Planning the Rest of Reston, Colin Mills, RCA President, Reston Patch, May 3, 2012

Colin Mills

Phase 2 of the Silver Line has been in the news quite a bit lately.  Loudoun County has been wavering on its commitment to Phase 2.  There's been considerable debate over MWAA's plan to give a preference to Phase 2 bidders who will use a Project Labor Agreement.  There's been debate over how much money Virginia will contribute to the project.

All this uncertainty has led to doubt about whether Phase 2 will be built at all.  (For the record, RCA continues to support the completion of Phase 2 to Dulles and beyond, provided that funding plans are adopted to reduce the burden on the users of the Toll Road.  Terry Maynard explains this eloquently on the Reston 20/20 blog.)

But I've got my mind on another Phase 2 today.  Specifically, Phase 2 of the Reston Master Plan Special Study.  It's time that we get started on it.  We owe it to the citizens and the commounity to look at the future of all of Reston, not just the areas around the Silver Line.

As I've mentioned before, I am serving on the Master Plan Task Force as Bob Simon's alternate.  It has been exciting and enjoyable to look at the development that may be coming around the Metro stations (when and if they're built), and how it could change the face of Reston.

But what the Task Force has looked at - areas in the Toll Road corridor that are largely within a half-mile of the planned stations - is only Phase 1 of the process.  Phase 2 is scheduled to look at the rest of Reston - the village centers, the existing neighorhoods, the Master Plan as a whole.  It's time to get started on Phase 2.  We should take this opportunity to look at Reston as a whole, and decide what we want the future of our community to look like. . . .

Click here for the rest of Colin's blog post.