting, "It's clear there has been a roadblock” between the Fairfax County Park Authority and the MCC board. “What is this problem that the two sides are having. MCC has the money.  The Park Authority has the land, so how do you do this?” he asked.

3. MCC board president Kevin Dent responded: “We had good meetings with the Park Authority staff”  and "We felt we had made good progress.”

 The Park Authority wanted to build a facility for everyone in the county. MCC wanted priority for McLean taxpayers since they were paying for some of it, Dent explained.

 They finally came to an agreement and gave it to Kevin Fay, the Dranesville representative to the Park Authority Board.  “Long story short we never heard back from them. . . we could get no traction from from Fairfax County Park Authority,” Dent said.

"After six months of no response from them,” Dent said the MCC board started looking at  building a black box theater on the site of the Old Firehouse Teen Center, which the county owns and  leases to the community center.

4. Dan Montgomery, a McLean president, president of the Clark Construction Co, developer of several town centers and one of the savviest developers in the area, owns much of downtown McLean including the Giant shopping center and at least half of the shopping center where McLean Hardware is located.

 Montgomery had hoped to redevelop the center of McLean but in July 2010, with the recession in full swing, he told Supervisor John Foust he was dropping the redevelopment plans.

5. Foust who oversees the MCC board has said he wants the money spent downtown. He worked to engage Montgomery and the MCC in a joint project to redevelop the area generally from Old Dominion Drive west to Ingleside Avenue and from Chain Bridge Road north to Beverly Road.

He told the Greater McLean Chamber of Commerce in January: "In my opinion the Community Center is landlocked. There is only so much you can do back there. . . the obvious place for them to expand is downtown. It would also help to get downtown moving."

But he also endorsed a gym. He said,"For a town this size this would be a great thing to do for the children and the adults."

A special committee on Downtown formed by the MCC board holds its first meeting tonight 7:30 pm at the Community Center.

*McLean Youth Athletics is an umbrella group for nine different sports.Each sport runs its own  program. Students in grades 3-12 can register in one place for a variety of league sports.