Police: Armed Sexual Assault in South Reston

A 32-year-old woman was sexually assaulted after being pulled into a van in the parking lot of Reston Glen apartments on Tuesday night, Fairfax County Police said Thursday afternoon.

Police are investigating a sexual assault that occurred Tuesday, February 26. Around 11:20 p.m. a 32-year-old woman was walking from Pinecrest Road through the Laurel Glade apartments when she reported a man grabbed her from behind and displayed a weapon. She was pulled into a van where a second man was waiting. The van was driven to Green Range Drive near Emerald Heights Court, where the victim was sexually assaulted and then released.

The suspects were described as possibly Hispanic and the van was described as being similar to an older model Plymouth Voyager.

Fairfax Police are asking anyone with information to contact Crime Solvers by phone at 1-866-411-TIPS/8477, e-mail at www.fairfaxcrimesolvers.org or text “TIP187” plus your message to CRIMES/274637, or to call Fairfax County Police at 703-691-2131.

Update: Teevee coverage:

Requiem for a Bookstore: Reston Barnes & Noble Closes Today

Well, folks, today's the day that Reston's of-late-lamented Barnes & Noble closes its doors, making way, as it well should, for the next evolution in exciting suburban big-box dreck retail opportunities: a purveyor of plastic containers in which to store all our various plastic crap. We hope you took advantage of the store's final days to "stock up" on books and cute anime keychains and "Nooks," whatever those are, since there is now no other possible way to obtain a book anywhere, except maybe for spending $5.50 for a round-trip jaunt down the Toll Road to Tysons, or maybe driving to Fair Lakes for free (scratch that -- you'd have to pay us well north of $5.50 to voluntarily travel to Fair Lakes under any circumstances).

Actually, we're just as bummed as everyone else about this. Our BFFs at Patch posted some photos of the all-but-emptied-out bookstore earlier this week, which have the same sort of disaster tourism feel as this.

But! There is a bright side! No pesky books to feel obliged to buy means more time to read stupid "web logs" like this one, maybe even while enjoying a latte at the Starbucks (which will remain open, giving the underemployed and overcaffeinated a birds-eye view of construction on the Container Store, which will apparently open sometime this fall -- just how long does it take to put up a bunch of shelves and stick plastic boxes on them, anyway?)

Speaking of which, we hope they erect a piece of public art in front of the new store when it opens to honor the Spectrum's past and its future, at least until it too falls to the wrecking ball for more of the usual bollardy goodness.

Beats carnivorous triffids, at least.

Acronym Madness: RCC Issues REC FAQs For STD5

The Reston Community Center has released more information (PDF) about its recently revived plans to consider building an indoor recreation facility at Baron Cameron Park, using the frequently-asked-questions format more typically seen when someone is trying to figure out why their fancy new HD teevee won't plug into grampa's old rabbit ears antennae. We especially like the first Q in the FAQ:

How did this come about?

"Well, let's see. First the earth cooled. And then the dinosaurs came, but they got too big and fat, so they all died and they turned into oil. And then the Arabs came and they bought Mercedes Benzes. And Prince Charles started wearing all of Lady Di's clothes. I couldn't believe it," the FAQ did not say in response. And why, YouTubes, why is there no clip from this seminal recreational facility public input documentary?

But we digress. Some real facts from the FAQ (say that three times fast):

• There have been no decisions about what might be in this facility -- be it swimming, indoor tennis, a rollerdrome, or a juice bar. "Reston Community Center is seeking input from the community about the programmatic features a new indoor recreation facility should include," the FAQ says, although it later adds that "Reston Community Center is committed to providing the best solution possible to the unmet demand for indoor aquatics and fitness amenities."
  
  
• As it is currently conceived, the Fairfax County Park Authority's financial contribution to the project is the 68 acres of Baron Cameron Park land it recently was "given" by the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors; "funding for the capital and operating costs would come from Small District 5/RCC revenues (user fees and taxes.)"
  
  
• Current activites at Baron Cameron Park -- "The fields, dog park, and community gardens… are also considered in the planning going forward."

Along with market studies, RCC is planning on spending five months collecting input "from citizens, partners, and stakeholders," starting with its regular monthly meeting on March 4. (A full schedule is listed in the FAQ itself.) The FAQ also states that:

The Board of Governors of Reston Community Center will not act on a major capital project to realize an indoor recreation facility for Reston without determining that:

• The community supports such an endeavor and has had the opportunity to participate in discussions of what an indoor recreation facility should provide and how it should operate.

• The market, demographic and financial contexts of Reston today and in the future are well
understood and considered.

"If new RCC facilities are built, they will be Reston-focused, environmentally friendly, and sensitive to the community’s concerns and needs," the FAQ states. It's nice to see that the RCC is far more committed to transparency than during its last time at the rodeo, and there's no doubt that additional amenities are already needed, even without the additional people who will soon call Reston home. Here's hoping this process yields a project that we can all feel good about -- and maybe fulfill our lifelong dream of opening an Orange Julius franchise in the process, the end.

On Twitter, The Unbearable Triteness of Being in Reston, or Herndon

It seems that some police activity in Herndon last night sparked an EPIC TWITTER BATTLE between Restonians and their counterparts on the other side of Fairfax County Parkway. (The horse meatballs are somewhere else. Possibly "horse country," or maybe Woodbridge.) In case you weren't sitting breathless in front of your combination Twitter machine/frozen yogurt maker last night as the tweets kept rolling in, here are some of the "highlights:"

NEVER. Except maybe for this part of Canada.

Point conceded.

WE HAVE A WINNER. Cue the music.
Remind us to unplug the Twitter after high school lets out in the afternoon from now on, the end.

Flashback Shocker: Was Reston Part of Nixon's Silent Majority?

Part of Reston's grand ur-creation myth involves the notion that the community's early settlers were an idealistic, progressive-minded people, willing to move to the nation's first townhomes that weren't anywhere near a town in search of a new way of living, one free from the "square" constraints of lamestream suburbia that instead embraced a "mod" style of architecture modeled after the finest in socialist European design -- with an equally enlightened outlook on life to boot.

So, even as the RA is presumably tabulating the results of its recent survey, imagine our surprise when a Confidential Restonian Operative forwarded us the results from the last time they ran a survey round these here parts, which appears to have been ca. 1973. Sock it to us, fancy survey results with inappropriately skinny headline font!

Only Nixon could go to China, but only Reston could support him 89-2 percent in the waning days of his presidency. Guess even then, as is the case now, lots of people worked in the lucrative dolphin bomb-strapping defense sector. And who knows? Maybe this unreserved show of support is precisely what convinced Tricky Dick to stay in office for almost another full year. Forget about how things play in Peoria -- the real question is how they sell in Southgate.

But some things haven't changed -- among them, opposition to fancy high-rise buildings in less-than-ideal locations:

Of course, that development -- and the idea of a series of Heron House-scale high rises ringing Lake Anne -- was stopped. So maybe our predecessors were a bit more civic-minded than we give them credit for.



Update: Commenter "Bob Woodward"* has won the Internet:

I have it on good authority that CREEP was actually a covert effort to influence the DRB's early decisions. It really stood for the Committee for Reston Eradicating Ecru Palettes.

*Probably not THAT Bob Woodward. Sounds more like something Carl Bernstein would say.

Why Metro Won't Open Phase 2 Silver Line Stations as They Are Built, and Other Friday Bummers

A while back, our BFFs at Reston 2020 had a modest proposal: To keep the fancy Wiehle Avenue Metro station/geometry playset from being the traffic-snarling terminus of the Silver Line for at least a half-decade, why not open each Phase 2 station as construction is completed, instead of waiting until construction finally snakes out into the particleboard nirvana of Loudoun County? We were particularly psyched, as the kids today no longer say, as taking the Metro from Wiehle to Reston Town Center would reduce the travel time from Restonian World Headquarters to the Macaroni Grill by at least 2 minutes -- and if we have to wait until 2018 for the RTC station to open, our favorite carb-intensive eatery will be long gone.

But we digress. It turns out there's a good reason staggering station openings won't work after all:

MWAA spokeswoman Marcia McAllister says it is impossible to open station by station, unless a rail yard is built along with each station as it is opened.

"The phases were designed this way to ensure the continuity of the operating systems," says McAllister.

"The Wiehle-Reston East Station is designed to be a temporary terminus station and includes tail tracks for storage of rail cars."

Bummer, but having seen the seminal mass transit documentary Thomas the Tank Engine, it makes sense that there needs to be a place for the Really Useful Engines trains to sleep park. And since Metro has already managed to royally screw up the turnaround arrangements on the other end of the Silver Line, it's probably best not to tempt fate here.

But no worries! In the same article, Supervisor Cathy Hudgins tell us that traffic won't be any worse once the 2,300-space parking garage opens.

"I live one block from Wiehle Avenue, and I don't think it's going to have any more gridlock than we have today," says Fairfax County Supervisor Cathy Hudgins.

"Will there be some hard days in the beginning? I think you're right. But the larger part of the message is that it's an asset coming here."

No arguments there, but we're guessing that 2,300 extra cars on two roads are going to have a soupçon of impact on the traffic situation. Reston 2020 and others tend to agree:

The Fairfax County Department of Transportation is currently working on projects to help ease congestion.

"These improvements include roadway expansions and the addition of turning lanes to facilitate the movement of traffic in areas near Silver Line stations and, in the case of Phase 1, the addition of temporary bus bays to the north side of Wiehle from the eastbound Dulles Toll Road," says Nick Perfili, Dulles Rail planner for the Fairfax County Department of Transportation.

Perfili says the level of service grade at the Wiehle Avenue and Sunrise Valley Drive intersection is currently a "D." He says the planned improvement would keep the intersection at its current grade. Without any improvements, it is projected that the intersection would get an "F."

The level of service measure grades intersections on an "A" to "F" scale based on traffic flows, wait times, and the space between vehicles. Level A is wide-open and Level F is total gridlock.

Fairfax officials hope adding 15 new Fairfax Connector routes in Reston will encourage more people to ditch their cars. The routes for the buses are still being finalized.

"The more cars we take off the road, the better. Each Silver Line train that leaves will take nearly 1,000 people, and that is 1,000 cars off the road, every 6 to 10 minutes," says Hudgins.

Our Reston 2020 BFFs have put together a report suggesting steps to be taken to address the transportation issues, including improved pedestrian, bus, and auto access to the station from the south of the Toll Road, where the fancy pedestrian bridge ends in a privately owned parking lot, as well as the creation of residential parking districts, better access for buses, and alternatives to single-occupant car trips to the station. Since we'll be stuck with this arrangement for at least five years, hopefully it's not too late to put some of these into place before the first train chugs in later this year.

On the YouTubes: The Harlem Shake, Whatever That Is

Please to be enjoying this YouTube video of the crazy kidz at South Lakes High School doing that thing all the crazy kidz are crazy about these days: the "Harlem Shake." We don't know what the "Harlem Shake" is ourselves, because we are old. Is it the same thing as YOLO?

In the interest of equal time, here's the Herndon High School answer to the "Harlem Shake":



If that's too much for you, you can always watch some video of Lake Anne Elementary's principal doing the Gangnam style dance on the roof of the school. That we know about, because it was on the Today show a bunch of times and they use it to advertise pistachios, the end.

Police: Search for Waterside Apartments Murder Suspects Ends With Husband's Apparent Suicide

Fairfax County Police say the husband of 38-year-old Jennifer Lynne Pearson, who was found dead in a Monday morning fire at Waterside Apartments, was found dead in Texas.

Detectives have determined that the man who resided in the apartment was married to the deceased victim. That man was found deceased in Bandera County, Texas on Tuesday, February 19. Authorities are investigating his death as an apparent suicide.

Detectives investigating the homicide do not feel there is a public safety threat and are not searching for any suspects in this case.

Pearson was pregnant at the time of her death, police had said yesterday.

Teevee news coverage from last night:



Update: Stories on the victim and her husband, Timothy Connor, from our BFFs at Patch.

At Reston Town Center, Will They Pave a Parking Lot and Put Up a Paradise (of Mixed-Use Bollardy Goodness?)

Forget golf courses. Forget garden apartment complexes. Apparently what really gets Restonians' goats is when there's talk about redeveloping an ugly surface parking lot.

As part of its ongoing consolidation of properties at Reston Town Center, Boston Properties is now purchasing the last surface lot at Reston Town Center for a cool $27 million. By our lazy quick count, that works out to about $150,000 for each parking space, which makes it reasonable to expect that Boston isn't just concerned about ensuring continued easy access to the Ruby Tuesday's FedEx store. Which, according to our BFFs at Patch, is exactly what's on the menu:

The parcel is commercially zoned for 250,000 square feet of office space. Boston Properties is evaluating a potential mixed-use development plan, which could include residential as well as commercial uses, CoStar said.

Reading the comments on Patch, you'd think they were talking about paving over Lake Anne and opening an Sbarro in the torso of the statue of Bob Simon. But this is a parking lot, and a parking lot that's soon to be surrounded by yet more dense buildings. It's actually a place that makes sense for that kind of development, which is a lot more than we can say for some other projects that have come over the transom.

Besides, we're old enough to remember when the original buildings at our gritty urban core were surrounded by a Disneyland-esque field of surface parking, minus the monorails to take you to Adventureland the Gap. It was beautiful, assuming you like the used car lot ambiance of say, Tysons, but the dwindling amounts of surface parking has added to the verisimilitude of an authentic urban experience as our Lil' Town Center grew up.

More annoying is the fact that Boston has hinted in the past that the days of free parking in the garages at our gritty urban core may someday come to an end, but it's not like you can just park for free in the middle of Times Square -- which is the only urban analogue that we can think of with more generic chain stores than RTC.

One valid question is what will happen to the rickety, lockjaw-causing carnival rides festivals that have used the parking lot. Well, we've still got four other "town centers" with surface parking lots, so why not spread the wealth around a bit? There's plenty of space in at least one of those lots, the end.

Police: Waterside Apartments Fire Death a Homicide (Update: Victim Identified, Was Pregnant at Time of Death)

Update: Police have identified the victim as 38-year-old Jennifer Lynne Pearson. She was pregnant at the time of her death, according to police. More updates here.

A woman who died early Monday in a fire at Waterside Apartments apparently suffered trauma to her upper body, and police are treating the case as a homicide:

A woman who died in an apartment building fire in Reston Monday morning may have been the victim of a homicide, police say.

The fire broke out around 6:10 a.m. at a building in the 12000 block of Waterside View Drive, just off Fairfax County Parkway. The majority of the blaze was contained to an apartment on the second floor, a spokesperson said.

The fire was extinguished quickly, but the door to the victim's apartment was locked, and firefighters had to force their way inside, said News4's Derrick Ward.

Police said later Monday that the victim had trauma to her upper body.

Amanda Hamm, a neighbor who called 911, heard a loud argument in the building about 2:30 a.m., News4's Pat Collins reports. She said she smelled smoke about 5:40 a.m.

Police are seeking information about the case and the as-of-yet unnamed victim at the usual places: Crime Solvers by phone at 1-866-411-TIPS/8477 or by texting “TIP187” plus your message to CRIMES/274637, or Fairfax County Police at 703-691-2131.

More TV coverage:



Patch coverage here.

Caddyshackpocalypse Now: RA, Hudgins Not Fans of Secret Golf Course Negotiations, Assuming They Exist (Updated: Maybe They Don't)

In light of rumors circulating about a possible deal involving the proposed redevelopment of the Reston National Golf Course, the Reston Association has written a letter saying it is not aware of any "meetings or discussions," but that it should be part of any conversations if they are happening. The letter states:

The Reston Association is not aware of any such negotiations or meetings. It has not been invited to in any such discussions. We have been told by County staff and Park Authority staff that they are unaware of any such discussions.

The Reston Association Board is hopeful that these are merely rumors; because this issue is far too important for secretive meetings among a select few. Any re-planning and redevelopment of the Reston National Golf Course needs to be openly discussed and involve the entire Reston community. The Reston Association, on behalf of its members and itself, has a very real interest at stake in any re-planning and redevelopment of the golf course. Any such discussions should include a Reston Association representative, as well as other members of the community. It should be an open and transparent process.

The letter also reiterates the RA board's opposition to redevelopment of the golf course, saying "the Board has heard, overwhelmingly, from Reston Association members, that redevelopment of the golf course to other than open space and recreational uses would have significant detrimental consequences on its members and on the Reston life-style."

Update: Supervisor Cathy Hudgins has issued her own statement pointing out that she, like the RA, is not involved in any discussions with the developers or any other party. She says:

Contrary to the Reston Patch and Reston 2020 reports, I have not been involved with any discussions with RNGC owners, Reston Association, Fairfax County Park Authority or others regarding any activity associated with this property… Let’s remember that Reston’s original planning and development required open space for active and passive recreation and I feel confident that will continue.

In a RESTONIAN WORLD EXCLUSIVE, we have obtained grainy cellphone footage of what the "secret negotiations" just might have sounded like:


Chilling.

Like the Golden Spike, Only Not Golden and Slightly Less Spikey

The Connection's Alex McVeigh stayed up late last night to watch construction crews lower the final bit of the pedestrian walkway to the Wiehle Avenue Metro station into place over the Toll Road. There's an entire series of pictures at the link above, if you're into such things. Now all that remains to be done before the station can open is putting the rad 80s art into place, plus maybe a few of those "tracks" and farecard machines and whatnot, the end.

On the YouTubes: We Watch the Reston Association Videos So You Don't Have To

This month's edition of Reston Today is just overflowing with sincerity. From a story about the county's urban search and rescue team helping out following Hurricane Sandy to an adorable first grader talking about cleaning up trash around Lake Anne, there's not much to make fun of during February's serving of four minutes and 57 seconds of video actualities from our beloved earth-toned community. But we did notice that, much like cigarette and liquor companies in the 1960s, the RA is not above a little subliminal product placement. We've included a screen grab below. Can you spot the RA-sanctioned product carefully hidden in this scene?

Yes, in case you blinked and missed it, it's a copy of Reston: The Magazine. We have achieved total product synergy.

ZANG!

Caddyshackpocalypse Now: Let's Make A Deal?

The ongoing saga of Northwestern Mutual Life's efforts to redevelop Reston National Golf Course into more of the usual bollardy mixed-use goodness may have entered a new phase. According to our BFFs at Reston 2020, it appears that "the quiet company" is quietly trying to negotiate some kind of deal that would preserve open space while allowing it to build on some portion of the land.

We are hearing rumors of a secret deal being negotiated between the County and NM to set aside a substantial portion of the golf course for a large Reston central park. In fact, one authoritative, but so far uncorroborated, source said that an option was being explored to have the developer proffer land for a park in return for being granted rental unit density. Another source indicates that NM is testing the market among several major area developers to see if the golf course can be sold for commercial development purposes. From these eyes, that sounds like NM or a commercial developer could develop more than 7,900 units—the current reported zoning limit—on whatever land is still left to “incentivize” a deal with the County.

We have no added solid information on whether such discussions are ongoing, much less on the nature of any such offer by the County or proffer by NM. Nonetheless, rumors on what such a deal might look like are rampant. Some of those rumors suggest the northern fairways will be turned into housing (they are close to Metro stations). Other rumors say the roughly one-quarter of the golf course land east of Soapstone Dr. will be a park, the west side will be turned into housing.

Reston 2020 speculates about why a deal may be in the works:

We have learned from a long-serving member of the Fairfax County Planning Commission (FCPC) that zoning language from the 1970s does leave open the possibility for housing development on RNGC land. In this “Dillon Rule” state, such a right—if it has been given—can virtually never be taken away. For a recent example, look at the County’s approval for the redevelopment of the Town Center Office Building into a 23-story office building, including six stories of parking and first floor retail—all BEYOND the half-mile circle that is the normal maximum distance used for transit-oriented development (TOD). This occurred because, again in the 1970s, the County amended the zoning ordinance to allow unlimited (yes, unlimited) development on that site—the only site with unlimited density in the County.

And all that puts the County in a quandary. Assuming for the moment that the right exists to develop housing on RNGC, the County faces being sued either by NM if the BZA rejects the NM appeal or by Restonians (RR and maybe RA) if the County acquiesces outright to the NM position.

Meanwhile, our BFFs at Rescue Reston are still asking people to sign their fancy online petition urging the county to hold firm to the position that development isn't allowed at all.

Wow. Between this and the just-revived indoor rec center/juicery discussions on the fancy other side of the Toll Road, this week is shaping up to be a lot like the last 15 minutes of a horror film, only instead of a presumed-dead corpse that keeps popping up, it's long-dead land-use issues. But if a deal to preserve open space winds up happening, maybe the soccer fields displaced by the fancy new rec center can be moved somewhere on Reston National's back 9, the end.

It's Baaaaack: RCC Proposes Indoor Rec Center, Again

It's been more than three years since the Reston Association and Reston Community Center took their plans to build a $65 million recreation center at Brown's Chapel Park off the table, but it's back. This time, RCC has a new partner -- the Fairfax County Park Authority -- and a new proposed location, right around the corner from Brown's Chapel on county-owned land. Give us some good blockquote, BFFs at Patch:

Reston Community Center is exploring the idea of building a new indoor recreation and community center at Baron Cameron Park.

In spring of 2012, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors transferred 68 acres at that location to the Fairfax County Park Authority, Bill Bouie, RCC Board of Governors member and chairman of RCC's program committee. The Park Authority will work in partnership with RCC to move the project forward, said Bouie, who is also chairman of the Fairfax County Park Authority Board.

"RCC would operate it, and for the parks department, it would be another amenity," Bouie said at a public meeting on the issue at RCC Hunters Woods on Monday.

The financing for the facility would come from Small Tax District 5, which includes Reston. The timing is right, Bouie said, because Reston is expecting an influx of residents and businesses with the arrival of Metrorail in 2013.

In some ways, it's like it's 2008-9 all over again: The same company is doing the facility planning, the cost is expected to be similar (or possibly slightly less), and a (much-needed) indoor pool tops the list of proposed amenities. (No word, though, on whether the juicery is still in the works.) It's also not clear what impact this would have on RA's own plans to build an (equally needed) indoor tennis facility at Lake Newport, which is currently in a holding pattern and would require a referendum to proceed.

Even back in ought-nine when emotions ran high over the first proposed rec center, few folks could deny additional indoor facilties were needed. Now, three-plus years later, Reston's already looking a lot bigger, and the sweet bollardy development fun is just beginning. Will people freak out about the location (originally earmarked for another fun high school; would it have been called North Lakes?) or the additional tax burden for those of us who live in Reston STD #5? (And great acronym, BTW.)

Time will tell. RCC is planning a number of focus groups and public meetings before it hopes to make a decision on whether to proceed in June. As for us, we just want in on the juicery franchise, the end.

And Then There Were Three: RA Elections Now All Unopposed, Comrades

Hey, remember that time when five candidates were running for three open seats on the Reston Association Board of Directors? Yeah, that was awesome. First, John Farrell withdrew his candidacy for the at-large seat because he was unaware he was running for the same seat as current board member Ken Kneuven. Now, Larry Dunn has withdrawn his candidacy for the North Point seat, leaving Timothy Cohn running unopposed there -- and candidates for the other two open seats unopposed as well.

That's too bad. We like contested elections because they're great for pageviews allow for a conversation about where Reston is headed. The stakes are obviously high, and now even higher with beet quotas rising in the next five-year plan a change coming in the CEO's office. Let's just hope the soon-to-be-elected and current board members are prepared for the work ahead.

Matthews To Step Down As RA CEO

We noticed an oblique "web log" reference to this yesterday, and now it's official: Reston Association CEO Milton Matthews is leaving his job on Sept. 30.

Here's the Reston Association statement, which is the kind of late-Friday news dump those of us in the Washington, D.C. media (if you consider a crappy blog part of the "Washington, D.C. media") have grown accustomed to:

The Reston Association Board of Directors announced that Milton W. Matthews will be leaving as CEO of the Reston Association later this year. On Thursday, Matthews announced his departure plans to the Association’s senior leadership team.

In the latter part of 2012, Matthews informed the Board of his intentions to move to Rockville, Md., in 2013; as his wife had accepted a position there as city manager – a position with a residency requirement.

The Bylaws of the Association require that its CEO be a resident and Member of the Association; as such, the Board initiated discussions with Matthews on a transition plan. Under that plan, Matthews will continue to serve as CEO until Sept. 30 of this year. The Board has initiated a search for a new CEO and is optimistic that it will name a successor to Matthews later this year. In the meantime, the Board has a high level of confidence in the staff’s ability to keep the Association operating smoothly.

Fortunately for Matthews, Rockville has its own Fake Downtown, if not all of Reston's groovy earth-toned charm. We wish him well.

Mauvescraper Up, Macaroni Grill Down? Bids Sought for One Project, While Spectrum Bides Its Time With Fancy Plastic Boxes

Developers are now seeking bids for construction of the awesome mauvescraper on Reston Parkway approved by Fairfax County last fall, although ground is unlikely to be broken until a tenant is secured for the office building.

The tower RTC Partnership LLC is planning for 1760 Reston Pkwy is years away from development, not to mention delivery, but the beginning steps are in motion. The developer is collecting multiple bids for the project and will soon arrive at the project's development costs. It is also in discussion with potential development partners, Transwestern's Matt Bundy tells GlobeSt.com. "It is almost certain this will not be a spec development. We will wait until a tenant or tenants are secured before moving forward. That will make the financing easier."

Meanwhile, the massive Reston Spectrum development, which was also approved by the county last month, will likely take just as long -- if not longer -- to get rolling.

Lerner Enterprises, the owner of the shopping center that runs from New Dominion to Baron Cameron along Reston Parkway, is offering no timetable for redevelopment. The company says it is excited about the future, but has no immediate plans to begin building.

“Lerner is pleased that the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors recently approved the redevelopment plans for The Spectrum at Reston Town Center," the statement reads. "The longterm vision is to redevelop the current shopping center into a vibrant mixed-use. transit-oriented town center."

"While we are excited about the future, we have no immediate plans to begin and invite the community to continue to enjoy our great mix retailers and restaurants available at The Spectrum.”

Part of that "great mix," of course, is the fancy, soon-to-arrive Container Store, which is replacing the long-lamented Barnes & Noble, currently Reston's only (new) bookseller, when it closes its doors by the end of the month. We'd wondered aloud if Lerner would move forward with smashing up the center, given that the Container Store presumably signed a multi-year lease when they agreed to move into the space, and a "commercial real estate source" confirmed to our BFFs at Patch that most of the Spectrum retailers are somewhere on a continuum of a 10-year-lease.

So, we'll just have to sit in gridlocked traffic on Wiehele await the transformation of Reston into a high-rise, mixed-use nightmare model of urban redevelopment for a few more years. In the meantime, we can continue enjoying our carb-intensive meals on the front porch of the Macaroni Grill, watching Parc Reston go up across the street, and -- wait, what's that?

The free-standing buildings such as The Macaroni Grill or On The Border might be the first areas to be redeveloped because they are single tenants, he said.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Bummer: Reston's Nate Tao Booted From American Idol

See what you made us do, Nate Tao? You made us turn on the teevee at Restonian World Headquarters, an event usually reserved exclusively for quality educational programming, to watch the singing game show. And you weren't even on until the last two minutes, in a brief montage saying goodbye to the people who didn't survive "Hollywood Week," whatever that is. Sorry! Maybe we should spend more time watching actual teevee instead of Reston-themed public access cable.

"It sucks," Tao said, and we agree. But it was a fun ride, and Tao seems like a legitimately nice guy. You can read an interview he did with our BFFs at Patch, or maybe this older story.

And Then There Were Five: Here Is Your Slate of 2013 RA Board Candidates (Updated: And Then There Were Four)

Five candidates -- one incumbent, two Reston residents who have run in the past, and two newcomers -- have tossed their hats in the earth-toned ring as candidates for the Reston Association Board of Directors.

The sole incumbent up for re-election in 2013, Ken Kneuven, is shifting from the Tall Oaks/Lake Anne district to the one open at-large seat (RA board terms are staggered). He will face John Farrell, who unsuccessfully sought an at-large seat in 2012. Eve Thompson, who also sought an at-large seat in 2012, is now running unopposed for the Lake Anne/Tall Oaks seat.

North Point Director Mike Collins announced last month that he would not seek reelection. His seat is being sought by two newcomers to RA elections -- Timothy Cohn and Larry Dunn.

So here's the box score -- three open seats, two contested elections. Read the official filing statements for each candidate after the jump. Spoiler alert: Development issues play heavily into each statement.

Update: John Farrell has opted to withdraw his candidacy. In a blog post, he writes that he and Kneuven "both of us, unbeknownst to the other, filed to run for the same seat," and since they agree in many areas, Farrell says he opted to bow out. There's also an oblique reference to "the impending turnover at the RA’s CEO position," which, hmmm, the end.

Which Of These Incidents Is the Perfect Reston Crime?

One week, two candidates for the prototypical Reston crime:

Candidate 1:

2100 block of Enright Place, 1/30/13, 9:50 p.m. A 25-year-old resident reported someone entered his home and sat down at the kitchen table. Entry was made through an unlocked front door. The home owner pushed the suspect out of the home.

Candidate 2:

2100 block of Green Watch Way, 1/28/13, 9:20 a.m. A 57-year-old woman reported that a man was seen standing on her patio. He did not attempt to enter and fled.

Tie goes to the peeper.

On the YouTubes: The Obligatory Video of People Jumping into Lake Anne, For Charity

Courtesy of the Connection's Alex McVeigh, please to be enjoying several hours of standing in the cold condensed into precisely six seconds of exciting video. Unlike last year's unseasonably warm "Polar" plunge, it was bitterly cold on Saturday, meaning we no longer have to feel guilty about leaving the Hummer idling in the carport 24/7 to spare our carpal-suffering wrists the indignity of cranking the ignition for an impromptu run to 7-11, the end.

Flashback Monday: Reston's Trailer Park Past That Almost Was

This fancy report showcased one of the Big Ideas that percolated in the idealistic New Town era of the 1960s: Building affordable housing for low-income families by stacking mobile homes on top of each other. What could possibly go wrong?

In the late 1960s, the Department of Housing and Urban Development funded a research program in cooperation with Gulf Reston and a mobile home manufacturer to see whether such awesome blocky storage facilities for the poors modular housing would be feasible. As with All Things Reston, the genesis of the idea was well-intentioned:

"But what of the poor? Are there not modular, light-gauge steel-frame modules?"

Here's what this moderate-income nirvana would have looked like:

While "three prototype modules" were constructed, apparently things never got much further than that. So a few of the early Reston clusters just happen to look that way, the end.

A Modest Proposal: Reston 2020 Suggests Staggered Opening of Silver Line Phase 2 Stations

As Phase 1 of the Silver Line continues slouching towards Reston, it's becoming increasingly clear that there will not be a lot of immediate solutions to the additional traffic that will immediately be drawn to the fancy 2,300 space parking garage/parallelogram magnet at the Wiehle Avenue Metro station. That, of course, was one of our biggest worries about the fact that for a while it looked like Phase 2 of the Silver Line, extending from Wiehle to the airport and the particleboard valhallas of eastern Loudoun beyond it, might not get built.

But with the Wiehle station opening late this year and the Reston Town Center station less than a mile down the Toll Road not opening until 2018 at the earliest, it seems likely that we'll get to enjoy at least five years of being the butt end terminus of the Silver Line. While that's worked wonders for the aesthetics and quality of life in, say, Dunn Loring, it's not exactly ideal.

With that in mind, Reston 2020 Co-Chair Tammi Petrine has a modest proposal. She's asking the county's Reston Master Planning Task Force With an Unprononcable Acronym (∞) to ask the airports authority to ask the contractors to, you know, open the Phase 2 stations as work on each one is completed, instead of waiting until the entire project is finished up. She writes:

If the building of Phase 2 could begin at Wiehle and proceed to west of the Herndon-Monroe station, the next two stations, Reston Town Center and Herndon/Monroe could be built and opened earlier than now forecast. RTC is the town nexus and has the ability to easily provide kiss ‘n ride drop offs as well as bus, bike and pedestrian traffic for the central parts of Reston. Herndon/Monroe has a completed parking garage as well as kiss ‘n ride and multi-model access from both western Reston and Herndon, north and south.

Spreading the entire load of commuters who would be forced to use only the desperately compromised Wiehle station to three stations sooner would spread the traffic burden. In addition, this plan offers developers the opportunity to begin earlier development of all three areas, not just Wiehle alone.

That's so crazy, it just might work.