The Legacy of Robert E. Simon Lives On In This Urban Utopia

“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there,” the Cheshire Cat famously advised Alice during her classic wanderings in Wonderland. 
     
Developer Robert E. Simon, Jr. took that warning to heart when he sold New York’s Carnegie Hall in 1961and used the proceeds to purchase 6,750 bucolic acres in Fairfax County, as reported by Allen Ward in Reston Town Center (Academy Press 2006). Simon knew just what he wanted to do with the woods and fields where for years riders from the Fairfax Hunt had galloped their horses in pursuit of foxes. He would develop the property into a new community he named “Reston,” using his own initials for its name.

But this wasn’t going to be just any new development. Simon started with a “big picture” of what he wanted Reston to become.

 At the time, cities were in decline everywhere. Residents were fleeing to suburban cookie-cutter housing developments that were linked to shopping centers by automobiles. Simon aimed to create a wholly different approach, a downtown in the suburbs. 

Ward wrote, “Simon’s vision for Reston was to create a new town that represented a different model for suburban development. His strategy was to concentrate development by creating urban places—a series of villages within the town, while preserving significant parts of the northern Virginia landscape. The remaining green spaces were to be laid out in corridors linking the village centers with the community’s heart at Reston Town Center.”
   
The new city would be located along the Dulles Toll Road midway between Dulles International Airport and Washington, DC. When Simon first envisioned his dream, its implementation was not allowed under Fairfax County zoning ordinances. County leaders soon embraced the bold new concept, creating a flexible “Residential Planned Community-Town Center Zone” to encourage the proposed development. 

Fast forward 54 years later when Simon died in September 2015 at the age of 101. Much of that vision had been achieved, despite the development having multiple owners and undergoing revisions.
     
With a population nearing 200,000 and one of Fairfax County’s largest commercial centers, Reston still boasts 1,300 acres of open space and nature areas, including more than 60 miles of trails, dozens of recreational facilities and two golf courses, according to figures from the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority. 
     
Reston has become an international poster child for a new form of “diet-urban” suburban development, and a regional driver of economic growth for Northern Virginia. More importantly for its owners and developers, it has also become a powerful financial success. 
     
The Reston Town Center’s phase 1 officially opened on October 18, 1990 with 530,000 square feet of office space, 200,000 square feet of retail stores and restaurants and an 11-screen movie theater, according to CoStar and the Fairfax County Office of Economic Development Last fall when the community celebrated the 25th Anniversary of Phase 1, the four-block area of the Reston Town Center had grown to include 2.8 million square feet of office space, 50 shops, 30 restaurants and three residential high rises.
     
During those 25 years, Boston Properties had expanded its ownership of Reston Town Center with a series of acquisitions and developments making them the major investors in the project.

“...new projects in Reston enhance the diversity and attraction of the urban core."

 In the October 16, 2015 Fairfax Times, Janet Rems quotes an enthusiastic Joe Ritchey, who oversees leasing for Boston Properties. “I really am amazed at how well Reston Town Center was planned and has come together.”
     
A longtime resident of Reston, Ritchey has much to be excited about. The Third Quarter CoStar report shows Reston with an overall vacancy rate plunging well below the average for Northern Virginia – the vacancy rates for both office and retail in Reston Town Center hover near zero. Boston Properties is one of the few landlords in Northern Virginia in the enviable position of encouraging its existing tenants to relinquish unused leased space, so that it can be leased to interested tenants.
     
CoStar also reported that three of the largest leases in the entire Washington, DC market since last July were inked in the Reston submarket: Fannie Mae’s 186,000 square-foot lease at One Reston Crescent, Noblis’s 141,675 square-foot lease at Summit 1 and Walmart’s 43,500 square-foot lease at Parkridge Center 5. 
     
During the past year, Boston Properties has consolidated its ownership of the Reston Town Center, becoming the exclusive owner of the Phase 1 office and retail space development. Meanwhile, it sold more than 750,000 square feet in Patriots Park I, II, and III to Hyundai Securities America for more than $320 million, penciling out north of $425 per square foot. 

Boston Properties is not resting on its laurels. Instead it is currently in the process of developing Blocks 4 and 5 within a half mile of the future Reston Town Center Metro station scheduled to open in 2020. 
     
Construction is underway on Block 4. By 2018 the 4.5 acre surface parking lot will be transformed into a $150 million twin tower residential property to be known as “The Signature.” One tower will rise 21 stories, the other 19. The towers will house 508 units, underground parking and 25,000 square feet of retail in two adjacent six-story low rise buildings. 
     
Boston Properties has also received permission from Fairfax County for a 276,000 square-foot office tower on the adjoining Block 5 as it focuses on expanding its current high tech tenant base. 
     
Also on the horizon for Boston Properties is an anticipated 4 million square feet of additional metro-related mixed use development on the 22 acres it owns around the future Metro stop.     
     
Unlike more typical suburban development in which each new project threatens the serenity and privacy of the residential homeowners, new projects in Reston enhance the diversity and attraction of the urban core. Residents appear to thrive in its increased density, mixed-use environment and greater job base. Being as close as possible to mass transit, restaurants and retail, as well as social and cultural opportunities, makes it especially attractive to the new, younger residents, just as Simon envisioned more than 50 years ago.