306 Units, Not 288. Three Zoning Cases, Not One. A November 4 Hearing Scheduled. Here’s What’s in the Filed Documents
If you are a Restonian, you’ve been following the story of one application for approximately 14 acres of the Reston National Golf Course. That’s not quite the full picture.
As of today, there are three concurrent applications filed by War Horse Cities — a Baltimore-based real estate developer operating through its subsidiary Virginia Investment Partners 2019 LLC — with NVR Inc., one of the largest production homebuilders on the East Coast, already named as co-applicant on all three. The 14 acres is the first legal wedge. The strategy is larger. The window to act is narrower than most Restonians realize.
Supervisor Alcorn has publicly committed not to support redevelopment without broad community consensus. The developers have now found a path that goes directly to the Board of Supervisors — bypassing the Site Specific Plan Amendment (SSPA) process that defeated this twice — with a Planning Commission hearing already scheduled for November 4, 2026. County pre-staffing begins May 4, 2026. The window to influence the framework is now.
The ask is not emotional. It’s procedural. Do what Loudoun County did: require legislative review for applications invoking pre-1975 zoning approvals before the staff framework locks. Reston Association Board President and land use attorney John Farrell warned publicly what a successful outcome for the developers would introduce to this community. He called it chaos. He wasn’t being dramatic. Here’s why.
One more thing before we get into the data. Reston National is not the only privately held PRC Open Space in Reston. Hidden Creek Country Club — 150 acres in North Reston, owned by Wheelock Communities out of Greenwich, Connecticut — carries the identical zoning designation, the identical Comprehensive Plan language, and the identical vulnerability to the same argument.
Do you think the Connecticut owners of Hidden Creek aren’t watching every move of this process? Do you think NVR — or another production homebuilder — hasn’t already had that conversation?
How many Stacked Townhomes before Reston is saturated with “Tiny Condo Syndrome”?
My prediction: Hidden Creek is the next shoe to drop. The only question is whether Fairfax County acts before the first shoe lands.
The Protection That’s Being Used Against Itself
Reston’s open space is not unprotected. The Planned Residential Community (PRC) district, established in 1962, was built on a foundational principle: adequate and well-designed open space for the use of all residents. That principle was codified into every development plan approval for every parcel in the PRC. Both of Reston’s privately held open spaces were formally designated under those approvals in 1966 and 1971. The Fairfax County Comprehensive Plan explicitly states that both are planned to remain.
That protection is real. The problem is not that it doesn’t exist. The problem is that the developers’ attorneys have found a way to use the protection’s own architecture against it.
Every PRC development plan is by definition amendable — that flexibility was built into the framework deliberately, to allow Reston to evolve over time. The argument now being made is that converting PRC Open Space to 306 residential units is simply an amendment to an existing development plan — not a Comprehensive Plan change, not a new rezoning, not a legislative act requiring the full SSPA public input process that defeated this twice.
If the Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors accept that framing, the community loses the SSPA protection layer that stopped this in 2022 and again in 2025. The public hearings still happen — but the legal standard being applied is lower, the community’s strongest procedural tool has been bypassed, and the precedent established reaches far beyond these 14 acres.
What the County’s Own Records Show
War Horse Cities acquired the property through its subsidiary Virginia Investment Partners 2019, LLC and the ownership history requires no editorializing.
Nobody pays 4.7 times the previous sale price for a property they intend to operate as-is. The county’s own transaction record documents the intent. That note — “Price reflects future redevelopment” — is a line in the Fairfax County public tax record, retrievable by any resident at no cost. The property continues to operate under KemperSports management. Green fees are being collected today on land that three active applications are seeking to convert.
Three Applications. One Coordinated Legal Strategy.
The public narrative has focused on a single by-right claim — one application, 14 acres, one 1966 zoning document. That framing describes the legal wedge. It does not describe the strategy. Here is what I found in Fairfax County’s PLUS system using the developer’s full legal entity name: Virginia Investment Partners 2019, LLC. These records do not surface when searched by property address, Reston National or by the name most people know — War Horse Cities.
The press has reported 288 units on 14 acres. The filed applications describe 306 units — which at the stated density of 20 units per acre implies 15.3 acres, not 14. That discrepancy has not been publicly reported. The applications are technically public. Without knowing the legal entity name, they are practically invisible.
Application 1 — The 1966 Wedge
The first application invokes a September 1966 Board of Supervisors rezoning approval designating approximately 14-15 acres on the western edge of the property for medium-density residential development at up to 20 units per acre. This was raw land pre-zoned before the site opened in 1970. That residential designation was never formally revoked. It sat dormant for 60 years — until a Baltimore developer’s attorney found it.
The developers’ own Statement of Justification, filed with Cooley LLP and publicly available in the PLUS record, states their argument plainly: the 1971 open space designations “did not amend the RZ B-555 approval or its development plan; therefore, the B-555 Land remains subject to the development plan associated with RZ B-555 permitting medium-density residential at 20 units per acre.”
Applications 2 and 3 — The Flanking Move
Seven months after filing the 1966 claim, the developers filed two additional applications invoking the 1971 zoning cases — the very cases that designated the remaining 150+ acres as permanent open space. Each of the three historical zoning cases carries an associated PRC development plan document. By amending all three simultaneously, the developers eliminate the community’s strongest counterargument before it can be made: that the 1971 open space designations supersede the 1966 residential claim.
They are not asking to develop 166 acres today. They are asking the Board to approve 15 acres in a way that makes the remaining 150 acres legally indefensible tomorrow with 2 additional applications covering the broader property.
Once the Board approves the first PRC Plan amendment, the precedent is established that these development plan documents — including the 1971 open space designations — are amendable through this same process. The two previous SSPA defeats become legally irrelevant to the remaining acreage.
NVR Inc. Is Already in the Room
Virginia Investment Partners 2019, LLC is not testing a legal theory alone. NVR Inc. — operating under the Ryan Homes and NVHomes brands — is named as co-applicant on all three filings. Production homebuilders of NVR’s scale conduct feasibility analysis, underwrite land costs, and commit legal resources before signing co-applicant agreements. Their presence signals that this project is already in pre-development planning.
NVR gets paid when units close. They are not here to speculate. They are here because someone has already done the math on sales velocity, unit pricing, and return on cost — contingent on Board approval of the PRC Plan amendment.
What Gets Built — And What It Means on the Ground
The application describes 306 stacked townhomes — but that term requires translation. A stacked townhome is a condominium unit. Two owners per building footprint. One owner occupies the lower floors, entering through the front door. The second owner occupies the upper floors, entering through a separate door. Neither owns the exterior walls, the roof, or the land beneath the building. That is condo ownership — not fee simple. This also brings a minimum of 4 parking slots per stack.
As properties within Reston’s POA boundary, Reston Association’s Master Deed covenants apply — as they do to every Reston property including existing condominiums. What these new units will not have is the cluster supplement layer that surrounding communities have built over decades. NVR creates the minimum condo documents required to sell units. Rental restrictions, occupancy requirements, and investor limitations are not standard inclusions. Without them, every unit is legally rentable from day one.
The financial math drives the design. At 18.7 units per acre — two units per building footprint — the development achieves near-apartment density behind a townhome exterior. This is condominium density accomplished through townhome aesthetics, in a zone that caps density at 20 units per acre.
What the adjacent cluster homeowner sees on the ground: the wooded buffer that currently separates their cluster from open space gets clear-cut for foundations and infrastructure. The golf course, the pond, the wooded view — the amenity they paid a premium for — becomes a four-story building face at the lot line. The financial impact of that transformation is the subject of Part 2 of this series.
The Process That Was Bypassed — And Why It Matters
This application is not purely administrative. It goes to the Planning Commission and ultimately to the Board of Supervisors. Supervisor Alcorn will have a vote. But the process being used is materially different from what defeated this before.
The SSPA process — Site-Specific Plan Amendment — requires a Comprehensive Plan change. It opens a full public input cycle, Planning Commission recommendation, and Board vote on whether to even begin staff study. That process rejected this project in 2022 and again in June 2025 when the Board unanimously removed it from the work program. Supervisor Alcorn’s pledge not to support changes without community consensus was made in the context of that SSPA process.
What the developers are now arguing is that no Comprehensive Plan amendment is required — this is a PRC Plan amendment, a lower legal bar. It goes to the Board directly, without the SSPA gatekeeping process. The community still gets a Planning Commission hearing on November 4, 2026. But the strongest procedural protection — the SSPA work program gate that requires the Board to approve even beginning the study — has been bypassed entirely.
Farrell is not describing bulldozers in every Reston backyard. He is describing legal uncertainty cascading through every PRC development plan designation in the community. If the Board approves this PRC Plan amendment, it establishes that these historical plan documents are amendable through this process — and the argument applies to every privately held parcel in Reston operating under a pre-1975 development plan.
For the approximately 400 homeowners whose properties directly border the affected parcel, Farrell cited an estimated $40 million in lost assessed value. That is also $40 million in lost tax base for Fairfax County. The full financial picture — by household, by cluster, by street — is the subject of Part 2.
By enabling PRC Plan amendments an acre at a time as lots surface, is degrading the community as a whole and creating the “Tiny Condo Syndrome” by looking at an acre to develop and not the whole of the PRC. Reston was intended to evolve, but as a community as a whole — not an acre at a time bypassing the SSPA process. This is the subject of Part 4 in this series.
The Loudoun Precedent — There Is a Policy Solution
This is not unsolvable. Loudoun County faced a structurally identical challenge in 2021 — developers using historical by-right claims to advance projects that bypassed public process. Loudoun amended its zoning ordinance proactively: legislative review required for applications invoking historical by-right approvals, with a grandfathering provision for projects already in flight. Loudoun acted before the loophole became permanent.
The result: $1.2 billion in annual tax revenue now flowing through an orderly, transparent, publicly accountable process. Development did not stop. It was required to happen in a way the community could see. However, due to the grandfathered projects, The Regency community has become an “island” surrounded by data centers and Dominion Power infrastructure (Read more about it here). This is where property value impact occurs when not looking at the whole community and bypassing the process, again the subject of Part 4 in this series.
Fairfax faces the inverse equation. Three concurrent applications seeking to convert PRC Open Space to 306 residential units — zero offsetting revenue to the county, $40 million in lost assessed value to adjacent homeowners, and the potential to establish a precedent that reaches the second privately held PRC parcel the moment this one is approved.
The specific ask: require that any application invoking pre-1975 zoning approvals be subject to the full Comprehensive Plan amendment process — before the current Planning Commission framework is set and before pre-staffing on May 4, 2026, locks the approach. Loudoun built this mechanism. Fairfax has the same opportunity now.
The Second Parcel — Hidden Creek Is Watching
Reston National is one of two privately held PRC Open Space parcels in Reston. Hidden Creek Country Club — 150 acres in North Reston, owned by Wheelock Communities out of Greenwich, Connecticut — carries the identical zoning designation, the identical Comprehensive Plan language, and the identical vulnerability to the same argument.
As of the date of this publication, no applications for Hidden Creek appear in Fairfax County’s PLUS system. Wheelock is not filing anything yet. The strategic logic is straightforward: let Virginia Investment Partners absorb the community opposition, secure the Board approval, establish the precedent. Then file.
South Reston is first. North Reston is next. The legal question being decided at the November 4 Planning Commission hearing has consequences for both privately held open space parcels and for every cluster in Reston that borders either one.
What I Put on the Record
On the evening of April 20, 2026, I sent a formal policy inquiry to Supervisor Alcorn’s district office at [email protected] — documenting the three active applications with their public record numbers, the unit count discrepancy between press reporting and actual filings, NVR’s co-applicant status, the $40 million assessed value figure, John Farrell’s public warning, and the Loudoun precedent. I asked a specific policy question on record before county pre-staffing begins May 4.
I am not an activist. I am a licensed real estate professional, a 25-year South Reston resident, and the HOA Board President of Whitney Park East cluster. I pulled the county’s own public records, read the filed Statement of Justification, ran the math, and sent the letter.
Supervisor Alcorn has publicly committed not to support redevelopment without broad community consensus. The developers have now found a path to his desk that bypasses the process where that commitment was made. He still has a vote. The question is what information reaches his office before the framework is set.
What You Can Do Right Now
Three sentences to the Supervisor’s office are enough — who you are, where you live in Reston, and that you are asking the county to require the full Comprehensive Plan amendment process before the PRC Plan amendment proceeds.
Email: [email protected]
Subject: Reston PRC Open Space — Please Require Full Comp Plan Process Before PRC Plan Amendment Proceeds
Every constituent email that lands in that inbox
before May 4 pre-staffing is a data point
his office carries into the framework discussion.
Every email after is history.
STAY INFORMED. TAKE ACTION.
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Reston Zoning Series:
Michele Hudnall
Real Estate of Northern Virginia | Equity-First Real Estate Strategy
Life Long Northern Virginia Native | 25-Year Reston Resident | HOA Board President, Whitney Park East | South Lakes Drive
[email protected] | 703.867.3436
RealEstateofNVA.com | @realestateofnva
I help Northern Virginia buyers and sellers make smarter decisions with local market analysis, strategic guidance, and real-world context, not hype headlines.
Disclosure: Michele Hudnall is a licensed real estate agent in Virginia. This post represents her personal analysis as a Reston resident and does not constitute legal or financial advice. Full disclosure at RealEstateofNVA.com. All analysis and opinion are my own and based upon local, real-time data. Please consult with a financial or legal professional as required.
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Sources: All Publicly Accessible — No Subscription Required
Fairfax County PLUS System: plus.fairfaxcounty.gov — RZPA-2025-HM-00034, RZPA-2026-HM-00007, RZPA-2026-HM-00008
Statement of Justification: RNGC.PRC Plan SOJ (324331430.4).pdf — filed 03/02/2026, Cooley LLP, publicly available in PLUS attachments
Fairfax County Tax Records: Parcels 0174-11-0004A, 0262-05-0004, 0262-02-0008 — Virginia Investment Partners 2019 LLC
Fairfax County CPN Record: CPN-2025-III-HM-028 — Comprehensive Plan Nomination, Status: Closed June 2025
FFXnow: ffxnow.com — May 19, 2025: “Reston National Golf Course meets resistance from Planning Commission”
The Reston Letter: therestonletter.com — April 2026
Patch Reston: patch.com/virginia/reston — February/March 2026
Rescue Reston FAQ: rescuereston.org
John Farrell Bio: mccandlaw.com/lawyer/john-w-farrell
Reston Association Governing Documents: reston.org/218/Governing-Documents
