Gupta Foundation Rejects Revised Contract And Ends Lake Anne Beautification Talks

RESTON, VA — Months after the $250,000 Lake Anne Rising beautification project was proposed, the foundation behind the proposal has ceased negotiations with the board representing Lake Anne property owners.

On Monday, Shashi Gupta of the Gupta Family Foundation sent an email to all Lake Anne property owners with the subject line: "LARCA Board kills Lake Anne Beautification Project."

"After two months of non-responsiveness, the LARCA board has sent an extensive markup of the agreement that our attorneys had already negotiated in early December," Gupta said, in the email. "Virtually every provision has been re-written, fundamentally changing the agreement, and imposing unrealistic and unworkable new requirements on the project — essentially killing it. In the business world, this is called 'negotiating in bad faith.'"

Following a meeting Tuesday night, the LARCA Board issued this statement:

"The Lake Anne of Reston Condominium Association Board is committed to acting consistent with the authority given to it by its condominium instruments and is further committed to protecting the interests of its owners while maintaining the LARCA Condominium property. The LARCA Board shares the community’s disappointment that the Gupta Family Foundation has, in light of LARCA’s commitments, felt it necessary to discontinue discussions over the proposed Plaza project."

On Wednesday afternoon, the Board sent a more detailed statement to property owners, which can be found at the bottom of this page.

At a Nov. 18 community meeting, Margaret and Shashi Gupta first introduced their proposal to beautify the plaza and pledged to provide a $25,000 grant from their foundation as seed money for the project, which aimed to raise $250,000.

The proposed work would include filling the plaza's 15 planters with new plants, cleaning concrete and bricks, installing a sign at the entrance of the plaza, and restoring both the Pyramid Park sculpture and the Fonseca Monolith.

The foundation proposed a budget of $250,000, which would be raised with money from several sources:

• Gupta Family Foundation: $25,000
• LARCA: $45,000
• Reston Community Center: $50,000
• Reston Association: $25,000
• Community Fundraising: $105,000

On paper, the proposal appeared to be a boon for the Lake Anne community, which had been under scrutiny and the recipient of bad press over the last several years:

• In 2020, newly elected LARCA President Senzel Schaefer initiated a forensic review of spending by the previous board, according to RestonNow. This came after Fairfax County Police initiated a criminal investigation of the community association.
• Quayside building residents went without hot water for months during the 2020-21 winter.
• A cursory inspection by Fairfax County found an estimated $37 million in repairs were needed to Lake Anne Plaza's aging infrastructure.

The Guptas' proposal came just two weeks after a new board had been voted in following a contentious election. In the run-up to the Oct. 27 vote, a petition signed by 43 property owners had been sent to Hunter Mill District Supervisor Walter Alcorn, asking the county to intervene in the process to help protect the interests of minority commercial owners.

When George Hadjikyriakou, owner of Kalypso's Sports Tavern, stepped in as the newly elected president of the board on Nov. 2, he told Patch his goal was "to try and help steer the group wherever they might have been in the right direction."

One of the things the new board would be focusing on was hiring a property management company which would be able to identify projects the board would vote on to address the infrastructure issues. The board also had a Dec. 31 deadline to submit its new budget.

Project Commitment and LARCA Board Deadline

The Lake Anne Rising proposal required two things from the new LARCA board. First, the board had to commit to contributing $45,000 to the effort.

"If LARCA says we're not putting in a dime, then we'll say we're not going to do this, because we're not going to go out and ask the community to participate in something that LARCA is not participating in," Margaret Gupta told Patch in November.

Second, LARCA needed to make that commitment by Dec. 1 — just 12 days after the proposal was first introduced.

Shashi Gupta told Patch in November that the relatively short deadline the foundation had given the board to approve the expenditure of money was necessary to ensure LARCA's commitment to beautifying Lake Anne Plaza, which he said had been allowed to fall into disrepair in recent years. Dec. 1 was chosen to give the project organizers time to raise the $250,000 and complete repairs before the opening of the Reston Farmers Market on April 30.

"The schedule looks tight, but in our business career, our clocks go at a fast pace," Sashti Gupta said, in November. "Anybody who works with us is comfortable with that."

When Dec. 1 arrived, Hadjikyriakou said the board was unable to commit to the project.

"We, as a newly elected board, at the time they proposed this to us, had not even seen the new budget for 2022," he said. "So of course, we could not commit to their requirement that LARCA commit $45,000 towards the plaza cleanup and landscaping project that they had identified in their spreadsheet."

In addition, neither the Reston Association ($25,000) nor the Reston Community Center ($50,000) had received documentation from the Guptas as of Nov. 30. So, they could not commit to contribute money to the project until they'd received documentation or a presentation from the foundation about it. Basically, they needed to know that the project was actually going to happen before they could consider whether or not to commit. This created another level of pressure on the board to make a decision quickly.

Even though the initial deadline came and went, the project was not dead. In mid-December, Shashi Gupta announced that a group of Lake Anne property owners had stepped up and pledged $33,000 toward LARCA's share of the project. In subsequent conversations with Patch, he said repeatedly that the board only had to commit to spending $12,000 to make the project happen.

At the time, Hadjikyriakou said he had only heard rumors about the donations. However, Shashi Gupta couched it, the proposal was still asking for a $45,000 commitment from the board, which was then focused on passing its new budget in order to tackle the infrastructure issues.

Not $45,000 But $145,000 Over 5 Years

The contract provided to the LARCA board by Shashi Gupta on behalf of the Reston Historic Trust did not contain details of the project, according to board documents dated Jan. 12, 2022.

Once the board received the contract, it discovered the financial commitment the Guptas were expecting from LARCA was much greater than originally described.

"The total amount of required LARCA funding was not $45,000 as reported, but $145,000 over 5 years as required by the initial agreement provided to us," according to the board documents.

The LARCA board voted unanimously by email to allow its general counsel, Whiteford Taylor Preston, to review the contract and advise the Guptas' attorney of the association's bylaw requirements.

LARCA bylaws require a vote of all property owners for any expenditure over $25,000 in a 12-month period, which was one of the things highlighted in the financial audit and confirmed by several attorneys, according to board documents.

The Guptas' proposal also asked that project oversight be handled by a five-member advisory board made up of Shashi Gupta; Margaret Gupta; Renette Oklewicz, who is a member of the Reston Museum board; Maggie Parker, the executive director of the PartnershipReston advocacy group; and one LARCA representative.

If the LARCA community voted to approve the project as proposed, it would be committing to dedicate $45,000 each year for five years on the beautification of the plaza alone, without even identifying methods to address the estimated $37 million in needed infrastructure repairs.

In addition, the decision-making for that funding would be handled by the advisory board and not the LARCA board, which is counter to the bylaws' requirements.

"Our bylaws do not allow for the board to recuse itself from the responsibility of repairs and maintenance of the property. We can enter into 'cost sharing' arrangements but must retain ultimate oversight. The recommendations from our General Counsel were to ensure we follow our bylaws, and we are now waiting to hear back from the Guptas and the Reston Historic Trust," according to board documents.

Shashi Gupta's response came in the email he sent Monday to all LARCA property owners claiming that board had killed the project.

Another aspect of the Guptas' original proposal was that it would place the couple's daughter, Radhika Murari, in the role of Lake Anne Rising project manager.

Murari is the founder of OhMade, an artisanal peanut butter maker that received a $50,000 combined grant from Fairfax County and the commonwealth of Virginia in 2020 to expand her business in Reston.

The state and county funds would allow Murari not only to source 30,000 pounds of peanuts from Virginia farmers over three years, it would assist her in creating five jobs and invest approximately $250,000 to expanding the woman-and minority-owned business in Fairfax County.

In a November interview, Shashi Gupta described Murari's role as overseeing fundraising and launching the project's website.

The LARCA Board sent the following letter to property owners on Feb. 2, 2022: