Notes from the RTF Wiehle Committee Meeting, September 8, 2010

People and process. Van Foster returned to resume his secretarial role. Dick Kennedy said he will be out for the next three mtgs. Bill Penniman was in the chair.

Minutes for late August meetings were approved and presumably will be on county website soon.

Next meeting will focus on draft outline ideas on land bays.


Substance

The meeting continued discussion of the 8/31 draft detailed outline. (This is on the county site under 1 Sept mtg)

Open space: Some rehashing of previous week's discussion on how best to lay out open space guidelines. Mark Looney was commissioned to do material on expectations re open space and recreation for each land bay for discussion next week.

Cooperation: Continued discussion about how to encourage cooperation between than many landowners in the Wiehle area. Some brief discussion of using density and FAR bonuses to do this (Comment: The committee has decided to defer all discussion of density till latter, leaving many issues like this in abeyance.)

Mark Looney suggested breaking expectations into two categories:
--on site enhancements that come with a particular site (immediate open space, etc)
--large scale infrastructure that might require a community effort (a CDA he suggested) such as Soapstone extension and a circulator bus system.

Basic issue re Wiehle: Discussion of the paper's section on comparison with Town Center (Wiehle would be less dense) unleashed continued debate on the committee about what Wiehle should look like. Mike Corrigan again raised his concerns that the committee should not go much beyond the current plan (he again cited traffic congestion and the big county parking garage as discouraging TOD development). Mike said he thought TOD development was not acceptable to the larger Reston community which drew several demurrals.

The DPZ staffer present noted that the hope was to vet the various committee work with transportation experts as well as looking at broader parks and schools issues latter in the year.

The upshot of a vigorous discussion was that most Committee members viewed TOD development as important but that the paper should have stronger wording on the need to resolve transportation infrastructure problems. Although the chair was leaning toward a formal vote this was not taken.

Residential-Commercial balance: The Committee discussed this and seemed to be using a 1/1 sq ft relationship as its starting point. Some discussion as to how to encourage residential in view of the commercial orientation of the current RCIG. But no specific discussion of density bonuses for residential. (I had raised Mark Looney's Town Center Committee paper earlier re relaxing county requirements on such things as workforce housing and parking. Mark said he would like to discuss this next week.)

Some discussion about the right language to use relating to phasing in of residential development. Point is to avoid commercial building with promise of eventual residential construction that never comes about. Mark Looney urged flexibility to accommodate the market rather than firm enforceable guidelines.

Other issues raised but not resolved was about the character wanted for Wiehle, Sunrise and Sunset--through routes or neighborhood streets?

County noise standards along the Dulles Toll Road were noted as antiquated by modern building/window technology.

The need for rental apartments was raised.

Public art consistent with the Reston IPAR initiative was endorsed.

Next week: Chairman noted that he hoped that discussion of North side would envision an Arlington Courthouse area while the Southside would be "sleepier". (Comment: In view of Southside property owners interest in big FARs/density/commercial this will be an interesting discussion.)