The planned community of Reston is recognizing multiple milestones in 2014: the opening of the long-planned Metro Silver Line station, the 50th anniversary of the move-in dates of the community’s first residents and the 100th birthday of Reston founder Robert E. Simon.
The community’s history will be the backdrop for the 13th annual Reston Home Tour on Oct. 18. The theme is Reston@50: Celebrating the Decades.
Today, Reston is home to about 60,000 residents and approximately 50,000 people who work there. But back in 1964 when developers started selling the first homes in the town, the concept of a planned community was revolutionary.
“There was a real pioneering spirit among the first people to move there because it was so different from anything else at that time,” says Chuck Veatch, president of the Charles A. Veatch Co., a commercial real estate company. “Reston was surrounded by rural Northern Virginia and the housing types were conservative. Building townhomes in the country was pretty unusual.”
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The first homes in Reston were townhouses and a high rise located next to the Lake Anne plaza, says Simon. The concept of the planned community was that people would “live, work and play” within the community and that people could change residences within the town at different life stages without having to move out of the community.
“The level of international publicity when we started selling homes was kind of crazy, but because we had a master plan and had built a European-style plaza where neighbors could gather, people were interested,” says Simon.
Plans for Reston included an array of recreational amenities such as swimming pools, tennis courts and a community center, along with walking trails and open space — all ideas that are common to most planned communities today.
Bonnie Haukness, a realty agent with Long & Foster Real Estate in Reston and chair of the Reston Home Tour, says that while Reston still appeals to people who are looking for recreational amenities, activities and access to nature, over time more residents have moved in because of proximity to their jobs in the town or in nearby Tysons Corner. During the first decade or more of its existence, most Reston residents worked in downtown Washington.
The original plan for Reston was for 22,000 units that would house 80,000 to 85,000 people, says Veatch. But while there are 22,000 units, the population remains at 60,000.
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“Family demographics and home preferences have changed since the 1960s,” says Veatch. “We thought there would be six people in each single-family home and four in each townhouse, but now families are smaller and yet still want more space.”
Reston’s population is projected to grow to 75,000 within a few years, says Simon, even though the community is mostly complete. Now redevelopment has come to Reston, with new transit-oriented development around the newly opened Wiehle Avenue station and the planned Reston Town Center station as well around Reston’s original Lake Anne Village. Veatch says rezoning will allow low-density buildings and surface parking lots that are adjacent to transportation hubs to be turned into hotels, high-rise residential buildings and high-rise office buildings.
Share this articleShare“Twenty years ago, density was a dirty word, but now people understand that if you want open space you get it by creating density in other places,” says Simon. “Over the next 25 to 50 years I would love to see the village centers and shopping plazas redesigned with high-rise buildings. I’m very impressed with the development around the Silver Line Metro station and think Reston could use more of that.”
While Simon is proud of the success of the community he planned and its dedication to preserving nature, encouraging participation in the arts and in community service, he says one way Reston has not followed his original intentions is the lack of consciously encouraging people of different income levels to live together.
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“We used to have designs that had a block of townhouses of different sizes next to each other so that people who could afford a 1,000-square-foot home lived next to someone who could afford a 2,500-square-foot home, but that principle disappeared,” he says.
The Reston Home Tour includes five private homes from each decade along with the community’s newest residential building, the Avant at Reston Town Center. At the Avant, tour participants can taste foods from the decades prepared and served by students in the South Lakes High School Culinary Arts Program.
“The first home is a 1960s home in the Hickory Cluster at Lake Anne with one living space, one dining room and one bath,” says Haukness. “Now single people buy these homes, but they were originally meant for families.”
Haukness says the upscale rental apartment on view in the Avant represents one of the main elements of Simon’s plan for Reston story.
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“The apartment is rented by a couple who owned a larger home in Reston and have now downsized and retired and want to live where they can walk to all the amenities of Reston Town Center,” says Haukness. “His idea was that people could live here at different stages of their lives and at different income levels.”
Until recently, Veatch says that residential development in Reston and elsewhere in the area was focused on the idea that people want to buy the biggest house they could afford. He says the housing crisis and recession changed that dynamic and that more empty nesters are opting to move into mid-rise and high-rise developments.
Reston’s planned single-family homes have now been completely built, says Veatch, and all new developments at the moment are rental apartments that appeal to young residents and to empty nesters.
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“After 50 years the concept and convenience of the live, work and play model is something people love,” says Veatch. “Over time, though, we’ve added the idea of ‘serve’ to the motto because so many people in Reston also participate in community activities and community service through a huge number of local organizations.”
The Reston Home Tour will take place Oct. 18 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The $30 tickets can be purchased at the Reston Museum, 1639 Washington Plaza in Reston, by phone at 703-709-7700 or online at www.restonmuseum.org. All proceeds benefit the non-profit Reston Historic Trust.
Michele Lerner is a freelance writer.
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