RESTON COMMUNITY REINVESTMENT CORPORATION

Board Meeting

September 13, 2007
Lake Anne Office Building
11484 Washington Plaza West
Reston, VA 20190

MINUTES

Board Members Present:
Kurt Pronske
Howard Green
Walt Peter
Bob Simon
Van Foster
Rick Thompson
Phil Tobey
Robin Smyers
Jim Garrett

Invited Guests:
Bridget Hill, FC OCRR
Guy Rando, TAP
John Carter, WPCA

Observers:
John Lovaas, WPCA
Wayne Schiffelbein, LARCA
Hedy Glenn, LARCA
Mirza Kurspanic,Reston Connection
Brian Grzelak, Fellowship Square Foundation
Donna Shaffer, WPCA
Kirby Yarbrough, Washing Plaza Baptist Church
Mary Buff, Moorings Cluster
Art Lambert, Moorings Cluster
Joel Anne Lambert, Moorings Cluster
Patty Hagan, Moorings Cluster
Doug Bursch, Chatham Colony Cluster
Allen Lenz, Moorings Cluster
Pat Lenz, Moorings Cluster

MINUTES                         

President Pronske called the meeting to order at 7:35PM. He asked if the minutes from the June 19 th meeting were correct. Mr. Green moved that the minutes be accepted, Mr. Tobey seconded and the motion passed unanimously.

Comprehensive Plan Amendment Status

As discussed in an earlier meeting, the County has decided that it must study the parking and transportation/road issues prior to preparing a draft Comprehensive Plan Amendment. Planning and Zoning (P&Z) is now preparing an RFP for a contract with a consultant to do the study and expects to issue it at the end of September. The study is expected to require three to four months to complete, so action on the Amendment will not proceed until early 2008.

Guy Rando's Lake Anne Village Development Plan

The Board has been interested in examples of potential designs for the revitalization and has asked the County to prepare renderings. Since Mr. Rando, a member of the Technical Advisory Panel for the BBPA study, had prepared such a design, t he Board had asked Mr. Rando to present his conceptual plan for Lake Anne. Mr. Rando presented his plan and showed a model of the design, emphasizing that it was consistent with community interests and not as dense as the BBPA report.

Mr. Rando introduced John Carter, head of Community-Based Planning for Montgomery County and a WPCA resident. Mr. Carter discussed what he views as the excessive density specified in the BBPA report. The FAR (floor area ratio) is too high - higher than comparable developments in Montgomery and Fairfax; also, the amount of open space is too small and there is insufficient allocation for community and religious space.

Mr. Simon commented that comparing FARs without ensuring that the areas were selected on the same basis could give misleading results. He also noted that the figure of 15% minimum open space was not meaningful, since no developer would propose something that low nor could create a viable design at 15%. Further, he said that discussion of a detailed site design was premature; the next step was the development of a draft comprehensive plan on which detailed designs would be based.

The discussion noted that the Board’s comments on the BBPA report had been sent to the Hunter Mill District Supervisor in May and expressed many of the same concerns identified by Mr. Rando and Mr. Carter. The observers expressed concern that the memo was not published nor matched the degree of the observers’ concerns. The President said the memo should be on the County’s revitalization web site and would be made available.

The observers also commented on the following topics:

• The BBPA report does not address deterioration of the existing Lake Anne Plaza.
• The report does not resolve Lake Anne Plaza ownership issues.
• RCRC should continue its efforts to engage the surrounding clusters.
• The Comprehensive Plan should provide development limits and design principles.
• The public’s involvement in the plan amendment process should be explained better.

Future Meetings

The Board discussed future meetings and decided that the next meeting, October 11th, would be the Annual Meeting.

The meeting was adjourned at 9:25PM.