A proposed partnership between Fairfax County and a developer to overhaul a Park and Ride is drawing fire in Reston, with critics blasting a closed process that has kept many details tightly under wraps.
The Reston South Park and Ride project would add as many as 145 dwellings and a parking garage of up to 665 spaces to a property of about 10 acres. Edgemoor Real Estate Services offered the project unsolicited in November 2005 under the provisions of the Public-Private Educational Facilities Infrastructure Act. The act allows information on many aspects of the plan to be withheld until negotiations are complete and, critics charge, until the project is close to approval. Key details such as the eventual number of homes and parking spaces and whether the county will sell the land remain unknown.
The secrecy has neighbors angered.
“There are lots of meaningful and rational issues to be discussed about this,” said John Bowman of Park-and-Ride Neighbors, a group of homeowners rallying around the issue. “The bottom line we get [from the county] is it’s confidential, and we can’t talk to you about this.”
Fairfax County Department of Purchasing and Supply Management Director Cathy Muse said the county is now in the last stages of an official evaluation of Edgemoor’s proposal, which she expects will be completed by the end of the month. If the county opts to move forward, it would then go to both the Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors for approval.
“This and any project will allow for public comment periods,” she said.
The county has, she said, changed its procedures to allow more public interaction in similar cases, but any changes would not apply to the current Park and Ride proposal.
To make use of the Virginia law allowing the closed negotiations, the developer must offer a public benefit — in this case, a parking garage. Muse said the act allows for “greater flexibility” than the state’s standard procurement regulations.
“It’s another tool in our toolbox,” she said.
