The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors earlier this month endorsed a developer’s application for 44 new residential homes known as the Lofts At Reston Station, near the Wiehle-Reston East Metro station.
Supervisors are touting the Lofts as “a new urban neighborhood,” and the first development of its kind in the area northeast of the Metro stop, according to an announcement from the county.
Pulte Homes will bring the Lofts to 1.58 acres at 1825 Michael Faraday Dr., south of Sunset Hill Drive, which is just a third of a mile from the Metro station’s north entrance. The space is currently occupied by a one-story office building and a parking lot.
The 44 new homes will consist of 12 townhomes and 32 apartment units.
The development, according to the county, will “begin to establish the local street grid for this area of Reston,” which is a highly-sought-after area for developers as construction continues on the Silver Line.
Pulte will extend Michael Faraday Drive and Reston Station Boulevard along their property.
“Reston Station Boulevard is planned as the new ‘main street’ for the area surrounding Wiehle,” according to the county. “This road is intended to connect properties on the east to the station, and the plan envisions this road stretching west of the station to Plaza America.”
Supervisors also said Pulte will contribute $44,000 toward construction of a future traffic light at Reston Station Boulevard and Michael Faraday Drive.
A Reston-based senior living company has filed plans to build a new facility at 11501 Sunrise Valley Drive in Reston.
Kensington Senior Development, LLC’s application was received by the Fairfax County Planning Department last week.
According to the application, Kensington Senior Development has filed a Planned Residential Community (PRC) plan concurrent with a Special Exception for an assisted living facility at that address, which is about 675 feet east of the intersection with Soapstone Drive.
Currently located at 11501 Sunrise Valley is Good Beginnings School, a private preschool, day care and kindergarten. The building has not been sold. The redevelopment plans do not include the Sunrise Valley Convenience Center stores next door.
Kensington currently operates assisted living communities in Kensington, MD; Sierra Madre, CA; Redwood City, CA; Montclair, NJ; Falls Church, VA; and White Plains, NY.
The JBG Companies’ Reston Town Center West project has big plans for expansion.
JBG has filed a rezoning application and development plan with Fairfax County Planning to permit the addition of 1.3 million more square feet of development to what is currently being built in the development on Sunset Hills Road about one-quarter of a mile from the future Reston Town Center Metro Station.
The space is currently an office park, which JBG is in the process of repurposing by adding 40,000 square feet of restaurant and retail space to the ground floor of existing buildings. The 13.77-acre property already has two four-story parking garages.
The plan for the second phase calls for about 675,000 square feet of residential (about 700 units) in two multifamily buildings; 650,000 square feet of office space in three new buildings and ground floor retail throughout the property. The plans also call for 3,100 parking spaces.
JBG plans to construct the new office buildings on the southern side of the property along Sunset Hill Road, for maximum visibility from the Dulles Toll Road. The residential towers will be built to the northeast, closer to the W&OD and Town Center Parkway.
The county planning commission hearing has not yet been scheduled.
The first phase of RTC West already has leases signed for a nearly 10,000-square-foot Cooper’s Hawk Winery, Nando’s Peri-Peri and Mezeh Mediterranean Grill. It is expected to open some time in 2017.
Renderings courtesy JBG
There will be 54 more townhomes heading for the increasingly developing Sunrise Valley area soon.
The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday gave final approval for Rooney Properties’ application to tear down a 1980s office building at 11720 Sunrise Valley Drive and replace the building with residential development.
The development will have quarter acre-pocket park located north of a private street that will run east to west through the center of the property. The park will include benches, a butterfly garden, public art, lighting and a bike rack.
To help make the connections to the two Silver Line stations, the developers will build six-foot sidewalks along Sunrise Valley Drive and Roland Clarke Place. The plan also incorporates a separate, 10-foot wide path for bicycles along Sunrise Valley. Read More
Dirt has begun turning for construction of Excelsior residential project in Reston.
To review, this is a plan for two buildings with a combined total of 457 residential units on five acres of the 22-acre Oracle campus at Sunset Hills Road and Old Reston Avenue.
The project was first proposed by Reston Excelsior LLC (a division of Lerner Enterprises) in 2oo6 and was sent back from the county several times for changes that were finally approved by the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors in 2010.
The Fairfax County Planning Commission had recommended denial of the plan for two 15-story towers because they seemed out of scale with Plaza America, Reston Parkway and surrounding areas.
However, a lot has happened since 2010. The Reston skyline has come to include The Harrison, Midtown, BLVD and plans for a 23-story office tower, among other buildings. So 15 stories seems rather modest.
Excelsior was back before the supervisors in July, where it got a requested parking reduction of 16.4 percent. The buildings had originally been approved for 820 underground parking spaces. The buildings — located in between the Wiehle-Reston East Metro and the future Reston Town Center Metro — will now have 612 spaces, including 58 designated for guests.
The Excelsior is planned to have 212 studio/one-bedroom units; 202 two-bedroom unites; and 33 three-bedroom units. The development will include 1 acre of open space.
Renderings courtesy Lerner Enterprises
Reston is changing at a fast clip — with several large development projects in progress and more than a dozen new applications in the pipeline.
Concerned Reston residents say they want to know about those projects in an equally speedy manner.
Hunter Mill Supervisor Cathy Hudgins and representatives from the Fairfax County Department of Planning and Zoning held a public meeting at Reston Association Monday in which they spelled out how the development process works, from application to final approval from the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors.
Even though the development process can take years, the citizens in attendance complained about a lack of opportunities for community engagement earlier in the process.
“The planning process is making me crazy,” said longtime Reston resident Tammi Pettrine. “In reality, citizens have no power against the county.” Read More
Four developers are teaming up to turn a 17.5-acre tangle of office buildings and parking lots at Wiehle Avenue and Sunset Hills Road into more than 1 million square feet of multifamily residential, as well as significant office and retail space.
Representatives from JBG/1831 Wiehle LLC, Bethesda’s EYA Development and The Chevy Chase Land Company gave a first look at the development application to the Reston Planning and Zoning Committee on Monday night.
The plan involves taking a half dozen parcels of land from 1831 Wiehle Avenue — the office building across Wiehle from the Wiehle-Reston East Metro station — several blocks east to Michael Faraday Drive. In addition to 1831 Wiehle, the plan will include redevelopment of 1861 Wiehle, 1860 Michael Faraday and 1840 Michael Faraday.
“We can see a large piece of property and a big opportunity at the Wiehle Metro,” said land use lawyer Brian Winterhalter, who is working with the applicants. “It is smack dab in between the W&OD Trail and the Silver Line. We see it as “the gateway to Reston.”
Bailey Edelson, JBG Vice President of Development, said the principals of the plan include high quality design; pedestrian and bike connectivity; urban parks and recreation; strategic office and mix of uses; and public art.
The development will be about 78 percent residential, with the remaining retail and commercial. Read More
With multiple redevelopment and rezoning proposals hitting Reston as it transitions to a transit-oriented community, Fairfax County is introducing a new process for applications.
Hunter Mill District Supervisor Cathy Hudgins will be give an overview of a new Land Use process, Reston Land Use Launch, for the community at the Reston Planning and Zoning committee meeting on Monday, Oct. 17. The The public is invited. The meeting is at 7:30 p.m. at Reston Association’s offices, 12001 Sunrise Valley Dr.
Says Hudgins’ office:
The Reston Transit Station Areas (TSA) and nearby areas are experiencing a large number of development applications. It is challenging for residents to keep current with all the proposals.
This new step in the local process is an attempt to share these proposals with the larger community earlier in the land use process. The goal is to provide information on new applications after they have been filed with Fairfax County Planning Division and afford an opportunity for community engagement early in the process.
There has been community pushback recently, particularly on the redevelopment proposal for St. Johns Wood, that the public is not given adequate notice of redevelopment plans until it is deep in the process and about to get a final review by the Fairfax County Planning Commission and the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors.
The Reston Planning and Zoning committee is an advisory committee organized by the Board of Supervisors. It evaluates the Reston land use applications and shares their comments and suggestions with the Supervisor and the Hunter Mill District representative to the Planning Commission. It does not have official approval capabilities.
After several years of on-again, off-again plans for redevelopment, Lake Anne Fellowship House has a signed agreement to build a new affordable senior housing complex.
The Fellowship Square Foundation (FSF), which operates the Lake Anne buildings, the facility at Hunters Woods Village Center, and several others in the Washington, DC area, says it has a signed deal with the Community Preservation and Development Corporation (CPDC) for a new building to replace the aging structures at 11480-11450 North Shore Drive in Reston.
The new construction project will replace all 240 apartment units, built in the early 1970s,with “a new, state of the art facility,” according to a release.
CPDC is a non-profit developer of affordable housing.
“We look forward to pursuing this project with CPDC to make this vision a reality for the Lake Anne community,” said Renee Jakobs, president of Fellowship Square Foundation.
Similar plans for Lake Anne Fellowship House have been made — and fallen apart — in the last few years.
In 2013, the foundation had an agreement with Cafritz Interests and Novus Development for new housing on the site. John Thillman, a developer and former Fairfax County Planning Commissioner who was at the time on the Fellowship Square Board of Directors, said then that 114 of the units are subsidized. The rest are market rate, but the buildings have a 20-percent vacancy rate and lose about $10,000 month, he said.
Comstock is in the final stages of purchasing the Sunset Hills Professional Park to add to its mixed-use square footage near Wiehle-Reston East.
Sunset Hills Professional Park is a one-story office condo complex at Sunset Hills Road and Wiehle Avenue. The complex was built in 1981 and is mostly home to doctors, dentists and other medical services.
Construction is not expected to begin for three to four years as the project moves through the Fairfax County approval process. The tenants will be able to rent back during that time, a Comstock spokeswoman said.
The professional park is adjacent to both Comstock’s Reston Station mixed-use development as well as the under-construction Aperture Apartments from Bozzuto.
“This will enable us to further develop our grid of streets and pedestrian pathways to Reston Station,” said Comstock’s Maggie Parker.
The plans, now in the design phase, will include ground floor retail, a wide boulevard with trees, residential and office, she said.
“This is the beginning of the real consolidation of the Reston Station neighborhood, which will go from Plaza America to Michael Faraday Drive,” said Parker.
The first phase of an eventual 1.5-million square-foot mixed-use development on the south side of the Wiehle-Reston East Metro was recommended for approval by the Fairfax County Planning Commission on Thursday.
The first phase of Vornado’s plan for Commerce Executive Park at Wiehle Avenue, Sunrise Vally Drive and Commerce Park Drive, calls for a 200-unit residential building, as well as interior roads, pedestrian paths and a cycle track.
The planning commission held a public hearing last week but deferred decision until Oct. 6 to iron out some development conditions. While those issues — when a bike lane on Wiehle will be built, as well as expected contributions to the Reston Road Fund, among others — are not completely settled, Hunter Mill Commissioner Frank de le Fe says he is confident the parties will work together as the development plan comes together. Read More
The Fairfax County Planning Commission has recommended for approval Pulte Homes’ plan to rezone a one-story industrial building into 44 residences at 1825 Michael Faraday Court near the Wiehle-Reston East Metro station.
After a planning staff report recommended denying the application and the commission held a public hearing last week, the panel delayed making a decision until Wednesday.
Hunter Mill planning commissioner Frank de le Fe said he still had some issues with the plan for the Lofts at Reston Station — which jams 12 2-over-2 townhouses and 32 multifamily units into fewer than two acres of land.
The staff report asked the developer that a few units be removed to allow greater ease of movement and parking for emergency vehicles and trash trucks.
Pulte said that removing units would affect the number of homes set aside for workforce housing, de le Fe said.
“I really don’t like to go against staff on this,” de le Fe said Wednesday. “While not perfect, [the application] represents compromise. In this case, the compromise centers around design for two units at the end. If we did not keep them, the applicant has made it clear it would be difficult if not impossible to meet WDUs [Workforce Dwelling Units set aside for a lower price] with three bedrooms. WDUs are very necessary.”
The plan will next go to the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors for final approval.
The parcel is about one-third of a mile from the Wiehle-Reston East Metro station, and will eventually be connected by interior streets, including an extension of Reston Station Blvd, plans show.
The staff report also takes issue with the configuration of open space; the amount of surface parking (27 spaces, which they say should be in structured parking); a poorly designed pocket park; and lack of landscaping in connecting to public space.
Rendering of multifamily building along future Reston Station Blvd at Michael Faraday Drive/Credit: Fairfax County
Bozzuto’s plan to more than double the size of St. Johns Wood apartments will not go before the Fairfax County Planning Commission later this month.
The plan — which has received heavy criticism from nearby North Reston residents — will turn the 250 units in nine garden-style buildings into 467 units and 46 townhouses. They will be rental units.
That’s scaled down from the starting point for 625 units in 2014 and then 511 units and 51 townhouses in an amended plan earlier this year.
The public hearing, scheduled for Oct. 26, has been moved at Bozzuto’s request to a date TBD, according to the planning committee agenda. This will give Bozzuto more time to tweak the plan and respond to citizen concerns.
Some of the complaints from residents: poor design; too much development too far from the future Reston Town Center Metro station; traffic on Center Harbor and North Village Drive; and parking on side streets.
St. Johns Wood is in a wooded, residential area across from North Point Village Center.
Bozzuto reps have said the complex at Reston Parkway, North Village Road and Center Harbor Road was identified for high density as far back as when Reston was first planned in 1964.
Meanwhile, Reston Association’s Board of Directors has sent a letter to Bozzuto detailing its concerns about the redevelopment plans. RA president Ellen Graves says the St. Johns Wood application “does not conform to the site-specific, detailed and unambiguous recommendations of the Reston Master Plan.”
RA does not have approval capabilities of the application. It can take a stance, but the decision ultimately comes from the Fairfax County Planning Commission and the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors.
See the entire RA document below.
FINAL 092816 RA Letter Regarding St Johns Wood Application (1) by Karen Goldberg Goff on Scribd
Another multifamily project is closer to approval for the area south of the Wiehle-Reston East Metro.
The Fairfax County Planning Commission recommended for approval Thursday Lincoln Property Company’s plans to build 260 multifamily residences on what is now a parking lot at Sunrise Valley, Commerce Park and Association drives.
The Fairfax County Planning Commission held a public hearing Sept. 23, but delayed decision until a few proffer conditions could be worked out.
The developer has now committed to a contribution at the highest level of the scale ($2200) per unit to go to the Reston Road Fund — which will be used to help make more than $2.6 billion in transportation improvements here over several decades. The developer also agreed to work out issues with building a sidewalk on Association Drive and a possible additional contribution to the Fairfax County Park Authority.
The park authority issue came about because the proposed plan is very urban in nature, with limited open space (about one-third of an acre) that will be used as small pocket parks. The lack of room for active play should be offset with $50,000 more towards county athletic fields. The developer has offered $25,000, in addition to $462,852 it has already committed for fields.
Lincoln Property’s project is a seven-story building with trails connecting bikers and walkers to the Wiehle-Reston East Metro station. The plans call for a pool and a natural play area, among other amenities.
Read more details in the county planning staff report.
The project is adjacent to Vornado’s large plan to transform more office buildings nearby. Phase I of that plan, to build a 200-unit multifamily building, was reviewed by the planning commission Wednesday, but the PC deferred decision on the project until Oct. 6.
The Vornado development will eventually be 1.5 million square feet of mixed-use development featuring the existing office buildings, two residential buildings (one of them 24 stories); a 22-story office tower; a retail promenade; a hotel; and five parks.
The Lincoln plan now moves on to the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors for final approval. A date for that hearing has not been set.
Rendering of Lincoln Property Company’s multifamily building at Commerce Park/Credit: Fairfax County.
The Fairfax County Planning Commission deferred a decision until next week on the first phase of redevelopment of Commerce Executive Park on the south side of the Wiehle-Reston East Metro station.
The first phase of Vornado’s plan calls for a 200-unit residential building, as well as interior roads, pedestrian paths and a cycle track. Eventually, the plan is to redevelop the existing office buildings into 1.5 million square feet of mixed-use development at Wiehle Avnue Sunrise Valley Drive and the Dulles Toll Road.
The planning commission held a public hearing last night, but deferred decision until Oct. 6.
Only one person, John Hawthorne, an attorney representing IGS LLC, the owner of a nearby office building, testified at the public hearing. He said this development would cause undue hardship and injury to IGS because of the office park’s private roads and infringement on that owner’s private property. He also spoke out with the same issues last week at the public hearing on Lincoln Property’s residential project on the other side of his building.
