Op-Ed: Poor Parks, Poor Communities? Terry Maynard, RestonNow, April 30, 2014

“Great Parks, Great Communities” is the clichéd theme of the Fairfax County Park Authority.  And the theme may be true, but the Park Authority is promising — a promise it may well not fulfill — Tysons and Reston urban areas among the most poorly parked-served areas among the top cities in the country.
It raises the question, will poor parks mean poor communities?

As Reston Now suggests in its April 29 article, county park availability standards for the newly urbanizing areas of the Dulles Corridor are less than half of the county-wide “suburban” standard — and the Park Authority plans to put fewer parks in Reston’s station areas than in Tysons because we have parks and facilities elsewhere.

Here’s where we are in the arithmetic of public parks.  The county standards described in Tysons’ and Reston’s plans shoot for providing about 1.7 acres of park per 1,000 residents.  That’s about 154 acres of parks in Tysons and 95 acres in Reston — if fulfilled.

Now let’s see how that stacks up. A national non-profit, the Trust for Public Lands, tracks park availability annually for the 100 largest cities in the country. When Fairfax County’s urban park standard is included in the ranking of acreage per 1,000 residents, both Tysons and Reston rank in the bottom 5 percent of all the cities.

 

If Tysons and Reston achieve the county urban goal, they would bracket New York City’s Manhattan Borough near the bottom of the list. Yet Manhattan has two and one-half times the density planned for Tysons and more than three times the density planned for Reston.

Moreover, despite having some of the most expensive real estate in the country, Manhattan has been able to set aside 18.3 percent of its land for parks.  That’s more than 10 times the share planned for Tysons (1.4 percent) and more than three times the goal for Reston (5.6 percent).

And the county has no intent to meet its own standard for Reston because, as the Reston Comprehensive Plan says, “Need generated in the TSAs should primarily be met through the integration of urban parks, recreation, and cultural facilities within the mixed use developments of the TSAs. To supplement these parks and facilities, elements of the larger Reston area’s robust park and recreation system (outside of the TSAs) may be able to be improved to help meet the needs of future residents and employees.”

So, yes, the County envisions that the park and natural areas that we as Reston Association members own and pay for annually in our RA assessments will count against its obligation to meet county park requirements. It is the grinding down of Reston as a special place to live, work, and play to just another mediocre county sub-division.

But that is only half the story. The other half has to do with the availability of facilities within the parks, especially space-consuming recreational fields.

Using Manhattan has our benchmark again, we find that Manhattan has 150 athletic fields (mostly baseball diamonds) serving its 1.5 million residents — or about one athletic field for every 10,000 residents.  This benchmark is not as good that planned for Tysons:  20 athletic fields for 89,000 residents or about 4,500 residents.

Reston falls way behind both:  The planned 56,000 residents of its station areas will have “at least” (and don’t expect more) three athletic fields or one for every 18,700 residents.  That’s about half the ratio found in Manhattan. It will be the worst in the country among TPL’s 100 top cities.

The rationale, as explained by the Park Authority’s Chairman Bill Bouie, “There is so much here (in Reston) already,” says Bouie. “We don’t have nearly the assets in Tysons.”

Wait a minute!  The county athletic fields in Reston serve the 60,000 people who already live here and, as Mr. Bouie knows well, are fully utilized by Restonians and thousands of people who live beyond Reston.

In fact, a recent RCA Reston 2020 on the Baron Cameron Park master plan shows that, even with the three athletic fields the current Reston urban plan proposes, there will be no improvement in the athletic field accessibility and the certainty of a major loss of athletic field accessibility if a recreation center is built in the park.

The other athletic fields in Reston are bought and paid for by the members of Reston Association as part of their annual assessments.  The apparent expectation of the county is that the residents of Reston should build more athletic fields in their 1,200 acres of common land to fulfill the county’s commitment to the community.

The picture painted here is that the county has no intention of sustaining Reston as a model planned community and, indeed, wants to take private Reston property — RA’s common areas — so that it can meet its so-called park commitment on the cheap. Actually, most RA members would like to preserve their common areas, especially their jointly-owned natural areas, rather than turn them into athletic fields to make up for shortfalls in the County’s willingness to fulfill its obligation to the community.

It is hard to imagine a more cynical county approach to providing basic, even substandard, public park services to Restonians.  Not only will Reston’s urban residents have about the worst park availability in the country, but Restonians will be forced to absorb the overflow into their privately-held common land — and pay for it.

Soon we will be living with poor parks and a much poorer community as the result.

Terry Maynard, Co-Chairman
RCA Reston 2020 Committee

What do YOU think about the draft plan for Baron Cameron Park? Terry Maynard

Last week, the Fairfax County Park Authority staff held a public meeting at which they laid out the draft Baron Cameron Master Plan, a plan that will guide development of the park for the next decade.  It was followed by people, some representing local special interest groups, standing and saying what they wanted (or didn’t want) in the plan.  The presentation opened a 30-day public comment period on the draft plan. 

But there was no discussion about the plan, no collaborative thinking or problem solving on how Restonians as a community would propose to improve the plan. 

Monday evening, all Restonians will have that opportunity at an interactive forum sponsored by RCA’s Reston 2020 Committee.  The forum will be held at Buzz Aldrin Elementary School at 7-9PM, April 7, 2014. 

Reston 2020 will begin by summarizing key aspects of the draft Baron Cameron Park plan.  His presentation will focus on the most controversial aspects of the plan:  the off-leash dog park, the option to build a recreation center there, the reduction in rectangular playing fields, and the implications for traffic congestion on Wiehle. 

The forum will then break up into small groups to brainstorm community thinking about the plan, focusing on its strengths, weaknesses, what’s missing, and what the risks are in the plan.  After each group briefly presents its ideas to the re-convened group, everyone will have a chance to help prioritize them.  Then, in an open conversation, we will try to arrive at a consensus as to the most important points to make about the plan.  

Reston 2020 will follow up by compiling the results and sharing them with the Park Authority as a consolidated community perspective, including listing all the ideas that came out of the small groups, before the end of the 30-day comment period.

The forum aims to provide an abundant opportunity to discuss all the key issues, not just advocate a single-issue position, and reach some community solutions to controversial aspects of the park plan.

This is the community’s last opportunity to provide a Reston perspective on the draft plan.  Everyone is encouraged to come to the forum and participate in making Reston’s only district park the best it can be.

Terry Maynard

 

This post was also published in RestonNow as an op-ed piece on Friday, April 4, 2014. 

Future Watch: More Fields Per Person in Manhattan Than In Reston? RestonNow, February 11, 2014

by Karen Goff

One of the major criticisms from Reston development-watchers about the changes to the Reston Master Plan is the lack of planning for recreational and athletic space if Reston experiences a projected population boom of 30,000-40,000 in coming years.

 

 As the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors gets ready for its Tuesday meeting, where it is expected to vote on changes to the comprehensive plan, advocacy group Reston 2020 took a look at how Reston of the future stacks up with the most urban of all transit-oriented developments: Manhattan.

“The draft Reston transit station area master plan promises less than two-thirds the playing fields per capita for the totality of the station areas and less than half for the “crown jewel” of Reston—Reston Town Center,” writes co-chair Terry Maynard. . . .

Click here for the rest of this article. 

Basic Parks and Athletic Field Comparison: Reston Station Areas vs. Manhattan, Terry Maynard, Co-Chair, Reston 2020 Committee, February 9, 2014

As the draft Reston master plan for its soon-to-urbanize station areas goes to the Board of Supervisors for approval on Tuesday, it’s appropriate to take a look at how the draft plan stands up against the reality of athletic field availability in Manhattan, America’s most densely developed community.  

As a reminder, the draft Reston plan calls for a minimum of three athletic fields in each of the three station areas and, in fact, goes further by saying at least one in each station area.  This despite the fact that the County’s “urban parks framework” calls for a dozen athletic fields given the planned for population of 49,118 two or three decades hence (Scenario “G”)—which is about one-third the athletic field standard for the County’s suburban areas.   The reality of this “minimum” requirement is that it is highly unlikely that developers will give up any additional acreage (up to 3 acres per field, which could generate some $12 million per year total added developer revenues in today’s market as Class “A” office space) to accommodate the County urban standard of 12 ballfields.

So how does that compare with today’s Manhattan Island, the most densely developed of New York City’s five boroughs?  Looking at New York City Department of Parks & Recreation data, here is how Reston’s station areas in 2030-2040 timeframe stack up in comparison:

Athletic Fields:  Manhattan vs. Reston

Yes, that’s right.  The draft Reston transit station area master plan promises less than two-thirds the playing fields per capita for the totality of the station areas and less than half for the “crown jewel” of Reston—Reston Town Center.

This focused picture is just part of the rather pathetic comparison of Reston’s proposed park space compared with what already exists in Manhattan.  Here is a comparison of park accessibility in the same three areas based on percent of area devoted to public parks and acreage per 1,000 residents[i].    

  

It shows that Reston’s crown jewel—the Town Center area—will rank last in comparison with all of America’s major cities, earning a park accessibility score that is one-thirtieth, yes, 1/30^th, that of Manhattan.  The station areas as a whole earn an accessibility one-third that of Manhattan precisely because so little space will be made available for parks.

These are not the results one would expect for a “world-class” planned community of Reston and, indeed, they violate one of Reston’s basic planning principles detailed in the draft Reston plan: 

9. High quality public open spaces will be required.

Abundant open space and a range of recreational and cultural opportunities are essential components of the high quality of life in Reston.  The transit station areas and village centers should include a variety of public spaces such as a large urban central park, recreational facilities, urban plazas and greens, pocket parks, playgrounds, and other public amenities within easy walking distance for area residents, workers and visitors.  Larger active recreation areas appropriate to Reston‘s residential and commercial populations should be provided outside of the transit corridor. 

The impact, of course, will be that Reston’s parks and athletic fields beyond the station areas will be much more crowded.  Local athletic leagues will have difficulty scheduling games on athletic fields in Reston, much less in the station areas.   Reston Association’s parks, nature trails, recreational, and other facilities will be more crowded.  And RA will be forced to meet the need of the excess demand although it will gain not one acre of open space to accommodate the demand created by the new residents and employees in the station areas. 

So, contrary to the stated planning principle calling for “high quality public open spaces” throughout Reston, Restonians can expect a major deterioration of their quality of life as their public and community-owned open spaces are saturated with newcomers and little park or recreational space (maybe 20 acres) is added in the station areas.   

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[i] For the purpose of this comparison, we have included all the privately-owned park space—which are not counted in TPL’s calculations--in the Reston station areas (e.g.—President’s Park, Fountain Square, Sunrise Valley Wetlands, the prospective “town greens,” etc.) as well as the limited public park land (5 acres in Town Center North, the W&OD trail) in these calculations.