Crescent City? CItyCenterDC Developer Submits Proposal for Massive Lake Anne Redevelopment

Hines, a global developer of high-end properties, including CityCenterDC, a fancy mixed-use development currently under way downtown (pictured at right), has submitted a proposal to redevelop the county-owned Crescent Apartments at Lake Anne. More specifically, it would build a 1,330 unit community, including 275 affordable apartments developed by AHC, a nonprofit developer of affordable housing.

It's the largest redevelopment proposal in Reston to date -- bigger than the contentious 805-unit Fairway Apartments project recently approved by the county. More specifically, it would increase the number of housing units at the 181-unit Crescent Apartments site more than sevenfold.

Hines and AHC submitted the proposal as part of the county's solicitation for proposals to redevelop the property, in an attempt to jumpstart the long-delayed revitalization of Lake Anne. Bear in mind this was reported by a real estate "web log," so it's not clear if there are other proposals under consideration -- and there may well be, given that 16.5 acre parcels in established communities don't come up for redevelopment every day. The county is supposed to select the developer for the property by July 2.

It's an interesting conundrum. Unlike Fairway, this redevelopment is in a spot the county is actively trying to have redeveloped, and redeveloped at a density that would make Lake Anne Plaza less of a ghost town in the winter revitalize Lake Anne Village Center. The county would also get more affordable housing in the bargain -- 275 units, compared to the 181 in the current county-owned complex. At the same time, there are the same questions as at Fairway about the impact of a large community on traffic, given its lack of proximity to Metro.

On the bright side, at least we now know there's actually developer interest in Lake Anne -- and high-end developer interest, at that -- and that county officials won't have to glumly announce that their bid for proposals came up empty-handed. That's something that might have been hard to predict back in 2009, when the redevelopment plan was approved by county officials smack dab in the middle of a recession. So we've got that going for us.

Summer of Mauve: Reston Entrepreneurs Seek to Swap Smoothies for Startup Costs, Barter Their Way to a New Tortilla Factory

So that whole "exchanging money for goods and services" thing may just be a passing fad. Which is why Restonians trying to start a new business at Lake Anne -- and revitalize an old favorite out yon Herndon way -- are trying fancy variations on fundraising and the age-old approach of bartering. Grab your shiny beads and handmade artisanal leather wallets and keep reading!

First up is New Family Naturals, a Reston Farmers Market regular that has now leased permanent space at Lake Anne Plaza and is hoping to open a "community health food market and juice bar" by August. To cover about half of its estimated $12,000 in opening expenses, the owners are using a website called Indiegogo to help raise startup costs. For $1,000, you can get a juice or smoothie named after you. For $5,000, you get a free juice or smoothie every week for a year. Smaller contributions get you donations, tote bags, and other goodies.

So far, New Family Naturals have raised $1,175 towards their $6,000 goal, which isn't bad. Maybe there's something to this goodwill-and-free-grub thing after all.

Meanwhile, out Herndon way, Reston resident Wally Spencer is trying to revitalize the Tortilla Factory, which closed earlier this year. So far, he has secured the name and recipes from one of the original owners, and is now trying to barter for air conditioning repair. "Anyone who may know a vendor that has loved the Tortilla Factory and would like to see it re-open - please support us," he wrote in a fancy "web log" post. "Bartering is the way to go!!"

Good for both of them -- for small, much-loved businesses like the Tortilla Factory and unique locations like Lake Anne, creative approaches like these make sense in a way that they wouldn't for, say, the 99th franchisee of the Cheesecake Factory or whatever. In the interest of being fair and balanced, however, we'll point out that the long-vacant One Dulles Corridor office building near the intersection of Hunter Mill Road and the Toll Road was just sold for a cool $41.7 million. Details are sketchy, but it appears no smoothies changed hands in the transaction, so maybe this capitalism thing isn't completely washed up, after all.

Fun With Maps: Reston Drivers Should Maybe Just Stay Off the Roads

Courtesy of the state DMV, this fancy map shows the impact of vehicle accidents in our beloved earth-toned community in 2010, the most recent year in which data was available. While there were only three fatalities (indicated by red triangles), there were certainly plenty of injuries (yellow circles) and property damage (green circles) in and around Reston. Aside from a slew of fender-benders on the commuter hellscapes of Rt. 7 and the Toll Road, the takeaway appears to be to stay off of Reston Parkway, Wiehle Avenue, and, especially, Elden Street once you cross under the Great Wall of Reston and head out towards Herndon way. North Reston appears to have fewer accidents (though we're sure the ones that did happen there involved much nicer, more sought after cars than elsewhere in Reston). Oddly enough, the pre-dieted Soapstone Road and the post-dieted Personal Injury Lawyers Road both stand out as not being particularly accident prone, at least on this fancy map, the end.

(Shout out to our favorite correspondent, The Peasant From Less Sought After South Reston, for this find.)

Update: Just hours after this "web log" was posted, we found this picture of a trash truck driving on the wrong side of a Reston street on the Twitter machines. Proof's in the pudding, etc., etc.

Metro Fiasco: If Loudoun Bails From Phase 2, Will Reston Development Speed Up or Slow Down?

Someone apparently gave the Washington Post "news-paper" a "hot scoop" over the weekend. That thing in the median of the Toll Road? Turns out it's one of those new-fangled Metro stations, and because of that, there might be some construction nearby, pardon the dust, etc., etc. Who knew?

The first leg of Metrorail’s Silver Line, which would run from East Falls Church to the eastern edge of Reston, is more than a year away from opening, and already there are signs that it will spawn some of the development that advocates promised it would. But it is also clear that it may take years for some of that long-awaited growth to actually happen.

At least the newspaper didn't use a big word this time.

To be fair, the Post did delve into a more pertinent issue: whether the trouble (with a capital T that rhymes with P) brewing amongst our enlightened neighbors in Loudoun County would impact the pace of development along Wiehle Avenue, though it wasn't clear if Loudoun's tea party-influenced, pound-foolish handwringing potential rejection of Phase 2 would speed things up or slow them down here in Reston. Journalism!

Other stakeholders worry that a decision by Loudoun to walk away from the $2.7 billion project could delay and even jeopardize its completion. At the very least, it could create more congestion in Reston and especially around Wiehle Avenue, which was not intended to be the terminus for Northern Virginia’s newest rail line.

Public officials worry that its plans for a walkable urban community could be interrupted, at least for a time, if the station becomes a magnet for commuters from the outer suburbs.

On the other hand, the bollardy developers of Reston Station sound like they'd view a stalled Phase II as an opportunity:

At the station, Comstock Partners has already carted away enough dirt to fill RFK Stadium from the seven-acre site where the parking garage and other development will go, spokeswoman Maggie Parker said... In addition to the garage’s 11 / 2 million square feet of space, there will be 2 million square feet set aside for a hotel, residences, and retail and commercial office space. The tallest buildings will be 22 stories high.

Parker said that Comstock will follow through with plans to develop the hotel, office and residential dwellings regardless of Loudoun’s decision. If anything, they would move faster to complete the project, she said. The firm also owns land near the last proposed Loudoun station. If Loudoun quits the project, Comstock will develop office space there.

“Everybody’s waiting and watching,” Parker said.

Meanwhile, some of the locals didn't cotton to the Post's recent discovery of this place called Reston:


Watch for it in the upcoming book 101 Hilarious Newspaper Comment Section Snaps, Disses, and Practical Jokes, the end.

More RTC Hawtness: Reston Police/Government Center or Ghostbusters Headquarters? You Be The Judge

We love us some architectural drawrings, and these exciting new renderings of the new $18 million Reston District Police Station and Governmental Center are pretty sweet, even if they suggest the building will be populated exclusively by ghosts, including ones wearing spectral spandex riding otherworldly cycles. There's even a canine from the Other Side. Scary!

In the summer issue of Reston: The Magazine, Hunter Mill Supervisor Cathy Hudgins writes that the new building will be built on the west side of the current facility on the north side of Reston Town Center in order to "allow opportunities for future development of the block." The two-story building will house police-related functions on the lower level, and government-related functions on the upper level, which is full of glass to represent transparency in government (or maybe people just like natural light) and features a kitchentte, which you've got to admit is pretty sweet. The building could be open as early as 2014, according to Hudgins.

South Lakes High School Ranked #308 in the Nation in Somewhat Arbitrary Yet Influential List

Every year, the Washington Post and Newsweek come out with their fancy "challenge index" of national high schools, prompting much hand-wringing and arbitrary comparisons that, when combined with 25 cents, may or may not buy you a dropperful of artiseanal free trade coffee from your local barista. This year, Reston's South Lakes High School ranked 308th among the nation's top 1,900 schools, or 39th in the DC area. That's up from #558 a few years back, a data point selected by the all-important "last time we remembered to check on this arbitrary annual list, which wasn't last year" criteria. Herndon High School ranked 233rd, or 31st in the region. Given that there are more than 26,000 high schools in the country, that ain't bad. But of course, we in Fairfax County have come to expect champagne wishes and caviar dreams, even from our schools.

At 104th nationally, Oakton was the top-ranked Fairfax County high school (and 10th in the region), followed by McLean, James Madison, Langley (go Unredistrictable Anglo-Saxons!), W.T. Woodson, Lake Braddock, Chantilly, Herndon, and Robinson. Centreville, Westfield, West Springfield, South County, Marshall, Stuart, Falls Church, Hayfield, Edison, Lee, Annandale, all scored lower than SLHS. About one in three SLHS students qualify for free and reduced lunch, according to the survey.

So what does all this mean? As with any piece of data rounded to three decimal points, probably less than it seems. The index is based on the proportion of graduating seniors who take college-level AP and IB exams, not test scores that "say more about a school’s average family income than its efforts to raise the level of instruction for average students," as Post education maven Jay Matthews puts it. Critics of the index argue that the rankings don't say how well students do on those exams, and point to schools on the list with high dropout rates and wide achievement gaps among students of different races and income levels. But with "rigor" being the watchword in education circles right now, it's hard to argue with the idea that schools should push more kids into IB and AP classes so they have a slight chance at not spending the next six decades as interchangeable and disposable wage slaves one minor misstep away from irrevocable financial ruin can be "college and career ready."

More troubling is this:

Either they didn't get any data from SLHS, or we'd suggest checking the water fountains for lead.

In other words, it's all a bit of a wash. We'd frankly spend more time worrying about who the next South Lakes principal is going to be, or why kids there are getting in trouble for being on the Twitters, or what possessed someone to break into the school, the end.

Not-So-Breaking News: County Lost $2.4 Million on Reston Housing Complex, Several Years Ago

Set the Wayback Machine to 2009, and in between listening to Nickelback and watching Lost on the teevee, you might have noticed that Fairfax County had gotten itself embroiled in the foreclosure proceedings of a Reston apartment complex. According to the Washington Times, the county lost $2.4 million in its investment in the Reston Glen apartment complex in South Reston -- an investment made to ensure "web logs" make their quotas of angry comments about workforce housing help ensure affordable housing in the county. Lay it on us, old-timey "news paper":

In January 2007, Fairfield Properties bought the 200-unit Reston Glen apartment complex for $30,375,000. The company subsequently sought financing through the county to keep a fifth of the apartments affordable based on a preset rateand to rehabilitate the property.

The county’s Redevelopment and Housing Authority facilitated $34 million in bond financing for the project, and also provided a $2.375 million loan from the county’s “Penny for Affordable Housing Fund,” which is funded by dedicating 1 cent of the value of the real estate tax rate.

In September 2009, Fairfield was unable to put up enough collateral after entering into an arrangement with Goldman Sachs, who bought the bonds, and so Goldman foreclosed on the property. In December 2009, Fairfield filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The $2.4 million was lost through the foreclosure, but the Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) came to an agreement with the purchaser, Red Stone Partners IV LLC, to repay the note up to the full amount at 25 cents on the dollar. The catch, though, was that the money would only flow for every dollar the company got in excess of $34 million for a future sale of the property.

Our eyes started glazing over at the words "Goldman Sachs," but we're going to assume their involvement helped create value or something and move on. Right?

The property was sold in December 2010 for $28.5 million, however, so HCD wrote off the Penny Fund loan at the end of fiscal 2011. The affordability restrictions on the complex are still in place, it was rehabilitated, and the bonds were fully repaid.

Here's a Fun Fact we didn't know. According to the complex's website (which has its own web log), the different apartment models are named after fancy painters -- e.g., the Monet, the Van Gogh, and the Picasso (just don't check the walls on the latter unit with a T-square). Things appear to be going A-OK there now, and the affordable units that were the reason the county got involved with the complex in the first place are still there.

So bygones? Apparently not. Some county supervisors are peeved that they were only formally notified of the loss this year, and the Washington Times, never one to miss a story about "affordable housing" or "not putting the poor in workhouses," was On The Scene. The county investment was part of a pilot project that won't be repeated, the article says, but Fairfax is now attempting to market another Reston affordable housing complex it owns -- Crescent Apartments -- as part of the broader redevelopment of Lake Anne. Bids were supposed to come in on those redevelopment proposals at some point this spring, so who knows what will come of that?