Alcorn Elaborates On Reston Plan Review, 2020 Priorities

RESTON, VA -- Just 17 days into his first term as the Hunter Mill District supervisor, Walter Alcorn (D) hosted a coffee with members of the local media Friday, Jan. 17 to discuss his goals for the coming year.

Front of mind for most in attendance was Alcorn's first board motion, which he introduced at Tuesday's Board of Supervisors meeting. The board approved the motion, which kicked off a public participation process that would amend the Fairfax County Master Plan for Reston.

The following Q&A highlights Alcorn's thoughts about that process as well as his other goals for the coming year.

What are your priorities for the coming year?

As you can deduce from my first board matter, one of the main things that I want to do and focus on is managing growth, starting with Reston and looking at the Comprehensive Plan, which was adopted about five years ago for Reston. There's some elements of that plan that I think do need more public input, probably need more, tightening up or at least review. Also in the last five years, I think there's some new issues that have become clear that need more public discussion that might belong in a Comprehensive Plan.

What issues in particular do you think need to be in the Comprehensive Plan?

One is the question of a private open space. In Fairfax County, over the years, we have gotten commitments from developers to provide a lot of open space and a lot of playing fields, and that's all great. The question arises, should that all be private? We're typically getting almost exclusively in the last few years, privately owned open space.

Now that's a double-edged sword. Obviously, when it's privately owned, the cost for maintenance is borne by the private sector, so that's good. But, there's some open questions. When it is private, what does it mean? What kind of strings are attached? So in other words, is open space where people can do voter registration, for example? Is it space where, if it's a wedding party and you want to do photos, can you go in and have wedding photos taken? There are a lot of subtleties that I think people have come to understand that might not come with private open space unless we have this discussion. So that's one of the things that's new.

Why is it important now to look at the Comprehensive Plan for Reston?

We're in this period where we have in effect outsourced many, what I would say traditional local government functions to associations, including the Reston Town Center Association. There are many benefits that come with that, but I think what we're starting to bump into is some limitations and some areas that we need to have a discussion. Do we want to keep going down this road or are there limits to how much we want to outsource as a county in terms of our public spaces and our public input on things like parking charges?

What other priorities do you have for this year?

In Fairfax County, we are, I would say, late to doing things locally to address climate change. But we are getting there. There's been a fair amount of movement in the last year. I think we need to encourage and plan for more renewable energy in county renovation projects, county construction projects. We need to look for and remove barriers for residents and businesses to incorporate renewable energy into their properties. ... We're now looking at the ability to help finance improvements to commercial buildings, both in terms of renewable energy, but also energy efficiency. ... But the big nut to crack is everybody else, so basically the private sector. All of us as individuals and consumers, homeowners, apartment residents, we have a lot of work to do, basically locally to make sure we put the incentives in place so we can move towards carbon neutrality, which is a goal.

Another one would be a pedestrian mobility challenge that we have. I think the first part of that is safety. ... We have some things going on in the county that are very positive in terms of improving pedestrian safety. We now have some ability to do more with crosswalks, but we still are challenged by the fact that the state owns the roads. So road designs are pretty much the call of a VDOT. But that said, I think there's a lot more we can do in terms of coordinating and engaging with the public on pedestrian safety. So that's, that's another priority of mine.

Affordable housing, that's also a another top priority of mine. My predecessor Cathy Hudgins was a leader on the board on affordable housing. Hunter Mill has been a leader in that issue and that's going to continue. On affordable housing in particular, I think we have some opportunities to look at our land-use policies and see where there are areas of potential reform. We have some plans that are ready to go. We have some initiatives that are documented in the affordable housing resource plan that I think will go a long way if we can move forward and implement them. What I am going to be doing and what I am doing is pushing to make sure we make those initiatives top priority.

It's a combination of things. One, we need to continue and ramp up our efforts to look at publicly owned land in Fairfax County as possible places where we can put mixed-income and affordable housing. Second, and this is something I'm particularly interested in and had some involvement in the last few years, we need to look at our old office parks, at our old commercial strip centers. Many of these places are underutilized, sometimes they're vacant. We need to put in place a process where those developments can convert to mixed-income communities and can convert to residential. But in exchange for that, we need to get bigger commitments to affordable housing [ from developers]. Typically, we get 10-12 percent commitments to affordable housing. For those, I want to see 25-30 percent.

What are your thoughts about transit-oriented development?

Personally, I am a big supporter of transit-oriented development. I want to see our new development focused around transit, particularly Metro stations. I see that as a really important long-term move away from our automobile-oriented development pattern. Now, if we start talking about allowing a bunch of new development anywhere, we're going to reinforce that automobile-oriented approach, which I think is not where we want to go in the long run. So, they're obviously competing challenges that we have to weigh that. And I think those issues are best weighed by local government because we're closest to basically the needs.

What are your concerns about transit-oriented development in Reston?

My big concern is that the transit oriented development around Reston's Metro stations is done well. That's my big concern. I think if it's done well, and the design is done well both from a transportation, from an environmental standpoint, from a visual standpoint, then I think it'll be OK.

Change is always difficult and challenging, particularly when we're talking about the amount of change that we're seeing around our Metro stations. But it's one of the reasons that I want to make sure that places that are not transit-oriented are not allowed to slip in and go high density in a way that would suggest more automobile-oriented uses. So that's why I included in my board matter the Village Centers, which still include the old planned density that's been there for 50 some years.

There have been concerns in Reston about the possibility of future development on the community's two golf courses. Will they be part of the plan review?

The golf courses will not be part of this Comprehensive Plan review. I have let the owners of Hidden Creek know that. The golf courses are in the Comprehensive Plan as golf courses. ... There has been some confusion out there. That's going to be the case. But this Comprehensive Plan review will not touch the courses. Their designation in the Comprehensive Plan is golf courses.