What if HQ2 comes to Reston?

At last week’s DC Economic Club luncheon, Jeff Bezos stated that Amazon will announce the location of its second corporate headquarters—“HQ2”—by the end of the year.  The Washington metropolitan area figures prominently in Amazon’s consideration with nine sites identified as finalists.  One of the possible locations indicates it is likely to be located at the Center for Innovative Technology (CIT) near Dulles airport in the bulls-eye of the US internet.    

Regrettably, Fairfax County leaders are not planning realistically or inclusively to provide the infrastructure needed to support the promise of 50,000 new jobs dangled by Jeff Bezos resulting in an estimated 130,000 person population gain, according to the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (MWCOG).  Moreover, MWCOG expects Amazon’s arrival in the DC area to generate an additional population growth of 260,000 people region-wide in households with employees directly supporting Amazon. 

Reston and the CIT are at the epicenter of Fairfax’s development planning to support Bezos’ expected move.  They are along Metro’s Silver Line and bordered by generally low-intensity commercial development that is already being profitably redeveloped into a high-density residential-centric mixed-use urban environment. 

The county’s comprehensive plan for our masterpiece Bob Simon “planned” community—modified without meaningful resident knowledge, much less input, in recent years—is to triple Reston’s roughly 60,000 population and add about 40,000 jobs over four decades.  This is the kind of growth that Amazon will require.  This includes well over 90,000 new residents and the new jobs in its three Silver Line Metro stations and adding more than 20,000 residents to its redeveloped suburban village centers, changing them from neighborhood shopping sites into high-density mixed-use mini-urban centers.   Routinely awarded "bonus" density and development waivers are likely to drive that population growth up at least another ten percent.

Using FCPS' forecast methodology, that potential 180,000 or so population means more than 5,000 new students added to the 20,000 kids already in Reston’s overcrowded schools according to Fairfax schools.  More broadly, MWCOG estimates total added students from all Amazon-related employment at 87,000--a much higher per household student ratio than Fairfax County anticipates (0.2 vs. 0.087 students per household).  The county’s plan:  Add one elementary school and shift some boundaries.  Using the county’s forecasting methods, Reston’s citizen groups calculate that three new elementary schools and one each middle and high school will be required.   MWCOG's forecast would require a doubling of that number.

Open spaces—parks, athletic fields, woods, and lakes—are a cornerstone of Reston’s history and its planning principles.  More than 1,350 of Reston's total 10,000 acres is HOA open space while the county provides only about 110 acres of parkland in Reston.   Yet the county’s Reston plan calls for only about 12 new ballfields requiring less than 50 acres, about one-quarter the acreage mandated by its own urban parkland acreage standards.  There would be virtually no other public open spaces of consequence, maybe some small linear and pocket parks, playgrounds, and—yes—sidewalks. 

The county’s transportation plan for Reston is equally ludicrous.  In general, it hypothesizes without meaningful evidence, using a flawed methodology, and relying on unreliable self-monitoring that traffic will magically diminish as new bicycle and pedestrian facilities and high-density housing are added.   Its few substantial road improvement proposals—critically needed crossovers of the Dulles Corridor—are literally decades away and unfunded, and moving farther into the future despite a special added tax on Reston station area properties.  Finally, the Reston plan explicitly proposes no additions to public transit—none!

Nonetheless, the County is in no financial position to carry out even these insufficient plans as the delays and omissions in its transportation planning highlight.  It has insufficient reserves to buy land for schools, parks, or any other public facility, much less build them.  Moreover, it almost certainly has made generous secret tax concessions to Amazon to attract it here.  It could use its “AAA” bonding power, but the investment would be in the billions of dollars over time, put its bond rating at risk, and require substantial additional property taxes on all county residents while limiting the availability of bonds for other county needs.   And there is little land available in Reston for almost any of the needed infrastructure investments at any price. 

Moreover, as analysis of numerous research studies has pointed out, the cost of adding infrastructure to support residential development consistently exceeds the new tax revenue generated.  The result, of course, will be a sharp diminution in Restonians’ quality of life with similar, but lesser, lifestyle erosion county-wide.   

And, when it suits Jeff Bezos, Amazon will move on to “HQ3”—just as Exxon returned to Texas a four years ago—leaving behind the wreckage of the once-uplifting planned community of Reston.

RA Letter to Supervisor Hudgins re Follow-up on Recent Meetings, August 20, 2018

   RA Prc Letter Aug2018 by TerryMaynard on Scribd

CPR/RA Letter to County Staff: The Road from Nowhere, August 17, 2018

August 17, 2018

Dear Tom (Biesiadny, Chief, FCDOT):

Trust all is well your way.  

In several of our recent meetings the "Road from Nowhere" has come up.  We have asked who decided to draw the road on a map buried in the appendix of the then draft Master Plan, why this wasn't presented to the community and justified before it was added, and how such a road could be proposed that impinges on designated open space.  We haven't yet gotten answers to any of these questions, but we have been told this is just a "conceptual" road and thus we shouldn't worry about it.

It would be helpful, however, to understand exactly what this "concept" would look like in reality.  If you or your staff could provide the following information it would be most appreciated.  

Is this conceived as a two lane or four lane road?  

What is the distance between the edges of either road, including curbs, gutters, set backs, bike paths and a sidewalk on at least one side?  

How will the road compensate for the large discrepancy between the level of the ground along the conceptual road and level of the road at American Dream Way?  

Who owns all the land the road will traverse?  

Why is the County unable to identify who drew the road on the map in the first place?  Is it common for the County to be unable to say how or why official documents are drafted and approved?  

An alternative to all of the above would be to simply remove the Road from Nowhere from all maps and planning documents.  Easier and better for everyone.  

Very best regards,  Dennis 

Dennis Hays

Parks, Open Space and Athletic Fields

Discussion Leader

cc:
Fred Selden, Chief, DPZ
Leslie Johnson, DC/DPZ, Zoning
Goldie Harrison, Hunter Mill District Supervisors Office

VIDEOS: CPR-RA Meetings with County on Reston Planning and Zoning Issues

Overall Planning

 Public Infrastructure

Parks & Open Space

Transportation

Will the suburbs move to urban mass transit or to electric self-driving personal vehicles?

In this Forbes article, "Autonomous Cars Are About to Transform the Suburbs,"  Joel Kotkin--a noted community transportation planner--and Alan Berger--an MIT professor of urban design--argue that we may be changing to a different kind of suburb nationwide, one reliant on zero-emission autonomous vehicles, than the dense urban high-rises Fairfax County expects and is counting on to bail out its financial condition.  

"Americans are again heading to the suburbs in large numbers, particularly millennials.

"So rather than fight the tide and treat suburbanization as an evil to be squeezed out, perhaps a better approach would be to modify the suburban form in ways that address its most glaring environmental weakness: dependence on gas-powered automobiles. The rise of ride-sharing, electric cars and ultimately the self-driving automobile seem likely to alter this paradigm. In most other ways, suburbs are at the least no more damaging than dense cities, and they are superior in terms of air quality, maintaining biodiversity, carbon sequestration and storm water management.

"We may well be on the verge of evolving a new kind of highly sustainable, near–zero carbon form, one linked by technology, and economically (and increasingly culturally) self-sufficient. Autonomous cars will remotely park in solar-charged sheds off-site, to be called to the home through handheld devices, thus eliminating the need for garages and driveways. With safer vehicles that can see and react to situations better, roadways will be designed with much less paving to mitigate storm water runoff and flooding. Homes will have drone delivery ports built in, greatly reducing the number of daily household trips and congestion. With much less redundant paving and more undisturbed land, autonomous suburbs will expand parks, bike trails and farms, and reduce forest fragmentation. Some of the next generation of suburbs will be anchored by main street districts, some of them restored, while others will be built from scratch, as we have seen in places like the Woodlands outside Houston and Valencia north of Los Angeles."

OK, not even Reston 20/20 is ready for all that, but it should make our community and county leaders think again about their headstrong commitment to urban density in Reston and other communities like it.  It may lead to their failure, not their success in generating new county tax revenues.

The article goes on:

"Simply put, the advantages of private transportation are, for the most part, too compelling in a country dominated by long distances and dispersed development. Elon Musk recently shared a brutally honest critique of mass transit. 'It’s a pain in the ass,' he said. 'That’s why everyone doesn’t like it. And there’s like a bunch of random strangers, one of who might be a serial killer, OK, great. And so that’s why people like individualized transport, that goes where you want, when you want.'

"In fact, no regional rail system has managed to make any sort of dent in car use. Since 2000, the increase in workers driving alone has been 15 times the increase in those using transit. Even the Progressive Policy Institute, a research organization affiliated with the Democratic Leadership Council, has noted, 'The shortest distance between a poor person and a job is along a line driven in a car.'"

Later on:

"Americans continue to move, for the most part, to less congested, less dense areas with lower levels of transit service and away from the more tightly packed areas with better transit service, and autonomous vehicles will likely exacerbate this trend. By one estimate, as much as a trillion dollars of real estate value could swing to locations far from job centers that will become more attractive due to autonomous vehicles while reducing the “premium” now awarded to closer in neighborhoods and inner-ring suburbs."  All of which could mean huge losses for county coffers.

Click here to read the full article. 

Reston 20/20 Statement to RP&Z on County Reston PRC Proposal, May 15, 2017

Statement to the Reston Planning and Zoning Committee

By Terry Maynard, Co-Chair, Reston 20/20 Committee

Re the Proposed Reston PRC Zoning Ordinance Amendment

May 15, 2017

Good evening.  I am Terry Maynard, 2217 Wakerobin Lane, speaking on behalf of the Reston 20/20 Committee.  

First, thank you for taking your time to listen to the many voices of Reston on the County’s proposed PRC zoning ordinance amendment. 

Most importantly, the PRC zoning amendment proposal removes all concrete zoning constraints on high-density residential construction in Town Center, a situation that can lead to serious unforeseeable circumstances.   We must rely on Board discretion.  Just look at the Board approval given to a FAR 4, 26-story office building to replace the Town Center Office Building that is dramatically inconsistent with the Reston plan and its own TOD policy. 

As we read it, the PRC amendment would allow the addition of more than 28,000 residents to our community, virtually all in high-density housing in the half of Reston Town Center north of the toll road.   In 2010, about 8,000 people lived in the Town Center PRC after nearly a quarter century of development.  In the last 7 years, residences for another 8,000 people have been built or approved in there.  Longer term, Board approval of the zoning ordinance would allow about 45,000 people to live in Town Center.  This would be in addition to the 45,000 people or so who could be added to the non-PRC portions of Reston’s station areas under the Reston plan and other zoning codes.  

I would like to speak to you briefly about how this development will affect infrastructure and commercial development issues in Reston. 

Transportation may present the most pressing infrastructure challenge as this unfolds in the PRC.  County data shows that, of the two-dozen Board-approved Reston station area transportation projects, only one sidewalk improvement at Wiehle Station has been completed.  Of the dozen projects in the RTC PRC area, none except the Town Center Parkway tunnel has begun and one has been put on hold.  The Soapstone Connector won’t be put out for contract until 2025.  None of this includes the still concept-level intersection improvements postulated by RNAG and the absence of any planned bus transit expansion for the PRC. 

Yet station area development, including development in the RTC PRC and its approval continues unabated.

All of the additional residential development also has implications for planned commercial development in the Town Center PRC.  Approval of the zoning ordinance amendment could unhinge the planned balance between residential and commercial development there and the desirable effect it has on reducing driving.    

Worse yet, developers—never ones to miss an opportunity—could use the high, if not unconstrained, residential construction limits to leverage even higher or unlimited commercial development in the PRC.  This alone suggests the urgency of a concrete upper limit on station area PRC density, not just Board discretion. 

One particular concern in this process is the availability of essential retail facilities, not to mention amenities such as theaters, restaurants, etc., for a population approaching 90,000 in Reston’s station areas, including the 45,000 in the Town Center PRC.  Two supermarkets and one pharmacy are not adequate, and to the extent that there is a shortage of these and other essential and desirable shopping in the PRC will mean more residents driving.

All this suggests that the County and the community need to understand the implications for Reston of the zoning ordinance amendment and quite possibly amend it so that it is consistent with Reston’s vision and planning principles.  This will take time, not the head-long rush the County and Board seem to be in to get this amendment passed with three public meetings in three weeks this month. 

What’s the rush?

Based on future analysis of the implications of the allowable development for infrastructure and other community needs, some amendments to the proposal that might be considered are:

• Raising the overall residential density per acre incrementally to, say, 14 people per acre and seeing how infrastructure, commercial development, and the Reston community adjusts to that density before moving another step higher.
• Creating a fourth residential density category called “urban” for the station area that has a concrete cap on it of, say, 60-70 DUs per acre.
• Not raising the zoning cap at all until at least the current approved transportation and other infrastructure projects, such as schools, open space and parks, etc., are completed.

While these are just ideas, they and other ideas need to be considered in a thorough, systematic, and unbiased way based on a consideration of the facts in a manner that meets the needs of the community as well as the County. 

"The Absurdity of a New Reston Road Tax," Terry Maynard, Reston Connection, January 4-10, 2017

The following is the text of the subject op-ed written by Reston 20/20 Co-Chair Terry Maynard.

On December 19, while most of us were getting ready for the holidays, a bare quorum of the County’s Reston Network Analysis Group (RNAG), a group appointed by Supervisor Hudgins, met and voted by a narrow majority to endorse a new tax on Reston station area homeowners to help pay for future street improvements there.  The vote was literally no more than an endorsement by a developer-dominated group of a totally unwarranted tax that will subsidize for profit development without a single community representative from the Reston station areas affected by the prospective tax.   
 

The RNAG vote specifically endorsed a proposed Tax Service District (TSD) that imposes added property taxes of $.021/$100 valuation on all property owners—including residences—living near Reston’s Metro stations.  As laid out by the county transportation department (FCDOT), residents will end up paying about 40% of the $350 million in TSD taxes over the next 40 years—some $140 million under a set of assumptions that grossly understate the likely costs residents will pay.

Absurd County Assumptions

And why?  Because the Board of Supervisors directed FCDOT to find a new revenue source to pay for improvements of the streets in and around Reston’s station areas, of course, without asking if a new funding source were needed.  Then FCDOT generated a phony $350 million “gap” in Reston road funding over the next 40 years that could only be filled with some new tax revenue source—as directed by the Board. 

The funding “gap” is based on a number of bogus assumptions.  First, at the heart of this tax scheme is the absolutely incredulous assumption that the County is unable to re-allocate any of its current $4 billion in annual County General Fund tax revenues to improve Reston’s streets in and around the station areas.  The amount that needs to be diverted each year is less than $9 million, a sum that barely rates as a rounding error in the County budget. 

Second, if for whatever cockamamie reason the County seriously believes it can’t divert funds to improve Reston’s streets to support massive development, it could ever so slightly raise the tax rate on any of several existing County-wide tax mechanisms to generate the needed funds.  In a more perfect world, the Board could even twist developers’ arms to have them pay for all the road improvements since they alone will profit to the tune of more than one billion dollars per year over the next four decades.  Another special tax on Reston homeowners (on top of the existing community-wide special tax district charging $.047/$100 valuation to fund the Reston Community Center) or any part of them is totally unwarranted; the street improvements are merely a fabricated excuse.

Third, the TSD proposal ignores the order of magnitude growth in the taxable value of planned Reston station area development over the next four decades.  Right now, Reston’s station areas are valued at about $6 billion.  Four decades from now they will likely be valued at more than $60 billion, and maybe as much as $90 billion, based on long-term area experience.  Even without a rate increase, that means the County will collect over $11 billion in basic property taxes from Reston’s station areas over the next 40 years, an average of more than one-quarter billion dollars in Reston station area taxes per year even without the TSD.  Surely three percent of those $11 billion-plus revenues could be used to fund Reston’s road improvements.

Fourth, don’t fool yourself into assuming those new TSD tax funds will just be added to Reston’s current transportation funding level.  The bulk of the added tax revenue generated by this TSD tax stream will most likely be offset by the County’s diversion of much of its current Reston station area transportation funding to other areas of the county.   

And, once the tax is approved, station area residents will be stuck:

• This tax doesn’t require a referendum approval, just the approval of the tax-ravenous Board of Supervisors, backed by the pre-holiday endorsement of the phony RNAG group.
• There is nothing to keep the Board of Supervisors from raising the TSD tax rate—and residential tax burden—just as it has with a similar TSD in Tysons.
• Finally, there is no sunset provision on the TSD proposal.  When that initial roadway investment is completed, station area homeowners will continue to pay the TSD tax indefinitely.  

Stop the Scam:  Restonians Pay while the County Collects Forever

And there you have the massive scam of the alleged “gap” in Reston station area street improvement funding.  There really is no “funding gap.” There is just another County scheme to pick homeowners’ pockets.  It reflects the Board’s refusal to put an additional penny into Reston streets despite billions of existing and future tax dollars sources.  At the same time, Restonians will face worse traffic by virtue of the County’s explicit intent to lower traffic flow standards such that intersection delays will nearly double during rush hour.   

The notion of a Reston station area “funding gap” is a swindle perpetrated by the Board to justify the creation of another tax revenue stream unrelated to any legitimate new tax funding need.  As a Restonian, whether or not you live in a Reston station area, you need to oppose this preposterous County tax scheme. 

• You can do so by contacting Supervisor Hudgins’ office (Catherine.Hudgins@fairfaxcounty.gov) and telling her that you are against the Board’s imposition of this unnecessary and unfair tax. 
• You can also sign the petition on Change.org (https://www.change.org/p/fairfax-county-board-of-supervisors-stop-the-tsd-road-tax-on-reston-metro-station-area-residents) calling for the defeat of this absurd tax.  
• And you can testify at the upcoming RNAG community meeting in January (date & place TBD), the Board of Supervisors public hearing on the RNAG funding plan (February 28, 2017), and the Board’s public hearing on the specific TSD tax rate proposal in March (date TBD). 

Please step up and help stop this unwarranted additional special tax on Reston station area homeowners.

Terry Maynard, Co-Chair

Reston 20/20 Committee

The Proposed Reston Transportation Tax is a Fraud

“The simplest explanation is usually the best one.”  Occam’s Razor

For the better part of a year, the Fairfax County Department of Transportation (FCDOT) has been trying to persuade a group of Restonians called the Reston Network Analysis Group (RNAG) appointed by Supervisor Hudgins that some or all of Reston homeowners need to pay an added tax to improve the road networks around the Metrorail stations.   

The need to improve the roads and intersections, FCDOT says, is obvious because of all the development that will be going on around these station areas in the decades ahead and, of course, Restonians should pay at least a share for those road improvements.  In fact, FCDOT continues, we have the model established in Tysons were residents are paying added taxes to help defray the costs of roadway improvements there. 

FCDOT is so convinced of the importance of Restonians paying an added property tax to help cover the cost of these improvements that it has offered up no less than ELEVEN different tax scenarios for the resident RNAG to consider.  

All of these 11 scenarios somehow relate to how the taxes at Tysons were developed, which is irrelevant to Reston unless, unbeknownst to us, whatever features the Tysons’ model(s) have are written on a stone tablet and brought down from the mountain top.   What about the models for other redevelopment areas such as Baileys Crossroads, Seven Corners, or the linear Highway 1 re-do in Mt. Vernon?  Reston is, in fact, its own beast with its own features, needs, opportunities, issues, and goals—and it is unclear that any of these characteristics are the same as they are in Tysons.   Yet FCDOT and RNAG have never taken a minute to examine these issues.  FCDOT has just presumed that whatever fits in Tysons will fit in Reston.  

Moreover, all eleven scenarios are complex involving different types of improvements, share splits between public and private (which, of course, don’t line up with citizens normal understanding of those two terms), residential versus commercial, and so on.  The only reason to introduce all these complications is to confuse the issue of who should pay for the roadway improvements by focusing on irrelevant issues.  It is very much like a three-card Monte or shell game:  Introduce a lot of motion (or commotion) and re-direct attention to confuse the mark. 

The bottom line is that there is no compelling reason that Restonians should pay any added property or other taxes whether through a tax service district (TSD) covering the transit station areas (TSAs) or a special tax district (STD—a la the Reston Community Center STD) covering all Reston. 

Using Occam’s razor, that a simple, straightforward explanation is the best one, we believe the best answer to financing the needed roadway improvements is, “Those who benefit financially from the Reston roadway improvements should contribute financially to their implementation.”  There are three parties to this effort:  The County, the developers, and the residents.

• The County will benefit financially from new property tax and other tax flows (eg—sales tax revenues from new retail businesses) created by the new development in the TSAs.
• The developers will benefit to the tune of billions of dollars from the added rent income from their new development as well as the continuing profits from existing development.
• The residents will receive absolutely no financial benefit.

In contrast, Reston’s residents are guaranteed to see worse transportation capabilities.  FCDOT has guaranteed this by setting a lower standard for managing peak traffic flows that will not only hurt those who live in the TSAs, but those Restonians and others who travel to or through them.  Moreover, they are also guaranteed worse local bus transit service because FCDOT states that it will not increase local bus service, just move the existing routes around.  So, yes, the goal of the County is to make moving around Reston more difficult, but it still it wants to charge some or all Restonians a tax for this more limited capability.

The only reasonable and honest rationale for the new Reston transportation tax—again, using Occam’s Razor to look for a simple, straightforward explanation—is that the County Board wants to create a new property tax revenue stream that it can adjust, meaning increase, at its prerogative anytime indefinitely.   

In short, the elaborate financial calculations and manipulations by the FCDOT for the RNAG are simply a ruse—a straight-up fraud—to create a new property tax revenue stream for the County that is unlikely to be spent in full in Reston and will definitely make Reston mobility more difficult.  

Act to stop it while you can.   Write to: 

• Tom Biesiadny, FCDOT Chief
• Kristin Calkins, FCDOT RNAG Project Manager
• Supervisor Hudgins
• Andy Sigle, RNAG Chair
• Cate Fulkerson, RA CEO
• Sridhar Ganesan, RCA President