The day started damp, leftovers from the night's rain, but quickly cheered with an autumn sun peeking through the hickories. Breakfast, coffee-to-go, pawing at the BRO (the Bull Run Observer, not the bro) to find the location for parking, then we're off.

According to E. Bruce Davis, staff writer for the BRO:

The thousands of people who attend from 9-4p.m., rain or shine, will see from any vantage point the majesty of the town's past, alongside the new development and buildings designed to herald a future pedestrian-friendly town.

Cool, 58F, with an improbably blue sky and some light wind. Perfect for viewing the majesty of Haymarket. Ahem, right.

Parking was easy and after depositing one girl with her school group, we took up curbside residence in front of the uninspired Town Hall, waiting for the parade. I've missed the past three Haymarket Days for various reasons, but was glad to see strong (almost too crowded) attendance and plenty of parade entries. My favorites: the pug wearing campaign stickers, the high school band, and, of course, my kid waving with her preschool group.

The inimitable Bruce Roemmelt stopped over to greet his mountain neighbors, as did most of the professional politicians (it's an election year in Virginia), but it was odd to see Delegate Bob driving a car by himself in the parade. Laura suggested that I could perhaps join him to discuss our political differences.

Conspicuous by their absence, the Gainesvill Ruritans didn't organize this year's event. They'll be putting on the Pumpkin Pandemonium in a couple of weeks.

Post-parade, we dove into the scrum of booths and vendors in the lot next to Haymarket Baptist Church, and had nice visits with Bruce again, and Louise Jamison, Grand Marshall of Haymarket Day today and a Prince William educator for many, many years. We were soon to be ejected by fussing kids and wind-whipped balloons. It was declared, "this is no fun," so it's off to lunch with friends at a local pizza place, where we consumed half of the chairs in the place, along with some tasty pizzas.

All in all, a perfect small-town day.

It's that time of year again, time for the annual farm tours of Northern Virginia and central Maryland.

• 29-30 Sep: Virginia - Prince William County Wild Western Farm Tour
• 29-30 Sep: Maryland - Frederick County Oktoberfest
• 13 Oct: Virginia - Fauquier County Farm Tour
• 20-21 Oct: Virginia - Loudoun County Fall Farm Color Tour
• 20-21 Oct: Maryland - Frederick County FamilyFestival@theFarm

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At least that's what the Lufkin Daily News found out this week. The Pine Blogger runs the LDN to ground on a ridiculous assertion that the 2006 average high temperature was 5 degrees warmer than normal in Lufkin.

Apparently, the LDN has relented:

A correction to this story will be in the Sunday LDN. Thanks to Mr. Fillo for checking his data. The five degree increase would have probably never caught my eye had I not attended the American Geophysical Union meeting last month where hundreds of talks/posters were presented on global warming.

Good eye, Mr. Bonner!

I've posted before back when pwcitizen was running on the Antioch Church near my house. A woman contacted me via email from Arizona about checking the small cemetery for her ancestral surnames (Vermillion,Pomeroy), so I ran over there recently to help her out. It's a small cemetery and only takes about 15 minutes to walk the entire thing.

A couple weeks back we had several days of gusty winds and apparently this huge poplar had enough. The tree is broken off about 20 feet above the ground and came down on a number of graves. The damage is not widespread, but many of the gravestones under it are broken.

Oh, and unless they're under that tree, there are no Vermillions or Pomeroys to be found there.

The blog, by WaPo (not Wipro!) staff writer S. Mitra Kalita, just got added to my RSS subscriptions. I'm mildly irked with the Post's lack of direct comments on this blog. They opt for "Email a Comment" instead. Not so much with the free discussion of ideas, I see.

Varun Singh, a developer at Wipro, calls what is happening in Bangalore "the IT crush." He said he feels the ire of longtime residents, especially those not in his field.

...

The IT and the non-IT folks find common ground on one thing: Neither side can wait for the proposed highways, the toll roads, the metro system. At a Barista coffee shop today, Mathew and Seema George sought shelter from the rain and sat sipping mugs of tea and coffee. The husband-and wife architect team said they cannot blame IT for the loss of the charming city they once knew, because it has also been responsible for the boom in their business designing homes and office spaces.

Technorati Tag: india

The Wellington project's commercial components could be well-received, says Sandy Paul, director of research for the mid-Atlantic region of Delta Associates (www.deltaassociates.com). The Prince William office market has a 4.7 percent vacancy rate; the flex/industrial market has a 6.4 percent rate.

After a bit of rooting around, I was able to find the rezoning document from the PWC Planning Commission online. The gist:

A. Request - This is a request to rezone +/-15 acres from A-1, Agricultural to O (F), Office Flex and +/-166.9 acres from A-1 to PMD, Planned Mixed Development to allow development of 624 multi-family dwelling units and either 1.2 million square feet of office space and 400 hotel rooms or an additional 230,000 square feet of potential office space in lieu of the hotel rooms. The application includes requests for waivers and modifications to allow private streets, to waive internal buffer requirements, to modify and waive perimeter buffer requirements, and waive the requirement for more than one dwelling unit type.

B. Location - The subject site is located on the north and south sides of Wellington Road, the east and west sides of Clayton Road, south of Hornbaker Road (see maps in Attachment A). The site is identified on County maps as GPIN 7596-63- 0490.

A. Planning Office Recommendation - The Planning Office recommends approval of Rezoning # PLN2004-00105, Wellington Glen, subject to the proposed proffers dated October 12, 2005. See Attachment B for the staff analysis and Attachment C for the proposed proffers.

The 69-page document is interesting reading, if you care about that sort of thing, since it notes a $6.68M proffer for the changes. The calculation for the proffer is interesting to me, in that schools have a recommended proffer rate of $3492 per dwelling and transportation garners $5258 per dwelling. I had no idea the county had a grasp on the dollar impact of new development. With traffic on many surface streets being so bad, I have to wonder if their calculations are realistic or whether the developers have gotten the upper hand too many times during the past decade.

The MSNBC article was light on the details of the project, which includes plans for 624 "dwellings", which are zoned as "small-lot residential/multi-family residentail." That says townhouses to me, but could include hotel rooms and apartments according to the Staff Report.

Wellington Glen looks to be a good project for the county, with substantial business and sales taxes to be garnered from businesses located there and limited impact to schools and traffic from the residential aspects of the project.

Google map, hybrid satellite and map of the Wellington/234 Bypass area.

Technorati Tag: Prince William County

The links:

Loudoun Farm Color Tour, includes farms and wineries
Family Festival @ The Farm, Frederick County, MD.

Fall in the Loudoun Valleys is beautiful. The colorful trees of the Blue Ridge, Short Hill and Sugarloaf Mountains set the stage for your self-guided tour of 14 farms (along with the Loudoun Heritage Farm Museum, the Loudoun County Master Gardeners, and the Loudoun Valley Sheep Producers Association), each offering their own unique experience of rural Loudoun. See cows and calves, horses, sheep, pigs, and other animals in their natural environments. Choose apples, pumpkins, flowers, herbs and mor from the bounty of the fall harvest. Tour a winery, talk to the proprietors about their grapes and wines, and learn why Loudoun's wines are winning awards and making news throughout the wine industry.

Last year's blog entry on this topic.

Technorati Tag: fall