A nonprofit grew on a beautiful manor, rent-free. The deal is ending.

Washington Post

6 days ago

The Arc of Loudoun, a nonprofit that helps people with disabilities, had an oasis for 16 years, rent-free.
Tucked off a neighborhood road in Leesburg, Virginia, the campus complex of clinics and schools offered children, adults and families from throughout the state and beyond the space for walks and views of open fields.
The land and a mansion on it had been left in a trust more than 100 years ago by a family of wealthy iron industrialists, who dedicated the property to serve 'children in need.' But the Arc and the landlord, the Margaret Paxton Memorial for Convalescent Children, have spent years in negotiations over a lease to no resolution. Now, the Arc says it plans to downsize on the campus and shutter or move operations from that location.
Next month, it will close a behavior clinic that provides therapy for people with developmental and intellectual disabilities and a preschool that serves young children. It will move its Ability Fitness Center — specially designed to help people gain mobility, strength and confidence as they deal with strokes, brain injuries, cerebral palsy and other conditions — to another space for 18 months and will then have to find a more permanent home.
The fate of the Arc's Aurora School, a private, year-round special education school that draws students from as far as D.C. and West Virginia, remains uncertain. Arc officials said they plan to consolidate the school into fewer buildings on the campus until they can find another place to go, but officials with the trust said the school should not start another academic year there.
Mary Lou Leipheimer, a trustee for the Paxton trust since 2022, said the organization has negotiated for four years with the Arc and been in mediation since October, but the two sides can't come to an agreement. In June, the trust pulled out of mediation talks.
'From our perspective, the Arc wants to continue to use the campus without change,' Leipheimer said. 'It wants to use the campus as is, rent-free, without sharing it with other tenants, indefinitely. The trust believes the campus can do more.'
She said the trust wants to construct 'new buildings and renovate old ones on the site and lease to multiple tenants and serve a greater number of children in different and complementary ways.'
The Arc's move will allow the trustees to make way for a new complex that will include one or two anchor tenants, as well as spots for start-ups, a park, a coffeehouse, a welcome center and an amphitheater.
Lisa Max, the chief executive of the Arc, said that she and her board of directors have gone to see about a dozen properties in the area as potential new sites but that most did not meet the zoning requirements for the Arc's special education school and preschool.
'It's not that we don't have money,' said Max, whose group has an $8 million annual budget from grants, donations, fundraising, private-paying clients, medical insurance payments and state funding. 'It's a question of finding space that's suitable for our needs.'
The changes will mean job losses for some of the Arc's 101 employees and a disruption or loss of services for many of its roughly 250 clients, children and adults with profound and complex needs. For those who depend on the Arc, news of the coming changes has created nervousness and uncertainty, according to interviews with clients, their families, employees, local officials and local residents. Many have described it as a loss of a sense of community.
A grandmother is scared she won't be able to find another preschool for her grandson who has behavioral challenges. A mom frets that her teenage autistic son will have to be home-schooled. A wife knows she will have to drive farther to get her husband to rehabilitation services.
'We're devastated,' said Debbie Wheeler, 69, of Leesburg, whose 4-year-old grandson has attended the Arc's preschool, the Open Door Learning Center, for several years. 'My grandson wasn't using his words and communicating and having tantrums. Here, he's learned so much. He uses his vocabulary, he plays well with others, he shares. We cried when we heard it's closing. We don't have anywhere to go.'
The Paxton property, where the Arc has made a home, has a unique history.
In 1869, Charles R. Paxton and his wife, Rachel, came to Leesburg and paid $50,000 for roughly 700 acres. As a young man, Paxton had worked as a civil engineer on what was once known as the Erie Railroad. He later moved to Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, where he made a fortune in the iron business, according to Rachel Paxton's papers located at the Thomas Balch Library in Leesburg.
He hired a New York architect to design a 32-room Victorian manor house, and a local builder constructed it. Historians have described the mansion, called Carlheim, as one of the few houses in the area to show a distinctive architectural style after the Civil War — a time when Virginia was in terrible economic shape.
Over the years, much of the Paxton property was sold off, but 16 acres and the mansion remained.
The Paxtons had one daughter, Margaret, who married Bolivar Christian, a lawyer and lieutenant colonel in the Confederate Army, and they had one child, Charles Paxton Christian, who died of diphtheria at age 5. Margaret fell into a deep depression and her marriage ended, according to Stacy Harrison, parish historian at St. James' Episcopal Church in Leesburg, where the Paxtons were members. Margaret died at 50.
'It's kind of a tragic, heartbreaking story,' Harrison said.
In her will, Rachel Paxton, who died at 95, left the property in a trust in her daughter's name and called for the house and land to be used for caring for 'convalescent' children. She named a board of trustees to oversee the trust and property. She also created a board of visitors from her church to advise the trustees.
In the years that followed, the house served as a place for children recovering from tuberculosis, then an orphanage, then a private child care center.
In 2004, when the trustees wanted to demolish the house and other buildings on the property, locals launched a 'Save Paxton' campaign. The Leesburg Town Council voted unanimously to include the Paxton property in the town's historic district. A lawyer for the trust, Jay Chadwick, said the property's county tax assessment shows the land is now worth $3.2 million.
In 2008, the Arc entered into an initial 10-year lease with the trust and moved onto the campus. But the relationship between the two frayed over the years.
Neither side can talk publicly in detail about the latest offer because the mediation was confidential.
Leipheimer said the trustees have 'loved the Arc program' and 'would love to continue to support the program.' They tried to make it work, she said, but 'we're at a stalemate.'
The trustees said that when they redevelop the site, they expect the new tenants to pay some rent, although they have not set an exact amount.
Rev. Chad Martin, the rector at St. James' Episcopal Church, said he was disheartened to hear that the two sides were unable to come to an agreement. He said he believes the Arc does 'some incredible things for Leesburg and the county.'
Kristen C. Umstattd, a Loudoun County supervisor who represents the Leesburg District, said the Arc is 'an absolutely wonderful and essential facility for Leesburg. I can't imagine a better group to meet the requirements of the trust and the desires of the original owner of the land.'
On a recent day at the Arc, clients who've come to depend on its services worked with therapists and staff members and talked about how the changes at the Paxton campus would affect their lives.
Eighteen-year-old Abhay Mysore experienced a traumatic brain injury three years ago when he was the passenger in the front seat of a car going 85 mph in a parking lot before it crashed into a tree, said his mother, Geetha Krishnamurthy. The driver, her son's friend, was not seriously injured, she said.
After seven weeks at a local hospital and 12 weeks at the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, Mysore was referred to the Arc's fitness center. He and his mother have come twice a week for more than a year, making the 30-minute drive from their home in Chantilly for the opportunity to work with the Arc's specialists.
'He wasn't able to do these stretches before he started coming here,' Krishnamurthy said as she watched her son do exercises. 'He's come a long way, and they've cared so much about helping him. We hate to see them move from here but would drive far to get him help from the Arc.'
Mark Soiland, a 59-year-old former master carpenter and builder from Purcellville, was referred to the Arc's fitness center after a large tree branch struck his head while he was working in his yard. The accident caused a traumatic brain injury and neck fracture. Doctors rebuilt half of his skull with titanium, and he had to relearn how to talk, walk and feed himself.
'His physicality was stripped from him, and it was really hard to witness,' said Lisa Soiland, his wife. 'The Arc gave us the next chapter in rehabilitation, and it gave us community so you don't feel like an island when you're going through life's challenges.'
'This place gives you hope, encouragement,' she said.
'It gets me up, gets me motivated to keep going,' her husband said. 'It makes me feel like I can do things again and I can accomplish things.'
Nadya Osterling's 16-year-old son, Nico, who has autism, has been a student at the Aurora School for almost five years. He arrived after his private school in Alexandria closed during the pandemic.
Since her son has been at the Aurora School, Osterling said, she and her family have seen major improvements in his behavior and demeanor. Teachers and instructors have worked with Nico to help him learn how to communicate using an iPad.
Osterling said she's worried she won't be able to find another school in the Washington area that doesn't have a waiting list and can meet her son's needs in time for him to start the fall academic year. She may have to home-school him, which she said would mean he would miss out on the camaraderie of classmates — and lose access to the physical, occupational and other therapies that he now gets at the Arc.
'There's no other school that can meet Nico's needs,' she said. 'It would break my kid to leave there. He would be devastated. He's grown up there. They're like his extended family.'
One of Nico's therapists, Keira Anderson, recalled how he 'could barely walk' around the Arc's grassy campus when he came.
'He used to sit in his wheelchair and not interact much,' she said. 'Now he walks everywhere and uses his tablet to tell us what he wants and needs.' He goes on outings with his classmates to local restaurants and grocery stores, she said. 'He laughs, he smiles. He participates and communicates. It's been exciting to watch his progress.'
Anderson said Nico and other Aurora students could regress in the skills they've developed if they have to leave the Aurora School and go to other places not as well suited to work with them one-on-one.
'Forty-two kids who need consistency, who need a regular schedule and specialized support are getting ready to have no place to go,' Anderson said. 'It's huge and devastating on each of those students' lives. It breaks my heart.'