Joint Forum on Reston's Future A Success

Last night's joint forum on the Comprehensive Plan and Reston's future, co-sponsored by RCA, RA, and ARCH, was a tremendous success and a great night for the community!  The forum attracted over 250 people; RA set up an overflow room to handle the excess crowd, and it was standing room only in both rooms.

Those citizens who showed up got a great primer on the work of the Reston Master Plan Task Force, the changes proposed in the Comp Plan, and the three organizations' thoughts on how to improve it.  The revised plan will set the ground rules for development in Reston for the next 40 to 50 years, so it was great to see so many of our citizens show up to learn more and express their thoughts about our community.

Reston Patch has a brief summary of the forum, including the slides that we presented.  If you weren't able to make it to the forum, or if you want to see it again, the full video is available below. Here's an annotated guide to the video, provided by RCA's Terry Maynard:

RA President Ken Kneuven opened the forum welcoming all the attendees and highlighting the importance of the Reston Master Plan Task Force.  He then introduced Patty Nicoson, the task force chairman, who spoke about the task force and its vision and planning principles for the community (12:10).  After her presentation, Richard Lambert of the County Planning Staff provided an overview of the draft plan (28:20).

The forum was then turned over to the task force representatives--RA's Andy Sigle, RCA's Terry Maynard, and ARCH's Jerry Volloy--to discuss the six topic areas of special interest to the Reston community in assuring the uniqueness and quality of life of Reston.  The six topic areas are:

• Sustaining Reston (Begins at 52:35)
• Open Space, Parks, & Recreation  (1:02:05)
• Flexibility (1:10:50)
• Environmental Sustainability (1:17:10)
• Mobility (1:21:50)
• Implementation (1:28:40)

Ken Kneuven then read questions from the audience for the forum panel to address (1:34:45).  Colin Mills, RCA's President, wrapped up the forum with a call to action by the community (1:58:20).  



Thanks to Andy and Jerry for their excellent work on the panel, and thanks to Ken for his great work as forum moderator.  Kudos to Cate Fulkerson and RA staff for their excellent work on getting the word out and setting up for the forum.  And thanks to all the folks who took the time to show up!  You showed just how much our citizens care about our community's future.