Roughly a dozen other recorded plats within a mile of this one begin with the word Chesterbrook, so here the street name does the work the subdivision name cannot.
Chesterbrook Estates is a recorded Fairfax County subdivision on tax map 0314, zoned R-2, on the eastern side of McLean toward the Arlington line. Its streets are Brookside Road, Bermuda, Calla, Dahlia and Upton Street — and those street names matter more here than in most McLean neighborhoods, because about a dozen other recorded plats within a mile also start with the word Chesterbrook. A search on the name alone returns several different subdivisions with different plats, different lot patterns and, in some cases, different governance. A search on the street returns the right one.
The name most often mistaken for this one is Chesterbrook Woods, a separate neighborhood on the same side of McLean — about 530 homes developed in the 1950s and 1960s, with a voluntary citizens association that buys supplemental snow removal on top of what the county provides. Voluntary is the operative word there, and it is not a fact that transfers to this plat. Beyond Woods sits a whole cluster of Chesterbrook-prefixed plats in the same square mile. Some listing aggregators compound the problem by publishing a single neighborhood profile that bundles Chesterbrook Estates and Chesterbrook Woods under one heading, which produces statistics describing an area no recorded plat matches. When you are comparing two “Chesterbrook” listings, compare the addresses instead: Brookside, Bermuda, Calla, Dahlia and Upton are this subdivision.
Fairfax County's zoning ordinance defines R-2 as two dwelling units per acre, and that district is what sets the terms of any project here. McLean's teardown-and-rebuild pattern reaches this neighborhood as it does the rest of the area: a demolition permit and a new residential building permit both come from the county, and what can go back on the lot is governed by setbacks, maximum height, lot coverage and tree preservation requirements — not by the footprint of the house that came down. R-2 is denser than the R-1 Langley plats on McLean's northern side and less dense than the R-3 pockets closer to the commercial cores, which is worth holding in mind when you are comparing a lot here against one two miles away. Confirm the district on the county record for the specific parcel rather than assuming the whole plat is uniform.
Chesterbrook Estates drains to Pimmit Run, and mapped Resource Protection Areas sit nearby rather than cutting through the middle of the subdivision — a meaningful difference from McLean plats where the buffer runs across back yards. Nearby is not the same as irrelevant, though, because lot lines are lot lines. Under Fairfax County's Chesapeake Bay Preservation Ordinance an RPA carries a 100-foot buffer meant to stay undisturbed: clear-cutting is not permitted, neither is removing vegetation to create lawn, and land disturbance requires prior approval from Land Development Services. As of August 2026, running the exact address through the county's Watersheds and Resource Protection Areas viewer is the fastest free way to settle it — do that before you plan a pool, an addition or a rear-yard regrade.
As of August 2026 the assignment is Chesterbrook Elementary, Longfellow Middle and McLean High School. The elementary school shares the prefix, which reinforces exactly the assumption worth resisting: a subdivision name has no bearing on school assignment in Fairfax County. Chesterbrook Elementary serves addresses across several unrelated plats, and not every Chesterbrook-named address in McLean is assigned to it. The Fairfax County School Board revised the boundary between the McLean and Langley pyramids on February 4, 2021, which is a reminder that these lines are administrative and do move. Verify the exact address with the FCPS school boundary locator rather than the MLS field.
Chesterbrook Estates sits within McLean — that guide covers the zoning, permitting and site constraints that apply across the wider area.
Artur can confirm what applies to a specific address here — lot, zoning, association documents and school assignment — before you write an offer.
