The plan to re-develop St. Johns Wood Apartments will get at least an additional month before its Fairfax County Planning Commission public hearing.
Developer Bozzuto is now on the planning commission’s schedule for Oct. 26.. Most recently it had been scheduled for a hearing on Sept. 29.
The plan to more than double the size of the garden-style development at Reston Parkway and Center Harbor Drive has been on and off the county agenda for more than two years. It has also been reworked several times.
The postponement gives Bozzuto more time to make changes, since the current tweaks are not well-received by area residents, who have spoken up at two recent community meetings.
Bozzuto’s latest plan for the 14-acre space is to 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 latest plan was called many things — none of them very affirmative — at the Aug. 4 meeting organized by Bozzuto and the Hunter Mill Supervisors’ office. They said the plan looked like “Inova Fairfax Hospital,” or a “VCU college dorm with a facade like the Mosaic District.”
“This is way too large,” said area resident Gary Fogel. “It is twice what is there now. If you told me 100 more units, that makes sense. But doubling it? That’s insane.” Read More
It’s been a little more than two years since Metro’s Silver Line opened. It hasn’t exactly been a smooth transition — track work, delays, expense for users and a frustrating layout at the Wiehle-Reston East parking garage among the issues.
But developers say those factors are not only out of their control (and users’ control), they are short-term problems in a longterm plan.
Speaking at Bisnow’s “Fairfax County the State of the Market” event Wednesday at the Marriott Fairview Park, Boston Properties Senior Vice President Pete Otteni says he does not see Silver Line problems dampening commercial development in Reston.
“It has the potential to be transformational in the longterm,” said Otteni, whose company owns Reston Town Center. “But transit isn’t a panacea and isn’t THE thing that drives retail growth. It’s a meaningful contributor to where people want to live, work and play, but not THE thing.”
Sonny Small, CEO of Renaissance Centro (The Harrison) said if not for Metro, then “we wouldn’t be having this conversation” about major development in Reston and Tysons.
“There are still issues,” he said. “But over time, [transit] will be an important ingredient.”
Small and Otteni, along with Greg Trimmer of The JBG Companies (Reston Heights, RTC West), pointed out that Reston already has an advantage when compared with Tysons.
While Tysons will likely be the “edge city” developers envision in about 20 more years, Reston is quickly heading that way because it already is a place where people live and has a specifically designed master plan, the panel said. Read More
Data center provider CoreSite has entered into a deal to purchase four office buildings on Sunrise Valley Drive near the Fairfax County Parkway.
CoreSite announced last week it will spend $60 million to acquire the 22-acre Sunrise Technology Park in the 12300 block of Sunrise Valley Drive, the Washington Business Journal reported.
Sunrise Technology Park, currently owned by Brookfield Office Properties, is a complex of four low-rise office buildings, totaling 315,000 square feet.
CoreSite says it could build more than 660,000 square feet of new data center capacity across the parcel. It currently has about 400,000 square feet of space in Reston.
CoreSite said in a release it expects to spend $90 million more on the first phase of the new development. Initial work will include the conversion of one 48,000-square-foot building into a data center, and the construction of two, 92,000-square-foot buildings — one data center shell, and one structure to house “centralized infrastructure.”
After the deal closes in December, CoreSite expects to start construction during summer 2017. It estimates it may spend as much as $500 million building out the site over many years and multiple phases.
“This planned expansion to our Reston campus is designed to meaningfully scale our colocation offering in the important Northern Virginia market, leveraging off of the installed network-and-cloud capabilities already deployed at the campus,” CoreSite president and CEO Tom Ray said in a statement.
Defense contractor General Dynamics, which plans to construct a new headquarters in Reston, has a Fairfax County Planning Commission public hearing scheduled for Sept. 14.
The company announced in January it hopes to build a 190,000-square-foot building on a parcel off Sunset Hills Road between Wiehle Avenue and Hunter Mill Road and bordered on one edge by the W&OD Trail.
The plan itself was generally well received at a community meeting in January. What GD plans to build is actually well below what was long-ago approved for the parcel. GD plans one five-story building for about 200 employees.
The site was approved by Fairfax County in 1999 for nearly 358,000 square feet of space spread over three buildings, as well as nearly 1,200 parking spaces.
The current footprint is much smaller, but does allow for a 30,000-square-foot-addition to the building in the future. GD plans 300 mostly underground parking spaces to go with the first phase of the plan.
Because of the secure nature of GD’s operations, the company plans an interior road, no public access, a guard gate and security fencing. It also plans to keep most of the forested area for a natural privacy shield and sound barrier. Read More
Now that Jefferson Apartment Group’s (JAG) plans for Tall Oaks Village Center have been approved by the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, let’s look ahead.
Tall Oaks today has about 75,000 square feet of retail, only about 13 percent of which is occupied.
The new village center at Wiehle Avenue and North Shore Drive will be 156 homes; 6,000 square feet of office space and 8,500 square feet of retail space,
JAG representatives say the retail portion, which will relocate into an existing free-standing office area, will be redeveloped first, and the hope is that the permitting process will be completed within the year.
JAG also hopes that some of the existing tenants (Paradise Nails, Mama Wok, Pho 75, for example) will sign leases to remain at the new Tall Oaks.
Overall, the retail plaza will have room for about five stores to serve neighborhood residents. That’s not a lot of space, but could provide the essentials.
So, what do you think would do well there? Remember, it’s 8,500 square feet, so big-footprint stores like Wegmans, Lowe’s, Barnes & Noble and the like are not fair answers.
Put your thoughts in the comments below.
Photo: rendering of new Tall Oaks retail building/Credit: JAG
North Point-area residents packed a Reston Association meeting room Thursday to point out a long list of issues they have with plans to redevelop St. Johns Wood apartments.
Project developer Bozzuto has made several changes to its redevelopment plan for the 14-acre garden apartment complex over the last two years. The newest one calls for turning 250 units in nine garden-style buildings into 467 units and 46 townhouses.
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.
It’s still too much for a quiet, suburban-style residential neighborhood, residents said Thursday. They said the plan looked like “Inova Fairfax Hospital,” or a “VCU college dorm with a facade like the Mosaic District.”
“This is way too large,” said area resident Gary Fogel. “It is twice what is there now. If you told me 100 more units, that makes sense. But doubling it? That’s insane.”
Bozzuto reps say 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. The idea was to have critical mass around Reston’s village centers, said Hunter Mill Supervisor Cathy Hudgins.
“Basically, it has been underdeveloped,” Hudgins told the crowd. “The only place you will see density [growth] is near the village centers.”
However, the Reston Master Plan update in 2014 brought down the density allowances farther from the Metro. That’s why Bozzuto reworked St. Johns Wood, which is more than a mile from the future Reston Town Center station, from 46 dwelling units per acre to 39 units per acre and now 36 units per acre.
The developer also has changed the facades of the townhouse to have cleaner lines and has scaled the buildings from six stories to five to rise no higher than the current tree line.
That’s still to much change for the character of the neighborhood, says Susanne Andersson-Tosado, who has organized a petition protesting the plan. Read More
Lane Bryant, the plus size women’s clothing store, has quietly closed its location in Reston.
The store, part of a national chain, had been operating at 1815 Spectrum Center for about 20 years.
The windows are completely papered over and the sign is gone as of Wednesday.
If you are a Lane Bryant shopper, there are nearby locations at Dulles Town Crossing and Fair Lakes Center.
No permits have been filed for the space.
This could be the start of vacancies at Spectrum as the shopping center prepares for a major redevelopment. The Spectrum was planned as a strip mall as a temporary measure and was always intended by developer Lerner to be a high-density, mixed-use center eventually.
While no start date for redevelopment has been set, land use-watchers have said as leases expires, watch for stores to remain vacant to prepare for redevelopment.
In early 2013, the Board of Supervisors approved changes to the plans for the Spectrum to include 774,879 square feet of non-residential use; 1,422 multifamily residential units in seven new residential buildings; underground parking; and new streets and bike trails.
Read more about plans for Spectrum on this previous Reston Now story.
The new Aperature Apartments have sprung up quickly across Metro Center Drive from the Wiehle-Reston East Metro station.
The latest word on the development from The Bozzuto Group is it will begin leasing in “early 2017.”
The Aperture will feature 421 apartments in a seven-story building, and has been approved for 10,000 square feet of ground-floor retail.
No retail tenants have been announced yet. Residents will be members of Reston Association.
The apartments sit on the site of the former Reston Mini-Storage facility, and construction has been going on for less than a year.
Here are some of the amenities planned for the building:
- Clubroom with entertainment kitchen, communal table, fireplace, lounge seating, HDTVs, and courtyard views
- Direct outdoor connection from the clubroom with flowing courtyard entryway
- Pool with outdoor kitchen, firepits, and lounge seating
- Outdoor amphitheater and movie screening area
- Bike repair station with convenient bike storage space
- Pet play zone
- Library space for reading or working
- Three adjacent fitness spaces with stretching and group fitness rooms, weights and cardio spaces, and an active outdoor yoga space
- WiFi Lounge with Computers
- Underground Parking Garage
- 24-Hour Concierge
- Resident Storage Space Available
Photos: Top, Aperture, August 2016; Bottom, Rendering of final product/Courtesy Bozzuto
Coming soon at RTC West: a couple of restaurants. Coming in a few years (maybe): more than 700 apartments, one million square feet more of office space and much more retail.
Developer JBG Companies says that the plans for RTC West — the project that is turning several office buildings on Sunset Hills Road near Town Center Parkway into more than 40,000 square feet of restaurant and retail space — is just a “phase one” plan.
The developer has said there is the potential of more than 1 million square feet of development for RTC West. Washington Business Journal recently gave a peek into what the eventual project could be — and found JBG’s proposal calls for the addition of two residential buildings and two office towers
The 13.77-acre property already has two four-story parking garages, one of which would get a six-story, 125,000-square-foot office addition, JBG said.
The nearly 500,000-square-foot office park would grow by roughly 1.35 million square feet — 675,000 square feet of residential and 675,000 square feet of office.
In the end, expect plans for 702 multifamily units; about 1 million square feet of office space; 91,950 square feet of retail; and more than 3,100 parking spaces.
JBG proposes 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, and the residential towers to the northeast, closer to the W&OD and Town Center Parkway, WBJ reports.
RTC West is less than a quarter mile from the future Reston Town Center Metro station, which is scheduled to open in 202o. It also essentially extends development from the station through RTC West and into the existing Reston Town Center.
RTC’s first phase is under construction. The second phase has not yet gone through Fairfax County Planning process.
The first phase of RTC West already has leases signed or 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.
RTC West rendering/JBG
After months of discussing the title defect issue at meetings and in executive session, the MOU will move ahead after receiving four yes votes and two abstentions at Thursday’s board meeting.
Reston Town Center North is the 50-acre parcel of land owned by Fairfax County and Inova from Baron Cameron Avenue to New Dominion Drive. A land swap was approved by the county last fall in order to reorganize the parcel into blocks for development.
Future plans are likely to include a new Embry Rucker Community Shelter; a new Reston Regional Library; a new building for community health, social and mental health services; a 90,000-square-foot indoor recreation center; and more housing and retail. A multi-acre park is planned for the center of the parcel.
From RA:
A large portion of the acreage within the redevelopment project area remains subject to the Reston Deed covenants, meaning this land is subject to RA Design Review Board review and new residents would be Reston Association members.
The association is seeking to prevent a “net loss” of open space within the project area. RA staff and counsel have been working with Fairfax County and INOVA Health Care Services for the past year to ensure the project does not infringe on the association’s objectives.
The MOU states that if a minimum of 10 acres of open space is not provided by RTCN by the end of the development process, then a “contribution of $64,340 per acre for each acre that the total area of open space is less than 10 acres shall be made to the Friends of Reston for Community Projects, Inc., to be used only for increasing the amount of or improving the quality of open space and natural areas in Reston.”
Several RA members spoke out at Thursday’s meeting both in opposition to to what one citizen called a “terrible agreement.” They were also upset that there was no opportunity for community discussion on the matter. Read More
After nearly two years of tweaking plans for redevelopment, The Bozzuto Group may be ready to move forward with plans to nearly double the size of St. Johns Wood Apartments near North Point Village Center.
Bozzuto Group and Reston Association representatives are holding a community meeting Thursday, Aug. 4, 6:30 p.m. at RA (12001 Sunrise Valley Dr.).
After several postponements in 2015, and two postponements in June and July of this year, the proposal has a new Fairfax County Planning Commission hearing date of Sept. 29.
The latest plan is for Bozzuto to redevelop the 250-unit garden apartment complex into 511 multi-family units and 51 townhomes.
That’s actually a scaled-down and lower-rise version from the first plans that were shown to community members more than a year ago.
Bozzuto first submitted an application to Fairfax County in 2014, proposing to redevelop the property with three mid-rise residential buildings containing 625 multi-family units and 34 townhomes. Read More
Just days after the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors approved a controversial residential development on the site of the former American Press Institute building, the Fairfax County Planning Commission reviewed an application from the same owner for 54 townhomes a few feet away.
RP 11720, LLC, part of Rooney Properties (which also owns the API building), plans to tear down a 30-year old office building at Sunrise Valley Drive and Roland Clarke Place to build the urban-style homes.
The commission expressed concerns Thursday about parking, both in everyday and in special situations. Among the concerns: is 19 feet wide enough for garages, which are planned for the four-story townhouses? And where will delivery trucks go when servicing the units that front Sunrise Valley Drive?
The developers believe that width is sufficient for garages and planning staff says the delivery may have to block someone’s driveway.
Parking, transportation demand management (TDM) contributions and money to the Fairfax County Park Authority also came up as issues at Thursday’s public hearing, so the commission deferred decision on the project until Sept. 24.
Developer representatives said they did not include TDM because of the low-density estimate for the new neighborhood but they are willing to work with developers towards that if it is a development condition.
The parcel is at 11720 Sunrise Valley Dr., just west of the Mercer Condos, (part of JBG’s Reston Heights) and right across Roland Clarke Place from the American Press Institute property, where 34 townhouses and 10 condominiums are planned. Read More
It’s a crucial time for Reston. The “new town” is now more than 50 years old. And old, when it comes to structures built in the 1960s and ’70s, sometimes means obsolete — or at least out-of-date or inefficient.
Two great examples of this are Tall Oaks Village Center and the 45,000-square-foot former American Press Institute headquarters on Sunrise Valley Drive.
Both were built in the early 1970s. Both thrived for years, then met a sad decline. Finally, this week, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors gave final approval to owners to redevelop the industrial/commercial properties into low/medium density residential neighborhoods.
Even though Tall Oaks served as a neighborhood retail destination for decades, it never quite was the “village center” gathering place Bob Simon envisioned when he founded Reston.
In the last few years, mounting competition from nearby shopping, particularly grocery stores, led to increased vacancies at the plaza on North Shore Drive. Since Giant Foods left in 2007, many smaller retailers followed, and now Tall Oaks sits only 13 percent occupied.
API too was a vibrant place from 1974 to 2012. Not only was the building designed by famed architect Marcel Breuer, it was a space in which hundreds of well known journalists attended trainings and seminars.
But, perhaps emblematic of the changing news industry, API merged with the Newspaper Institute of America in 2012. The headquarters, a Brutalist building on a nice wooded lot at Sunrise Valley Drive and Roland Clarke Place, has been empty ever since. Read More
Farewell, Tall Oaks Village Center as a retail spot. Welcome, Tall Oaks Village Center as a mostly residential neighborhood.
The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors took an unprecedented step for Reston development on Tuesday when it unanimously approved Jefferson Apartment Group’s (JAG) proposal to rezone, rebuild and transform the smallest of Reston’s village centers.
JAG will now go forward with plans for 156 homes (a mix of townhomes, 2-over-2 townhomes and multifamily buildings), community space, 8,500 square foot of retail and about 6,000 square feet of office space.
“We are very excited about the approval and the chance to rejuvenate a shopping center that has been fallow for a number of years,” said JAG CEO Jim Butz. “This will be one more nice neighborhood for Reston.”
Butz said he estimated the retail site plans and permitting will be processed in the next nine months. Because the retail space will be located in existing free- standing buildings on the property, that will enable a smooth transition for current retail tenants who desire to stay at Tall Oaks.
The residential permitting process will take about 12-14 months, Butz said. Construction would begin sometime after that.
Tall Oaks’ longtime challenges have been a location on a dead end and lack of visibility from a main street. Its longtime anchor tenant, Giant Foods, moved out in 2007 and vacancies have been mounting since.
JAG representatives have said the property was marketed to retailers in the last several years but there was little interest in locating there as more than five major retail centers featuring a grocery anchor are located within a few miles.
More recently, the developer conducted a market study that showed large retail was not viable at Tall Oaks, which is now only 13 percent occupied.
“This has been a very difficult center to remodel or upgrade,” said Hunter Mill Supervisor Cathy Hudgins, who lives in the Tall Oaks area. “The hope I have is JAG is able to provide what is necessary to provide that.”
JAG paid $14 million for the property in 2014 and has held numerous meetings with the community since then. After noting community concerns, JAG has added green space and additional retail space to its original plan.
But many in the community were still not in favor of a complete overhaul for Tall Oaks. Some residents still maintain that retail would thrive at the center if it were properly managed. Read More
Nearly six years after being approved by the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors — and then virtually halting plans to move forward — there is some action on Lerner Enterprises’ Excelsior Parc project.
The Excelsior Parc will include 457 residential units in two buildings on Reston’s Oracle campus near the intersection of Sunset Hills and Reston Parkway.
The project was first proposed in 2oo6 and was sent back from the county several times for changes that were finally approved by the 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.
But that is not why the developers are back before the supervisors. The buildings had originally been approved for 820 underground parking spaces. The developers are seeking a reduction in parking of 16.4 percent, which must be approved by board.
The County Executive recommends the supervisors approve the reduction based on an analysis of the parking requirements. He has recommended 612 spaces, including 58 designated for guests.
Part of the reason for the change is the Metro. The property is about a half-mile from the Wiehle-Reston East Metro Station and about the same distance from the future Reston Town Center Station, which is scheduled to open in 2020.
The Excelsior is planned to have 212 studio/one-bedroom units; 202 two-bedroom unites; and 33 three-bedroom units.
The Board of Supervisors will discuss and vote on this on Tuesday.
No word on when the construction will begin.
