Thursday, November 18, 02004
I spent a good part of the day voluntering at the Capital Area Food Bank sorting mainly
'touch-o-lemon' tuna cans. Local markets are apparently not as enthusiastic about lemons as Lori Longbotham.
Posted at 05:31 PM EST [Link][Karma] [Comment]
Wednesday, November 17, 02004
I made it to a "carefully structured and focused" meeting concerning the Lake Anne Revitialization last night. I took around three pages of notes, so hopefully this post will be replaced by something more thorough soon. My general feeling is the approach will be to stuff as many new residential units in the plaza as possible in the hopes people will start shopping there. The purpose of the meeting seemed more to gauge the "simmering discontent" in the community rather than to provide any real progress status.
Posted at 01:45 PM EST [Link][Karma] [Comment]
Monday, November 15, 02004
Of the angry single-page post-election websites out there, the Urban Archipelago is the closest to my heart bile-filled liver:
From here on out, we're glad red-state rubes live in areas where guns are more powerful and more plentiful, cars are larger and faster, and people are fatter and slower and dumber. This is not a recipe for repopulating the Great Plains. And when you look for ways to revive your failing towns and dying rural counties, don't even think about tourism. Who wants to go to small-town America now? You people scare us. We'll island-hop from now on, thank you, spending our time and our money in blue cities. If an urbanite is dying to have a country experience, rural Vermont is lovely. Maple syrup, rolling hills, fly-fishing--everything you could want. Country bumpkins in red rural areas who depend on tourists from urban areas but vote Republican can forget our money.
Lots more of the same on their page, but most of it using delightfully NSFW language.
Posted at 05:43 PM EST [Link][Karma] [Comment]
Panel To Discuss Lake Anne
A community meeting on Lake Anne's past, present and future will be held at the Reston Community Center at Lake Anne on Tuesday, Nov. 16 at 7 p.m. Reston's founder, Robert Simon will discuss his original vision for the community and representatives for each era of Lake Anne's history will also speak.
Among the expected highlights of the presentation will be the release of the initial findings of a needs assessment study being conducted to determine the economic and infrastructure health of the historic neighborhood. The discussion is open to the public and will be moderated by Sarah Larson, a Reston historian.
Basile, Baumann Prost & Associates Inc, the firm doing the needs assessment study packaged the
Mall of America. Locally, they've worked on the Potomac Yards, and the Fairfax County Government Center. I'm not looking forward to their plans very much.
My hope is the plan will revolve around adding a small independent-run movie theatre to the area. However, more realistically, it'll probably involve replacing the Lake Anne parking lot with two or more high rises, and probably eating the hill by Crescent Apartments for additional development.
Posted at 11:19 AM EST [Link][Karma] [Comment]
