Lake Anne | Fairfax County Revitalization

Lake Anne Consultant Told to be Innovative
From the Times Community Newspapers
By Lise Hausrath Simmons
Nov. 23, 2004

The consultant who was hired by Fairfax County to conduct an economic study of 40-year-old Lake Anne Village Center was told by two relatively young female residents last week to add residential density to Reston's historic heart in a way that will make the locale the innovative kind of focal point that Reston has always been.

Kimberly Dillard, who lives in Waterview Cluster and is a young mother who said she loves bringing her two children to Lake Anne, urged whomever eventually plans a project to revitalize the area to build residential housing that will really stand out.

Emily Matson, 28, who grew up in Reston and came back to live there after attending school, agreed, saying an innovative redevelopment approach is needed "because that's what Reston is all about."

Another resident, artist Mike Cantwell, wants Lake Anne to be a center for the arts, and he bemoaned the fact that the Greater Reston Arts Center is now located at Reston Town Center, rather than at Lake Anne.

"This is the historic hub of Reston . We should do everything within our power to preserve that hub," Cantwell said at a community meeting called by Hunter Mill District Supervisor Cathy Hudgins (D) on the Lake Anne revitalization project, which is still a work in progress.

The meeting was moderated by local historian Sarah Larson, and a distinguished panel of guests was on hand to talk about Lake Anne 's history and why it turned out the way it did.

Reston founder Robert E. Simon Jr. talked about his original vision for Lake Anne and its design. Larson noted that it was Simon who put together the first planned community built in the United States after World War II and the first open community built in the South, meaning people of all races and backgrounds were welcome.

Chuck Veatch, one of Simon's first salesmen when Reston was in its infancy, spoke about the years when Simon and Reston Virginia Inc. were in control.

Fran Steinbauer, who was a design engineer with the Reston Inc. development team, talked about the years Gulf Oil Corp. was in charge of developing Reston . He also touched upon Mobil Oil Corp.'s role when it purchased Reston 's remaining unsold land and some buildings from Gulf in 1978.

Kurt Pronske, head of the Reston Community Reinvestment Corp. (RCRC) and a longtime resident, talked about how the Lake Anne Condominium Association came to be and how the current divided ownership of Lake Anne properties has affected its infrastructure and economic health.

Retail, residential challenges

Jim Prost, of Basile, Baumann, Prost & Associates of Annapolis , Md. , gave a progress report on what his company has done to date on its economic study of Lake Anne , which it began this past summer after being awarded a $50,000 contract by the county.

Prost told a capacity crowd at the Reston Community Center at Lake Anne that his firm hopes to have an interim status report finished by the end of November.

The next step will be for the company to propose revitalization and development options for the community to consider, which he hopes to do by early December.

"It's an interesting challenge, to say the least," Prost said, after giving a detailed listing of all the problems and issues associated with revitalizing Lake Anne .

The bottom line is that Lake Anne center was designed by Simon to not be expandable, so this limits what can be done. Another issue is the importance of preserving Lake Anne 's special historic character, Prost said.

There is no way Lake Anne could ever compete with Reston Town Center in terms of drawing pedestrian traffic, he said, so the community needs to come up with a way to improve it while being realistic about what can be achieved.

A lot can be done with residential development, he said, but the retail side of the equation is tougher because there is no supermarket anchoring the center and acting as a draw.

The current merchants at Lake Anne are "hanging on," he added, while noting that their estimated sales are much less than sales at competing areas in Reston , such as the North Point Village Center nearby.

Another factor is the ownership structure at Lake Anne, where much of the property is owned by the condo, he said. The monthly fees paid by residents and merchants to the association are very high, which is another economic constraint.

"You really need to get more retail sales to make the retail work," Prost said. "Their numbers are low, and they need to be enhanced."

There are two ways to do that, it was suggested at the meeting. Either add a lot of residential density by building several high-rises on nearby land or make a concerted marketing effort to lure people from outside the Lake Anne community to the retail operations there.

Eduardo Faubert, owner of the Jasmine Cafe, said the merchants at Lake Anne are doing what they can to market their services.

The condominium association's merchants subcommittee has decided to increase its marketing expenses, he said. "We'll be spending the money to save ourselves," Faubert said.

A meeting place

Simon spoke about the general role of the village center in Reston , saying he envisioned it as a place to "gather people together and give them a meeting space," surrounded by restaurants and cafes.

He wanted a supermarket to be the focal point at Lake Anne, and a Safeway store played that role for a time.

But, as supermarkets grew bigger and bigger, there was no way to keep one at Lake Anne, he said, because the village center was designed to be a limited size.

"If we had made Lake Anne more expandable, it would be more successful," Simon said.

He noted that Lake Anne was always supposed to be a "walk-in community," so that people could get there by foot from their neighborhoods.

There also were supposed to be more high-rises built at Lake Anne, but people protested, Simon pointed out.

He noted that Lake Anne was designed to be a "water-oriented village," as opposed to the second village built in Reston at Hunters Woods. That was supposed to be a "horse-oriented village center," he said, where people could stable their horses and hitch them to posts as they traveled about.

"Each village center was supposed to have its own character," Reston 's founder said.

Veatch, who sits on the board of the Reston Historic Trust, noted that potential buyers at Lake Anne in the early days thought the real estate there was very expensive, as well as urbane.

"It took a sophisticated buyer, architects, engineers ... to really appreciate what was here and want to buy in Lake Anne," Veatch said.

History and the future

Steinbauer noted that, when Gulf purchased Reston in 1967, Lake Anne was Reston. The developer was willing to keep commercial occupants there at "any cost," he said.

But the Arab oil embargo in the mid-1970s prompted Gulf to jettison its "other" businesses and concentrate on oil, he said. Mobil took the opposite tack, wanting to diversify. So, it decided to get into real estate.

Mobil purchased the undeveloped land in Reston , and another company bought the Lake Anne properties that housed retail and commercial operations, Steinbauer explained. That company then raised the rents, driving some tenants away.

That's when the condominium was formed. It is also when the building now housing Millennium Bank was spun off and the commercial parking lot's ownership was split up. So, control of the Lake Anne properties was "at the whim of whoever happened to buy the space," he said.

Prost and Hudgins urged people to communicate with Basile, Baumann, Prost & Associates about what specifically they want done to revitalize and redevelop Lake Anne .

Hudgins told the crowd at the meeting that you need to "e-mail, telephone, share your viewpoints."

"I would urge that you stay with us throughout the process," Hudgins told the community.

Simon summed up what most people at the meeting seemed to believe. "If there ever was a village center, this is a village center," he said. "We have a community here. What's needed is more people, more density."

Pronske agreed. "It's taking time to get where we need to be," he said. Revitalization would be a "big help."