The Fairfax County Planning Commission has thrown its support behind a proposed expansion of the Lofts at Reston Station with the expectation that the developer will address several outstanding complaints raised by existing residents.
All eight commissioners present for a meeting on Wednesday (April 29) voted to recommend that the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors approve a comprehensive plan amendment that would allow residential development on the 5-acre site at 1810, 1825 and 1850 Samuel Morse Drive, which are currently occupied by low-rise office buildings.
If the amendment is approved, it would set the stage for developer Pulte Group’s proposal to build a second phase of the Lofts with 46 stacked townhouses and three multifamily residential buildings totaling 112 condominiums.
The new housing would be located just east of the original Lofts, which were approved by the county in November 2016 and opened in 2019 with 32 condos and 12 two-level townhomes.
“It’s been interesting for me,” Hunter Mill District Planning Commissioner John Carter said of the Lofts II review process. “Lofts I was approved about eight to 10 years ago. This is in a transit station area. I’m not sure we had that in our mind at the time, so there were things we probably would do differently now.”
Based on testimony during the planning commission’s April 8 public hearing on the proposed amendment, near the top of that list would likely be the decision to waive loading space requirements for Lofts I. Instead of providing one or two designated loading spots for moving trucks, Pulte striped three regular parking spaces as a loading zone.
Two members of the Lofts at Reston Station Condo Association board expressed bafflement at the county’s decade-old decision to grant the waiver, calling the provided loading option “really kind of useless.”
“You can’t possibly put a moving truck in there, so it means we’re going to have to be paying attention all the time to clearing out cars if somebody notifies us that they’re moving in or moving out,” Rob Vogel said at the public hearing.
In general, the availability of parking in the area has proven to be inadequate, residents said. Reported issues include delivery and rideshare vehicles blocking the road, townhome residents parking on the street because their vehicles don’t fit or have a difficult time maneuvering in and out of their garages, and overflow parking spilling into the nearby Union Towns neighborhood along Easterly Street.
“I know it’s above the minimums [required for the development],” said Adam Rubinstein, the vice president and treasurer for the Lofts condo association board. “But we do have issues where whenever UPS, FedEx, Amazon come in, there’s no place for them to pull in to make those deliveries, and it just seems like there isn’t enough parking in the neighborhood.”
While not specifically prompted by Pulte’s project, the Fairfax County Department of Transportation is now exploring the possibility of introducing short-term parking standards to address issues like the ones reported at the Lofts.
Vogel noted that he regularly walks to and commutes via the nearby Wiehle Metro station, so he drives his car “a lot less than I would otherwise use it.”
“But it doesn’t mean you don’t have to have a car, because there are plenty of places you must have a car to get to when you’re living in the suburbs like Reston,” he told the planning commission.
Speakers at the public hearing also shared that Pulte still hasn’t added striping on Reston Station Blvd for a bicycle lane along the Lofts I frontage, despite a proffer committing the developer to providing the lane as a condition of the original 2016 approval.
Getting timely road maintenance, including snow plowing, has been a challenge as well.
“We’re not against the development, per se,” Rubinstein said. “We just want to see Pulte fulfill proffers for our development first before they build next door to us.”
The planning commission voted after the public hearing to defer a decision on the Samuel Morse Drive plan amendment until its April 29 meeting in the hopes that Pulte could resolve some of the complaints raised by residents.
Carter indicated at this week’s meeting that many issues have indeed been addressed, or are in the process of being addressed.
The developer has agreed to provide both short-term and long-term loading zones for the original Lofts as part of its Lofts II expansion, and an application to stripe Reston Station Blvd for a bike lane has been submitted.
Both Reston Station Blvd and Michael Faraday Drive are currently private, but they’re planned to eventually become public roads. According to Carter, the striping needs to be completed first before the roads are turned over to the Virginia Department of Transportation.
“That accomplishes quite a bit. It gets the maintenance done, snow plowing,” Carter said. “… So, we’ve got that coming along.”
As part of its rezoning application, which includes the detailed development plan and will be presented to the commission for a public hearing on May 13, Pulte has agreed to proffers related to noise, construction vehicle access, and grading to allow construction of a future Easterly Road extension.
When asked by commission chair Phil Niedzielski-Eichner whether he feels the issues raised at the public hearing are now being addressed, Carter confirmed that he does.
“If not, we have the 13th to take care of it,” Carter added. “I’ve met individually with all of the community representatives who are here, as well as representatives from Pulte, who are hiding up in the stands here.”
Before the rezoning application is considered, the proposed plan amendment will head to the Board of Supervisors next Tuesday (May 5) for a public hearing and final vote.
