Hoping to draw inspiration from Reston’s internationally recognized history as a planned community, Fairfax County planners and leaders are developing a planning process that will review documents and processes to guide the community’s development in the future.

Fairfax County Supervisor Catherine Hudgins (D-Hunter Mill) said she would appoint a task force to study the documents and processes.

"It is so critical to be prepared, not for today, but for tomorrow," said Hudgins during a Tuesday night, June 3, meeting at St. Thomas à Becket Church in Reston. "This is a meeting that has long been promised and planned," said Hudgins, addressing about 30 people. Hudgins said the community should ask itself how did Reston start, where it is today and where it can go in the future. "Yes, I will be appointing a task force," she said.

RESTON’S PLAN was developed more than 40 years ago and it has garnered international recognition and praise as a planned community that succeeded.

However, with forecasts of more people and jobs moving to the area and the aging of the infrastructure, Reston’s residents and leaders have been asking for a review of the documents and processes. The apex of the demand occurred when the county’s Board of Supervisors approved amendments to the Planned Residential Community (PRC) District zoning ordinance in March of last year, in effect allowing more development under Reston’s population cap, 13 people per acre.

Reston founder Robert E. Simon spoke of facts that will grip Reston in years to come. He said it is forecasted that an additional 2 million people will move to the Washington area in the next 40 to 50 years. "If communities don’t plan for it, they [the people] will still come," said Simon, urging the meeting attendees to take a serious look at how to best accommodate the new populations.

Simon said Reston was "parenthetically" supposed to have seven village centers, but has wound up with one at Lake Anne, and the rest are "strip centers." He said Lake Anne was planned to have a "dense collection of high rise buildings."

The Reston Town Center, now generally thought of as the 80 acres that constitute the urban core, was planned to take such shape throughout the 476 acres that make up the Reston Town Center district.

"I’m amused when people, who when anything that comes near their own house, say, ‘Let’s stick to the original plans,’" said Simon, voicing dissatisfaction with Reston residents he considers to be NIMBYs — Not In My Back Yard. "I doubt very much that that shelter for the homeless could be introduced today," he said of the Embry Rucker Community Shelter located next to the Reston library. He said the early Reston residents had different attitudes that are often not replicated in today’s population.

FORMER HUNTER MILL District Planning Commissioner, and former county planner for Reston, John Thillman, said the plan for Reston’s development changed with frequency.

County planners in the 1950s assumed the county’s population at the turn of the century would total about 940,000 people with Reston estimated at 78,000. The assumptions included access to what is now the Dulles Toll Road for Reston residents, which was correct, and that an outer Capital Beltway that would touch Reston and the airport would be constructed, a vision never realized.

"The plan is not static, it’s never been static," said Thillman.

The county planning staff has proposed a three-part process to establish a planning exercise that would review the current documents and make recommendations for the future.

"How can future growth be accommodated in Reston and where," said Heidi Merkel, from the county’s Department of Planning and Zoning, about the focus the discussions will take.

The first part of the proposed process is to inform the public about the planning history in Reston, as well as the current planning and zoning documents, which was the purpose of the June 3 meeting.

The staff will meet with stakeholder groups in June and July to receive input about the planning exercise and will then make a recommendation to Hudgins as to what process to use to continue with the exercise.
Reston resident John Lovaas said the review is "literally a generational thing," and asked whether the process is open to question. He urged Hudgins to step away from the staff-proposed process and to consult the community about how to construct the planning exercise.

"I feel the train has already left the station," he said, adding that the county should not set the perimeters of the discussion. "This is a process to settle a process, to hear from people what sort of discussion they want to have," said Merkel.

Hudgins said the process would be community driven and asked for ideas how to get people who are not in the room involved, for example the young people.

She said the process "isn’t one to be staff-driven." She added, "We’re talking about how to open up a process and how to move forward."

Marion Stillson, president of the Reston Citizens Association (RCA), suggested the county use a process similar to the one the Initiative for Public Art-Reston (IPAR) is using to reach the public. Stillson praised IPAR for its efforts that include a professionally designed survey and its outreach to the community. "Invest in mailing to households to get the attention of most, not just the usual suspects," said Stillson. She also suggested that when the discussion about infrastructure is raised that professional input be sought.

"Maybe someone who is good at redeveloping, someone from Bob’s [Simon’s] subsequent generation, good at redeveloping, not developing," said Stillson.
Gerald Volloy, president of the Alliance of Reston Clusters and Homeowners (ARCH), said he hoped the long-range goal of the exercise is broader than the review of the current plan for Reston. "I hope our goal is to lay out another plan, not just update the original Master Plan," he said.

Mary Ellen Craig, a Reston Town Center resident, said the discussion should be about more than the levels of development and infrastructure and should address efforts to reach out to Reston’s diverse community.

"We’ve got a real community building job to be done in Reston," said Craig.

RESTON RESIDENT Dave Edwards recommended that sunset provisions be implemented in Reston’s zoning documents. He said that much of the zoning in Reston was granted more than 25 years ago. The importance of zoning is that it is the tool that gives the Board of Supervisors leverage when it deals with development requests in the community, said Edwards.

However, what was put in the books at the time the zoning was granted remains in force today without a sunset provision. "Maybe we couldn’t see as clearly in 1975," said Edwards.

Reston resident Patrick Kane said the population of Reston should increase over the upcoming decades in order to continue to make the area attractive to businesses.

Deborah Steppel asked why the Board of Supervisors makes the decisions about Reston’s development and future, when Reston has two representatives on that 10-member board, Hudgins and Gerry Connolly, who as the chairman of the board is an at-large member. "Why are eight of 10 people making decisions about Reston people who don’t have the sense of living in Reston," said Steppel.

Hudgins said that the simple answer is that Reston is a part of the county. Reston draws on experiences of other county areas and also offers its experiences to those other parts. "Our Reston plan is very much emulated in mixed use developments across the county."

Robert Goudy, a member of the ARCH board of directors, raised a number of questions for the county staff. He asked whether the 13 people per acre cap in Reston’s plan is a point of discussion or if it is set for good and then mentioned he had heard that the Reston Planning and Zoning Committee had a sort of a de-facto role over the county planning decisions in previous decades. Merkel said the 13 people per acre plan is not on the table at this point, but that future discussion may be warranted on the cap if an appropriate time presented itself.

Simon noted that out of 60,000 people in Reston, approximately 27 showed up to the informational meeting.