Wiehle Metro Development: Standing Room Only Crowd Listens to P&Z Consider ARBs, TIAs, and DRBs

Here's "citizen journalism" or "web logging" or whatever at its finest. No sooner than we sent out our call for information about yesterday's Reston Planning & Zoning committee meeting about the awesome Wiehle Metro station development than did the eyewitness accounts start rolling in. And here's what we heard. It was standing room only! Bob Simon, among others, called for even taller buildings -- which actually makes sense, as when you follow current county rules, you get the mind-numbing fugly sprawl of Tysons Corner. Someone else proposed revitalizing the DRB's long-lost, malformed sibling -- the ARB! The beginnings of an urban grid beyond the existing site were suggested, and it sounds like Comstock is setting whatever midscale retail chains might call the development home up for limited traffic.

Comstock began the presentation with changes to its previous proposal:

They submitted a TIA (Traffic Impact Analysis) that apparently showed that in spite of the 5000+ parking spaces of the final proposal--2300 public parking for the Metro, and 3000 some odd for private parking for the office and residential buildings--the peak traffic load would be about 1300 cars (additional to the current traffic). To me that was implausible in the extreme. Even so, their TIA showed a "Level of Service" (LOS) grade of F. That's F for failing, and that is after their traffic mitigation, which is mostly additional turn lanes and timed traffic signals. He said that there would be traffic demand management goals of 20-25 percent reduction in peak hour trips and penalties if they didn't make the goals. He didn't say what measures would be taken other than assuming that with high density living and some pedestrian amenities people will use cars less. I think they probably assume they will pay the penalty and build it in to their costs.

He talked about the Plaza which he tried to convince the P and Z members was actually large--about the size of the Town Center plaza with the skating rink: 100 feet wide and about 300 feet long. Part of the Comstock plaza will be a road. He said that cars will be necessary on the plaza to attract top level shops and the hotel. He showed the traffic flow around the plaza and it is two way traffic making a zigzagging route along the length of the plaza. Also there will be parking along the roadway and a two taxi stand in front of the hotel. Picture the Town Center plaza with a two lane road going from the fountain, along the Clydes outside area, cutting across the skating rink and returning along the side of the Hyatt, with cars parked in the Clydes and Hyatt areas.

Sadly, it sounds like the idea of making the tall buildings in the proposal even taller to create more open space is a non-starter.

There were also several calls from the committee & the floor to increase allowable building height and reduce minimum parking requirements, all with a view to making the site more attractive with a larger plaza and more sunlight. Even Bob Simon encouraged building higher to reduce the footprint and increase sunlight and open space!

The key downer was the engineering observation that the piers for the parking garage are designed to carry the weight of the buildings as they are currently configured and increasing building heights would be problematic, if not impossible. One Comstock partner suggested they could switch to steel from concrete to build taller buildings, but that didn't seem to get much traction, I presume because of cost considerations.

Also, the positioning of retail struck some observers as odd:

One thing that I hadn't thought of from an architectural viewpoint until last night's discussion was that the retail in the Comstock block focuses inward, not toward the street. This contrasts strongly with the "success" principles of TOD development that call for retail to face the street, making an easily accessible and open retail environment.... In contrast, Comstock is proposing an insular, hard to see, much less access, retail environment. As one P&Z committee member put it, it could easily become as dead a plaza as the one on the west side of the Reston International building.

Some hints of future development also emerged during the meeting:

One new development--or at least new to me--was that Chuck Veatch is preparing proposals for the small site just west of the large Comstock block as well as his much larger block northwest of the core Comstock site, according to his attorney. The only feature of the proposal the attorney presented was that Veatch intends to extend the street on the west side of the Comstock block north to Wiehle--a beginning of the "grid of streets" in this area. He expects to have those proposals done by the end of this month and Art Hill suggested that the proposal come to the P&Z committee in May.

And then there's that thing about the DRB-like ARB.

I think Art Hill's strategic recommendation to create a design review committee to look at the architecture of development in the RCIG--a la the now-defunct ARB--as an advisory group under the local supervisor may be the key long-term idea to come out of the meeting. I would note that he didn't suggest that the current DRB should take this on, but he didn't totally disabuse that notion either. He was looking for a supervisor-appointed group, I think.

According to one participant, parking seems to be the big bone of contention going forward:

There were lots of questions about the traffic and parking. It seemed to me that the DPZ and county transportation dept. doesn't think that was too important. Bob Simon chimed in and asked to request a study of Arlington traffic before and after metro--he guessed that there would be little difference in spite of the huge increase in population and density. I think that is probably right but only because Arlington did not supply parking. The county transportation guy said that he agreed and that parking was the biggest bone of contention between them and Comstock. But somehow, they are still allowing 5000+ parking spaces.

Probably the most encouraging thing to come out of this meeting was how well-attended it was. This project and JBG's Fairway redevelopment proposal are the two big harbingers for what development throughout the Silver Line corridor might look like, so it's important to keep tabs on it -- ARBs and P&Zs and DRBs and TIAs and all.