Summary: Reston Task Force Process Comm. Meeting, May 7, 2010, John Lovaas

This second Task Force Process meeting, held Friday morning at the Supervisor’s police station, had a much smaller attendance. Only six Task Force members were present, including Chairperson Patty Nicoson, M. Looney, J. Stowers, A. Hill, V. Foster and B. Penniman. Heidi and Richard Lambert were there from the county.

While their agenda had 4 items, most of the time was spent on bantering back and forth about whether or not to establish subcommittees along the lines of the Reston Town Center (North) subcommittee and when, and what should be on the agendas for the upcoming Task Force meetings on May 11, May 25 and the special one June 1 as well as the Community Meeting May 22. A draft table of contents for the Task Force final report prepared by Foster and Penniman was handed out but not discussed. (NOTE: The draft outline is here.) It starts an idea of where they think they are going.

While the repetitive discussion on whether and when to create two subcommittees, one for the Wiehle station area and one for Herndon Monroe, was going on, a couple of troubling themes kept coming up from 2 development folks. Mark Looney agreed stressed his theme of keeping TF discussions at a general level, not get into detail of land uses, F.A.R.’s which should be left to landowners. County staffer Merkel sometimes seemed to back this, while Joe Stowers insisted that comp plans should “be about options”. Looking to realize land areas’ “development potential” was stressed often. Note: I found this troubling because it sounds like the objective is to fill land with buildings, not necessarily to create a thing of beauty, that stresses community, liveability and mobility. Open space, natural areas and infrastructure such as schools are not mentioned. Transportation improvements for pedestrians and bikes in addition to roads are given modest lip service but are not the focus.

There was apparent unanimity to create the two new subcommittees with an RTC type mandate. Mentioned but not resolved, I think, was the question of extending the RTC Subcommittee mandate to include all of TC north and particularly south of the station—the latter being of particular concern because there has been so little conversation of “development potential” on that side—including connecting eastward to JBG Land.

As I understood it, the plan is as follows:

At the May 11 Meeting:
-County staff presentations on: Transportation—“situation in current transportation Hpatterns, changes likely with advent of transit.”
-County staff on Park Authority role, changes in way they plan park space. [Arthur Hill of P & Z said he thought “park stuff” was peripheral; TF’s focus is on commercial, industrial ? and residential development!]
-On affordable housing. (after suggestions that this be dropped—it was retained, I think.)
-Update on Process meeting!
-Update by RTC subcommittee—and possible discussion of extending their mandate to the south side, encouraged by lawyer Looney.
-Discussion of Planning Principles maybe. (Remember them?)

May 22 Community Meeting:
-Special presentation by a high-powered real estate market consultant; TOD discussion; breakout groups to discuss Herndon-Monroe station

May 25 TF Meeting:
-Wiehle Station breakout groups
-formation of Wiehle subcommittee—to report by end of June; announce and begin formation of Herndon-Monroe subcommittee
-Report with recommendations of Reston Town Center Committee—although this likely to slip to June 1 meeting with addition of southside mandate.

June 1 TF Meeting: Possible report of Reston 2020 Parks/facilities group pressed on chair by Leila Gordon. Led to discussion of opening to presentations by 4 other Reston 2020 groups—Environment, Transportation, RUDL and ?X?; possibly RA committees, others. Possibly report of RTC subcommittee, formal kickoff of H-M Subcommittee. (delayed after it was pointed out that the TF would be wise to give Polo Fields neighbors a lot of advance notice or there could be “political trouble”.
The latter led to expanded concern about the need to make the communities and community aware of changes to meetings schedules, changes to agendas in upcoming meetings, getting word to groups who might be invited to make presentations including Reston 2020 groups and any others, like RA committees, possibly ARCH, etc. Comment: While Chairman Nicoson has been more receptive than the norm to community input, she is under pressure from several TF members and the calendar to move on and leave the community aside. I fear an attempt to line up all possible groups, give them 10 minutes each, check that block as “community participation” done and move on without any real effort to incorporate important substantive work done by 2020 work groups in particular.

Opinion: The Process group again failed to see the forest while being led by the nose into the trees. The TF still has adopted NO guiding principles as they go piece by piece looking for development potential NOT community potential. In the first place, they should have adopted an overall vision for Reston (while there has been talk of at least doing so for the corridor, there is no vision at that level either.) from which would have flowed the planning principles to guide their analysis and discussions of the 3 station areas, Town Center and the village centers (and other areas?) to follow.

Instead, the TF is building up the maximum “development potential” in discussions increasingly led by landowners and their lawyers with no overall vision. So, the group maximizes what can be done at Wiehle, then Town Center and then Herndon-Monroe before moving on to do the same for each of the 5 village centers—and then maybe the connecting, all-enveloping high density “sinews”. You get the idea.

OK, so what does it matter what order they go in? It matters because as we get down the pike, or at the end, we’ll find we have a residential capacity for 150-160,000 people and commercial development greatly surpassing the new, but now revised downward, 85 million square feet at Tysons Corner. And, we’ll find we have no schools for this 150% increase in population, nowhere near civilized amounts and quality of open and natural spaces, and pathetically inadequate pedestrian, bicycle and even vehicular transport infrastructure. Only a couple of people on the Task Force, especially John Carter, recognizes this. What will it take for the sheep to stop being led and starting to approach a master plan at the community level.

The current approach is backwards and marches us towards a Tysons outcome NOT a Reston outcome.

John Lovaas