Tennessee Town Center: Hope They Liked the Macaroni Grill!

First, the Washington Post, now the Tennessean. Reston's becoming the new Wasilla for the working press.

You may recall that in Tennessee, the developer of a proposed urban development called May Town Center in the decidedly downtown-less metropolis of Bells Bend cited the Reston Town Center as one of his inspirations. Local planners were invited to come have a look-see at how us near-Yankees do the whole "town center" thing, so earlier this week, they came, they saw, they went home.

Real estate developer Tony Giarratana wore a tie with a rabbit being pulled out of a hat on Monday as he led a tour group through the Reston Town Center office and retail center here on a sales jaunt designed to build support for a similar $4 billion May Town Center project in Nashville.

The tie was a gift from a financial adviser, Giarratana said, and he hopes it serves as a good luck charm that leads to the eventual approval of a massive office, residential and retail campus in a rural part of West Nashville that proponents say Davidson County needs to stop its tax base from bolting to other nearby counties over the next decade.

Oooh! Sounds like they're divided -- just like us! Someone call the Post.

"I like to wear it for important occasions like this," Giarratana said shortly after wrapping up a two-stop airplane trip that also took a handful of participants to Winston Salem, N.C., for a morning tour of a research park linked to Winston-Salem State University. The group came to Reston Town Center in suburban Washington, D.C., in the afternoon to wrap up a 12-hour fact-finding mission that ended back in Nashville by early evening.

No word from the Tennesseean on whether this guy bought a fancy new tie at Anthropologie, or whether the crowd enjoyed the epicurean delights of the Macaroni Grill.