Plans to redevelop the Crescent Apartments, which trace their lineage nearly back to Reston’s founding, took a key procedural step forward on Tuesday (July 16).
The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors voted 9-0 to transfer the 16.5-acre site to the Fairfax County Redevelopment and Housing Authority, enabling the agency to work on finding a private partner for the redevelopment project.
The board had authorized staff in January to prepare documents for the transfer.
“This is an important first step” toward moving forward on the redevelopment effort, Hunter Mill District Supervisor Walter Alcorn said at the July 16 meeting.
Outside of Alcorn’s brief remarks, there was no discussion among supervisors, and the public hearing preceding the vote attracted no members of the public.
The 181-unit garden-style complex in Reston’s Lake Anne area was constructed in the early to mid-1960s and has reached the end of its usable life, said Michael Lambert of the county’s Department of Housing and Community Development.
It sits at 1513 and 1531 Cameron Crescent Drive, between Baron Cameron Avenue to the north and North Shore Drive to the south.
Most residents of the apartments have household incomes below 60% of area median income, with some making less than 30%. County officials aim to leverage unused density on the parcels for a future mix of market-rate and affordable units.
Fairfax County Housing Director Thomas Fleetwood told supervisors that, after the transfer, the next steps will include preparing a request for proposal to gauge interest among possible development partners, while also starting to plan for eventual relocations of existing tenants.
He promised “continued community outreach, working with the neighbors, understanding the needs on the site.”
Under the plan agreed to July 16, supervisors retain the right to retake ownership of the site if plans for redevelopment fall through.
The county purchased the property in 2006 for just under $50 million with the intention of preserving it for affordable housing. Six years later, a planned partnership to redevelop the site as part of a 1.7-million-square-foot mixed-use development project to revitalize the Lake Anne area fell through.
The eventual replacement of the apartments will turn a page on one of the earliest chapters in Reston’s history.
The initial apartment dwellers to move in were among the very first Reston residents, at a time when the nascent planned community huddled around the manmade Lake Anne before development began to spread outward.
Despite being part of the community’s earliest history, the apartments are located outside the county’s Lake Anne Historic Overlay District. They’re also not part of the Lake Anne Village Center Historic District as recognized by the state and federal governments.
