Brown's Chapel Rec Center: Another Week, Another "Community Input" Meeting

South Lakes Mom, one of our regular commenters, attended this week's community input meeting on the rec center / juice bar planned for Brown's Chapel Park. A couple of points from her well-reasoned and even-handed account of the meeting (posted elsewhere, as well-reasoned and even-handed commentary have no place on this filthy "web-log") struck us as particularly telling:

Many of the people who had a lot to say about this (masquerading as questions) are part of the over 60 crowd. Many of them have been in Reston since the 1960s. They’ve enjoyed the benefit of all of the amenities that they would now deny the younger folks. Our standards for recreation have changed over time, and to refuse to even listen to other people shows that one has become an embittered oldster rather than a helpful member of the community. If the purpose of the meeting was enlightenment for those who came for information, the attacks and zealotry clearly stifled productive discourse.

While we've made plenty of hay about of the utter lack of transparency involved in this process, this is something we've actually been mulling for some time. Be prepared for a touching and heartfelt post on this sometime soon. At the same time, though, something else hasn't changed:

I thought some of the RA respondents were a bit patronizing. Yes, you’re under attack, but RA’s lack of transparency has led to this adversarial relationship. Seize the moral high ground and don’t be patronizing or rude. On the other hand, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you telling someone their comment is ‘counterproductive’ or ‘just plain rude’. Let’s be grown-ups about this.

Also from Monday's meeting: USTA and US Swimming are now backing the need for indoor swimming facilities, and someone suggested a new proposal which is so crazy, It Just Might Work:

One semi-great suggestion came up in regards to the rezoning of the area that parallels the toll road. It was that the additional parking deck could be multi-tasked to provide the requested indoor facilities and parking for them... if you build a huge facility at Brown’s Chapel to accomodate USTA and US Swimming’s desires for a venue for their events, you’re asking all that traffic to go up Wiehle Ave or Reston Parkway to get there. If people can just hop off the toll road and park, it’s a much better idea.

And maybe one of the private developers in that same area can just open an Orange Julius franchise next to the Metro station, eliminating the need for the juice bar! An Orange Julius would fit right in with the station's rad '80s artwork, after all.

The next "community input" meeting is scheduled for 7 pm next Tuesday, June 30, in the Armstrong Elementary School cafeteria. Given that's the North Reston meeting, we'd say that the meeting's host, RA rep Frank Lynch, will likely have his hands full.