On the YouTubes: Camps, Clusters, and Color Swatches (We Watch the Reston Association Videos So You Don't Have To)

Much like an experimental film from the late 1960s, this month's edition of Reston Today opens abruptly on a discordant note, with a boisterous group of children of the corn RA campers shouting and waving at the camera before we segue away to Andy Sigle, who is far away from the camps (and presumably out of earshot). And we're off on yet another monthly video tour of what's doin' in our favorite earth-toned planned community!

First, we bid adieu to former RA CEO Milton Matthews, who departed at the end of last month and was credited for his "quiet but effective leadership." No word yet on the RA annexing his home in Maryland to get around the residency requirement that prompted him to move on in the first place, but maybe they're still drawing up the plans.

Next, we learn about all of Reston's "clusters," each of which have "specific design standards." We confess that we momentarily got excited when we saw this (comparative) rainbow of colors as a thick binder of regulations for one cluster was opened in some pretty sweet B-roll footage:

But before we could run to Home Depot to pick up a few cans of that lovely purple on the bottom of the page, we realized those were just the key to the binder's color-coded dividers. Here's the actual approved palette:

Oh, well. That beige with a soupçon of mustard yellow looks pretty good too. We guess.

There was more stuff about the RA camps, which are admittedly awesome, but frankly we had a bit of tinnitus from the opening sequence so we couldn't really fathom what was being said. So we come to the end of another 5 minutes and 23 seconds of our summer (and by extension, our lives) that could have been spent at the beach. Happy summer!

Indecision 2013: Five Seek Appointment to Vacant RA Board Seat (Updated)

Five Reston residents have stepped forward to fill the Hunters Woods/Dogwood Reston Association board seat left vacant by Cheryl Beamer, who resigned at the end of last month. They are:

• John V. Berry (candidate statement)
  
• Ellen A. Graves (candidate statement)
  
• Tom Vis (candidate statement)
  
• Victor Van Rees (candidate statement)
  
• Adam Parnes (candidate statement)

According to this verbose bit of legalese, complete with the requisite "whereases," the RA Board will appoint one of the five candidates, who will serve until the next annual election, at its meeting on Thursday.

Given that the last election saw unopposed candidates for all three open board seats, we're glad that so many people are interested in vying for what can be a thankless job. Here's hoping this level of interest carries over to the next election, lest we see another Soviet-style ballot, the end.

Update: Welcome Ellen Graves, your newly appointed RA Board member.

Flashback Monday: Once and Future Chain Goodness

Set the controls of the Earth-Toned Wayback Machine to the early 1990s, a tumultuous time in much of the world… except Reston, where the big news was the opening of a couple of midrise buildings in a field Reston Town Center. The most depressing design plans had been luckily avoided, but RTC apparently needed to convince a dubious populace that this New Urban Core was, in fact, the real sanitized thing. What better way to do so than run advertising listing all the exciting chain goodness awaiting intrepid urban explorers, who had to park their car in a giant surface parking lot upwards of several hundred feet away from said retail and dining opportunities?

We're honestly not sure what's more surprising -- the number of these intrepid chain-store pioneers that no longer call RTC home, or the number that still do, more than two decades later. Either way, there's no doubt that chain shopping is "the life," as the ad's tagline in the even-then-dated handwriting script in the lower right put it, the end.

Shocking Photographic Proof: Fanciful Concrete Bollards, Caught In the Wild

Longtime readers of this fancy "web log" know that we latched onto this image of fanciful concrete bollards, submitted as part of the interminable paperwork associated with the proposal for the Reston Station development, and have since run the joke into the ground used it as visual shorthand for all the midrise development a'comin down the pike in our beloved earth-toned community, much as we've been accused of using a beloved carb-intensive eatery as a metaphor for the pervasive midscale chain goodness that's filled our fake downtown gritty urban core. However, on a recent jaunt to a purportedly "transit-oriented" development in neighboring Herndon that happens to be nowhere near any transit but happens to share the annoying naming conventions of our own TOD projects, we stopped dead in our tracks:

ZOMG, as the kids today no longer say text. Fanciful concrete bollards, in vaguely pleasing proportions, as far as the eye can see, keeping harried commuters from driving straight across the one traffic circle that somehow managed to sneak its way into Herndon. The legends are true!

"One way," indeed. Do we even need to point out that prophetic sign is pointing towards Reston? No we do not, the end.

Lightpocalypse Now: DRB Approves Lights For Brown's Chapel Ballfield, Targets Nearby Houses With Occult Laser Beam

We've joked about the DRB launching drones to track down scofflaws with piles of red mulch in inaccessible backyards, but this fancy image that the Reston Association posted to the "Face Book," presumably from some secret document hidden in the safe room far below the DRB offices, suggests they've gone one step further, using one of the Brown's Chapel Park ballfields as the nexus of some sort of "frikkin laser beam," ready to unleash havoc, or at least thinly diffused light, on any nearby homes that step out of line. (Fortunately, Restonian World Headquarters is more than 1,040 feet away from the site, so our collection of outdoor lawn statuary will remain unmolested for now.)

But we digress. Not since a lesser-known ballpark inconveniently not under the purview of DRB regulations added lighting has there been a more exciting development in baseball, or HOA covenants… or both! Give us some good blockquote, RA press release:

The Reston Association Design Review Board unanimously approved ball field lighting for the Brown’s Chapel #1 Little League field.

This will be the first ball field subject to RA covenants to be lighted and it is an exciting development for the growing population of Little League baseball players in Reston, said RA’s Director of Parks and Recreation, Larry Butler.

The six-pole lighting will be installed later this summer in anticipation of having the first game on the second weekend of September.

In its June 18 decision, the DRB recognized the collaborative discussions between RA, Reston Little League, neighboring residents and clusters to come up with solutions to concerns brought up in earlier meetings. The lights will be used during the spring and fall Little League seasons, which run from April through June and September through October, respectively. The lights will have a hard shut-off time at 9 p.m. RA deferred the parking lot and concession stand lighting to develop a more appropriate solution than first proposed.

The decision had been postponed to address concerns from nearby residents, but judging by the image above, the RA has found a way to keep the systems in line, the end.

Kicking the Can: RCC Pushes Back Rec Center Decision, Will Now Consider Other Locations, Funding Options

Facing pressure from the community, reports questioning the decision-making criteria, and studied neutrality from the Reston Association, the Reston Community Center's governing board has decided to postpone a decision on its proposed new rec center at Baron Cameron Park until next year. The board has also said it will look at locations other than Baron Cameron, which was recently transferred from the school board to the county's park authority in anticipation of building the rec center there. Give us some good blockquote, BFFs from Patch:

The board has received months of public feedback asking them to consider the cost to Small Tax District 5 residents, concerns with traffic and loss of green space, and whether developer proffers or an alternate site should be considered.

"We recognize that Reston alone should not be funding [a new pool]," board member Roger Lowen said at RCC's Public Hearing for Programs and Budgets on Monday. "We have formally asked the Fairfax County planning group for planning [information] at North Town Center to include cost options. We will continue discussions with Brailsford & Dunlavey."

Lowen said alternative sites, such as closer to future Metro stations at Wiehle and Reston Parkway or at existing commercial centers, will be examined, as will the possibility of improving RCC Hunters Woods, where the current indoor pool is located.

Building in additional time to review alternate locations and funding options, the RCC now anticipates making a decision on whether to pursue the project in "winter 2014."

Unlike their last time at the rodeo, it's clear that RCC is now paying attention to what others are saying. We're not exactly sure why it'll take them another year and a half to look at a handful of other possible sites, but if that's what it takes to get buy-in, it's probably worth it.

Flashback Monday: How a Construction Error Became One of Reston's Most Beloved Concrete Adornments

What's the expression contractors love to kick around while sipping coffee and devising new excuses to deliver in surly tones to their clients while explaining why that bathroom remodel might take more than "two weeks"? "Measure twice, cut once," we think? Well, when the Lake Anne Plaza was rising from the primordial ooze, it turns out someone kinda sorta forgot about that, and we got one of our most beloved brutalist adornments as a result.

Here's the first-hand account from a recent Reston Historic Trust presentation:

"When they were building Lake Anne, they made that lake wall, but when the architects came down from New York, they saw the wall wasn’t straight,” said Cheryl Terio-Simon, wife of Reston founder Robert Simon. “Rather than tear down and rebuild a perfectly good wall, they decided to put up that, what I like to call a pulpit.”

That's what construction pros like to call an "oopsie," to use the technical term. But in return, we got this:

We'll take it.

BTW, critics of our critique of the plaza's architecture as "brutalist" should know that the term is kicked around several times during the presentation on this fancy YouTubes video. (The part about the pulpit is at around 11 minutes in.) Other terms used to describe our poured concrete goodness include "modern gothic" and "a touch of nostalgia for the medieval." We can't wait for the next renaissance festival.

But was this the only oopsie at Lake Anne? Judging by this old-timey aerial photo, it looks like the bigger, fancier pulpit on the other side of the plaza might also be hiding another small rounding error. Look closely:

Close enough for government HOA work!

Manifest Destiny: RA May Admit Nearby Property, Is 'Great' Falls Next? (No, Probably Not)

Go west east, and slightly north, young man, the RA seemed to be saying as the board voted considered whether to annex admit a home just outside of Reston into the friendly confines of Reston Association goodness, with all the pool passes and whatnot that entails:

Reston Association's Board of Directors will vote Monday to add a property - 11101 Chessington Place, Reston - to the association.

What makes that house so special? It's not the house, its the owner.

RA At-large director Donna Rostant and her husband recently moved from a home within RA boundaries to the $1 million home on Chessington. Since RA by-laws say a director must be an RA member, the solution seems to be to add the home to RA.

RA president Ken Knueven said the Reston deed outlines the process of adding real property to the Association.

A home can be added to RA with the written consent of the homeowner and any holder of a deed of trust and a two-thirds vote of the Board of Directors during a meeting in which a quorum is present.

So many questions… will the RA's newest home now have to be vetted against the DRB criteria for, say, Hickory Cluster, and will it have to be repainted in a fetching shade of asteroid? Will the board attempt to win back its just-departed CEO by annexing his home in Rockville?

Some people aren't happy about this decision, but we say they're just not thinking big. Why fight over the membership status of the future residents of a bunch of midrise dreck when the RA can grow its membership, and make it more exclusive to boot, by looking northward, to 'Great' Falls, or southward to Oakton? As our favorite correspondent, The Peasant from Less Sought After South Reston, points out, how inspiring would it be to see "an island of earth-toned goodness shining as a bright beacon of good taste in a sea of godless communist red mulch"?

Of course, there's one snag. RA's newest house is at least close to the rest of our earth-toned nirvana, but if more far-flung properties are added to its bosom, we'll need to organize a Berlin Airlift-style way of getting vital materials to them. The Peasant thoughtfully compiled this list of RA necessities:

-- Macaroni Grill breadsticks
-- rotary phones for RA pools
-- spare parts for RELAC
-- brown mulch
-- RA election ballots
-- grit for the urban core

We can picture it now:

Inspiring!

And always remember, and never forget, as our BFFs at Patch helpfully point out:

Alternatively, for anyone who resents RA assessments and regulations - there is no streamlined process for leaving the Association.

Exactly.

Shocker: First Silver Line Metro Delays, Track Fires, and Broken Escalators Postponed Until Early 2014

This isn't exactly the biggest shocker in the world, but according to an EXCLUSIVE report from WTOP (which appears to be "exclusive" based solely on the fact that they forced a reporter to attend the kind of meeting reporters typically try to avoid like the plague), the awesome Silver Line won't open before the end of the year:

Metro's Silver Line was expected to open this December, but a top official at the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority now tells WTOP that the official launch date will not be until early next year.

Sam Carnaggio, director of the Dulles Corridor Project at MWAA, made the revelation during a presentation at the Action Committee for Transit on Tuesday.

"The project from the contractor is expected to be completed by the end of September or in early October, so we're now projecting January 2014," he says.

"Weather has played a role in the reason the date is where it is now and we are confident the contractor will meet it," he says.

Oops. We only hope that one of our Confidential Restonian Operatives' Metro Sea Monkeys can hold out that much longer.

Meanwhile, our BFFs at the Washington Post have penned an epic takedown of the way Metro is managed, making us all the more excited about what the experience on our E-ticket ride to the wonders of Tysons will be like:

LIKE CHARON piloting his lifeless charges along the River Styx, a darkened Metro train rumbled through the Tenleytown-American University Red Line station early last Tuesday morning, its windows black, its destination unknown. Although it never stopped for the passengers waiting forlornly on the platform, it did emit an ear-splitting horn blast.

We don’t know if the horn was meant to scare commuters, greet them, jolt them awake or warn them (gratuitously) not to try boarding a moving train. To passengers, it was just another bewildering, maddening, soul-sapping Metro moment, a quotidian annoyance barely worth mentioning.

Except that it is worth mentioning that Metrorail is a slow-rolling embarrassment whose creeping obsolescence is so pervasive, and so corrosive, that Washingtonians are increasingly abandoning it. Even as ridership climbs on MARC and VRE commuter trains, and holds steady on Metro buses, passengers are deserting Metrorail in droves.

Over the nine months ending in March, ridership slumped by almost 5 percent, or about 8,000 trips, compared with the same period a year ago. Officially, Metro blames the effects of sequestration. But in a region whose population continues to grow, the exasperations of using Metrorail are undoubtedly a factor prompting passengers to flee — in some cases to bike shares.

The comatose escalators; the crumbling ceiling at Farragut North, year after year after year; the funereal lighting; the frequent signal problems; the routine single-tracking that makes weekend Metro use torturous — all of this takes a toll on riders that Metro officials too blithely dismiss.

And that was the positive part of the editorial. But it's nothing a little rad 80s art and some new upholstery can't fix, and that's exactly what will keep our spirits buoyed as we're sitting in the quicksand of the (possibly) sinking Tysons tunnel, the end.

Storagepocalypse Now: County Approval of Sunset Hills Development Continues Planned Growth Around Wiehle Metro

The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors recently approved a long-proposed mixed-use development adjacent to the Reston Station development on Sunset Hills Drive, currently home to a mini-storage facility. Instead, we'll see a midrise residential building (pictured above in lifelike hi-def Xerox-Vision™) with up to 421 units, as well as the existing office building and up to 10,000 square feet of "support retail use" (translation: Cheesecake Factory).

Gone for now is the earlier proposal by RBP&M LLC, Section 913 LP, and Bozzuto Development to replace the existing 30,000-square foot office building that butts up against the Toll Road with one with up to 175,000 square feet of space. Although the current plans are to maintain the existing building, the Fairfax Supervisors rezoning approval does allow the "opportunity for the future intensification of office use as recommended in the Fairfax County Comprehensive Plan. Section 913 LP looks forward to redeveloping this property with additional office space, possibly as part of a consolidation with one or more adjacent properties, at some time in the future," the developers said in their voluminous application materials.

In their filing, the developers say their plan will provide "an opportunity to help establish a grid of streets that will improve access to the Metro station and benefit not only the Wiehle Avenue Transit Station area, but also the larger Reston community." The residential focus right next to the Metro station, they add, will help meet the goals of encouraging mass transit use.

Of course, we love us the details of these planning documents, so here we go:

Here's the building itself. It's not quite a Texas donut, but it will have a swimming pool and two courtyards to break up the structure inside, as can be seen in this lovely 3-D rendering below:

Hey, it looks like it's smiling at us! Awesome.

Here's a rendering of the streetscape proposed for the property. We're reminded of the Champs Elysses, only with better retail.

And finally, no land use application would be complete without a schematic of how the trees will be planted and supported by a series of guy wires to protect them from the next derecho.

All in all, it looks like something that should be put next to a Metro station (as opposed to into an existing neighborhood a mile away from mass transit). But the supreme irony is that just as we're finally getting a merchant to help us with our storage needs, we're losing a facility where we can put all those burpable plastic containers, the end.

Flashback Monday: The Reston Living Room That Should Have Been (and Probably Was)

Okay, so maybe this photo of a sofa didn't come from Reston proper, but you just know that ones just like it filled many a "conversation pit" in the mid-70s here in our earth-toned community. With a different upholstery pattern, one end of this sofa could even have been in this highly convincing advertisement encouraging folks in their 20s to move to Reston, the end.

So We Were Wrong: Maybe Reston Is Becoming 'Another Manhattan' After All

In the early days of this fancy "web log," back when we had to web log by candlelight and the server was run by steam power, we chronicled the preponderance of news coverage in which Restonians expressed "trepidation" that our beloved earth-toned community was about to turn into "another Manhattan," only with even more midscale chain awesomeness. And while we've gotten the odd mauvescraper in the years since, Reston still bears only a passing resemblance to Gotham these days. Our fancy new "subway" is even above ground, for Pete's sake, like the ones in also-ran cities like (shudder) Chicago. (And is "for Pete's sake" something they'd say in Manhattan? Only if they added the f-word to it, we guess.)

But we digress. In the otherwise unremarkable news brief that the old American Press Institute building, one of Reston's original concrete shrines to brutalism, has been sold, we noticed an interesting detail:

The new owner of the modernist structure is Francis Rooney and Rooney Holdings, according to Fairfax County land records.

Rooney is the majority owner of Manhattan Construction Company, which has led such projects as George Washington University Hospital, Founders Hall at George Mason University, the US Capitol Visitors Center, Dallas Cowboys Stadium and the George W. Bush Presidential Library.

That's right -- the Manhattan Construction Company.

There are no words.

Burgerpocalyspe Now: Fox Mill Five Guys to Close, Joins Shuttered Fry Pit in Herndon

SHOCKING news out of Fox Mill, as first reported by one of our commenters earlier this week: The Fox Mill Five Guys, where one can purchase french fries by the sack, is closing later this month -- on June 16, to be precise. What's worse, it joins the Five Guys location on Elden Street in Herndon in the Graveyard of Lost Lamented Eateries -- the Herndon location also recently closed, perhaps in light of the upscale retail that's popped up nearby.

That leaves us with just one guy location, the one in Plaza America. Are we approaching a state of burger singularity? Will we someday face the true existential dilemma of the early 21st century -- whether to slum it at McTacoHut or go upscale at one of the fake downtown gritty urban core's artisanal burgeries? The mind boggles (and the stomach jiggles).

In what is almost certainly a coincidence, our BFFs at Patch posted this article earlier this week:

No words. Just feeding our feelings over here at Restonian World Headquarters.

Here We Go Again: Fancy 'Land Lines' Sink First Reston Pool Day of the Summer

Remember when you had a phone bolted to the wall by the telephone company, or maybe a fancy featherweight 45-pound "princess" phone in a stylish pastel hue that complemented your shag carpet if you were "living large," as the kids today no longer say, and heaven forfend you do anything to it because then the folks at Verizon Bell Atlantic C&P Telelphone Ma Bell would put you through a ringer (get it?) and you might never get to have a telephone again?

Well, the past is prologue at Reston's pools, where earlier this week we saw the first pool shutdown of the summer because of a malfunctioning landline -- a fact communicated by the high-tech, early naught medium of Facebook:

This happened quite a bit last summer as well.

This isn't the RA's fault -- health code regulations require a landline at each pool, under the assumption that they reliably work when mobile phones might not (i.e., bad weather, good weather, daytime, nighttime). Which is true, except for when they don't.

Fortunately, in a RESTONIAN WORLD EXCLUSIVE, we have obtained video footage of the elusive telephone "technician" whose job it is to keep the pool phones working:



AWESOME.

Pro Tip: A Shortcut to Vienna You Shouldn't Take

The Washington Post was kind enough to map out the path taken by a McLean woman who inexplicably drove on the W&OD Trail from Reston to Vienna on Saturday night, seriously injuring a cyclist and scaring the beejeezus out of several others.

[The driver] did not explain why she apparently drove at a high rate of speed, possibly for miles, on the trail, which is often crowded with walkers and bicyclists, police said. She appeared disoriented at the time of her arrest, they said.

“She said she was coming from Mexico,” said Gary Lose, a Vienna police spokesman.

[The driver] is in custody on charges of felony hit-and-run and driving while intoxicated, pending a bond hearing set for Tuesday. The bicyclist, a 65-year-old Vienna man, remained hospitalized Monday with serious but non-life-threatening injuries, police said.

[The driver] is thought to have driven onto the trail in the Reston area, but the exact spot is not known, police said. They said she headed east on a section of trail that is paved and about 10 feet wide. At least five people reported close calls with the car before the bicyclist was struck near the Vienna border, police said.

With at-grade crossings, high-speed cyclists, and the occasional horse (WTF?), the W&OD was dangerous enough before it became a cut-through for (allegedly) intoxicated drivers. Fortunately, the Post helpfully annotated its map to make sure no one else gets any ideas:

Problem solved.

Update: The driver of the car was granted bond this afternoon. Also, these sort of shenanigans are apparently more common than you'd think.

Flashback Monday: Reston, Rock-n-Roll, and Eat

Local music lovers of a Certain Age may remember the early 1980s sensation Four Out of Five Doctors, who were considered the Next Big Thing to come out of the DC area (besides suburban sprawl). But did you know that when the time came to pick out a location for the cover of their first eponymous album*, the band picked Reston? More specifically, they picked EAT**, an old school roadside restaurant at the intersection of Rt. 7 and Baron Cameron Avenue.

Sadly, the band's story was one of unfortunate timing.

Their music blended elements of the Cars, Elvis Costello, XTC and Squeeze, using sunny day melodies as a backdrop for wry lyrical observations. Everett’s boyish lead vocals gave them pure pop appeal, and their absurd sense of humor (displayed in songs like "Jeff Jeff" and "Danger Man") made them a precursor to They Might Be Giants and Barenaked Ladies.

When the album was released in January, 1981, the pop scene was changing. Radio had soured on power pop and new wave in the wake of the Knack’s unsuccessful second album and the failure of similar acts to break. Album rock radio had turned to heavy metal and hard rock instead.

Along with opening for acts including Hall and Oates, the Clash, and the Cars, Four Out of Five Doctors did get a role in 80s movie The House on Sorority Row II (skip ahead to 2:45 to go straight past the stabby business to the band).


They also performed at Jammin' Java as recently as 2010.

Of course, Reston has since developed more homegrown musical talent. But we keep going back to Four Out of Five Doctors album cover and its old-timey, pre-Reston vibe. If only they had known there were myriad artistic inspirations for their album covers just a short drive down Baron Cameron, the end.

*album (n.) Pre-cassette CD iPod device used to store music on circular vinyl platters.

**Probably not its real name.