Reston 20/20 Comments on latest JAG proposal for Tall Oaks Village Center

From:  Tammi Petrine 

• Jul 18 at 11:33 PM

To:  plancom@fairfaxcounty.gov  

       frankdelafe@comcast.net

CC:  goldie.harrison@fairfaxcounty.gov 

        cate@reston.org

RE:  PRC C-020/SE 2016-HM-012 – TALL OAKS DEVELOPMENT COMPANY, LLC AND TALL OAKS COMMERCIAL CENTER LLC

Dear Fairfax County Planning Commissioners,

I would like to refute several of Mark Looney’s statements made at the Tall Oaks hearing last Thursday that were very cleverly crafted to misrepresent some of the circumstances regarding the Tall Oaks redevelopment effort.  From my perspective as a very alert, active community member for the last 6 years of Reston master planning, I have witnessed similar tactics over and over.  

Very few of us citizens have either the time or the knowledge to protest the enormous development that Fairfax Co. in general and Reston in specific are undergoing by attending multiple meetings and hearings.   I was encouraged at this hearing to hear good questions coming from some commissioners that signal that perhaps there is a modicum of hope to reign in some of the outrageously poorly designed projects.  The Tall Oaks Village Center is such a beast.

• Tall Oaks Village Center plan as presented now is neither a village center in spirit nor design.

o   There is not enough retail to qualify.  8500 square ft. is ridiculously small.  The question was asked of Looney: How many stores would 8500 sq. ft. accommodate?  His answer between 8 – 10.  8500 / 8 = 106.25 sq. ft.   Info from brief online search: An average 7/11 in this country is between 2400 – 3000 sq. ft.  The average size small restaurant that seats 58 is 2550 sq. ft.  The required work space alone for a small bakery would be 1500 sq. ft.   Retail and seating spaces would be extra.  A small ice cream retail shop with no seating needs 400 sq. ft. (Check out this link for more info on required sq. footages for other types of stores: http://info.linearretail.com/topic/average-store-size-for-ice-cream-store)  I think you get the idea.  PS: We would be thrilled with 8 - 10 stores!  Please require more retail square footage to make that possible.  The reason Reston was planned with 5 Village Centers is to make it walkable in the medium density areas with enough parking to accommodate the SFH residents who would likely drive to designations.

 

o   The outdoor community space is contrived and too small.  The county staff is abrogating the required backyard 200 sq. ft. per unit, claiming that there is community space for the owners to use instead.   Using grandiose terms like ‘promenade’ for a sidewalk does not make the proposed space either usable or sufficient for community gatherings for even the new # of units proposed for Tall Oaks let alone the wider neighborhood!  The closest existing neighbor is an assisted living center yet this developer claims to be serving that neighbor by providing fitness equipment in the public area.  Seriously?  A person is not in an assisted living center if s/he can jog outside to do stretches, etc.  What would be appropriate and appreciated is an adult-scale row of cocoon swings (with backs and arms).  The water feature with surrounding benches and children’s’ climbing area are great for intergenerational activity.  However, the outdoor congregating area is too small for concerts, puppet shows or other entertainment/meetings needed to qualify for community meeting space.

 

o   The public parking is totally unreasonable and inadequate.  There is NO adjacent street parking for this site.

 

o   Can you imagine 2 public bus lines (RIBS & Fairfax Connector) turning down your internal narrow residential access street on a regular basis to accommodate in internal bus stop?  One glance at this plan shows the inadequacy of the layout and over-crowded site plan.  I am astonished that this ever made it through the staff review!

 

• Traffic in this area is already catastrophically impacted by arrival in Metro.   

• In the AM, when existing residents of this area attempt to exit neighborhood going southbound onto Wiehle, the cars already backed up from the Sunset Hills Road intersection prevent  left turns: Tall Oaks residents have zero space to merge.  Light cycle after light cycle provides no relief. 

• The Tall Oaks neighborhood east of Wiehle which includes this new JAG development has NO other exit.  If the developer wants to add well over 100 more living units to the mix, he could provide another northbound-only exit to Wiehle.   A community architect met with Robert Simon about this dismal plan before Simon’s death and went over the plan to provide such an exit.  He also made a trip over to FDOT to discuss this and was assured this would doable.  JAG wanted nothing to do with it and ended the conversation.

• Mr. Looney alluded to the idea that Reston Association’s own Design Review Board had given its blessing to this plan.  Please realize that the RA DRB has NO influence on the content of the plan; it can only regulate the external finishes and details.  It IS the job of the Fairfax County planning and zoning staff to regulate the major details of the plan re: Village Center requirements, parking, building clearances, canopy cover, etc.  You heard multiple issues with insufficient info re: traffic and clearances from just your few questions.  How did this ever get approved for your review?

• Mr. Looney told you JAG had spent two years and held 54 community meetings of one type or another before arriving at this plan.  Yes, JAG started out with a slightly different plan and was clearly shocked by the idea that Reston was a planned community with specific requirements.  The number of advertised, public meetings were minimal.  Mr. Looney cited one such meeting sponsored by Supervisor Hudgins in the empty Giant.  Let me tell you about that meeting.  (BTW, Reston Association has always generously allowed developers to hold meetings in its state-of-the-art conference center.  In addition, the new supervisor’s office has a large appropriate conference/meeting room so the location was one that JAG selected voluntarily.)

This spring’s last public meeting was a classic ‘check the box’ offering but with a couple of twists:  The space was dark and freezing cold.  JAG had set up a buffet of food (?) but did not have either adequate lighting, heat or enough folding chairs to accommodate  even ½ of those to who turned out to hear JAG’s long awaited “new” proposal that was supposed to answer previously defined problems.  JAG had provided 4 or 5 construction lights on tripods to light the ‘meeting space’ which was bounded by tape stretched between roof support posts.  They had a slide show but NO microphone.  The kicker was that the generator that provided the power for the lights and projector/computer was so loud that no one could hear a thing.  Repeated requests for speakers to talk/yell loud enough for everyone to hear failed.  

To add insult to injury, the time limitations on the evening meeting prohibited many folks who came to the meeting from asking questions or giving comments except for one current tenant of the shopping center who is the owner of the nail salon.  He spoke at length TWICE denying others a turn.  You should know that at previous meetings, he and other tenants had railed against the former owner, detailing how horribly they had been treated and leaving no question as to why other tenants had fled the center.  Now at this meeting, Mr. Nail Guy lifted the barricade tape and made his way to the front of the seating area to inform us how wonderful this current JAG plan was and how we needed to support it as scary guys were now casing his business and he was afraid of being robbed.  He expounded that we would never get anything better and he was sick of waiting, etc.   Imagine our surprise when it was disclosed that JAG had offered him a prime space in the newly acquired office building!   

 

This meeting was manipulated for maximum effect by Looney and JAG.  There is a recently vacated restaurant space two stores down from the Giant space that was adjacent to an operating business.  It has low ceilings and JAG could’ve run an extension cord from next door to provide a satisfactory space with lighting and a microphone where folks could see, hear and speak.  Nope.  JAG wanted to showcase an empty grocery store cavern to make us believe that retail would fail in this location.  Barbara Byron of the Fairfax Revitalization office was sitting right in front of me.  Something Looney said in his remarks set her off.  She told the lady next to her that something was inaccurate.  She made a beeline for him after the meeting but I was never able to discern the issue that so angered her.  I would love to know.

The community is not responsible for the time JAG is taking to come up with a decent plan...  You heard Looney insinuate that we are the problem because we cannot make up our  minds.  He blames the victim.  It is not Restonians holding up progress but rather JAG’s inability to accept that a PRC means something out of their typical realm.  We pay a high price for living in Reston.  For that, we expect that our community remain true to the master plan.  This iteration fails in numerous respects. 

The types of housing proposed take up too much space and the number of units is too high.  Living spaces that are smashed together with minimal clearances/driveways/garages/sidewalks are not what should be approved.  The result optimizes profit at the expense of all in the Reston community, new residents and existing neighbors.  Would you want to live in a development billed as a Village Center with insufficient retail, minimal open space, walls of fences and alley-way type streets, limited parking, already terrible traffic where you are smashed into a ‘cluster’ devoid of any of the requirements of a planned community?  Will this development provide a long-term success for Reston or for just the pockets of Mr. Looney and JAG?  Does this plan in any way satisfy the requirement of a Village Center?  The answer is unequivocally “NO!”

I have lived in Reston for over 40 years, have attended over 600 planning meetings and know what is required to keep our community viable.  Slowly the continued approval of poorly conceived projects is killing our gem and ultimately Fairfax County’s tax revenues.  Please send this iteration of JAG’s plan back to the drawing board.  It is not ready for prime time.

Thank you.

Tammi Petrine

Co-Chair, Reston 2020

reston2020.blogspot.com

703.390.0577

JAG's redevelopment plan calls for the end of Tall Oaks as a Reston Village Center.

Jefferson Apartments Group (JAG) submitted their redevelopment plan for the Tall Oaks Village Center (see overview and embedded plan below) to the county about three weeks ago. An examination of the plan suggests it is no way consistent with the Reston Master Plan guidance on Village Centers nor does it satisfactorily address community concerns expressed by the RA Board of Directors and the Tall Oaks community.

What JAG has proposed is a multi-family residential development with the equivalent of a convenience center.   In fact, the 7,000 SF of retail space in two small buildings is less space than is occupied by the current few tenants of the existing shopping center.  

The JAG proposal fails to meet the following village center design principles laid out in the latest Reston Master Plan:

 

As much as our late founder focused on the importance of plazas in village centers, the failure of the JAG to provide any space that might be called a plaza is abysmal.  At best, there is a narrow "green" part way down the middle of the proposed development that will become little more that a dog waste dump.

 

There is absolutely no transition in the proposed village center redevelopment to the neighboring areas.  The entirety of the residential development is 45'-50' high.  The effect is to create a wall of mid-rise development as one enters the Tall Oaks and Bentana Woods area along North Shore Drive, hanging there like a fortress on the hilltop above Wiehle Avenue.

In a letter to Supervisor Hudgins, the RA Board made a straightforward declaration:  JAG's plan "falls woefully short of meeting even minimum standards sought for a village center.”   President Graves continued:

The existing elderly housing residents should be supported in the Village Center's design, amenities, and uses.  An amount and mix of commercial uses to serve the surrounding community should remain.  The community has an opportunity to transform this nearly vacant  plot of valuable Reston land into an enduring treasure that will highlight our stature as a premier "place to live."  Let us not squander this opportunity.

But squander they did.  The most we can see that JAG did in response was to add a second small retail building near the village center entrance and shift the blocks of residential buildings around so the same limited green space looks like a narrow lawn and asphalt spine through the center of the development.  There is no plaza or central green that serves as a neighborhood focal point; what is proposed barely serves the development.

And the Tall Oaks Village Center neighborhood very thoughtfully surveyed their neighbors and offered some constructive suggestions for improving the redevelopment plan, including a presentation presenting their findings.  According to RestonNow, these include:

•  Require a minimum of 10,000 square feet of retail. The retail that is currently operating successfully at Tall Oaks, to include Paisanos, Paradise Nails, Fur Factory, Pho 75, Vocelli, Kumon Learning, and Tall Oaks Veterinarian easily fill the square footage. They have expressed interest to stay and have been successful for years in the village center. 

•  Require community green space/meeting space in a village or plaza-like setting.

• Require adequate parking so overflow parking isn’t along North Shore or it becomes impossible for customers to park for the retail services.

• Require a traffic study and feasibility of an exit onto Wiehle westbound.

• Require design of housing and retail building fit into the community and the Reston nature feel.

• Push for LEED certifications, green roofs, reuse of rain water, etc.

• Consider building above retail if needed.

• Require plaza/village space, multi-generational gathering space.

The submitted JAG plan falls short in just about all, if not all, of these areas of community concern.

So what we are left with is the conclusion that the public meetings held by JAG were just a large-scale sham to make the community think that they were listening when, in fact, they cared little about what the community thinks is important in retaining Reston's and their neighborhood's character and vision.  The meetings were merely a public relations gambit with a dash of a sales job thrown in on the minor modifications they conceded.  Indeed, here is what JAG's attorney says about the development in his "letter of justification," including typos:

The development willbe focused around a new plaza/open space area offering leisure and community spaces to attract residents from neighboring clusters to visit the development, enjoy time with friends and family, and patronize commercial services. Particular attention has been paid to enhancing the Property's pedestrian circulation system to and through the Property, with strong emphasis. on improving its relationship to the adjacent office building and assisted living facility. Indeed, the Applicant'B design of the plaza area includes benches and .outdoor seating/tables to encourage the assisted living facility's senior population to enjoy modest exercise and engage in "people watching" in ways the current retail center configuration does not permit. The Applicant proposes an off-leash dog walk area, climbable structures for kids and other amenities that will be available for use by residents of the surrounding clusters. Similarly, the Applicant's plans include improvements to the existing trail network linking the Property to various Reston Association facilities, including walking and biking trails and the Tall Oaks pool across North Shore Drive. The Applicant's design proposes to maintain the existing vehicular ingress and egress points while vastly improving the pedestrian environment, a key component ofthe original Village Center concept.

The attorney has the right words; the developer just doesn't have a product that meets them.

The specifics of the JAG plan call for the construction of 154 residential units allocated as follows:

• Two 35-unit four-story (plus "penthouse") condominium buildings (50 feet tall),
• 50 "2 over 2" multi-family units in the center of the tract (50'), and
• 44 4-story  townhouses (45') mostly around the perimeter of the tract.
• Two new small retail buildings (3,500 GSF each) near the existing privately-owned office building, which will be retained.

If the proposal is approved, Reston will have lost one of its village centers to a housing development, despite the fact that village centers are ostensibly the focal point of our various neighborhoods across this once-planned community.

JAG expects the redevelopment to take about 36 months to complete if it is approved.

JAG's Submitted Plan Overview for Redevelopment of Tall Oaks Village Center

   Tall Oaks PRC Plan (1st Submission 2015-09-08) by Terry Maynard