Out With the Old, In With The Mauve: A Look Back at the Fun, Frolic and Tree-Felling That Was Reston 2009

What an awesome year for our earth-toned planned real estate development community! Let's look back together at 2009, abandoned dreams of juiceries and all:

• All that clapping finally worked, as Metro's Silver Line was finally approved by the Feds. Soon plans for an awesome shrine to rad '80s art were proposed for the Wiehle Avenue Metro Station, followed by an even more awesome, or at least costlier, $90 million parking garage and related, Macaroni Grill-friendly, mixed-use development.
  
  
• All the Reston Association wanted was a measly $15 million to buy or build a shiny new headquarters, but voters shot that referendum down -- even after the RA's heartfelt plea for new filing cabinets. But the RA didn't get mad -- they got even by proposing an even more grandiose plan that had been developed in secret for more than a year, an awesome indoor rec center, complete with juicery, to be built at Brown's Chapel Park. After public opposition and the world's second most awesome YouTube video about Reston scuttled those plans, the RA went ahead and leased the fancy office building, complete with child labor cubbies, that they wanted for their headquarters in the first place. That'll show us!
  
  
• After considerable protest, the stream deforestation restoration project continued, turning the Glade and Snakeden reaches into pristine wastelands remediated waterways. The RA thoughtfully let everyone get into the act. And along Soapstone, first they came for the trees. Then they came for the junk cars and tradesmen's vehicles.
  
  
• Reston earned its newly coined reputation for being a foul-mouthed haven for political junkies, what with the awesome tea party and town hall meeting and local elections featuring Holocaust deniers, Willie Horton-like advertising, morality plays and whatnot.
  
  
• The DRB outdid itself. And one cluster earned the well-deserved title of Reston's most selfish cluster.
  
  
• The long-discussed revitalization plans for Lake Anne were finally approved. We joked about trepidation that the plan would turn bucolic Reston into "another Manhattan," but the joke was on us when JBG unveiled plans to turn the low-rise Fairway Apartments into a massive development. But it would have something like 11 on-street parking spaces, so no worries. Fortunately, the process of revising Reston's overall master plan has kicked off, so even if we don't get a say, we'll at least see a bunch of cool pictures of air rights development over the ole Toll Road!
  
  
• The athletic but somewhat plan-averse bank robber who hit a number of Reston banks but forgot to bring a bag to carry the money in remains at large. Oddly, the better thought-out use of a getaway canoe in another robbery didn't work out quite as well.
  
  
• Lawyers Road went on a road diet, gaining bike lanes to create an awesome, Spandex required velodrome. So far, no accidents like this have been reported, but you never know.
  
  
• Reston's vibrant economy continued apace, getting a hipster computer store (which was promptly robbed), while other companies continued massive layoffs, and the old-timey "news-papers" that serve our beloved community kept getting smaller. But property values only plummeted a lucky 13 percent! (Sounds like the perfect time to buy, especially with awesome inventory like this!)
  
  
• Nekkid plays and daring world record attempts dominated the cultural scene.
  
  
• This filthy "web log" got its 15 minutes of fame. So did Reston, which exported the disease named after our beloved planned community to pigs in the Philippines. Not to be outdone, the RA began its own web log and Twitters, including offering some fun facts.

If you're really nostalgic, you can look back at 2008 as well. But we wouldn't recommend it.