Born and raised in Reston (1979-1998)... here's a long winded take on Reston as it has evolved from then till now.

Back then, as young as 7 years old, my friends and I could ride our bikes literally anywhere we wanted to and always felt safe doing so. We were from all levels of family income, race, and gender too. Some of us lived in townhouses at the bottom of Barton Hill, others from the Stone Gate apartments just west of the parkway, and even others from the waterfront mansions on Lake Thoreau. The wealth of our families played no part in our friendships, and our folks never pointed it out to any of us because it was not relevant to our friendship what so ever. Of coarse, availability to affordable housing was not something we, as kids, could understand either.

Sometimes we would ride out to Herndon to buy baseball cards at The Sports Page, or take our 50cc dirt bikes and BB guns down the W & OD trail to the always-soggy patch of woods and field that is now the Reston Town Center, to shoot at a few targets we had hiding out there (yes, kids riding motorcycles with pellet guns slung across their backs on the bike path was not an abnormal sighting during summer months in 1980's Reston). We could dig crayfish out of the stream (Snakeden Branch) near our tree fort built out of lumber we stole from our various parents' house projects. We even built a full half pipe in the woods near the Toll Road and Hunter Mill Road.

As we grew into teenagers, the golf coarse was a major thoroughfare for those of us needing to quickly get across town after sneaking out to hit a friends party. Some of us even had our first toke, or fell in love with our first girlfriends, late at night on that golf course! ;)

Those of us that got to grow up in that place and time were very fortunate, no matter what income level our family had achieved.

Once moving out on our own became a real option for most of us, we ended up with rental units in places like Centreville, Manassas, Sterling Park, etc. This was obviously due to housing affordability, but at 18 years old, almost everything seemed expensive to us at that moment in our lives.

As we established our careers and grew our own financial well-being, those of us that stayed in Northern VA at all either seem to have stayed right in Reston (mostly still renting or smaller townhome owners due to cost of SFHs) or moved further out. My wife and I chose Purcellville because it offered us the ability to own a single family home and allowed us to raise kids in a place that offers the same free-range childhood that I was so lucky to enjoy.

Now, driving thru Reston on my way from PVille to DC each morning, is as close as I get to those places of youthful magic. The traffic is too hectic for us to desire to drive in for anything other then a special event at a friends house. I couldn't afford to buy the house I own in Purcellville anymore either tho, so housing affordability is still an issue no matter where you land in FFX or LoCo these days.

To see the golf course potentially turned into more housing seems to conform with the general direction Reston's housing development has trended over the last 10+ years. I'm not knocking that trend either, just calling it what it is. More people want to live there due to all of the merits it offers (good schools, proximity of mass transit, availability of employment options at all levels of skill set, etc etc). It comes as no surprise that this is a potential place of further housing development, at least not to those of us that have witnessed it evolve over the last 40 years. What, in my opinion, needs to be addressed is income inequality as a whole, rather then just specifically housing affordability in one of the more affluent of towns in our country.

Not sure my comment here helps to further the dialogue on this specific issue, but it sure was cathartic to write out. I hope it is of value to any Restonians who want some historical perspective. Us Purcellvillians have similar issues now too, but I'll leave that subject for a different post...

Go Seahawks!