Comments on Draft Reston Town Center Committee Report, Terry Maynard, July 19, 2010

(The draft report is posted below at this link.)

Robert—

I want to thank you for sharing your draft paper on Reston Town Center with the community. It reflects a lot of good work by a lot of dedicated people, and you should all be proud of the contribution you are making to the future of Reston.

I think the product you ultimately produce will become a model for the other TOD committees and, therefore, I want to comment early on and personally in the hope that some members of your committee will have the opportunity to review these remarks before you meet early tomorrow morning and other Task Force members can understand what Reston’s residents (at least this one) think are important.

If I were to make an overarching comment it would be this: While the report covers all of Reston Town Center in many ways, it omits some important topics and lacks specificity about priorities in others. If the report is finalized as it is, I am afraid it will provide the Task Force insufficient guidance as to what the proposed Comprehensive Plan language should say, leaving open debates on many important topics that will have to be re-hashed. Although I know there are those who benefit from this vagueness, I would urge you and the committee to take the more difficult course of making those key decisions early on rather than kicking the can down road—a ubiquitous Washington practice.

Let me just list some of the topics that seem to be omitted in this draft:
• Building an elementary school
• Not building a police station as proposed by FCPD or building it differently (not to mention the fueling station)
• Building a performance center—large or small or not at all
Many metrics, including the percentage of land dedicated to open space, retail, institutional, natural areas, and other land uses—at least at the level of reasonable ranges for further refinement in Task Force discussions.

I know others will have more to offer in this regard that will lengthen your “to do” (or at least “to consider”) list.

My remarks below track through the draft—and the most important one may be the first.

p. 2—Re 1:1 (sq. ft.) Residential:Non-Residential: I believe this thinking is bad planning and I can find no authoritative source that describes this relationship as anything like a “best practice.” This includes Federal studies by DOT, HUD, FTA; think tank reports by Urban Land Institute, Institute for SmartGrowth, Brookings, Heritage, even Cato, and others; city/county planning departments of TOD-intensive communities including Vancouver, Portland, Montgomery County, and Arlington County; and academicians starting with Robert Cervero (who largely developed the concept of TOD and continues to be its leading researcher and proponent).

The only sources I’ve seen supporting this spatial equality are developers and their associates, primarily because it is less risky and more profitable to build and sell/lease office space than residential space, not because of consideration of community values or TOD effectiveness. Nonetheless, I’m not sure this assessment applies in the WDC area given the recent GMU CRA forecast for the 2030 Group that there will be a housing shortage in the metro WDC area over the next 20 years as new housing is built in the distant exurbs with adverse consequences for the metro business economy. Either the availability of housing, reduced cost of transportation, and amenities Reston can provide will make Reston urban living more attractive than West Virginia or we are really dealing with flawed regional development theories.

The fact of the matter is that we need balance in Reston to keep (or improve) it as a place to “live, work, and play.” That requires a balance in the drivers of building a successful community—which is PEOPLE. The space they occupy is a means to an end. People “live, work, and play” in spaces, and those spaces ought to be allocated to serve a balance in their activities in the most effective way possible, not the other way around. The third “play” element of that includes retail, dining, cultural, open, and natural spaces, the metrics of which this report does not address—and yet they will all be important to a successful Town Center and Reston as a community.

Your 1:1 spatial relationship would mean that twice as many people would work in Reston Town Center as live there if we continue to assume 4 people work and 2 people live in one housing unit in a 1,000 GSF space. I have suggested at least a 2:1 Residential:Office space relationship so the number of people living and working in Reston are roughly equal. I would recommend a 2.5:1 Residential:Office to balance the burden in public transit and private commuting on Reston’s streets as Joe Stowers has proposed. Please note this is an important difference in points of view in terms of the drivers of community success—a balance of people and purposes. If we have the larger number of local residents my formulation(s) propose:
• Businesses in the Reston Town Center area will have much more walk-in business while still sustaining levels of drive-in shoppers.
• Commuter traffic on Reston’s main arterials, especially around RTC, will have balanced peak period traffic rather than being overloaded in one direction or the other.
• The greater the residential representation, the more successful Metrorail and other public transit is likely to be as—like in Arlington—RTC residents shift their travel habits.

What my formulation(s) does/do not address is non-office, non-residential development in the ratio, which may be included in your “non-residential” phraseology. This may offer a bridge between to the two positions because we all want Reston Town Center to have a robust retail, open space, parks, and natural environment and it should also have a viable county government center. So, if the committee is comfortable with stating that the non-residential space includes all these other uses, and those other uses account for half of the non-residential space (so that the residents and office workers are equal), then I’m willing to amend my view. If this is what the committee intends, it needs to be explicit.

In short, this concept would mean something like the following: Developing a space of 200,000 square feet at an overall FAR 3.0 (600,000 GSF) would allow 150,000GSF of office space, 300,000GSF of residential space, and 150,000 SF of space for other non-residential uses per above (with say, not more than 50% (75,000GSF) for business purposes, lowering effective FAR to about 2.8). The result would be an equal number of workers and residents and an abundance of retail and public spaces. I think such an approach would better address all Restonians’ needs.

Top of P. 3—You leave open the FAR and height issues, and omit the necessary tapering of densities away from the Metro station as well as the need for lower densities beyond the 1/2-mile limit of the TOD area (specifically, North Town Center). Tapering is essential for effective TOD. Without tapering, it’s just development. This must be dealt with in the context of your specific recommendations about FAR levels.

I am less concerned about height limits, but I would recommend that incentives be used to garner extra height about 200’ (slightly higher than Comstock’s tallest planned structure at Wiehle). The two incentives I would recommend are:
• An increase in height based on the depth or capacity of underground parking for a building.
• An increase in height based on the percent of ground-level space devoted to open space, parks, and/or natural areas.
These incentives would offer an opportunity for both improved design and a better pedestrian environment.

P. 4—North-South Connectivity—You have left the issue here (and on p. 5) of a connector bridge/tunnel across the DTR from Halley-Town Center Pkwy hanging. It will be an essential connection for Reston as its population doubles and RCA Reston 2020 believes it should be build in the 2020-2030 timeframe to handle expected increases in traffic. It can not be delayed nor certainly treated as casually as this report addresses the matter. With peak period traffic projected most conservatively (by MWCOG under the current Comprehensive Plan) to increase about half in the next 30 years and possibly double per Reston 2020’s transportation report for the Task Force, we absolutely must increase north-south connectivity across the DTR moat.

PP 4-5—Grade-separated pedestrian-bicyclist routes—The death of a Reston teenager crossing Reston Parkway within the last two weeks highlights the need for grade-separated transportation routes for pedestrians and bicyclists around Reston Town Center, but this topic is not even mentioned in the draft report. The Reston 2020 transportation report highlighted specifically the need for such access to Reston Metrorail stations (beyond the specific bridge to the Metro station) across major arterials, including Reston Parkway, Sunrise Valley Drive, Sunset Hills Drive, and Town Center Parkway. These must be included in your recommendations or we will have more pedestrian fatalities and fewer people walking and biking in the TOD area.

PP 7-8—Open Space—A lot of nice talk about what could be done, but no particulars on priorities or scope. This needs to be fleshed out an address the standing draft planning principle for 25% open space in some detail.

I have already covered the ratio, FAR, and height issues above.

I appreciate the effort your committee—especially you—have extended so far. You have the basis for a highly useful report to the Task Force in my view, but several substantial additions and changes to be made.

I wish you the best in completing this important task.

Sincerely,
Terry Maynard