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County Planning Commission Recommends Approval For Fairway Application
Decision moves forward the process to develop aging Reston complex.
The Fairfax County Planning Commission on Thursday recommended approval for JBG's latest proposal for the redevelopment of Fairway Apartments.
Ultimately, the Reston Association's Design Review Board has final say on the design of the complex, but Thursday's vote moves forward the process, which has been going on for over a year.
The proposal now moves on to the county Board of Supervisors, who must approva the application for it to proceed. A date for review from the Board of Supervisors has not been announced.
"We are presented with a plan for redeveloping an aging property,"
Hunter Mill Planning Commission representative Frank de la Fe said. "I don't know that it is a perfect proposal. I don't know that there is any such thing."
De la Fe outlined the concerns residents expressed to both the DRB and the planning commission in hearings in the last month. Among them: density, traffic and affordable housing.
"There were comments to wait [to decide] after the Reston Master Plan revision," he said. "We, of course, must base our actions on the current recommendation of the master plan. The proposed development is in keeping with master plan."
De le Fe added that the principal roads can handle the traffic, and JBG will conduct a traffic study. Although the current Fairway complex contains "affordable housing" (rents generally from $1300-1900), none of it is government run, de le Fe pointed out.
A staff report in July 2010 recommended denial of the project. But that was when the JBG proposal was for a high rise tower featuring 951 units.
JBG went back to the drawing board, and this spring presented a plan featuring 804 units and 38 percent green space among five mid-rise buildings and 131 townhouses.
A staff report in June 2011 recommended approval. The DRB, meanwhile, was heading toward voting against the plan when JBG asked for a last-minute deferral.
Many residents appealed to both the DRB at a June meeting and the planning commission in early July to rethink the Fairway project.
"We welcome the arrival of rail in 2013 and the opportunity to develop a true Transit Oriented Development," said Diane Blust, president of the Fairfax Coalition for Smarter Growth. "Fairway is not a TOD development. This runs counter to the comprehensive plan. It will increase traffic, disrupt a stable neighborhood and create a loss of relatively affordable housing."
Among the DRB's concerns: 50-foot townhouse heights; flat townhouse facades; little greenspace; five-story buildings that are really seven-stories in order to accommodate underground parking; the "Texas Donut" style that wraps a building around parking; and the increased density.
RCA president Marion Stillson says Fairway is extremely important because it will set a precedent for about two dozen other neighborhoods that may next be in line for redevelopment.
"Why is Fairway so dangerous?" she said. "Because it breaks the rules at a time and in a manner that could spoil Reston. Fairway is the first residential neighborhood in Reston to seek development. If it gets the greenlight for this, what will stop the others?
"This proposal is dense in scale, urban in design and does not belong next to a golf course," she said. "It is unacceptable and violates Reston's values. Please reject it."
Stillson reiterated her opposition to JBG's plan in a letter to de le Fe this week.
Thanks. We'll email you the next time we update this story.
John Farrell
7:13 am on Friday, July 29, 2011
The Board of Supervisors does not have to act on this application?
Karen Goff
8:19 am on Friday, July 29, 2011
Good eye, John. They do. I will add that to the story.
John Farrell
8:22 am on Friday, July 29, 2011
So the Planning Commission vote was to recommend approval to the Board of Supervisors, yes?
Has the date of the BOS public hearing been announced ?
Karen Goff
8:37 am on Friday, July 29, 2011
John (below) yes, now it goes to the BOS and no, no date announced. But there will be many, many, many more rounds of wrangling with the DRB to come.
Diane Blust
7:59 am on Friday, July 29, 2011
Mr. de la Fe is correct that none of the current Fairways Apartments units is under government control, i.e., none is needs based. What he failed to say, however, was that the rents at all 348 Fairways Apartments make them affordable for families with incomes between $49,800 and $76,200 per annum - figures that are well below the County's definition of "moderate" income (about $82,000). So unless JBG intends prices and rents for 348 units in the new development to be affordable to this segment of the population, Reston will lose affordable housing. Reston will be less diverse. People with whom I have spoken place diverstiy high on their list of things they value most about Reston. Don't know if this is most Restonians or not.
By highlighting Bob Simon's 7th principle for Reston (financial success), Mr. de la Fe and his colleagues on the Planning Commission have clearly demonstrated they will always put the bottom line on a developer's balance sheet above community interests.
The PC recommendation on Fairways is a sad commentary on government. People or corporations with money to hire lobbyists and high-priced lawyers will always get their way. People who collect our garbage, clean the streets, police the streets, teach our kids and carry out many other jobs to make our lives comfortable will always lose out.
I would like to state for the record, this is a personal comment and is not an official comment of the Fairfax Coalition for Smarter Growth.
Diane Blust
8:08 am on Friday, July 29, 2011
Not enough room in the previous comment to go into the environmental impact of this proposed development. The Lake Anne neighborhood will be subjected to increased traffic and traffic jams (which cause the most pollution due to idling cars) AND the loss of most of the mature trees on the Fairways site. These trees provide valuable and easily quantifiable environmental services to the community in terms of stormwater retention, cabon sequestration, reduction of urban heat island effect, and air filtration. But, developers don't factor these environmental services into their bottom lines because they don't have to pay for resulting damage. The community, however, will have to factor the loss of the trees and pollution from increased traffic into its bottom line in terms of increased costs for stormwater management and costs to deal with more run off into Lake Anne, increased pollution due to the loss of the trees filtering functions, increased health care costs, etc. This is just one more case of the "externalization" of environmental costs by developers and corporations.
Again, a personal comment.
Private Person
9:20 am on Friday, July 29, 2011
And mowing down every living thing for the metro, which will use at least 50 percent dirty coal to power the system, and most of the remaining from other fossil fuels, does not do the same thing environmentally speaking?
Richard Holmquist
4:55 pm on Friday, July 29, 2011
Not sure that it's worth replying to anonymous snipes, but the short answer to Private Person's comment below is no, Metro isn't a net environmental problem - not when you compare it to the network of roads that would have to have to be created to manage the traffic of people who would otherwise be driving. Furthermore, rail & electrical power are an order of magnitude more efficient than individual automobilies burning gas. By "mowing down every living thing" do you mean digging up the Toll Road median, Rt. 7 in Tysons, or the Weihle park & ride? I'm not sure exactly where I stand on the Fairway develoment, but this one's easy.
Private Person
7:53 pm on Friday, July 29, 2011
Your intolerance is showing and it's embarrassing to all. Free speech applies to all including those who disagree.
Once again, we see the heads stuffed in the ground drinking the poisoned kool-aid.
Metro is a financial drain and is far from any form of green. It will do nothing more than increase congestion in the entire Dulles corridor and here you are opposing progress once again?
The Reston of the 1960s is dead, It failed and it's time to bury it and move on.
Such hypocrisy! Keep the dilapidated housing on the false premise that we are here to house the "poor" with granite and stainless kitchens and private spas to a tune of at least $1.5 million in condo fees...and you question what's easy?
The BSD Guy
1:44 pm on Friday, July 29, 2011
My question is WHY IS ANYONE SHOCKED BY THIS? Is it stupid? Of course? Is it well thought out? Of course not. Are the citizens/residents in Fairfax the benificiaries? No, the developers are.
It's always the same "shell game". A developer comes up with a money making scheme, it faces opposition, it bounces around from committee to committee where it, as usual, gets approved. WHAT PERCENTAGE OF DEVELOPERS PROJECTS ARE EVER **NOT** APPROVED???
This is just another example of what's wrong with the government in this country ranging from our lowliest local legislators all the way up to the U.S. Senate: It's all about special interests with the American people held hostage.
....oh, and .....uh.....how's that working out for 'ya. What's that you say....you're just coming out of a world economic collapse induced by special interests.....you're about to let the U.S. economy collapse because special interests with radical if not crazy economic "theories" (if you can call "It won't happen...just because" a theory) driven by special interests are letting the country default on its obligations.
...well, look at ti this way. Right now you can likely get to a grocery store in 10 minutes, do your shopping, and take 10 minutes to get home. With our "developers gone wild" program as implemented by the County, in the future it'll be 45 min to store, shop, then 45 min from store....due to congestion.
By all means...enjoy!!
Private Person
8:27 pm on Friday, July 29, 2011
And just how do you think this place called "Reston" came to be? Some developer (three guesses who he may be and the first two guesses are moot) bought a bunch of land, many thousands of acres in fact, mostly under the cloak of mystery, most of it a farm and a distillery, and changed the world view by reviving a so-called "planned community" concept left for dead by WW II.
The grand irony, of course, is had "that developer" not developed, cleared the farms and forcing the distillery our in the late 1980s, none of you would be here and this debate would not be occurring.
Had other developers not come along, Tyson's Corner would still be owned by Mr. Tyson, it would still be little more than a corner, and one would have to motor elsewhere to do the things one does in Tyson's Corner. Is Tyson's Corner attractive? Hell no, It's a hideous eyesore and it will take billions of dollars no one has to make it more than the ugly, but wildly financially successful, mess that it is.
Likewise, Clarendon would still be the home of the dilapidated Sears store and ethnic restaurants (RIP Queen Bee).
So implement that which is possible and compromise for planned, attractive progress rather than festering away in some quaint 1960s experiment whose time is long past.
Rob Whitfield
3:31 pm on Friday, July 29, 2011
I did not attend the recent Fairways Planning Commission hearing but have followed the plan in news stories during the last year. I am dismayed to read the following in the Patch: "De le Fe added that the principal roads can handle the traffic, and JBG will conduct a traffic study."
What factual evidence on existing traffic conditions and new traffic demand forecasts for the proposed project was submitted by JBG and reviewed by planning staff, if any? Did Commissioner De le Fe review any traffic demand data?
Is it now standard Fairfax County Planning Commission practice to approve new projects before traffic data such as provided in a VDOT Section 527 Report is provided by an applicant for plan approval? If this is the case, it is time to immediately remove the Planning Commissioners who allow such a practice.
It has been very evident during the Reston Master Plan Update process that Commissioner DeLaFaye doesn't care to know about traffic problems being created the massive increases in development density proposed in transit station areas. The transportation presentation by Fairfax County staff at the Task Force meeting on Tuesday was, at best, sophomoric.
I gleaned from Dan Rathbone, who is doing Tysons Corner traffic demand modeling, that instead of five new lanes for the Dulles Toll Road to handle increased traffic which will be generated by new Tysons Corner development, they now are only looking at one additional westbound lane to Reston.
John Lovaas
3:41 pm on Friday, July 29, 2011
Actually, there are some positives to note in what is. of course, not a surprising outcome. In the end, the political appointees on the Planning Commission did what influential developers wanted even if it is clearly not in the best interests of the community. And, the Reston P & Z clearly fears exercising any independence from the Supervisor's office these days.
But, the Fairfax County DPZ staff is to be commended for a valiant effort in recommending denial the first time around for a long list of reasons that they carefully delineated in one of the best pieces of staff work I've seen by that department in the last 10 years at least. Even though many of the issues they identified were not resolved, some were; and, they apparently felt that was the best that could be done without getting their senior civil servants in difficulties with the political level.
The Reston Association's Design Review Board have been the center of integrity in the matter for over two years now, over under withering pressure and public name calling from today's voice of developers, Robert Simon. In fact, the DRB continues the fight for at least sound Reston design principles. Matters of development overload on the infrastructure, the inconsistency with Fairfax County's own policies of Transit-Oriented Development, and the net loss of 200 plus affordable units are beyond DRB's legal purview. But, we all owe them a debt of gratitude for standing up for us, when others did not. Keep it up DRB
John Lovaas
3:50 pm on Friday, July 29, 2011
Also to be commended is the Reston Citizens Association and their leadership in the person of Marion Stillson for speaking out repeated and eloquently to the stone wall of the Hunter Mill Planning Commissioner. Similarly, we've discovered a shining new light on the Reston scene--the Fairfax Coalition for Smarter Growth and and its dynamic President, Diane Blust. So, there are some silver linings to the ugly cloud of the Fairways destruction. Hope for the future!
Tammi Petrine
8:43 pm on Friday, July 29, 2011
I am beyond dismayed by the approval of the Fairways application pushed through by our local commissioner, Frank de la Fe. De la Fe made two egregious errors that exposed his bias at the public hearing before the Fairfax P & Z at which so many Restonians testified:
#1. He stated that Fairways was in a TOD area and therefore suitable for approval.
SAY WHAT??? A TOD (Transit Oriented Development) area is within 1/2 Mile from the transit (in this case, Metro Silver Line.) Two problems with that one: A) Fairways is a MILE away from the PROPOSED Silver Line. B) We have no Silver Line yet and no viable business plan to get it here. Yeah, that's right! You heard me... $10 to $20 tolls EACH way automatically put this project in the dumpster. No bond underwriter will support this crazy scheme as everyone knows that drivers will flee the toll road in droves if such idiocy persists. Unless a huge group of creative citizens gets together NOW to ferret out some heretofore undeveloped funding sources, this puppy is dead.
#2 De La Fe stated that Reston already has precedent for the terrible "Texas Donut" design that is the hallmark of the current Fairways design. Texas Donut = multiple stories of housing wrapped around multiple stories of parking garages. He cited Hickory Cluster as his example. That too was wrong. HC NEVER had a Texas Donut. Their limited parking garage was hideous, hated by residents and its construction failed, requiring it to be torn down,