New RCC Facility Won’t Go to Referendum in 2015 News, RestonNow, January 16, 2015

by Karen Goff — January 16, 2015 at 11:00 am

Reston Community Center will not send the idea of a new indoor recreational facility to a community referendum in 2015, RCC Executive Director Leila Gordon said.

RCC’s Board of Governors has been discussing since February 2013 the idea of adding a new recreation center with a 50-meter indoor pool. 

RCC’s current indoor pool, at Hunters Woods, is more than 35 years old and need of modernization, the board of governors says.

The pros and cons have been debated at a series of sometimes contentious community meetings. A feasibility study by Brailsford & Dunlavey, completed in 2013, said the facility would cost about $30-40 million if RCC built it on land donated by the Fairfax County Park Authority at Baron Cameron Park.

Last June, the park authority approved changes to the Baron Cameron Park Master Plan, incorporating the rec center as a future option at the 68-acre park.

The board is also considering the area known as Town Center North as a potential site.
RCC is not in position to have a referendum this year, Gordon said, because county planning for Town Center North has not been completed. . . .

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Several studies by RCA and its community planning committee, Reston 2020, have pointed out that

• the Reston community should not be taxed for a county recreation facility (& there are county rec centers in every other supervisorial district), 
• the construction and operating costs are likely to be substantially higher than the RCC consultant projects,
• the recovery rate for operational expenses of a Reston rec center will not be "successful" using criteria established by the RCC consultant and experienced at all the other rec centers (80% or more of operating expenses), and
• any Reston rec center, if built, needs to be centrally located and not take up already well used public park space (at least 2 soccer fields at Baron Cameron Park) with Town Center North being the preferred site.