News and notes from Reston (tm).

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Wow, some junket!

393392215_64083c3c76.jpg.jpegThose fat-cats in Congress are always going on fact-finding junkets to the Caribbean or Hawaii or whatnot, where they study the effects of lobbyists expenditures on their tan lines. But if you're a local politician in Tennessee, the best you can hope for is an all-expenses paid trip to the awesome Reston Town Center:

The developer of the proposed May Town Center is offering to fly Metro planning commissioners to Virginia on a chartered corporate plane to see a model for the development, and some Bells Bend and Scottsboro residents are crying foul.



In a letter sent Monday, Tony Giarratana invited every member of the Metro Planning Commission to accompany him and two Tennessee State University officials to the Piedmont Triad Research Park and Reston Town Center next Monday, May 11. Giarratana wrote that Reston Town Center “served as the inspiration and model” for May Town Center. The May family, which owns 1,500 acres in Bells Bend, has donated 250 of them - and $400,000 - to TSU for farmland and a research park.

“We feel these tours will help you better visualize the May Town Center proposal before you,” Giarratana wrote.

But David Briley, an attorney representing Bells Bend and Scottsboro residents who don’t want the potentially $4 billion office, residential and retail development built near their homes, said the trip could violate the state’s open meetings law.
Granted, this is Tennessee we're talking about, so we're sure these dedicated public servants will stare slack-jawed at the Macaroni Grill and such mind-bending foods as "sushi."

The developer's site has some awesome pictures of the proposed development, which looks suspiciously like a fake downtown we all know and love. Only we're assuming instead of Anthropologie and the Apple Store, they're shooting for such exciting ground-floor retail as a Dollywood souvenir store and the Tobacco Barn.

5 comments:

  1. Horrible how people that you agree with coast on asinine stereotypes to get cheap laughs.

    There's a significant opposition in Nashville to the idiotic idea of building a "new urbanist" ersatz downtown on an inaccessible plot of land that provides sustainable agriculture within ten miles of a city center, as well as being a nature sanctuary.

    This stupidity actually got stopped at the planning commission last summer by smart, well-organized opposition.

    But for your cheap yucks, you offer an image of slack-jawed yokels. Funny how people you would think are your allies act like such bigots.

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  2. Oh, come on. If you read this blog for any amount of time, you'd see it's an equal-opportunity offender. And new urbanism's a great concept -- it's the fake (or "erstaz") new urbanism that's annoying.

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  3. Will the Tennessee visitors get small cans of mauve paint as party favors?

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  4. The Convict in Gulag 4May 6, 2009 at 7:39 PM

    I was about to suggest that, since Herndon and Runnymede are sister towns, that maybe Reston and Bells Bend or Scottsboro could be our sibling. DG, however, has made me question whether or not I want such people in my family.

    However, DG, if you want to discuss this further, I'll be happy to stop by your trailer park the next time I pass through Nashville. We can have dinner at Macaroni Grill or maybe Bubba's RoadKill BBQ.

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  5. Ooooh, we've got foreigners in our midst! They need to read a lot more of this blog to understand Reston. They also need to look up the definition for sarcasm.

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