Reston Association Board member Eve Thompson has been so surprised by the Jefferson Apartment Group’s response to community input on Tall Oaks Village Center that she coined a new land use term.
Gesturing with two hands that she almost touched together, she said, “The plan has moved, perhaps, milli-scooches.”
“The plan is almost the same,” Thompson said Thursday, Feb. 25 at Reston Association’s Board of Directors meeting.
“They haven’t seemed to make any effort to even address the spirit of a village center,” she said. “I don’t understand that from them if they really want this development.”
RESTON ASSOCIATION’S land-use attorney John McBride briefed the Board last Thursday on JAG’s current plan to commission its own economic viability and market study of the Tall Oaks Village Center in April.
That market study will delay its proposal to the Fairfax County Planning Commission that had originally been scheduled for May.
“Getting it to a village center is the challenge, and frankly, the opportunity that is before us,” said McBride.
The market study will be reviewed by a county consultant.
“That should at least make for changes or at least for some dialogue with the community,” said McBride. “We’ll have something new to look at.”
He said, if JAG doesn’t make any changes, “we will have the opportunity to comment.”
“We have to be vigilant, we have to be ready to provide input,” said McBride. “When we do analyze it, this goes for Reston Association members and for Reston Association, we have to analyze it as a Village Center.”
The current zoning ordinance, he said, defines a village center as “a central location for activity of retail, community and leisure uses on a scale serving a number of neighborhoods.”
MCBRIDE ANTICIPATES Jefferson Apartment Group to have a new proposal before the Planning Commission by July.
Reston Association Board member Ray Wedell called on Reston Association to act, “to make a stand.”
“The proposal is so antithetical to the goals of Reston, to the Founder’s vision, to the objective of Reston’s revenue,” Wedell said. “It should serve as a clarion call for us that need to control our future.”
He asked for the community and Reston Association to “band together” and to make sure “we don’t have abominations like this slammed down on us, and I emphasize this plan by Jefferson is an abomination.”
More than half a dozen community members attended Reston Association’s Board meeting last Thursday, voicing frustrations with the cluster-development plans Jefferson has shown so far.
Board member Ken Knueven said Reston Association is there to assist, and “we’ve already funded John McBride with regard to Reston’s opinion on this matter.”
But he suggested individuals get involved.
“Acting as individuals adds that much more input to the county,” he said.
“Passion, togetherness, fighting for what’s right. In this case, we know we’re right,” said Wedell.