RA calls for Restonians to attend January 23rd Planning Commission meeting on Reston PRC zoning ordinance amendment

Rise up, Reston! Stop the Reston PRC density increase!

All Restonians who wish to preserve Reston as a well-planned and executed planned community must rise up now and express their disgust with the county’s proposal to increase the allowable density, potentially tripling “ONE Reston’s” population. 

On January 23, the county Planning Commission will be considering an amendment to Reston’s Planned Residential Community (PRC) zoning category to increase the allowable density from 13 to 15 persons per acre.  The zoning ordinance covers Reston’s suburban areas, including the village centers and most of Reston Town Center.  While that increase sounds relatively modest, it does NOT consider:

• At present, the Reston PRC’s density is about 18,000 people (more than 20%) below its allowable capacity of more than 81,000 people.  Reston’s growth over its lifetime, virtually all in the PRC area to date, has averaged less than 1,000 people per year.
• Up to a 20 percent “bonus” to developers for building affordable (low- and middle-income) housing that is not counted per the PRC zoning ordinance, adding capacity for another 7,400 people to live in the PRC area.
• Existing plans and zoning authority to build 40,000 new high-rise, multi-family housing units (84,000 added people) in Reston’s three transit station areas (TSAs) beyond the PRC boundaries, but affecting everyone in Reston and beyond.

All in all, these changes would allow an increase Reston’s population from about 63,000 to about 190,000 people in ONE Reston.   

At the same time, the county has not funded plans to meet Reston’s transportation, school, park, and other needs associated with this growth, even as required by its own county policies.  In fact, the Fairfax schools just rejected funding again for a new high school to meet the growing needs along the Dulles Corridor.  Yet that hasn’t stopped the county from placing another tax on Reston homeowners in the transit station areas for the “grid of streets” that only helps developers complete their projects more profitably.   

The result of this massive unplanned imbalance between growth and infrastructure will be a dramatic loss of quality of life in Reston for everyone, new or longtime resident.

In the process of moving forward, the county and our supervisor have reneged on their explicit commitment to the community to follow through with community-county staff meetings to address the surrounding the proposed Reston density increase before proceeding with legislative steps.  Their disrespect for Reston and Restonians is profound.  They see Reston as a plantation that they own and will oversee as they wish with no regard for its residents or their needs.

The Coalition for a Planned Reston (CPR) has detailed a list of ten reasons to keep the Reston PRC density cap at 13 persons per acre that includes the above and other reasons NOT to increase the density cap.  

While CPR and RA are planning to testify at the Planning Commission hearing, individual Restonians must rise up to stop this authoritarian county behavior.  Attend the Planning Commission hearing at 7PM, January 23, in the government center auditorium.  Wear your YELLOW shirt. 

Bear witness, speak out, and demand that the county meet the community’s needs as well as its own politically-driven agenda.  This may be your last chance to preserve the planned Reston we have known for more than a half century while allowing for reasonable future growth.  We need to fill the Fairfax County Government Center auditorium (12000 Government Center Parkway) with hundreds of YELLOW-shirted Restonians to have a chance to stop the county’s effort to ram this amendment through. 

RA comment on proposed Reston PRC zoning amendment and upcoming schedule

Presentation Slides: Community Meeting on the Proposed Reston PRC Zoning Amendment, September 20, 2017

   FINAL PRC Slides -Community Presentation 9 20 17 PDF by TerryMaynard on Scribd

Re-Post: Op-Ed: County’s Doomed High-Density Residential Development Strategy, RestonNow, July 31, 2017

The following is a re-post of the op-ed in RestonNow written by Terry Maynard, Co-Chair, Reston 20/20 Committee. 

Fairfax County’s development strategy of pursuing high-density residential development around Metro stations and other commercial centers (e.g. — Seven Corners, Lake Anne Village Center) will fail in its fundamental goal of generating large new tax revenues. This is due to the demonstrated fact that the cost of community services for residential services substantially exceeds the revenue it generates.

The need for massive new County tax revenues is driven primarily by the deteriorating fiduciary position of its four pension funds (civilian, police, uniformed, and education). At the beginning of the century, all four funds were essentially fully funded (97 percent to 102 percent), but they have deteriorated almost continuously since then. The FY2016 County annual financial report shows a $4.7 billion funding shortfall despite the quadrupling of County (and additional employee) contributions since 2000. That represents about a one-quarter shortfall in required funding across the four funds. This growing shortfall is why Moody’s issued a warning on the County’s AAA bond rating several years ago and the County made a commitment then to reach 90 percent funding by 2025. One obvious approach to addressing such a shortfall is to dramatically increase development that creates new taxable value. 

From Reston’s perspective, this has taken the form of two County zoning initiatives linked to the revised Reston Master Plan:

• The passage last year of an amendment to the PDC/PRM (Planned Development Commercial/Planned Residential Mixed-Use) zoning ordinances to increase the allowable density from FAR 3.5 to FAR 5.0. From a Reston perspective, this primarily affects the Herndon-Monroe and Wiehle station areas as well as the southern half of Reston Town Center. The zoning ordinance also covers Commercial Revitalization Areas (CRAs), including Lake Anne Village Center. The two ordinances focus on commercial and residential mixed-use development respectively, and the residential-focused PRM would allow up to as many as 200 dwelling units per acre (DU/AC) at FAR 5.0. No place in the Washington metropolitan area has that much density.  
• The recently proposed amendment to the Reston PRC (Planned Residential Community) which would increase the community-wide population density from 13 to 16 people per acre, about 21,000 people. More importantly, it places no limits (except Board discretion) on the number of DU/AC in “high density” development areas. This includes the Town Center north of the toll road and Ridge Heights to the south. Making the matter worse, the Reston plan was amended behind closed doors (not by the Reston planning task force) to eliminate any limits on high density multi-family development. Currently, the limit is 50 DU/AC.  

Aside from the many reasons Restonians do not want the intensity of residential development allowed in Reston, there is one vital reason for the County not to want to pursue this ultra high-density residential development strategy: The cost of community services (COCS) for residential development — especially high-density development — exceeds the tax revenues it generates. Residents require schools, streets and other transportation, parks and recreation, libraries, and much more. This is especially important in the ongoing dialogue about increasing residential density in Reston’s PRC zoned area.  

Research on this issue by the US Government, private sector, and academia is extensive and it virtually all comes to this same conclusion. All these studies highlight the importance of methodology, assumptions, other values than tax revenue in development decisions, etc., but none we have discovered suggest that residential development will ever generate a net gain in tax revenues for the County.   

Probably the benchmark study on COCS is an overview by the Farmland Information Center (FIC) of the American Farmland Trust in a public private partnership with the US Department of Agriculture last September. The overview records the results of analysis of the COCS by type of development in more than 150 communities, counties, etc., across dozens of states over more than two decades. The results of FIC’s studies show that, on average, for every dollar in tax revenues generated by tax revenues, the median residential development is a cost $1.16 in community services, a 16 percent loss. By contrast, commercial and industrial development costs $.30 in community services for every $1 generated in tax revenues, a better than three-fold tax revenue return for the County.


A second, academic “meta-analysis” of more than 100 communities across the country came to the same conclusion, but with slightly different results. It put the mean cost of residential services at $1.18 per dollar of tax revenue, and Commercial/Industrial and Agriculture/Open Space were also slightly less advantageous at $.44 and $.50 per dollar of tax revenue than in the FIC overview.

An additional important finding of this study is that the addition of 10,000 residents increases the residential ratio by one percent, that is, from $1.18/dollar to $1.192 per dollar. An implication of that finding is that the addition of 80,000 new residents to Reston’s station areas as planned would increase the $1.18-to-$1.00 ratio to $1.274 in community service costs for each dollar of tax revenue. Based on this study’s data, that expansion — when completed — would cost the County $50 million more per year in community services for Reston’s station areas than it would receive in tax revenues in 2017 dollars at current tax rates.  

This is not the answer the County is looking for if it is trying to solve a growing long-term debt obligation problem. Its alternative options are limited, however, and would cause further deterioration of Restonians’ quality of life:

• The County could offset the losses generated by the residential development by equally massive — and tax revenue positive — commercial development. The key problem with this approach is that there is little demand for new office space in Fairfax County now as growth stagnates and office space per worker shrinks. In fact, as of last December, County data shows that the office space vacancy rate was 16.8 percent, nearly 20 million square feet of vacant space county-wide. Net office space absorption last year — new leases less new vacancies — was less than 250,000 square feet of office space out of 116 million total square feet of office space. On the other hand, the more loss-generating residential development that occurs now, the less the opportunity for tax revenue-positive future office and other commercial development.
• The County could demand substantially greater proffers from developers seeking high density development. Frankly, the County has never been very good at obtaining fair value from developers as they apply for new development, including improvements in transportation, education, parks and recreation. Moreover, with the moneyed motivation of developer interests in Richmond generating legal constraints on County proffer efforts, the County’s ability to elicit proffers is increasingly limited.
• The County could massively cut Reston’s community services and those of other County residents. This is basically what is happening in Reston, especially in the station areas, and it is leading to a major loss in the community’s quality of life. The County’s Reston plan calls for one elementary school when the planned population growth requires two elementary and one-each middle and high school. The County is not even trying to live up to its own urban parks or recreational facilities policies. And the County has lowered the acceptable standard for traffic congestion in urban areas — and still added a property tax on station area homeowners to pay for the improvements.

Yet, even if the County pursues all these avenues in one way or another as it likely will, it is not clear that it could reduce the cost of Reston’s community services below the tax revenues it generates. The more it uses these tax tools, especially dense office development and reduced community services, to offset the tax revenue losses from residential development, the more Reston will fail as a planned community focused on a high quality of life. Reston’s deterioration as a planned community, both within and beyond the station areas, may well cause residential property values — and tax revenues — to stagnate, if not decline, putting the County in an even deeper financial hole because of its massive additions of high-density residential housing.  

Given the County’s current intent on pursuing much greater residential density in Reston’s station areas and beyond by amending the Reston PRC (and having already amended the PDC/PRM zoning ordinances), Restonians should make every effort at every level to prevent the County from destroying the planned community that is Reston. If nothing else, Restonians ought to highlight to the County that increasing Reston’s urban density by increasing the allowable DU/AC in the Reston PRC does not serve the County’s interests even if it serves developers.

Terry Maynard, Co-Chair
Reston 20/20 Committee

Stop "One Size Fits All" Zoning Proposal, Terry Maynard, Reston Connection, May 11, 2016

The following is an op/ed written by Terry Maynard, Reston 20/20, and published in today's Reston Connection:

Stop “One Size Fits All” Zoning Proposal

In the next few months, the County Board of Supervisors plans to approve a “one size fits all” zoning ordinance amendment that would guide redevelopment throughout the urbanizing areas of the County for decades.  It wouldn’t be too bad if the one size were a “medium” or “large,” but the Board—increasingly desperate for new tax revenues from more development—has chosen to go for XXL.  Specifically, the County’s draft zoning ordinance amendment proposes that all the county’s 20 transit station areas (TSAs), community redevelopment districts (CRDs), and commercial business centers (CBCs) be allowed a floor-area ratio (FAR) of up to 5.0.  

So what does FAR 5.0 really mean?  Literally, it means that a developer can build structures with floor space that is five times greater than the area of the parcel on which they sit.  In the real world, it means that developers can build up these Fairfax County areas to a density that is greater than any that exists anywhere in northern Virginia.  Even the massively developed Rosslyn Metro core (see photo below) only has a density of FAR 3.6 according to Arlington County (including twin towers above the Rosslyn station at FAR 10.0), about two-thirds of what Fairfax County is proposing to make available in communities and neighborhoods areas across the County. 

In general, the FAR 5.0 density zoning ordinance may be appropriate for some locations, such as a part of one of Reston’s transit station areas.  Reston’s new master plan calls for allowing FAR 4.0 (plus a bonus of FAR 0.5) for the small area immediately north of Reston’s Town Center Metro station.  But the draft amendment makes no distinction in allowable density at the station and at the ½-mile perimeter of the station area where it should taper substantially.  

Moreover, Reston’s other two station areas and virtually every other Metro station area in the County, such as the West Falls Church and Van Dorn station areas, are neither planned for nor could they reasonably accommodate density anywhere approaching FAR 5.0.  Unlike Reston’s Town Center (and Tysons), these places have no planned aspirations to become regional economic centers with huge population and employment increases—many tens of thousands—envisioned.

Even worse is the notion of redeveloping the County’s CBCs and CRDs at a density of up to FAR 5.0.  The redevelopment of these areas is almost exclusively meant to revitalize their community economic viability, not to have broader County or regional impact.  Most importantly, these areas have no walking access to Metrorail which is the key ingredient in allowing high density in TSAs.  At best, they will have bus service to link them with Metro, and they certainly can’t absorb the tens of thousands of additional autos on their local streets without massive and costly improvements. 

Worse yet, the residents of all these areas will probably have to pay a share of the cost for the new transportation improvements this intense development will create through new local taxes, so called “transportation tax service districts.”  These needs will include a new internal “grid of streets,” improvements to existing roads, and better bus transit.

Reston is facing this situation now as the County is proposing an added local real estate tax of $.025 to $.035 per $100 valuation.  One version extends the tax district to all of Reston although only about one-quarter of Reston along the Dulles Corridor is in the TSAs where the road work and development would occur.  Elsewhere, in southern Fairfax County, for example, a comparable proposal could be a Richmond Highway-long tax district from Alexandria to Ft. Belvoir for roads built or improved only in the six small CRD areas designated for redevelopment along that route.  There is no reason the County wouldn’t apply this warped you-pay-for-it reasoning everywhere in these redevelopment zones.

Tysons already has such a transportation tax district.  The tax rate there started at $.04 per $100 valuation in 2013, but increased to $.05 per $100 valuation the following year.  No doubt Tysons’ rate will continue to rise (in addition to the increased taxes from higher valuations on property there) and the proposed Reston “teaser rate” will almost certainly increase quickly soon after the Board of Supervisors approves it. 

The insult to local communities is that the County’s explicit intent is to increase traffic congestion in these redeveloped areas.  Yes, the County’s plan for all this transportation tax spending is to increase congestion explicitly to discourage people from driving in, out, or through these areas.  The goal for these “urbanizing” areas is to increase driving delays at each intersection by up to 50 seconds from current County standards under its new “urban guidelines.”  Four traffic lights will mean more than three minutes of added delay, even for people just passing through these areas, during the rush period whether on Reston Parkway or Richmond Highway. 

Adding injury to insult, all these funds would be used to subsidize the profits of the local corporate developers who need the new and improved transportation capabilities to make ever larger profits on their new development.  Residents would not receive one dollar in financial or any other benefit from these new taxes. 

By our calculation, the developers in Reston’s TSAs will likely make more than $50 billion in profits in 2016 dollars over the 40 year plan timeframe and yet Reston residents are being asked to contribute about one-seventh of the $2.6 billion needed for roadway improvements using County costing assumptions.   That translates into more than $8,800 per household over 40 years with moderate inflation.  Alternatively, the developers could pay for all these roadway improvements from their $50 billion in profits and still—by our calculation—their return on investment for their $34 billion in new development would be 20 percent.  We would anticipate comparable results elsewhere in the County.

The County’s response to the above analysis is that the zoning ordinance amendment proposes to limit the allowable zoning density to the level allowed in the district’s plan and “other recommendations in the adopted comprehensive plan, in furtherance of the purpose and intent of this district.” 

What could be wrong with that?

First, “other recommendations” is a good sized hole through which to drive higher development density; it has been done routinely with less of a legal loophole.

Second, some of the area plans affected by this zoning proposal do not have a FAR density limit at all.  They are “form based” plans that describe what the redeveloped area should look like.  The only out from a FAR 5.0 zoning is the “other recommendations” phraseology, which means little constraint at all.

Third, Virginia’s “Dillon Rule” law prohibits any reduction in zoning authority once given; that density becomes a “by right” authority of the landowners.  So an overly ambitious zoning decision mistake once made cannot be undone.  The opportunity is all for the developers; the risk is all for the residents.

Most importantly, with the County’s new “Fairfax Forward” Comprehensive Plan amendment process—which may be better called “Fast Forward”—the barriers to increasing an area or project plan’s density are virtually non-existent.  The state-mandated Comprehensive Plan, which covers all areas of the County in some depth, provides only a vision and guide to each area’s development that, unlike the zoning ordinance, is a policy document and not legally binding. 

The County Board’s goal in the Fairfax Forward process is to expedite the amendment of existing local plans with high-density plan amendment proposals, which means limiting and controlling community input.  There will be no more time consuming task forces, charrettes, workshops, endless public meetings, and other such community input mechanisms that the County has used previously in its Area Plan Reviews to re-vamp community-wide plans.  And the approval of project-specific plan amendments will be even more tightly controlled.   Still, the Fairfax Forward process documentation reads like a civics lesson in public participation, including an extensive “Public Participation Toolkit” no less, but public participation is schedule-driven, mechanistic, and generally ignored. 

Once the plan amendment has been approved, the ensuing legally binding high-density zoning approval by the same actors will soon follow.  Suddenly a TSA, CBC, or CRD area or project originally planned at FAR 3.0 through the old process becomes planned at FAR 5.0 even if no mass transit is anywhere around, its related zoning amendment application approved, and construction is underway.

We strongly urge all of the County’s citizens associations, homeowners associations, neighborhood civic groups, and any local entities that might remotely be affected by this proposed zoning ordinance amendment to communicate with their supervisor their disapproval of this one-size-fits-all approach to zoning.  It will only increase local congestion, environmental damage, and taxes while disrupting viable neighborhoods and communities, and provide billions in County tax welfare to already highly profitable development corporations. 

And please take the time to testify at the Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors hearings on this zoning proposal, now scheduled for 8:15PM, May 25, and 4PM, June 21, respectively at the County government center. 

Terry Maynard, Co-Chairman

Reston 20/20 Committee

The FAR 5.0 Zoning Ordinance Amendment, A Reston Perspective: Its Meaning, Appearance, and Some Impacts

   Brief on FAR 5 Zoning Ordinance--UPDATED

The County and Reston’s Future Urban Growth: A Broader Look (Corrected), RestonNow, September 17, 2015

As noted in RestonNow's presentation of this op-ed, there were material errors in the various calculations made in the latter half of the op-ed.  The following is a fully corrected version of that op-ed.  The author apologizes for any inconvenience caused by the earlier inaccurate article. 

The County and Reston’s Future Urban Growth:  A Broader Look

A few days ago, I wrote an op-ed published here on the County’s efforts to increase the allowed population density in Reston and double the permitted zoning density in Transit Station Areas (from FAR 2.5 to FAR 5.0, plus a 0.5 FAR bonus for affordable housing), including Reston’s three stations.    

Aside from allowing major density increases here, these proposed changes affect other types of County “districts”, such Community Business Districts, Commercial Revitalization Districts, and Commercial Revitalization Areas elsewhere in the County.  These include Baileys Crossroads, Seven Corners, McLean, Merrifield, Lake Anne (yes!), Annandale, Springfield, and most of the Richmond Highway area.  And, of course, all the areas surrounding the County’s Metrorail stations.   And we already have reliable commentary that developers intend to maximize density in at least one of these “districts” once the zoning law is changed.

All these areas would now be incorporated into the zoning code as either Planned Development Commercial Districts (PDCs) or Planned Residential Mixed-Use Districts (PRMs), the difference being the predominance of commercial or residential uses.   The density caps may be approved if the County “is implementing the density/intensity and other recommendations of the comprehensive plan or any other design guidelines endorsed by the Board.”  “Any other guidelines;” that’s a hole as large as a skyscraper.

The adding of these “districts” to the PDC or PRM categorizations and upping the allowable density is all part of the Board of Supervisors’ strategy to allow massive urbanization of Fairfax County over the next several decades.   Not just the Reston you know, but the County you know would be completely different if market conditions permit.  

In fact, early this year the Board approved a new County “Strategic Plan to Facilitate the Economic Success of Fairfax County” that calls for this urbanization of Fairfax County.   The plan was developed by the County’s Economic Advisory Commission and its panel represented just about every County “sector” except residents, the people who pay more than half of the County’s taxes and elect its Board.  As you might expect, however, the strategic plan cynically states that the County’s vision is “To protect and enrich the quality of life for the people, neighborhoods and diverse communities of Fairfax County….”  But who needs them in preparing the plan?  What value could they possibly add?

The strategy makes these two critical changes in what we know as Transit Oriented Development (TOD) areas—“the half-mile circle”--around Metro transit stations:

Section 2.2.a: "Explore creation of 20 Minute Neighborhoods where a variety of housing options and jobs are linked by high capacity transit to support clusters of opportunity and innovation." A "20 Minute Neighborhood" is a ONE-mile ring from the Metro stations, doubling the current HALF-mile globally recognized “walkability” ring.  But that’s OK, we’re Fairfax County; we don’t need to be guided by global experience with human behavior.

Section 2.3.b: "Include the concept of expanded Transit Oriented Development (TOD) in future planning efforts by increasing the radius distance recommended for higher densities from ¼ mile to at least ½ mile around mass transit stations, such as Metrorail, light/heavy rail, or other rapid transit stations."  Like the preceding, this doubles the distance for the highest density development and the commercial vs. residential focus.  In general, density should taper from the station to the TOD ring boundary.

Not only does the County plan to double densities throughout transit station areas, it plans to double those densities at double the distance from the stations, changing each TSA area from ¾ square mile to more than 3 square miles.  And, yes, it expects you to walk a mile to catch Metro.   

All told, that offers up as much as 438 MILLION gross square feet (GSF) of potential development (5,280SF² X  3 SqMi X FAR 5.0) at each County Metro stop where, in Reston, we currently have about 63 million GSF (FAR  about 1.9) in Reston Town Center, including Town Center North, a more than seven-fold increase in density.   If that were to be developed with 80% of that space focused equally on office and residential uses (175 million SF each, the rest in open space and other job uses), that would allow 580,000 office workers and 146,000 new housing units with nearly 292,000 residents in each transit station area using current County high-density office worker and residential space planning guidelines.  

Yes, that much development.

But here is what’s important:  That strategic plan is just a plan whose absurd values can be reduced or ignored at any time.  Even development potential laid out in the County Comprehensive Plan of which the Reston Master Plan is a part can be reduced at any time.  What cannot be reduced—as the Virginia Supreme Court told Fairfax County years ago—is development potential authorized in the zoning code.  Once density, measured by floor-area ratio (FAR), is embedded in the zoning code, the property owner has “by right” authority to develop the property to its limits subject to other constraints in the code (open space requirements, etc.).  

And that is why this proposed change to the County zoning code is so critical to Reston’s and many other County communities’ future.  

It is time for Reston’s community leaders at Reston Association, Reston Citizens Association, and the developer-dominated Reston Town Center Association to act on behalf of Restonians, just as other community groups around the County have been doing to protect their communities.  Aside from these two RestonNow postings, I have been in contact with all three groups to point out what is going on and asking them to represent Reston’s interests to the Board. 

All Restonians need to make their views known to Reston’s leaders and to the Board of Supervisors before we become locked into outrageous development that destroys the character of this Reston planned community as well as other PDC and PRM areas in the County.  Moreover, we need to tell the Board that the people of our County need to be involved as early in any such proposed changes as the business interests who desperately want them.

Terry Maynard

Reston 2020 Committee