News and notes from Reston (tm).

Tuesday, June 19, 2018

More Than A Half-Century Later, Ultimate Vision of Reston Accomplished: Apartments Over Wegmans

Live. Work. Play. Consume Reasonably Priced Pre-Packaged Meals. At long last, the Reston ideal may soon become a reality.

Ever since we heard the news that exurbanite nirvana Wegmans was eying a Reston location last year, we've been on pins and needles. Now we've seen our first CGI-rendered glimpses of our future grocery nirvana, and all we can say is suck it, Loudoun! We won't have to get into our fancypants crossovers and traverse an endless maze of windy cul-de-sacs full of particleboard homes and dubious parks connected by deserted "walking paths" to get to Wegmans, because we'll be living directly above it! Who knows, maybe for a nominal fee they'll offer the apartment complex residents this special amenity:

Let's take a closer look:

Sure, it's your typical off-the-shelf massing of a midrise mixed-use apartment complex, but we've already seen far, far worse on the same stretch of Sunrise Valley Drive. Give us some exciting blockquote, BFFs at the Washington Business Journal:

Brookfield Properties' 4 million-square-foot redevelopment of the 36-acre Reston Crescent site, a short walk to the future Reston Town Center Metro station, is expected to house the community’s first Wegmans.

Now we know what that building will look like.

Brookfield has submitted two applications to Fairfax County. One is a conceptual development plan for the entire site, and the other is a final development plan for the first new building there, featuring the urban-format Wegmans topped by 380 apartments. That building, to include a screened garage with more than 1,000 parking spaces, will front Reston Parkway, just south of the Dulles Toll Road. The architects are MV&A and Alexandria-based LandDesign.

As currently envisioned, Reston Crescent will total 4.16 million square feet of mixed-use, including the two six-story office buildings there now. Those two buildings, constructed in 2000 and 2007, will remain.

The property’s existing surface parking and open space will be developed over time with about 3.77 million square feet of new construction, to include up to 1,721 residential units, 1.5 million square feet of office, 380,000 square feet of retail and a 200-key hotel. The overall project will offer at least a half dozen park spaces — a dog park, fitness area, neighborhood park, Gateway Plaza and others.

More than 4.16 million square feet (okay, maybe 4.1599999999 million square feet if you don't count the dog park) of mixed-use goodness? What exactly will that look like?

That's... a little dense. But never fear, silly rabbits, because they have, as they say in the movies, a plan:

Brookfield has agreed to expand Reston Parkway along the Reston Crescent frontage to three lanes southbound, largely to mitigate the anticipated Wegmans traffic.
Judging by traffic today at the Sunrise Valley-Reston Parkway intersection, they might be better suited putting in a helipad.

Of course, none of this will come easy, or right away. Wegmansvana will be part of Phase 2 of the project. What does Phase 1 look like, you might ask?

Mmm, endless seas of surface parking. Woonerfy!

6 comments:

  1. Those surface parking lots remind me of RTC in the early days, back when the living was easy and parking was free.

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  2. Wegmans? More like WegMEHns if you ask me.

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  3. Peasant From Less Sought After South RestonJune 20, 2018 at 8:26 PM

    Coming soon to an intersection near you...the mother of all gridlock.

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  4. This is payback from the Brutalist gods for destroying the Marcel Breuer "masterpiece" a few months ago. This one has all the charm of the semi-derelict FBI building in downtown DC.

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    Replies
    1. Reston will always be stuck in the '80s. For some that's not a bad thing.

      Delete

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