Construction started on Reston Gateway (also referred to as “Reston Next”) in 2018, and the primary building has now reached 22 floors. Although the exact height is in flux due to continuing work, as of the start of August this office building was safely tall enough to definitively take the height crown from neighboring Reston Town Center.
The ambitious highrise development project, developed by Reston Town Center owner Boston Properties, will house over a million square feet of office space between two buildings. Fannie Mae has agreed to lease about three quarters of the building, and negotiations are reportedly ongoing for most of the remaining floor area.
An extension of Reston Town Center
Boston Properties has had transit-oriented development on its slate for as long as the Silver Line has been under construction. Since the turn of the millennium, the Boston-based REIT has been gradually acquiring every property between the future Reston Town Center Metro station and New Dominion Parkway, the neighborhood’s northern boundary. This process culminated in 2013 when Beacon Capital Partners handed over Fountain Square and the neighboring Signature property—which was a parking lot at the time. The following year, Boston Properties started to promote Reston Gateway as the next big thing: a multi-million square foot center just steps away Metro. The initial thought was to open something by the time the Silver Line arrived, which at the time was thought to be in 2018.
That the Metro station ended up being delayed time and again is a fact not worth belaboring, but Reston Gateway’s initial timeline did not quite hold up either. A development plan was submitted to Fairfax County in 2017 and approved in 2018, and although the Silver Line’s next phase is not scheduled to open until 2021, Reston Gateway is scheduled to deliver a year or so later.
Design of the site changed over time, with initial plans calling for around 3.5 million square feet of new office, hotel, residential, and retail development. This number increased with the various revisions, eventually resulting in an approved concept that could include up to 4.5 million square feet instead.
New development is split into two primary phases, each based on an existing superblock. The first, situated on the western portion, includes the two Reston Gateway towers currently under construction on the corner of Town Center Parkway and Sunset Hills Road, a planned hotel, and a planned residential skyscraper touching the W&OD trail. Before construction started, this block was largely covered by asphalt parking for the last thirty years, and most recently served as a commuter lot for the county.
The second block is currently improved with two lowrise office buildings that the federal government is using until 2024. As a result, this block will wait a while before being developed. After the government lease ends, however, Boston Properties has proposed a central park and four additional highrise buildings. Altogether, the 21 acres that comprise the two blocks will contain roughly the same amount of mixed-use space as the over 45 acres of Reston Town Center’s urban core, which will assist in fulfilling the vision of transit-oriented development that helped get the Silver Line out to Reston in the first place.
Bringing modern design to Town Center’s front door
The Gateway towers are designed by Duda Paine Architects as a pair of buildings connected by a seventh-floor sky lobby. The buildings are part of a larger group of three blocks that also are approved to include a hotel. A multilevel underground parking garage will be shared between all three blocks, although the office towers include additional parking throughout the six story podiums.
A major objective of modern mixed-use development is the activation of the ground level to encourage pedestrian activity. To this end, developers are encouraged to include publicly accessible shopping, services, and restaurants to new highrise construction. Visible above-ground parking structures can inhibit the sense of urban space, and as a result, it is now common practice to screen parking podiums of larger buildings in one of a few ways. For buildings with a smaller footprint that cannot hide parking within, underneath, or behind the building, the most sensible option is to disguise the parking levels with architectural features that imply that these floors are occupied. This can often take the form of reflective glass, living walls, or mesh screening.
As is starting to be visible through construction, the architects for building “A” (the taller of the two and subject of this story) made the choice to use a combination of screening for the first six stories. The ground level has opaque paneling on the sides facing the highway, while the next five levels will mostly be covered with a fine screen that will allow some light and air into the garage. Some of the main building’s architecture will extend the glass curtain walls into the parking podium, which should give nice breaks of color to the monotony of grey mesh.
With much of the ground level devoted to retail and parking, one of the defining features of this project is the sky lobby on the seventh floor. This level will connect and allow access between the two buildings, while also providing an elevated scenic terrace on the roof above. At over 100 feet above the street level below, the expansive terrace is positioned perfectly on the corner of site to capture ample sun throughout the day.
The office levels are covered exclusively with reflective glass curtain. Both towers include a number of setbacks, curves, and cantilevers to give texture to the otherwise rectangular footprint of each floor. At completion, Building A will have 28 stories total (including the podium), and Building B will come in a little shorter with 20 stories.
Claiming the title of Reston’s tallest
Given that developers are not releasing updates on structure height in real time, some assumptions have to be made in order to calculate the height of the building. The height depends on the number of topped stories and the slab-to-slab height, which is the distance from the surface of one floor (a concrete slab) to the surface of the next floor. Unless the architects make the final site plan specifications public, the slab-to-slab height must be estimated.
Reston Gateway is considered trophy-class construction, which in layperson’s terms means the highest quality space available. This typically includes a taller than average ceiling height for each office floor, which is usually close to uniform throughout the building. This might be the same as the height of the podium levels, or it might differ. In the case of this building, based on what can be seen with the naked eye, the difference in height between the podium level and office level is small. The norm for trophy-class is twelve to thirteen feet per floor. To be conservative, we will estimate each office level to be twelve feet tall and each parking level to be ten feet tall.
The lobby floors, 1 and 7, are significantly taller than the other completed floors. These two floors appear to be taller than the main office floors by a factor of one half. Therefore, the height of these floors is at least eighteen feet.
The current building height record holder in Reston is either the 21-story Midtown residential twin towers on Market Street, or 18-story One Freedom Square on the neighboring block. The heights of these buildings are within a small margin of 260 feet according to a site section study from 2006. No other building completed in Reston since then has surpassed them in height.
However, Building A of Reston Gateway recently topped 22 floors. Using a little math, the height can be calculated based on the following:
• If floors 2-6 are at least 10 feet tall (5 stories in total)
• and if floors 8-22 are at least 12 feet tall (15 stories in total)
• and if floors 1 and 7 are at least 18 feet tall (2 stories in total);
• Then the height of the building is at least (10 × 5) + (15 × 12) + (2 × 18) feet = 50 + 180 + 36 feet = 266 feet tall
Because the most reasonably conservative estimate was used, the building is at least 266 feet tall currently. Therefore, it is now the tallest building in Reston measured by roof or pinnacle height. Tysons is the only nearby place to find anything taller.
Reston will keep getting taller
Based on the progress made so far this year, the Reston Gateway towers should both top out before the end of the calendar year. Architectural renderings depict a substantially-sized mechanical penthouse on top of each building, which will add to the total height. The maximum approved height for the two buildings is 420 and 380 feet, respectively. Due to adjustments in gross square footage during the planning and apporval process, it is doubtful that the final height of either building will approach the maximum. Still, it is likely that the buildings will top out around 400 and 300 feet.
Considering this, the Reston Gateway towers should stand as the two tallest buildings in Reston for the foreseeable future. No other building currently under construction will be in the same conversation height-wise, and it is possible that the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic will chill the office and high-density residential markets enough to delay any of the other Reston highrise construction that might have been a challenger. If there is one to look out for, it’s the approved residential skyscraper on the block neighboring Reston Gateway to the north. If built as planned, it could end up being 48 stories, which is taller than any other building in the Washington metropolitan area.