Bob Simon on Redevelopment, Communism, and Longevity: 'One Martini Every Evening'

Reston founder and popular Lake Anne sculpture Bob Simon was recently interviewed by Washingtonian magazine, the same august publication that profiled some filthy hobo "web logger" earlier this year. Seriously, read the whole thing. Along with learning the 95-year-old Simon's secret to longevity (the aforementioned daily martini) and mocking satanic Reston doppelganger Columbia for the same reason we do (its town center is a "huge air-conditioned mall"), the interview confirmed our long-held suspicion that Lake Anne's Heron House was inspired by cutting-edge architecture from Cold War-era Finland, or as it was called at the time, a "chillier East Germany."

Okay, so we made that last quote up. But Simon also shared his vision of the future of Reston. Commenters, break out your repetitive stress injury wristbands and get ready:

At the Wiehle Avenue stop planned for Reston, I’m interested in having them develop over the Dulles Toll Road. If they don’t put the foundations in now for air rights, they’re going to be very difficult to get later. We have some wonderful renderings of what could happen with air rights—office buildings, apartments, gardens.

They say the Washington area could get 2 million more people in the next few years. We’re going to get our share in Reston.

The “village centers” at South Lakes, Hunters Woods, and Tall Oaks could be torn down and proper village centers built with dense residential. That could absorb a lot of the population.

I’ve been working on revitalization for Lake Anne Plaza for more than five years. The market is such that no developer’s going to come along right now. But the plan would bring in a number of residential units—townhouses and apartments—behind the plaza. That’ll make a big difference. It could be all high-rises. It could be a combination of low-rise and high-rise. It could include townhouses. I know two developers who we’ll be hearing from when the market gets a little better.

So does Simon want to turn Reston into, as a popular phrase has been coined, another Manhattan?

I don’t miss New York. We have everything here—music, art, theater, and of course community. If I were really loaded, I still don’t think I’d want to get a palace in New York and chauffeur-driven cars. I like this kind of place.

Simon also talked about Reston's early days, where the promise of people of all races and income levels living together were too much for the 1960s "establishment." Come on, didn't he watch Mad Men or anything?

We sought an investment from General Electric, which had announced that it was going to build 20 “new towns.” We negotiated a deal, and their planners brought their wives here and put holds on houses. Then the decision went to the powers that be at GE, where one of the guys said, “You can’t do that. They’ve got blacks living there.” And the deal was canceled.

I’ve been told for years that the real-estate brokers at the time said we were communists. I recently got confirmation of that. I was at a party with a couple who have lived here for a long time. Before they moved here, they were told, “You don’t want to go to Reston—it’s pinko.”

Simon also spoke about what's been lost from Reston's original vision:

The idea of village centers went out. We have things in Reston called village centers, but aside from Lake Anne Plaza, they’re just shopping centers.

We also lost the idea that people of different incomes could live happily next door to each other. Reston still has a remarkable diversity of incomes, but rich and poor are not living next door to each other.

It’s difficult to overcome the culture that we live in. It’s a culture where a state-of-the-art bathroom and kitchen are what one needs, plus enough square footage to show everyone that one could afford it. We’ve gone a couple centuries without understanding community. It’s too bad that it’s so hard to communicate what pleasure one gets from living with one’s fellow human being.

We seriously love this guy.