In a meeting with Herndon town officials on Friday, Jan. 21, landowners and property managers around the future Herndon Metro site said they are unsure if the area needs a kiss-and-ride.

Herndon Senior Planner Kay Robertson said the plan the town is working with is a first draft and is likely to be revised a lot over the next six to eight months. She said one of the common themes the town has seen from comments from the public is connectivity. She said people want the area to be good for cyclists, pedestrians, buses and it should have easy Metro access.

Consultant Christopher Gay, of Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, Inc., for the plan gave an overview of road improvements that would need to be made, which included triple turn lanes from westbound Spring Street onto southbound Herndon Parkway and from westbound Spring Street onto a new, wider road at southbound Victory Drive.

Robertson said the town will be doing a traffic study on Herndon’s roads eventually and the study will also include traffic impact on surrounding areas. That study will then be passed onto the Virginia Department of Transportation for evaluation, she said.

Shane Murphy, with Cooley LLP, said it is important to know what the assumptions are for the traffic study. He said the landowners need to know what the town is trying to achieve.

Murphy said they know that some slowdown of traffic through the area might be good because it slows cars down and allows pedestrians to move about more freely. “It looks like we’re building roads that are going to be fairly wide,” he said. “And at least on the periphery, might encourage people not to walk around as much.”

Consultant Ralph Basile, principal of BBP and Associates said they need to know what the landowners might like to see to encourage eventual redevelopment in the area.

Christopher Gordon with KGD Architecture said landowners haven’t seen what this station is supposed to look like over time, which is the heart of the whole development. He said there needs to be more vision on the part of the planners.

“What urban area do you know that has a kiss-and-ride,” Gordon said. He said they want to take traffic off the roads, but instead are encouraging it by having a kiss-and-ride.

Gordon said there’s an intermodal station across the toll road that Fairfax County is funding with plenty of land to do it. He and others expressed concern for the amount of traffic the kiss-and-ride may bring, noting that nearby main intersections are already failing.  

Robertson said the town of Herndon’s comprehensive plan includes a policy for a kiss-and-ride at Herndon’s station. She said the town would like to plan the kiss-and-ride in a way that’s more urban by bringing it closer to the station.

Robertson said a lot of traffic will come to the station and the town wants convenient access. She said the town is in the position of fighting traffic that shouldn’t be stopping to drop someone off, or accommodating it.

Herndon’s officials would also like to start developers at a base floor area ratio and allow them to go higher depending extras they’ll include in their development, such as public art, extra landscaping or donating right-of-way, Robertson said.

When consultants discussed land consolidation and possibly providing incentives for doing such, landowners said they weren’t sure that would be likely between developers. Landowners said it may be difficult because properties may not be at the same stage of development, such as if one developer is ready to build but another doesn’t plan to redevelop for another decade.

A representative with Lerner Enterprises said they believe a minimum acceptable floor area ratio is 4.5, of a building that is 4.5 times the square footage of the lot it sits on. He said the town should also not restrict themselves to height because some buildings may not be able to have an FAR of 4.5 if the building can’t be more than 15 stories tall.

Those in attendance also expressed concern that they may be trying to compete with Reston Town Center, the future Rt. 28/CIT-area station or the Wiehle Aveue station in Reston.

They said Reston Town Center has infrastructure and features that Herndon doesn’t, and the Wiehle Avenue station will be years ahead of the curve, since it opens sooner.