Ringing Out the Old: A Fun-Filled List of Things You Didn't Want to be in Reston During 2012

• An acrophobe
  
  
• A reader
  
  
• A impatient Lake Anne resident
  
  
• An aficionado of imported German vehicles
  
  
• A golfer
  
  
• A homeowner with a golf course view
  
  
• A fan of Euclidean geometry
  
  
• A anonymous web logger
  
  
• A task force proofreader
  
  
• A aficionado of jet-age cooling systems
  
  
• Someone uncomfortable with the human form
  
  
• A fan of the Macaroni Grill
  
  
• A resident of Manassas Park
  
  
• The RA's telephone repairman
  
  
• A 1960s advertising icon
  
  
• A coin collector
  
  
• A Chinese pig
  
  
• An aging midrise garden apartment/ condo complex
  
  
• An excessive underarm sweater
  
  
• A water lilly
  
  
• Someone who remembers 1960s horror movies about carnivorous plants that fell from the sky, presumably from outer space
  
  
• An owner of a pet dragon
  
  
• Unromantic people
  
  
• A grieving pet lover with a flair for the dramatic
  
  
• A Norfolk newspaper columnist
  
  
• A wallaby.
  

Especially a wallaby.

Our Holiday Gift to You: YouTubes Videos of Seasonal Reston Fare

For lazy "web loggers," YouTube is the gift that keeps on giving all year round. In the spirit of the holidays, here's some fancy videos you may have missed.

Did you miss the Reston Holiday Parade? Here it is:

Next up is a "holiday wish" from our BFFs at Rescue Reston. You'll never guess what that wish is! (Spoiler: It's not a set of cufflinks.) If you want to give Rescue Reston a present, you could sign up to go to their fundraising "winter gala" on Jan. 26, if you're so inclined.



This isn't particularly Christmas-y, but it 1) is from Reston and 2) we think we saw a Christmas tree in the background at one point.



Finally, please to be enjoying this fancy video of Reston's best (and most DRB-pleasing monochrome) household light display, straight outta fashionable North Reston. The home's owners are asking everyone to donate to St. Jude's, which sounds seasonally appropriate to us. Enjoy, and happy holidays.

At Tall Oaks, a Blue Christmas (Sign)

This artsy photo from the Twitter machine captures the spirit of the season at our ersatz downtown. On the odd chance you haven't stopped by in the past month or so, it's actually quite pretty!

But we're writing with the exciting news that that RTC is not the only place to get into the last-minute Christmas spirit! Confidential Restonian Operative "Joel" shared these exciting and festive photos of the Tall Oaks Stucco Wasteland Shopping Center.

"Joel" writes:

Crowds of shoppers will find the holiday spirit alive at Tall Oaks Village Center, where light posts are festooned with new seasonal banners.

"All four seasons are represented," "Joel" adds, and indeed they are. We'd like to think that Susie de Los Santos would be proud.

We hope that this inspires you to go out and do some last-minute Christmas shopping, except that there aren't really any establishments at Tall Oaks to shop from per se, unless you want a gift card from one of its (seriously excellent) restaurants, or maybe to do some Christmas dry cleaning, the end.

Everything's Coming Up Bollards: JBG Buys Another Reston Apartment Complex

We know what Reston's getting for Christmas: more bollardy goodness! JBG, owner of the soon-to-be-redeveloped Fairway Apartments complex, apparently rolled double ones on the Reston Monopoly board and has purchased Charter Oak, the garden apartment complex closest to Park Place Fairway on North Shore Road. Give us some good blockquote, BFFs at Patch:

Charter Oak is a 262-unit complex off of North Shore Road near Lake Anne.

JBG, which also owns the Reston Heights mixed-use development and nearby Fairway Apartments in Reston, says the complex's location near Hidden Creek Country Club, Reston Town Center and Metro's upcoming Silver Line, presents a "terrific opportunity."

A JBG spokeswoman also said that there are "no redevelopment plans at this time."

However, Charter Oak, a garden-apartment complex built in 1970, is smack in the middle of other affordable housing developments slated for redevelopment.

Also, the move is furthering the consolidation of a handful of big developers with an outsize stake in Reston (re)development: Along with Fairway and Charter Oak, JBG owns Reston Heights, itself slated for further redevelopment. Lerner has dibs on the Spectrum, plus maybe the proposed Reston National Golf Course redevelopment, or so the folks at Rescue Reston have alleged. By acquiring the original buildings earlier this year, Boston Properties now owns much of the present (and future) Reston Town Center. And who knows who will wind up the "winner" of the county's Crescent Apartments redevelopment RFP.

Maybe it's time to resurrect the Game of Reston. We call Macaroni Grill Marvin Gardens!

Reston: The Maps

Confidential Restonian Operative "Ryan" shared this eye-catching map he created with us:

I've been living in Reston for about 6 years now, and I've always noticed how Reston has the coolest looking neighborhood signs. I came up with an idea to photograph all of the neighborhood signs I could find and arrange them onto a map of Reston.

Or if you like your maps with actual streets and bodies of water and whatnot, our BFFs at the Reston Association have updated Reston: The Map. Download the PDF at this link, print it out, roll it up, and put it in the stockings of your loved ones. Your kids will love hanging their official map of Reston next to their Bobby Sherman One Direction poster, the end.

Flashback Monday: Homes for 70s Hep Cats in Their 20s

Set the controls of the Earth-Toned Wayback Machine to 1972, when this fancy advertisement told hip young people, presumably wearing Wavy Gravy-style tie-die shirts, that they could own a "home" in a place called "Reston." The image is tiny, but you can see Bearded Dad sitting on a sofa that we can thank our lucky stars was photographed in black-and-white, to spare us its mauve and orange horrors. He's watching as his wife and their child luxuriate in the thick pile of the earth-toned shag carpeting, contemplating a tiny tree and a disturbing bust of a human head on top of what is either a large microwave or small tevee. Behold the horror:

The breathless marketing copy reads:

Sanibel Townhouses: Reston's newest addition priced from $28,000. A value within reach even for a young couple in their twenties. And a Sanibel townhouse means an investment for the future, bringing you all the tax savings and equity accumulation advantages of full home ownership.

Way to talk to the Laugh-In crowd. Sock it to me... with more marketing copy!

And Sanibel owners will also own a part of Reston's leisure life.

To go with their leisure suits.

Close to your home are open green spaces, wooded pathways, swimming pools, tennis courts and playing fields. For convenience, a full range of shops and services is offered nearby in the Hunters Woods Village Center and Reston's new International Center. And Reston's Express Commuter Bus System brings the office and home closer together than ever before.

Sweet, Daddy-O! We'll spare everyone the mental math and share the depressing thought that the pioneering young folk who bought into the Reston dream in their 20s back then are now in their 60s, having aged just like the rest of us. And that cute kid? He's now a middle-aged man. Happy holidays!

As the Shadowood Turns: Post Runs Article Day Before Board Elections

The fancy Washington Post "news-paper" ran an article this morning about Shadowood's date with the state Supreme Court earlier this year. The stuff about the high court's ruling and its Serious Implications on how and when condo associations can fine their residents aren't new, but there are lots of fun details about life in South Reston's most litigious condo complex. Fines for calling the management office! Cars being towed en masse on (or right before) Thanksgiving! Air conditioning cutoffs! $75,000 for consulting services! Water damage left unrepaired for years! A board election to be held… tomorrow!

For years, the Shadowood Condominium Association imposed fees for things like calling the management office or having the wrong color blinds. It towed tenants’ cars for unpaid fees — on the day before Thanksgiving. It turned off the heat or air conditioning to apartments of owners who were in arrears or in violation of its many rules.

Last year, a Fairfax County judge permanently enjoined Shadowood from doing any of that stuff. The association appealed to the state Supreme Court, using its own members/victims’ money to pay its lawyers. This summer they lost there too, enshrining Shadowood in Virginia law under the concept that you can’t make up rules and impose fees if they are not in the development’s original master deed.

So many of the owners of the 450 condos in Shadowood, at the intersection of South Lakes and Soapstone drives, are interested in changing their association leadership. But the officers who run Shadowood, in particular longtime board president Brian Olivia, are still in charge. An election is scheduled for two of the five officers on Saturday, but with an interesting set of rules for who may run, and it will be interesting to see if the vote changes anything.

The article also provides a rare public airing of the Shadowood board's point of view.

Olivia is the target of a lot of ire, but he defends his positions calmly and in detail. He, and his lawyers, believed that state law allowed condo associations to impose fees in order to keep people from dumping trash or paying late, but that the Virginia courts reached a new, different view. Now, Olivia says, he has no way to enforce the rules in Shadowood, late fees are not being charged, and “it’s the Wild West around here.”

…Olivia felt like he and his board were merely trying to enforce rules to keep the place neat and orderly. Now, “we don’t have an effective means of enforcing our rules. We have to expect people are following the rules. They’re not.” He said Shadowood now couldn’t even charge a late fee or interest for late monthly maintenance payments.

…Olivia, who noted he and the other directors are unpaid, sent over a two-page list of the condo board’s accomplishments in the last three years, including electric heat pumps in all 450 units and extensive exterior improvements.

The Post article's a terrific read, full of "fun" stories (assuming you don't live there). Follow the link to read them all, but we'll share the one about how Fairfax County got involved in legal action against the complex:

For many years, Fairfax County has been one of the largest condo owners in Shadowood, having bought 16 units back in 1975 to rent to low-income folks. But when their tenants began having problems with fines and fees, the amounts quickly added up. In one month of 2010, Fairfax County was told it had rung up more than $10,000 in fees, for having incomplete forms on file, making improper calls to the management office and having invalid parking stickers. A Fairfax housing official tried to attend a hearing to challenge, brought a court reporter with her, and was ejected, court records show.

The county said a number of its tenants’ cars were towed on Thanksgiving morning one year despite discussions about pending obligations. Olivia said Fairfax had been late paying its bills, had been given a grace period granted to no one else, and still wouldn’t pay on time. He said utility bills needed to be paid for the entire complex, and all owners needed to pay their share. He said “parking privileges were suspended” and the vehicles towed on the day before Thanksgiving, not Thanksgiving morning.

So it's hardly surprising the upcoming board elections are generating equal amounts of drama:

So now comes Saturday’s election for two new board members, and a set of rules sent to possible candidates last month, including: “have no past, pending, probable or current litigation” against Shadowood and “have no more than three Shadowood governing document violations” in the past year.

This raised some eyebrows among the disgruntled owners. But Olivia said they were only voluntary guidelines, suggested by the association’s lawyer, and that several of the candidates already lined up to run are involved in lawsuits but are still on the ballot.

Jim Peters, an owner who wants new management, said Shadowood’s financial records were still being “concealed,” which he theorized was connected to the “extraordinary legal embarrassment and the court striking down our fines and late fee income. Shadowood’s owners should not have to vote from a position of ignorance.”

Saturday ought to be an interesting day at Shadowood, that's for sure.

Update: It appears the two incumbent board members up for re-election Saturday both lost their seats.

Reston Master Plan: Task Force With Unpronounceable Name Completes Report Draft as Metro Nears

Wow, did Christmas just come early to those of us who love land use debates focused on transit-oriented development! Our BFFs at Reston2020 have posted a draft of the fancy report that the Reston Master Plan Special Study Task Force With the Unpronounceable Acronym (¶) has spent the better part of three years putting together. It has a "vision for Reston in the 21st Century!" And "traffic issues!" (Don't we all!) And visions for the areas around the three future Metro stations! Just don't look for conclusions or performance standards, because those aren't done yet. And none of the work thus far involves the much scarier "Phase 2," which is where recommendations will be made about the extent to which Reston's existing righteous stucco strip malls village centers can be redeveloped into bollardy midrise goodness.

The other thing that's been going on sub rosa has been a quiet dialing back of proposed maximum development levels, due to a traffic analysis that suggested that Reston traffic would melt down for most of the daylight hours some key intersections would be completely jammed at "peak hours." Some inside-baseball changes could lead to more flexible development options, balanced by a greater mix of residential development and caveats that office space should be closest to the Metro stations to minimize the traffic impact. Not everyone is pleased, says an anonymous commenter to Reston2020:

You should’ve heard the crescendo of outraged cries from developers and land use attorneys at the last meeting as some of us did. This plan would mean no “tear down” and re-building, just less desirable infill construction—if any!—they said. Limiting development for traffic reasons is “the tail wagging the dog!”—they added. This will prevent Reston from achieving the visions laid out by the task force’s committees!—they raged. In the only counterpoint offered, one task force member noted that congestion is a major Reston problem now, not a hypothetical one for the future.

The real problem is the time that this process has taken, as developers continue pushing through proposals in the absence of guidance from a master plan. As RCA President Colin Mills wrote a few months back:

This timeline is, to say the least, disappointing.  The whole point of splitting the Master Plan Special Study into two phases is so that Phase 1 would be completed before the Silver Line got here, so that we'd establish the ground rules for development before the Metro-related proposals started coming in.

But as we've seen in the case of the notorious 23-story office tower, Metro-related development plans are already rolling in.  And by voting to approve a tower that violates the Task Force's planning principles, Supervisor Hudgins has indicated that she won't follow the Task Force proposal until it's approved by the Board of Supervisors.  Now we know that it's going to be at least a year before that proposal is in place.  That means another year of uncertainty in Reston's planning, which is frustrating for developers and the community alike.

I'm not blaming planning staff or the FCDOT for the schedule; the planners are working diligently, and the transportation analysis will take as long as it takes.  But the Task Force's deliberations have always been, well, deliberate.  Now we're seeing the price of that slow progress.

Meanwhile, Metro is coming, as this photo from the Toll Road taken by a Twitter Operative last week can attest:

What will arrive in Reston first -- a complete master plan or the first Silver Line train? Betting on Metro doing anything on schedule is a sucker's game, but we're definitely leaning in that direction at this point.

RA Tongue-Twisters: Say 'Covenant Citations at Crumbling Stucco Soapstone Shopping Site' Three Times Fast

After citing the owners of the small "convenience center" on alien landing strip Soapstone Drive for a variety of violations, the Reston Association appears to be moving beyond its usual "write a letter and scare the beejeesus out of the homeowner" tactics, maybe. Give us some good blockquote, BFFs at Patch:

Reston Association has been trying to get the owners of the Soapstone Convenience Center to abide by RA covenants for several months now.

In July, it flagged the center, owned by C and R in Reston, LLC, for a long list of violations. Among them:

*Dead trees, soil erosion, refuse and debris exposed to view on the property consisting of, but not limited to: "Barrels, wood, plastic bags, plastic bottles, chairs, PVC pipe."

*The entire asphalt parking area is faded, cracked, and has holes and must be repaired or replaced; the asphalt pad to the right side elevation of “2303” building is weathered, cracked, disintegrating and must be repaired.

*The asphalt pad on the right side elevation of the “2335” building is cracked, disintegrating and must be repaired; the entire sidewalk areas located at “2303” and “2335’ buildings are discolored, cracked in several places and must be cleaned and repaired or replaced.

*Faded and cracked stucco on several buildings; fascia and trim that is faded, weathered, discolored warped, rotted and must be cleaned, repaired or replaced and painted.

*The pergola, screening and trash enclosure on “2335” building is faded, weathered, discolored, rotted, warped and must be cleaned, repaired or replaced and painted.

*Chimney flues that are faded, weathered, discolored, rusted,leaning and must be cleaned, repaired or replaced and painted; skylights full of debris; cracked landscape timbers and stucco planters; a cracked slate walkway and graffiti on the “2303” building.

Yeah, but other than that, are there any problems? Now that Soapstone has been resurfaced and painted with fancy suicide lanes traffic calming features and the neighboring watershed has been gussied up, it's time to go upscale! At great personal expense, we hired an architect to come up with a proposed, DRB-pleasing "new look" for the Soapstone Convenience Center. So long, dated stucco!

YOU'RE WELCOME. We especially like how the background in the rendering shows how the design would complement the natural splendor of planned changes at the nearby golf course.

But we digress. How have we left things with the current shopping center, RA?

RA directed the shopping center owners to clean up the violations by the end of August. At last check, the violations had not been remedied, and, in fact, neighbors complained when trees were removed from the property last weekend but most of the other violations remained.

The issue has since gone to the RA legal committee. Legal committee proceeds are private.

Addressing these longstanding issues isn't the worst use of our assessment money.

Flashback Monday: Selling Way-Out-Of-Townhouses in a Place Called Reston

Wow, this fancy cover of the June 1966 issue of House & Home magazine, which we assume is a lot like Cosmopolitan minus the sex tips ("5 Earth-Toned Negligees He Won't Be Able to Resist!"), really nailed the Reston dynamic from the get-go, didn't it? And, forty-odd years later, have we determined if our beloved beige community is just an "oversized subdivision with oversized problems?"

Well, no. But it's reassuring to learn through a Reston Historic Trust lecture duly attended by our BFFs at the Fairfax Times that even in its infancy, Reston was a bit of a tough sell to folks accustomed to bland subdivisions. We've seen the pop quiz Bob Simon subjected Reston's early sales staff to, but now we get to learn firsthand what it was like to sell way-out-of-townhouses to an incredulous public:

In its infancy in the 1960s, many early marketers who tried to sell the concept of the unique utopian village to prospective buyers initially had a rough time of it.

Sales of original Reston homes were transacted through Reston itself and not through traditional realtors, so the community had its own sales, marketing and public relations staff.

“It was my job to tell people why they wanted to drive 17 miles from D.C. and then two more miles down a dinky two-lane road to Reston; to live in a high-rise with no one else in it yet,” said Houston Park, an early Reston marketing and public relations staff member who spoke along with others last week as part of the Reston Historic Trust lecture series.

What could possibly go wrong?

Chuck Veatch, an even earlier resident of Reston, moved to Reston in 1964, only one year after it was established, and began trying to sell homes.

“The first model homes in Reston opened that year,” he said. “Our goal was to sell 80,000 homes by 1980, but we were trying to sell the concept of Reston, and homes that were a little more expensive, at a time that homes were sold strictly by a square footage standard. It was initially a tough sell.”

The speakers said that local real estate agents used Reston's inclusive nature, at a time when Virginia was still segregated and had no fair housing laws, as the opposite of a selling point, and sales remained slow for years. What turned things around for our favorite planned community? Bloomingdale's, that's what.

It also turns out the long-standing stereotypes perceptions of Reston vis-a-vis its more affluent neighbors to the north and its more, shall we say, rustic, ones to the west, came honest early:

John Siddall, another early Reston marketer, remembers the outside perception of Reston at that time.

“Reston in the early years was a young, intellectual community made up of 30 and 40 year olds,” he said. “And there was a perception that the people in Reston were weird. Some thought we were communists, and even the rest of Fairfax County thought we were a strange group of folks.”

Communists? What would give anyone that idea?

On the YouTubes: We Watch the Reston Association Videos So You Don't Have To, Learn That Reston Station Office Building Construction Has Begun

The weirdly angled Bridge to Nowhere spanning the Toll Road before ending in midair opens this, the festive holiday edition of the monthly Reston Today video. Dulcet-toned Andy Sigle dons a hard hat and hands us over to Reston Station construction superintendent Dave Mesich, who announces that the parking garage has finally sprung forth from the bowels of the earth to reach the "plaza level." Soon, the Sleestacks will see daylight for the first time. Soon. "We'll be ready when that train rolls in," Mesich says, and presumably so will they.

There's more! The addition of a fifth tower crane to the site -- which is especially impressive if you like cranes and/or are a three-year-old boy, means that Comstock has also started construction on its 16-story office building. Parallelogram, here we come!

But it wouldn't be the holidays without a special treat, and here it is: a "sneak peek" of the parking garage we'll soon be jockeying for spaces in. Behold!

"It resembles most of your typical parking garages," Mesich admits, "but with LED lighting." Sweet!

There's some other news as well, mostly about a survey of Reston apartment residents and a community-wide survey that will go out to all of us next year, which will help the RA set budget priorities and prepare for the influx of new residents. And with that we fade to credits, another four minutes and 41 seconds of our lives over, ticking down like the sands in the hourglass as we celebrate the approach of a new year with bright lights and festive celebrations that serve to mask the never-ceasing passage of time. Happy holidays!

Unruly, if Well-Dressed, Mobs: When Restonians Agitate

We Restonians are a peaceful bunch for the most part, the descendants of gentle people from the far-away 1960s who left the city to settle in earth-toned townhouses that weren't technically in a town. But take away our bookstores sense of social justice, and we get a bit piqued.

First, we have the tale of how a group of Restonians are rallying to avert the "fiscal cliff."

Dozens of Virginians gathered on Saturday to rally for an end to the Bush tax cuts for the top 2%. The activists gathered at Reston Used Bookstore to hear from community members on the issue before going door-to-door to urge neighbors to contact Congressman Wolf. Those gathered expressed concern that middle class taxes could go up over $2,000 a year if leaders in D.C. don't compromise and put the middle class before millionaires.

We're sympathetic, but we doubt too many members of the 2 percent are hanging out at a used bookstore. Or Lake Anne, for that matter. Or even Reston. Try heading north of Rt. 7, is all we're saying.

Another Confidential Restonian Operative shared this shocking firsthand account of what happened when RCC's online registration promptly melted down on its first day this past weekend.

There are middle-aged ladies in pajamas standing in long lines at RCC-Hunters Woods this morning. RCC’s new-fangled registration system went into complete fail. They changed from a lottery system to a first-come, first-served (because that's just so much more egalitarian) as well as launching a sparkly new online registration gizmo. December 1 at 9 a.m. marks the start of resident registration. The online system promptly crashed, and all those affluent middle-aged mothers and fathers desperate for good-value swim lessons were forced to dash over to RCC and register in person, along with masses of other Restonites who don't want to miss out on choice seats at Arena stage.

There are no words.

And finally, and somewhat predictably, a fancy online petition to save the Barnes & Noble already has 157 signatures, the end.

Bookpocalypse Now: Barnes & Noble 0, Purveyor of Containers 1

Well, the rumor that was first surfaced by our BFFs at Patch over the weekend has been confirmed: The Barnes & Noble in Reston's Spectrum Center is closing after the holiday season. Much to our surprise, it is not being replaced by a purveyor of frozen yogurt, artisanal cupcakes or salad. What's really surprising is that it's being replaced at all, given that Spectrum owner Lerner recently revived its longstanding plans to redevelop the big-box center into the usual bollardy mixed-use highrise goodness -- plans which were approved by the county's Planning Commission last month.

In case you're keeping score at home, B&N is being replaced by The Container Store, which sells… containers, we guess. And after the departure of Books a Million, Bretanos at RTC, and the independent bookstore at North Point, Reston's only remaining bookstore will be its first one -- the used bookstore at Lake Anne.

What's weird about this all is that even with the imminent demise of the printed word and all the antiquated, industrial-era business models still desperately clinging to it challenges of the bookselling industry, what with all those fancy "Kindles" and whatnot, B&N didn't choose to leave -- it was apparently pushed by the Spectrum's owners.

David Deason, Vice President of Development at Barnes & Noble, said the company wanted to stay in Reston and was willing to pay more to do so.

“We tried extremely hard to come to an agreement with the property owner to extend the lease at our Reston location, but despite our offering significant additional rent, the property owner was unwilling to agree to an extension," he said in an email. "We regret that we will be closing this location at the end of February, 2013.”

Who knows, maybe the Lerners just like containers.

It does make us wonder exactly how long Lerner plans to wait to begin redeveloping Spectrum, assuming the project wins final approval from county supervisors. We figured they wouldn't have restarted the approval process if they didn't have plans to get rolling soon, but it's unlikely that the Container Store would have agreed to move all its fancy containers into a new space without a multi-year lease.

Of course, all this just gives us an excuse to enjoy some of the details from the site plans for the Spectrum redevelopment (ginormous PDF file):

SOLD. They had us at that fancy trashcan with the swinging lid. Though what is that roundish item in the middle of the top row? A pair of calipers to check the BMI of people before they're allowed to sunbathe in the (semi-) public areas?

Here's a fancy 3-D isometric rendering of the project, apparently rendered using the same hardware as this game from the 1980s. Note the low-rise building at the right -- that's where the rocket-shooting robot lurks the existing Harris Teeter building, which will continue to offer free cookies to hungry shoppers, minus the surface parking.

Finally, here's the view of the development from the existing Fake Downtown vibrant urban core. Of course, we all know what's missing from this lovely, urbane streetscape:

TICK.

As the Silver Line Turns, or Apparently Doesn't

This would be funny, except that it isn't:

Metro may have to spend millions more than anticipated to operate the new Silver Line because trains will have to travel farther east than planned, according to two people with knowledge of the problem.

Transit officials originally expected eastbound Silver Line service to end at the Stadium-Armory stop, according to the two sources. But officials have since concluded that the tight turning space near the station would make it difficult for trains to reverse course there. Instead, trains will travel five additional stops to Largo before turning around to head back toward Virginia.

The change could cost Metro $4.5 million a year more to operate the line, according to the two people familiar with the problem and the plan to deal with it.

Way to sweat the small stuff, Metro. We're not exactly reassured that their preparation for the eventuality that their fancy trains might, on occasion, need some way to turn around doesn't appear to be much more detailed than the plans we submitted for Phase 2 of the Silver Line.

So maybe we'll drive instead, and use those accident-riddled fancy Lexus Express lanes on the Beltway. How hard could it be to make sense of a variably tolled, limited access median highway with traffic lights and T-intersections?


This is why we try to avoid leaving Reston if we can help it, the end.

Flashback Monday: With a Steamshovel at Sunset, Our Gritty Urban Core Sprung Forth from the Earth

Last time on Flashback Monday, we witnessed the early days of Hunters Woods Village Center. Now let's set the controls of the Earth-Toned Wayback Machine to 1988, when a Reston newsletter used this extremely dramatic photo to illustrate the fact that ground had been broken for another, slightly more successful retail mecca: the Reston Town Center, which promised to "unify residential, commercial, cultural and retail life." Alrighty then!

Here's what the senior development manager for the project had to say about this mixed-use nightmare vision back in ought-take-away-twenty-plus-eight:

"Twenty-five years ago, Reston wasn't ready for it. Even D.C. wasn't ready for it."

But was Tysons ready for it?

We digress. For us, the biggest surprise was that the developers 1) didn't go Full Ugly, and 2) that their lofty predictions actually kinda-sorta came true. Check it, Mr. 1988 Developer:

"The first phase undertaken by Phase 1 Associates sets the stage for residential growth to occur later."

Old folks like us Long-time Restonians may remember that Phase 1 was initially surrounded by fields of parking, an ersatz block of a Potemkin city connected to nothing. Little did we know that the residential development would actually come in time, followed by flash mobs and baffling cultural landmarks and occasional semi-nudity and all the other things we've come to expect from an authentic urban experience. And frozen yogurt. Lots of frozen yogurt, with the occasional purveyor of artisanal cupcakes thrown in for good measure.

And, as this photo suggests, it all began with an arcane digging ceremony at sunset. Who knows, maybe the Necromonicon was involved, the end.