URGENT: Community Meeting Tonight on Massive Redevelopment at Wiehle and Sunrise Valley

Your support is needed at a community meeting this evening (Monday) at 7PM in the North County Government Center to discuss the massive redevelopment proposed at the southeast corner of Wiehle Avenue and Sunrise Valley Drive.  

TF Cornerstone is proposing three new buildings on this property, to include a 29-story residential building, a 14-story commercial building, and an 8-story residential building; the two smaller buildings currently on the property will remain.  The 29-story and 14-story buildings will dwarf the neighborhoods at this intersection, as they are immediately across the street from single family homes and multiple townhouse clusters.

If approved and built, this development will house over 2,600 new residents and employees, overwhelming an already-packed Sunrise Valley Drive.  There simply are no/no road improvements that could even remotely address this increased level of traffic density.  Eastbound traffic on Sunrise Valley is already so backed up in late afternoon that it's nearly impossible to turn out of the Upper Lake Drive on either of its intersections with SVR.  (Upper Lake is a horseshoe-shaped road.)  

TF Cornerstone has invited all affected neighbors to a community meeting on Monday, August 26 at 7 PM at the North County Government Center community room (1801 Cameron Glen Drive in Reston.   If you know of other individuals or groups who would be interested in engaging on this proposal, please feel free to forward this post to them.

The company is already on the Fairfax Planning Commission's schedule for a public hearing on September 25, 2019 and has told residents that it is working to schedule a Board of Supervisors public hearing on October 15, 2019. A copy of the development plan and proffer statement for the rezoning application are included, below.  
 

https://liquidfiles.cooley.com/link/Z0X56q7bKVVyOMTQpI0ni6
https://liquidfiles.cooley.com/link/Gex8fsJlSpT3PxZmSVGGZb

In addition, there are two posts on Nextdoor by Upper Lake neighbors who met with RA and with TF Cornerstone's land-use attorney that provide additional background info for you (see links below).  It is useful to note that one of my Upper Lake neighbors replied on Nextdoor that she had never gotten a notice from TF Cornerstone about this meeting.

Meeting with TFC's attorney

Meeting with RA

Developers have the Wiehle Avenue Metro surrounded, Washington Business Journal, October 5, 2015

WBJ's Michael Neibauer provides an excellent round-up of the various re-development schemes underway around the Wiehle Metro station, all of them except Comstock's BLVD residential tower in the paper planning stage.  Most of the proposals focus on residential development, not office development, recognizing the huge overhang of vacant or available office space in Fairfax County and across the metro area  (approaching 20%, direct and indirect vacancies and availability).  This is especially important in the Wiehle area where, unlike Reston Town Center, the Reston Master Plan calls for a higher mix of residential than office space and more moderate overall densities.

Here is how the article begins:

Despite Metro’s troubles of late, developers have not lost confidence in the lure of the Silver Line to draw residents to the Dulles corridor.

Case in point: Wiehle-Reston East, where no fewer than eight projects are currently underway, or planned, totaling nearly 3,000 new residential units. . .

Wiehle-Reston East, according to Metro, “continues to be Silver Line’s commuting powerhouse.” The terminus of the line’s first phase surpassed first-year ridership projections, with upward of 14,000 daily weekday users, by far the most of any Silver Line station.

Developers are banking on that surging growth, adding thousands of residential units to an area that, until recently, was largely comprised of mid-rise office and light industrial uses.

One small nit to pick:  Neibauer cites JBG's redevelopment of Reston Heights--"less than a mile away"--as part of the Wiehle redevelopment.   It is, in fact, across Reston Parkway from the soon-to-be built Town Center Metro station and is part of the Town Center transit station area, not Wiehle.

Click here for the rest of this article, including a brief description of each of the eight projects.

 

Silver Line at Wiehle to Have Planned WORST Service on Metrorail.

Dr. Gridlock writes about the new WMATA plan to change Metrorail scheduling to reduce congestion on the Blue Line.  He concludes his article with the following paragraph:

Under this (WMATA) proposal, Metro estimates, the number of cars in service on the Orange Line in the peak direction would drop from 78 to 64. The average number of passengers per car would rise from 91 to 111, tying the Orange with the Silver Line for most passengers per car, in the Metro estimate.

Of course, this doesn't consider the almost daily delays on Metrorail, many of them on the Silver Line.  So this is the BEST CASE SCENARIO.  A two-minute delay with this planned schedule would mean nearly 140 passengers on the train at Wiehle.  A five-minute delay would mean 175 passengers. 

For this service, Dulles Toll Road users are paying $3 billion (plus oodles of interest) for the Silver Line's construction and the taxpayers of Fairfax County are paying roughly another one billion dollars.  And that doesn't count other federal, state, and local contributions to the line's construction. 

Wiehle Station Metro users pay the highest fares in the Metrorail system.

This is Reston 2020's 2,000th post in its 5-1/2 year history in the blogosphere looking after the community planning interests of Restonians!  And more posts are on their way.

A really nifty article and graphic called Metrorail Revenue by Station--Visualized!  at Plan-It Metro shows that the people who use our first Reston Metrorail station pay the highest average fares of any users on the Metrorail system no matter the time of day. 

• On an all day average, the 8,137 users of the Wiehle station pay $4.34 per entry, the highest anywhere on the Metrorail system.  The second highest average fare goes to the Vienna station at $4.08 per passenger.  In fact, those are the ONLY two stations--both in Fairfax County--that average more than $4.00 per entry in the entire Metrorail system.

• During the morning peak period, the average 5,079 Wiehle station users pay $5.36 per user, the only users on the Metrorail system who pay more than $5.00 during the AM peak period.

• During mid-day, Wiehle station users again pay the highest fares in the system at an average of $3.38 per user, just two cents ahead of their Vienna station counterparts.

• During the afternoon peak period, Metrorail users entering the Wiehle station again pay the highest fare at a $5.18, the only average fare system-wide that exceeds $5.00.

• And, finally, in the slack evening period, Wiehle station entrants again pay the highest average fares in Metrorail at $3.44, slightly ahead of their Vienna counterparts at $3.33 per person average.

So those who choose not to use the Dulles Toll Road because of the abusive charges to cover the building of the Silver Line also face the highest fares in the Metrorail system, morning, noon, and night.

Why?

Here's the interactive graphic:

Successful Clarabridge expands Reston office space, and provides another lesson in office space planning.

BIZNOW reports that Reston's Clarabridge, a young social media marketing research firm, is expanding its office space next to the Wiehle Metro station by about 40% to accommodate 80 new employees within the next year.  Great!  It is precisely the type of high-tech start-up that Reston wants in its emerging Silver Line transit station areas. 

Here is a little of what BIZNOW has to say:

Clarabridge will increase its 250-person workforce by 40% next year and has just doubled its Reston HQ. Naturally we wanted to hear more, so we stopped by the software firm right in the middle of moving day. . .

CEO Sid Banerjee . . . says Clarabridge’s growth is coming from large customers like DIRECTV, Walmart, and Best Buy that want to know what people are saying about their products and services. Clarabridge, launched by Sid over seven years ago, pulls customer feedback from social media and from surveys and call center data and turns it into recommendations. He says the company is on the road toward an IPO in the next few years.  . .

Sid, trying out a treadmill desk, says revenue has grown 55% and head count has grown 50% this year. That's why the company took another floor in the Reston building where it’s been for several years. The company will occupy both floors, doubling to 42,000 SF. The new space allows the company, which also has offices in San Fran, London, and Spain, to hire roughly 80 more people in the next year. . . 

Its new floor, which formerly housed a government contractor, was also redesigned with Silicon Valley in mind. (SVP) Emily (Markmann) toured 28 startups and midsize companies, including Salesforce and Etsy, to get ideas. Those ideas included private and open collaborative spaces, private rooms, exposed floors and ceilings, and large colorful disks hanging from the ceiling that control noise. . .

From an office space perspective, Clarabridge is an excellent example of what future office space will look like, especially in the high tech industry Reston and the County are pursuing.  

And, oh yes, the 42,000 square feet of space will serve 330 employees--250 current and 80 prospective.  Getting out our slide rule, we find that the space allows 127 square feet of space per employee--which we presume are "leasable square feet."  As we pointed out in a letter (p. 8) to County Board Chairman Sharon Bulova more than a year ago, that translates into about 144 gross square feet (GSF)--the metric used by the County to plan future office space--per employee.

Unfortunately, the County insists on using 300 GSF per employee as its planning metric as noted in this letter responding to our point from the County's planning chief, Fred Selden.  Why?  Because Houston has an average of 300 GSF per employee and so do nine firms in the Reston-Tysons area!  Of course, all of these firms are legacy businesses, not the new companies the County is theoretically trying to attract.

The result, of course, is that Reston's transit station areas will over time see about twice the employment that the planning process projected if developers are successful in filling out their land as planned.  Unfortunately, the transportation planning for these areas is also based on one worker per 300GSF of office space.  The result will be, at bets, about half the transportation capacity--roads, buses, pedestrian & bicycling capabilities--the community needs to meet even the most basic transportation standards.  It will result in absolute gridlock on local roads, including community thoroughfares through the station areas.  Ultimately, it will erode the attractiveness of Reston's station area development.

The County can change the plan now, but once it translates the plan into zoning decisions, the densities can not be revised downward in this property rights-obsessed state.  And don't look to the Board of Supervisors for forward thinking on these matters, especially when they see developers at the way to County financial nirvana where no tough budget decisions need be made.

We will continue to point out how new and expanding firms in Reston's urban areas are leasing and furnishing their office spaces for the future of work in which telework, collaboration, and cost efficiency are the principal drivers.  We hope that our leaders will learn this rather sooner than later in the face of a County office space vacancy rate now running near record high levels.  In its third-quarter office “snapshot” report, Cassidy-Turley (CT) puts Fairfax County’s office vacancy rate at 16.3% and total office space availability (including currently occupied, but available space) at 22.7%.  It puts Dulles Corridor vacancies and availability as follows:

Location                 Vacant                Available

                                                                Tysons                     17.1%                     24.3%

                                                                Reston                     15.3%                     22.1%

                                                                Herndon                   12.5%                     21.3%

Together, there is more than 13,000,000 (yes, 13 million) leasable square feet of office space available for lease in these three areas, 4,000,000 GSF of which are currently vacant.

 
Like the workspace Clarabridge is so carefully re-cycling into a contemporary creative office environment, there is at least room for 116,000 more office workers along the Dulles Corridor at 150 GSF per worker before developers need to pour any concrete.  Now the County needs to find companies that can be as successful and creative in doing so as Clarabridge.

Keep up the great work, Clarabridge.  The County Board of Supervisors needs to learn from your example about the future of office space in the Dulles Corridor. 

Actually, Wiehle Station Silver Line ridership already exceeds first-year expectations while Tysons lags

We have seen a number of articles based on a WMATA press release yesterday about the great ridership progress made in the first two months of Silver Line Phase 1 operations.  Here's how WMATA leads off:

Metro today provided updated Silver Line ridership information showing that, less than two months after opening, the new line is already performing at 60 percent of its projected ridership for the end of the first full year of service. As of last week, an average of 15,000 riders are entering the system at the five new Silver Line stations on weekdays for a combined 30,000 trips to or from the new stations.

In the planning process, Silver Line ridership was projected to reach 25,000 boardings at the five new stations after one full year of service.

Metro estimates that the Silver Line is currently adding approximately 6,000 new riders -- making roughly 12,000 trips -- to the Metrorail system each weekday. The balance, approximately 9,000 riders, are primarily former Orange Line riders who have switched to the Silver Line.

Wiehle-Reston East remains the Silver Line’s commuting powerhouse, having already surpassed first-year ridership projections with 8,400 boardings, or 16,800 weekday entries and exits.  With convenient bus transfers, a secure bike room and a large parking garage, Wiehle-Reston East’s commute makes up around half the line’s ridership. . . .

In short, the new Silver Line stations are generating about 60% of the 25,000 boardings WMATA expects by the end of the first year of operations.  That translates into 50,000 trips each way per day on the Silver Line.   Actually, a September 12, 2013, brief by WMATA on marketing the Silver Line puts that total daily trips at a slightly smaller number, 49,000, as shown in this graphic:

 

The important thing to notice here is that this projection indicates our Wiehle-Reston East station should produce 16,400 of those trips each day by the end of the year.  

The good news, according to the WMATA press release, is that Wiehle is already generating 16,800 daily trips, 400 more than WMATA projected by the end of the first year of operations.  

Yes, Restonians like mass transit and are using it more than forecast.

The question then is:  Why aren't more riders using the Silver Line at Tysons?  By the end of the first year of operations, it should be carrying 32,600 people per day according to the graphic above.  Right now, subtracting out Reston's share of the traffic, it is only carrying about 13,200 riders daily or 40% of its year-end forecast traffic. 

We wonder if Tysons lack of "a secure bike room and a large parking garage(s)" might not be the problem even with the free (with Metro transfer) circulator bus service there--which gets mixed reviews because of infrequent service on circuitous routes.  (Sounds like the same reviews of the Reston RIBS bus service, which isn't free and each route is much longer & service less frequent.  Hint for Fairfax DOT:  More buses + more frequency = more riders.  And "free" is good too!)   And the absence of parking garages at Tysons isn't a design flaw, it's a "design feature" no matter how ill-conceived.  

Whatever the reasons, we hope that Tysons joins Reston and lives up to WMATA's expectations by next July.

The County is not ready for commuter access to the Wiehle Metro Station.

We are now less than a week away from the much anticipated and long overdue opening of the Silver Line Phase 1 to Wiehle Avenue Station in Reston.   And yet, the County and state have completed barely half the projects required to make the station and Metrorail accessible, especially those for bicyclists and pedestrians.

First, let’s take a look at the key preparations that are in place:

• The County has adjusted the Fairfax Connector bus routes in and around Reston to deliver passengers to the station in a largely zero-sum financial game.  (Initially, it proposed taking more money from Reston buses to apply to Tysons and McLean, but ultimately found some other funding, at least for the reduced-fare Tysons circulators.)  In Reston, there will be slightly more frequent rush hour feeder service and new mid-day routes, but there still are gaps in schedules and hours of service are limited.  There simply is not enough bus service to really encourage Metrorail usage. 
• The County has completed about 500’ of sidewalk on the north side of Sunset Hills & west side of Wiehle to make pedestrian/bicycle access possible to the Metro station. 
• Comstock has met its various road improvement obligations to upgrade intersections near the station (mostly at Wiehle and Sunset Hills) under its public-private partnership (PPP) deal with the County. 
• Comstock has also completed the underground parking garage required by the PPP, including 2,300 spaces for public Metro parking and 1,000 spaces it controls for future tenants.  It is charging as low as $4.50 per day for one of its parking spaces (more if you want special services including guaranteed parking), thus undercutting the County’s $4.85/day charge for its parking spaces right next door.   (Note:  The County could have set its daily charge at any level.  It chose go to with the WMATA standard for Metro’s station garages.)

There are two key sources to look at for information on what has not been done and—in some cases—what will not get done until next decade.  The first of these is the April 15, 2008, Reston Metrorail Access Group (RMAG) report (yes, six years ago) that recommended proposed improvements—road, bus, bicycling, and pedestrian—to make the Wiehle station more accessible.  It has basically set the agenda for work that needed to be done by the time the Silver Line station was opened.  The second is the County’s tracking tool for the implementation of these improvements. 

The latest available County tracking document shows there are a total of 32 “spot” and “linear” projects, most of them recommended by RMAG, that are needed for proper access to the station.  What that document shows is that 12 of them are complete, six of those by Comstock under its PPP agreement.  The County document also shows that five other projects (all to be done by Comstock—identified as “Dulles Rail Project”—should have been done by May, and we suspect that they have been completed.   All told, that’s 17 out of 32 projects probably completed by the time Metrorail opens at the Wiehle station some nine months late.   We’re half way there!

So what’s missing six years after the RMAG report and nearly a year after the Silver Line was supposed to open?  

The most critical missing link, according to RMAG, and one that is not even on the County list is the so-called Soapstone Connector, the planned roadway/bridge/ped-bike route across the Dulles Corridor from Sunrise Valley Drive to Sunset Hills.  Nonetheless, at this time, the County has picked a route and a configuration for the Connector after conducting a feasibility study last year (five years after the RMAG report).  As of this spring, it has budgeted only enough money through the end of the decade to develop plans for the construction of this Connector. 

The Soapstone Connector project won’t be built until at least the next decade.   Its absence—likely for more than a decade—means that traffic going to/from the Wiehle Silver Line station from the south as well as all traffic in both directions trying to cross the Dulles Corridor or use the Dulles Toll Road from Wiehle MUST use Wiehle Avenue.   In short, it will likely take as long to build this single bridge (from feasibility study to opening, forget the 6-year old recommendation) as it will take to complete the entirety of the Silver Line—and workday traffic will be jammed the entire time.

So what is the status of the other Wiehle Station access improvements?

All of the tasks the County lists that have not been completed except one are the responsibility of the County (FCDOT).  Comstock has completed its obligations, the schedule indicates.  The lone state project (VDOT) not yet completed is crosswalks across Wiehle at Isaac Newton Square, which is scheduled for completion next month.  As for the County’s eleven uncompleted projects (out of a total of 14):

• The earliest to be completed will be four scheduled to be done in 2016, including pedestrian intersection improvements on Town Center Parkway (in fact, a Phase 2 project) in April 2016, intersection and sidewalk improvements done by June 2016, and more pedestrian intersection improvements by October.
• Two more similar projects are scheduled for completion in July 2017.
• The remaining five projects, including a proposed grade-separate crossing for the W&OD trail across Wiehle, have not yet been scheduled.

What is clear from this brief look at the projects and their scheduling it the County has so far minimized its investment in improving access to the Wiehle Metrorail station while talking incessantly about how important the Silver Line will be to reducing area traffic.  

That won’t happen if people can’t get there.  Moreover, it will hinder developer interest in building the transit-oriented development (TOD) in the station areas that the County sees as a balm to its growing financial difficulties.  

We think it would be better if the County put its money where its mouth is.  But then, maybe its financial "mouth" is only in Tysons Corner.