A new plan is officially under review for Fairfax County’s long-awaited Reston Town Center North (RTC North) redevelopment.
Inova Health System and the county’s Board of Supervisors have submitted a joint rezoning application for at least 1.6 million square feet of mixed-use development that will make way for a new Embry Rucker Shelter and Reston Regional Library, along with housing, a school, recreational facilities and retail.
Bounded by Town Center Parkway to the west, Baron Cameron Avenue to the north, Fountain Drive to the east and The Paramount condominiums to the south, the nearly 47.9 acres of land that constitute RTC North are currently occupied by the library, homeless shelter, the North County Governmental Center, the North County Human Services Center, Sunrise Assisted Living and an Inova emergency room.
Plans to redevelop the area have been in the works for more than a decade, Hunter Mill District Supervisor Walter Alcorn noted in a statement shared with FFXnow.
“I’m pleased that the rezoning for the Reston Town Center North project has now finally been submitted,” Alcorn said. “This is the next step in getting badly needed public facilities in Reston, including a new Reston Regional Library, a new homeless shelter with permanent supportive housing, and a 3.2-acre central green.”
Following the approval of $10 million in bond financing to replace Reston’s library, which opened in its present location at 11925 Bowman Towne Drive in 1985, Fairfax County updated its comprehensive plan for Reston in 2014 to incorporate the future library and homeless shelter into a larger vision for mixed-use development based around a central green.
The county entered into an initial agreement in 2015 to swap land with Inova, which owns emergency room, Sunrise assisted living facility and now-vacant Cameron Glen Senior Care Center sites, and Reston Association’s Design Review Board approved a conceptual layout for the development blocks, a grid of streets and open spaces in November 2019.
However, the project was put on hold when the Board of Supervisors authorized a review of the Reston Comprehensive Plan in 2020 at the request of Alcorn, who had been elected the previous November.
An unsolicited proposal from Foulger-Pratt for a new, 40,000-square-foot library and 350 affordable apartments raised the possibility of that portion of the development moving forward, but the developer nixed its plans in February 2023 due to increased costs.
The planned public facilities
After adopting an updated Reston Comprehensive Plan in September 2023, the Board of Supervisors accepted new recommendations for RTC North from a task force assembled by Alcorn that November. The guidance identified eight blocks for development with a 3.5-acre central green:
- Block 1: Future public elementary school
- Blocks 2, 4 and 6: Inova development
- Block 3: New library
- Block 5: Homeless shelter and human services building
- Block 7: Athletic field
- Block 8: Recreation center
The newly filed rezoning application adheres to those recommendations, designating blocks 1, 3, 5, 7 and 8 as public uses with the North County Governmental Center remaining in its current location. The athletic field would be designed for under-13 soccer, according to an April 30 statement of justification from Timothy Sampson, the land use attorney representing Inova.
“Existing improvements on the property are nearing (ever more so now) the end of their useful life,” Sampson wrote. “The Property needs to be repositioned to allow for redevelopment that will continue to provide valuable community services in a development setting that better reflects the location of the Property in proximity to Reston Town Center and the Reston Metro Station.”
The new Reston Regional Library will be approximately 40,000 to 44,000 square feet in size with a maximum height of 135 feet under the submitted plan. With construction not imminent, the current facility underwent a renovation last summer, getting new lighting, ADA improvements and other upgrades.
County staff with the Department of Public Works and Environmental Services began initial design work last year for the new Embry Rucker Shelter, which will be expanded to 25,000 square feet with beds for single adults, 14 permanent supportive housing units and additional services.
Constructed in 1987, the existing 10,500-square-foot shelter at 11975 Bowman Towne Drive has enough beds for 76 people but continues to operate at capacity, even after families were relocated in April to a new emergency shelter that the county established in a former hotel in the Fair Oaks area. Woods in RTC North where a tent encampment had stood for years were closed off last September to prepare for future development.
Inova proposes housing, Central Green
For its three blocks, Inova proposes allowing 1,000 residential units and up to 150,000 square feet of non-residential uses, which could include retail, office, hotel, medical care, cultural, recreational and public space.
Not including any affordable dwelling units, the plan allocates up to 590 multi-family units to Block 6, 320 multi-family units to Block 4, and either 300 multi-family units or 90 single-family townhouses to Block 2.
After the planned land swap with Fairfax County, Inova would also own the site of the proposed “Central Green” community park.
“The concept [for the Central Green] revealed by the community’s input is to provide a meaningful and substantial opportunity for public gathering while also providing opportunities for more quiet (and shaded) respite,” Sampson’s statement says.
Proposed amenities include an event plaza, a common green that could accommodate larger events as well as outdoor activities, various open lawn areas and shaded spaces, a play area, possible locations for public art, shaded walkways, public restroom facilities, and a site for a bicycle sharing station.
According to the application, Inova intends to eventually hand ownership of the Central Green to a community organization — possibly Reston Association — after the improvements are finished.
The comprehensive plan’s recommendation of 10 acres of open space in RTC North will be met with the Central Green, athletic field, recreation facility, commitments to preserve trees in blocks 3 and 4 and on the North County Governmental Center site, streetscape improvements, and nearby Edgewater Pond, which is included in the application but not planned for development.
The plan lays out a grid of streets that will ultimately become public with the exception of Street C from Bowman Towne Drive to the intersection with Street A. The applicants, likely Fairfax County, plan to maintain “private” control of that segment so it can be closed to traffic during events that may spill over from the Central Green to the library block.
In addition, Library Street will be extended all the way to New Dominion Parkway after the county acquired a 36,553-square-foot parcel for $7.5 million on Oct. 30, 2024, per property records. Currently undeveloped with some trees, the land is located behind the existing Reston library and in between the Paramount condominiums and the Winwood Children’s Center.
While the rezoning application doesn’t include detailed designs for the future buildings, establishing the general blocks and a grid of streets is critical to set the stage for the land swap, according to the county and Inova.
“It would be a tremendous and unfortunate waste of public (County) and community serving (Inova) resources to design buildings based on an anticipated grid of streets only to have the configuration of the street grid change and cause the need for building redesign,” the application says.
While there’s no established timeline for construction, Inova has provided a commitment, or proffer, to establishing the Central Green “with the first phase of redevelopment north of Bowman Towne Drive.”
