Flashbacks:
The RNGC Caddyshackpocalypse
Bollards!
Flash forward to earlier this week, when county officials held a meeting to say… not a whole lot, beyond the fact that construction on something just might begin as soon as 2016. A few Lake Anne residents had what seems like a completely appropriate response:
"I have been to 10 or 12 meetings," said Linda Fuller, owner of Lake Anne Florist and Virginia Wine & Gourmet. "Why are we doing this again? Are we going to sit here at Lake Anne while Reston Station, Fairway, and Parc Reston are redeveloped? How does Lake Anne Village Center take advantage of Reston Station if we have nothing to offer? I have been on the plaza for 38 years. I am not gonna sit here again and listen to something I have heard before."Chalk it up to charette PTSD.
With that, Fuller left the room. She was soon joined by another neighbor.
"I am wondering why you called this meeting," the woman said. "We have told you 15 times what we want for Lake Anne. This is [expletive]."
What's telling is that there was no mention of the fancy 1,330-unit proposal to redevelop Crescent ostensibly submitted by Hines, the developer of the fancy CityCenterDC project downtown, back in late spring.
Maybe Hines is still interested; apparently "several" developers are. But reading between the lines, it sounds like county planners may be holding out for a broader redevelopment plan that includes other parcels around Lake Anne, including the plaza's current parking lot.
With consolidation, up to 935 units could be developed, said John Payne, Fairfax County's Deputy Director for Real Estate and Development said at the original RFP meeting. If only Crescent is redeveloped, it will be for a maximum of 750 units.Both of those figures are considerably smaller than the number of units Hines initially proposed for the Crescent property alone. Which may be appropriate, given traffic and other considerations, but may also be a sticking point for developers. A completely integrated mega-proposal that encompasses all of Lake Anne could also be waiting in the wings. But given the fact that we're seeing other redevelopment projects preparing to break ground right now, the delays aren't exactly encouraging.
In case you're keeping score at home, the county now expects to select a proposal sometime next fall. Add the requisite zoning/DRB approval fun, and you get that 2016 start date for any construction. The bright side? Maybe there's still time for us to submit a proposal for a fun floating rollerdrome in the center of the lake.
Let's go for broke on this one and build a canal between Lake Anne and Lake Newport and then have a River Walk ala San Antonio, TX!
ReplyDeleteLiving at Lake Anne is pretty much like "Ground Hog Day" the movie. Every morning, everything starts all over again -- just as if yesterday never happened.
ReplyDeleteOpen a gay bar. Redevelopment always follows the gays.
ReplyDelete...and on the other side of the Kola Superdeep Borehole is...Lake Anne
ReplyDeleteThe Russians began drilling the deepest hole in the world on 24 May 1970 using the Uralmash-4E, and later the Uralmash-15000 series drilling rig. A number of boreholes were drilled by branching from a central hole. The deepest, SG-3, reached 12,262 metres (40,230 ft) (12.26 km, 2.21 leagues) in 1989, and is the deepest hole ever drilled, and the deepest artificial point on Earth.
However, due to higher than expected temperatures at this depth and location, 180 °C (356 °F) instead of expected 100 °C (212 °F), drilling deeper was deemed unfeasible and the drilling was stopped in 1992. With the expected further increase in temperature with increasing depth, drilling to 15,000 m (49,000 ft) would have meant working at a projected 300 °C (570 °F), at which the drill bit would no longer work.
Well, the Russians CLAIMED that they stopped drilling.
That claim was a big deep hole of a lie.
In fact, the Russians DID NOT stop drilling and actually drilled all the way through the Earth's core and right on out the outside side. And, as it turns out, the other side of the Kola Superdeep Borehole is Lake Anne, which accounts for the fact that not one damn thing has changed all these years at Lake Anne because all the metric tons of planning documents generated from the millions of meetings about the revitalization of Lake Anne were dropped Cathy Hudgins into the hole and popped out somewhere in Siberia.
However, those planning documents aren't going to waste. Siberia, as it turns out, has been inspired by the Lake Anne revitalization charette documents to create a frozen golf course surrounded by condos that will be cooled during the long Siberian winters by an Iranian manufactured RELAC-style chilled snow system. Their system comes on line next year. It should be entertaining to read the al Jazeera news reports about all those upset Siberian condo owners angry over the golf course stealing snow from the community-owned glaciar to cool the fairways.
The sooner that the wrecking crews can start their work on Crescent, the better. That place is an eyesore, which the county wasted $40 million of my tax dollars to buy at the height of the real estate bubble. Kathy Hudgins needs to go! She didn't even have enought respect for her constituents to even attend a meeting about Lake Anne redevelopment, which is desperately needed. Whatever her agenda is, pro developer or pro turning this area of Reston into a ghetto, she doesn't represent my interests. I own my condo nearby and pay my mortgage and property taxes, and what I get from my local elected representative is a lot of foot dragging and inertia. This place is turning into a ghetto, with abandoned wrecked cars on Northshore. It's an embarassment!
ReplyDelete