What Do They Know That We Don't? Strap On Your Mauve Colored Tinfoil Hat

Earlier this month, construction began on the second, now shockingly rectilinear, office tower at Reston Station. It's unusual for buildings of this size to be constructed on spec (the mauvescraper that may someday be Reston's tallest has been approved for years but is awaiting a "trophy" tenant before breaking ground). Comstock may have been betting the first Reston Station parallelogram that has sat mostly vacant since it was completed was a shoe-in for Nestle's U.S. headquarters (which instead chose Urban Hellhole Reston Is Destined To Become Minus the Proximity to DC Arlington), but now they're going forward with a second massive building, estimated at $95 million, with no signed tenants?

Give us some good blockquote, paywalled BFFs at the Washington Business Journal:

[Comstock CEO and founder Christopher] Clemente admitted to being a little "crazy" to start the second building but was confident there will be strong demand once it is complete, due largely to the facility's location near Metro.

"There is no office building on the Silver Line that is closer to Metro than the one we are about to start," Clemente told me in an interview. "We're doing it based on demand we see in the market and the activity we see in the [Dulles] Toll Road corridor."

He noted that it will take some time to build the parking structure under the new building, giving the developer roughly a year before it must commit to vertical construction of the office building.

Okay, makes sense. But what to make of this TOTALLY UNRELATED STORY about the renovation of the Westin hotel across the Toll Road at Reston Heights?

Noble principal Ben Brunt said the acquisition was motivated by substantial growth and corporate relocations planned in Reston. (emphasis ours)

For some unknown reason, we're visualizing a fruit of some sort floating down a South American river, but maybe that's the long-expired sexist bread from the long-gone grocery store we ate last night talking.

So maybe not. Probably not. But... maybe?

Looking even further ahead, Comstock said it expects to begin construction next year on the third office building: a 250,000-square-foot tower called 1902 Reston Metro Plaza. The total price tag for that project is $125 million.

Now that we've entered tinfoil hat territory, let's check out another totally crazy conspiracy theory, which began with the "road to nowhere" across the never-to-be-redeveloped even though it was purchased by developers Hidden Creek Golf Course that the county refuses to delete from its maps. Now, our BFFs at Coalition for a Planned Reston point out, there's something else afoot:

The Road from Nowhere was slipped in to the Comprehensive Plan surreptitiously, and now we have learned that the County has been planning for years to take over a portion of the fourth hole of the course for a 1 to 4-acre storm water d retention “pond."

Nothing to see here, kids. Just an additional water feature to add a little challenge for those hordes of up-and-coming millennial golfers!

County officials planning for a golf course-free future while publicly professing the intent to keep it open space? Now that's crazy, the end.