Visitors to Lake Anne in Reston should find it a little easier to get around soon with new wayfinding signage.
After wrapping up a Lake Anne Economic Visioning Study last fall, Fairfax County is working on a project to bring more signage to Lake Anne and direct visitors, shoppers and residents around the area.
At a virtual meeting on May 20, county staff and the consultant Streetsense presented a wayfinding strategy developed at the recommendation of the earlier study.
Based on a walk-through of the village center and the rest of the Lake Anne Commercial Revitalization Area in January, the consultant found that the existing signs often lack visibility, and the mix of residential, office and retail uses can make it difficult for visitors to know where to go and where to park.
“[There’s] a lack of clear signage directing visitors who may be coming to Lake Anne for the first time and find themselves in residential parking areas by mistake,” Jodi Dubyoski, a senior urban designer for Streetsense, said at the meeting. “They have a hard time figuring out where to go from there.”
The assessment also noted that signage could help clear up some confusion and conflicts between cars and pedestrians.
Streetsense is also running a survey of local residents, businesses and property owners on how they feel about the current Lake Anne logo — designed 10 years ago — and whether they believe it should be refreshed or redesigned.
The current Lake Anne logo has a somewhat retro feel — though the “A” part of the symbol, intended to evoke the fountain in the middle of the lake, did draw some Freudian sniggers on the social media site BlueSky.
The next phase will be designing the proposed signage, which will take place after the Lake Anne logo and branding survey ends on June 11.
The wayfinding initiative is a “small” but “potentially helpful” step in the county’s push to revitalize Lake Anne, Hunter Mill District Supervisor Walter Alcorn said at the community meeting.
A more substantial component got underway earlier this year when the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, at Alcorn’s request, authorized staff to initiate a process conveying the nearby Crescent Apartments to the Fairfax County Redevelopment and Housing Authority.
The county has long contemplated redeveloping the property at 1527 Cameron Crescent Drive with affordable, or rent-subsidized, housing. That plan was generally backed by the economic visioning study, which projected that Lake Anne will need approximately 878 residential units by 2034 to meet the demand for housing.
