Size and Scale
Building height and mass also remain a significant community issue, particularly given this development’s location immediately adjacent to longstanding residential neighborhoods of single-family homes and low-rise townhouses.
TF Cornerstone's planning team repeatedly stresses their tract’s Transit Station Area (TSA) designation; however, our Master Plan requires that all planning consider Reston as a “comprehensive unit” in which development projects “meet the character of each area” and take into consideration the projects’ “specific impacts on the surrounding neighborhoods.” Furthermore, the Reston Master Plan stipulates that density should “step down from the Town Center to the other station areas,” with “appropriate transitions (…) provided between new development and all residential neighborhoods.”
The developer's most recent proposal includes a 25-story tower and a massive rectangular office building (split between 9- and 12-story segments) directly abutting the corner of Wiehle and Sunrise Valley.
The tower would be one of the tallest in all of Reston and the proposed office building one of the tallest anywhere along the entire length of Sunrise Valley Drive. This latter building, in particular, will dominate the Sunrise Valley streetscape with a massive visual monolith that does not complement the character of our residential Reston neighborhoods.
Even in the Reston Town Center area, large buildings, such as the Harrison Apartments, are separated from neighboring residential areas by lower-rise structures that serve as a visual and physical buffer between them. No such buffer exists in this proposal.
Indeed, the graphic, above, illustrates the enormous size differential that will exist at this site. (Please note that this graphic is drawn to scale, using the street section of Sunrise Valley from sheet #C9 of their development proposal, with the right edge of Building B aligned with its designated placement in their diagram.)
Clearly this does not, in any way, provide “an appropriate transition” from their development to our existing neighborhoods.
Finding a way to “ensure the successful integration of new development into the existing fabric of the [Reston] planned community,” in the words of the Reston Master Plan, must be a key topic of discussion and engagement with the public before thisproposal goes before the Planning Commission.