Washington’s Architectural Review Board unanimously endorsed the sweeping expansion design advanced by the town’s chef and innkeeper, Patrick O’Connell, after a succession of residents said they trusted that the new and revised buildings wouldn’t overwhelm the quiet streetscape they consider home.
The ARB “certification of appropriateness” paves the way for a detailed site plan, a review by the Town Planning Commission, and the application for a building permit from the Rappahannock County Building Office. Each involves new scrutiny and O’Connell and his team are steeling themselves for months of detailed discussions on traffic flows, water and sewer hookups, electricity demand, noise and light pollution.
There may be continued attention around the building that formerly housed the Middle Street Gallery and Antiques at Middle Street. O’Connell said the structure, bought by the Inn last year in a $1 million acquisition, has suffered water damage and rot, and that it lacks the historic pedigree that requires care and restoration. Indeed the Inn has obtained a permit to “remove it,” though O’Connell said if the building, or part of it, turns out to carry historical importance, as some think it does, the Inn will rethink that plan.
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Inn at Little Washington proprietor Patrick O’Connell explains his expansion plans to interested neighbors on Monday.
But the ARB endorsement, which followed a tour of the compound, and an unexpectedly peaceful meeting, suggests that the county’s feverish change-versus-continuity wars are losing some of their vitriol. Visibly relieved by the outcome and the generally supportive exchanges, O’Connell remarked that “now it’s pretty clear that it’s a renaissance” more than a threat, and that citizens accept that the town’s success is tied to that of its largest enterprise.
O’Connell’s peaceful sail through the ARB wasn’t an accident. Three critical messages – reinforced throughout the evening – and in informal discussions after the bold blueprint emerged last week – reassured what might have been a fretful community.
The big plans aren’t as big as they look.There is a new reception building for guests, a spa with a swimming pool, a courtyard house with new rooms, and a carriage house with more new rooms plus a wine cellar. Plus there are linking structures, a new courtyard and collonaded walkways. However, all of the new buildings and enhancements fall within the Inn’s existing footprint, with no additional real estate. And none of the new structures will reach the height of the Inn itself, or adjacent Washington Town Hall. The 10 new rooms, it was noted repeatedly, will bring at most 20 new guests at a time, arriving in 10 cars that would be whisked off to valet parking spots away from Washington’s principal streets.
Set aside the blueprints, walk the streets. The drawings by Washington D.C.-based Franck & Lohsen Architects showed only the newly configured Inn. Lacking a context for the new structures, neighbors worried that the town would seem foreign, even unrecognizable. A video seemed to carry viewers even further from the place they knew and loved. O’Connell organized a tour of current buildings and gardens an hour before the scheduled ARB meeting, pointing out where each new building would begin and where it would stop. In a presentation at the ARB meeting that followed, architect Michael Franck departed from his own blueprint to point up the green spaces between buildings. He also predicted landscaping touches and design flourishes to soften what some found to be a “fortress-like” solidity in the new plan. A number of town residents said that the explanations provided on the tour, and during the ARB meeting, left them reassured.
Track records, and before and after Images. Once perceived as an outrageous experiment, the Inn at Little Washington, at 45, is an unquestioned success story that has transformed the town and the county. In the Town Hall, where the ARB session unfolded, O’Connell arrayed before and after photographs on easels, featuring the oil-splotched gas station that became the Inn, along with various neglected and dilapidated structures the Inn refurbished and incorporated into its campus. “Each of these projects was opposed at the time,” he said just before the discussion of the expansion plan. “One even had a stop-order placed on it by the ARB. Each of them seemed a threat to the community when it was proposed. And when it was finished, people liked it.”
A small town, a big project
Citizen discomfort mostly focused on the scope of the project. Though falling within the Inn’s current footprint, the new configuration unifies the buildings, knitting a scattered campus into a coherent whole around a rectangular courtyard. Long-time Washington resident Judy DeSarno said that while “it will be beautiful and exquisite, I’m worried.. Something this size in a place this small.”
Gary Aichele, who recently moved back to the town with his wife Wendy, voiced a similar unease: “It’s a small town, and it’s a big project. How do we decide whether this addition overwhelms?” But like most others who spoke up, he ended up assured. “It’s a natural expansion and I think it’s about right, frankly,” he concluded.
George Eatman, a respected observer and author on art and architecture, and a neighbor of the Inn, stated that the planned reconfiguration and expansion “makes a beautiful addition to the town.”
Former Mayor John Fox Sullivan said the Inn’s interests are aligned with those of the town residents. “Nobody cares more about this town than Patrick O’Connell,” he said. “Yes, he’s in business and, yes, he wants to make money. But he wants less traffic, not more. He wants less trucks, so he sends them down Route 211. He doesn’t want a Disneyland. That would destroy his business and that would be stupid.”
And although tensions between the town and the county bubble up continuously, county residents also benefit from the Inn’s success. Although the Inn’s gusher of meals and lodging taxes bypasses the county and finances much of the town’s budget, sales taxes flow to the county. Keir Whitson, County Supervisor for Hampton district, which includes Washington, estimates that a typical county resident has as much as $200 more in the bank each year because the sales taxes from the Inn obviate the need for an unpopular jump in real estate taxes.
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