How big and how fast should Reston grow? Leaders will soon debate this question.

Hunter Mill District Supervisor Walter Alcorn recently called for an amendment of the Fairfax County Comprehensive Plan for Reston. The Comp Plan is a sort of master document for the planning, development and priorities for the planned community. The plan hasn’t been amended in five years.

In a press release, Alcorn said, “the time is right to review key elements of that plan, including the balance of existing and planned development, infrastructure and the environment across all of Reston.”

But, what will these amendments mean for residents of Reston and the region at large?

Why review and amend the Comp Plan?

The last big amendment to the comp plan was in 2014 and 2015 for the Transit Station Areas in Reston, and Phase II amendment plans for Reston Villages and residential areas. Since then, however, millions of square feet have been built or are under construction now. But looming questions remain about how fast and how big Reston could and should grow.

The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors approved Alcorn’s proposal during a January 14 board meeting, and the review process could take between 12 and 18 months. Details will be announced soon but public participation will be key.

The idea of reviewing the Comp Plan is not new to Alcorn who campaigned on managing the massive amount of planning in Reston, even while he served on the Fairfax County Planning Commission, before being elected to the Board of Supervisors.

Alcorn listed out several priorities including:

• Projected population thresholds for Reston, and how to ensure that population, infrastructure and the environment are all in balance
• Land use in the village centers (Hunters Woods, South Lakes and North Point) – including clarification of what type of future redevelopment proposals might require an amendment to the Comprehensive Plan
• The adequacy of existing plan language to generate additional affordable housing, and improvements to plan language to encourage preservation and enhancement of existing communities that now provide affordable housing
• The adequacy of existing and planned pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure for accessing Silver Line stations
• The adequacy of existing Comprehensive Plan guidance to facilitate urban-scale mobility and development design in the TSAs while protecting the stability of nearby neighborhoods
• Existing Comprehensive Plan transportation improvements to ensure that they are aligned with planned development
• How the Comprehensive Plan could better facilitate enhancement of Reston’s natural environment, encourage energy efficiency and support sustainable green neighborhoods
• How the Comprehensive Plan could address concerns about monopolization of ownership in Reston, and ways to encourage diverse ownership and/or management over the long term
• Whether the historic practice of promoting privately-owned and managed open space sufficiently addresses public needs during the next 50 years of Reston

That’s a lot of issues and there are places where some goals may be incompatible. Let’s look at a few of them:

Population caps

The idea of fixing a firm population number onto Reston is a popular one with groups who want to ensure that new development is limited in Reston. It was a large criticism behind efforts to derail updates to Planned Residential Community limits where plan opponents felt like it was an underhanded way to just let the population of Reston grow unchecked.

At the same time, projecting population increases is hard sometimes and the failure to get the projection right might just be a signal that people’s predictions were off rather than a sign that property developers are running amok. And when those projections are tied to development approval or the provision of new infrastructure it can delay construction of new housing needed by the same families who are growing.

That’s the effect in Montgomery County where construction moratoriums aimed at letting school construction catch up aren’t really an effective tool at expanding school capacity.

Stable versus dynamic growth

One of the challenges in Reston is balancing the interests of people who mostly want things to stay the same versus people who want to see the area change to accommodate more people. The first iteration of the Comp Plan aimed to balance this by laying out where people could expect changes versus where things would stay the same.

This was a change from the first iteration of Reston’s development where developers were largely free to choose whether or not a neighborhood would have detached homes, townhouses, or apartments. The current Comp plan revised this by basically locking in the built zoning of established neighborhoods.

To accommodate the need for new growth, new density would go in either what’s now known as a “Transit Station Area” (TSA) or a few other areas like Reston’s Village Centers which are largely commercial retail areas that could include new housing one day.

This seems like a reasonable compromise but instead, it has led to new fronts on the development battlefield. A recent example is an organization that rose up against the redevelopment proposed at Campus Commons.

Residents in the “stable” neighborhood on the southern side of Sunrise Valley Drive balked at a proposal to add new housing and offices close to the Wiehle-Reston East Metro Station in an area firmly inside the Transit Station Area Zone. On paper it’s straight forward but when a dramatic zoning change is literally decided by what side of the street you’re on its easy to see how the real world makes it harder to balance two competing interests.

Infrastructure delivery

Another key point is looking at the schedule of delivery for infrastructure projects aimed at helping handle Reston’s growth. The biggest one, Phase 2 of the Silver Line, is due to open (hopefully) sometime in the next year but that’s not the only change proposed.

Fairfax County is also evaluating changes to Fairfax Connector routes in the area, adding sidewalks along major roads, and new connections across the Dulles Toll Road.

But coordinating things and building public infrastructure with private construction funda and companies is difficult and there is the question of how long is it reasonable to wait for one to precede the other. Or even if what is planned is adequate.

On top of that is continued debate over what infrastructure changes are best equipped to handle the growth, like adding bike lanes or pedestrian crossings to encourage walking and cycling, instead of changes that aim to speed up car trips.

There are other issues that will be examined, like the role of private organizations that own some of the public space and amenities in Reston as well as a system that encourages a few large landowners rather than a larger and more diverse group.

Alcorn says he wants to do all this to “fix” the Comprehensive Plan. It’s an admirable goal but those “fixes” may depend on whose viewpoint ultimately gets heard.