Speak Up on Tall Oaks Village Center Plans Monday

Interested in what Tall Oaks Village Center’s owners have planned in redevelopment of the site? Then attend Monday’s community meeting at Reston Community Center Lake Anne.

Jefferson Apartment Group (JAG), which purchased Tall Oaks in December for $14 million, will present a revised look at plans for the space at 7 p.m. Monday.

At two community meetings in April, JAG showed plans to replace the increasingly vacant shopping center with 154 residential units (townhomes and condos) and a small amount of retail.

The proposal was not well received by Tall Oaks-area residents, man of whom would prefer the village center be preserved as a retail center, including a grocery store anchor. There is an online petition asking JAG to keep Tall Oaks retail.

Other residents at the April meetings said residential might be a good plan, but would prefer more open and community space than JAG has planned for the site.

The 25,000-square-foot grocery store space — formerly a Giant and then two different international groceries — has been vacant for nearly five years.

Land use attorney Mark Looney said Tall Oaks, which had a nearly 90-percent occupancy rate in 2007 and currently has a 13-percent occupancy rate, will be 6 percent occupied by early 2016. Competition from other nearby retail centers and grocery stores is one of the main factors in Tall Oaks’ demise, he said at the previous meetings.

Meanwhile, Reston Master Plan Phase 2, recently approved by the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, says developers do not have to get a Comprehensive Plan Amendment in order to redevelop Tall Oaks as residential.

Map of new Tall Oaks residential neighborhood (April concept)/Courtesy Jefferson Apartment Group