The fight over Reston National Golf Course has been running, in one form or another, since 2012. It has produced a zoning administrator’s ruling, a Board of Zoning Appeals reversal, a circuit court judgment, an abandoned appeal, a sale, two rejected comprehensive plan nominations, and a volunteer organization that has now outlasted one owner and is working on a second.
We sell homes on the streets that ring this course. Buyers ask us about it at showings on Golf Course Drive and Colts Neck Road, and the answers they arrive with are usually a version of the 2025 proposal, which the Board of Supervisors already turned down. The current plan is a different animal on a different legal track.
Three applications sit with Fairfax County right now. Together they would put 306 stacked townhomes on roughly 14.76 acres along the western edge of the course and rebuild much of the golf course around them. The Planning Commission takes them up on November 4, 2026.
Start with the filing: three applications, not one
Most news coverage of this proposal follows a single case, RZPA-2025-HM-00034. The county file holds three, a point Rescue Reston has made to its own supporters and one the filings themselves settle plainly.
The applicant’s Statement of Justification, dated March 2, 2026, explains the reason. The golf course carries PRC zoning under four separate approvals dating to the mid-1960s and early 1970s, so a single plan across the property takes an amendment to each approval it touches:
- RZPA-2025-HM-00034 amends PRC-B-555, the September 1966 approval, and covers the land where the housing would go
- RZPA-2026-HM-00008 amends PRC-C-135, the February 1971 approval covering 136.65 acres
- RZPA-2026-HM-00007 amends PRC-C-281, the May 1971 approval covering 7.94 acres
The fourth approval, RZ C-203 from February 1971, applies only to the easternmost arm of the course, and the applicant states it is not part of this application. The county accepted the PRC-C-135 case on March 27, 2026, with an application area of just under 63 acres. Only the 2025 case appears on the county’s Hunter Mill District land use page, so anyone following that page alone is seeing one piece of a larger filing.
The Planning Commission agenda lists a single address for all three, 2018 Soapstone Drive, while most coverage gives the course as 11875 Sunrise Valley Drive. Soapstone Drive runs through the property and separates its eastern and western halves, so the two addresses describe the same assemblage from different sides.
The 1966 argument, which is the whole case
Fairfax County approved RZ B-555 in September 1966. The development plan attached to it allowed medium-density residential at up to 20 dwelling units per acre. Golf was not among the approved uses on that land.
Five years later the county approved RZ C-135 and RZ C-281, and those 1971 development plans showed golf course and open space. The course opened in 1970, designed by Ed Ault, and Reston’s neighborhoods filled in around it.
The owner’s position turns on what the 1971 approvals did not do. According to the Statement of Justification, they never amended RZ B-555 or its development plan, and the only amendment B-555 ever received came in 1980 and applied to a 1.3-acre parcel unrelated to the golf course. On that reading, the western land never stopped carrying residential approval at 20 units per acre, and the owner is not asking permission so much as filing the plan that implements permission granted 60 years ago.
That framing is why this moves as a PRC Plan rather than a rezoning, and it is why the result reaches past this property. A finding that 1966-era approvals survive underneath later golf course zoning would apply anywhere the same layering exists.
Rescue Reston, the volunteer group that has fought redevelopment here since 2012, reads the record the other way. Its April 2026 position argues that the B-555 land was meant to be folded into the golf course property, which would void the earlier approval.
The county has not published a staff position on the entitlement question, and the staff report is the document to watch. What the county has said elsewhere cuts against the owner: the Comprehensive Plan still identifies the property as golf course and open space, and county planning staff recommended against the owner’s 2025 nomination to change that.
What would get built
The housing sits in two land bays, one along Colts Neck Road and Sunrise Valley Drive, the other along South Lakes Drive.
The application proposes 306 stacked townhomes, and the number needs a footnote because published accounts have used 288, 306 and 308 at different times. County staff asked the applicant about it directly, and the answer in the file is specific: 306 is the total including bonus and affordable units, while 277 appears in the plan’s own calculations because it excludes the bonus units. The 288 figure came from the earlier 2025 version of the proposal.
That distinction matters for anyone doing the density math. Divide 306 by 14.76 acres and the result runs slightly above the 20 units per acre the 1966 approval allows. The application computes it the other way, using 277 units over the same acreage for about 18.7 units per acre, and notes in a footnote that measured across the entire B-555 land the plan works out to 11.63 units per acre. That last figure indicates the 1966 approval covers more ground than the 14.76 acres slated for construction.
On affordable housing, the application commits to 18 affordable dwelling units, which it describes as nearly 6 percent of the total, provided under the county zoning ordinance. A Reston National spokesperson separately told FFXnow that NVR would build 34 homes affordable to county residents. FFXnow asked for clarification and had not resolved the difference as of its July 30 story. Two numbers, same applicant, still unreconciled in public.
The elevation sheet in the plan set shows four-level buildings with a brick base and siding above, drawn to sit alongside the surrounding townhome neighborhoods. Layouts orient as many units as possible toward the course. The plan adds five amenity areas, two in the north land bay and three in the south, linked by walkways.
NVR, the parent of Ryan Homes and NVHomes, is the builder. Virginia Investment Partners 2019 LLC is the record owner and co-applicant.
What happens to the golf course
The golf side rarely survives the summary, which is a shame, because it decides whether Reston keeps a course here at all.
War Horse Cities launched the plan as RNGC Evolution 18 at a June 19, 2026 open house, presented by KemperSports vice president of operations Matt Lindley, Quitno Golf Design president Todd Quitno, and War Horse founder Scott Plank. The pitch is that housing pays for a course renovation instead of replacing the course.
The filed plan proposes reconfiguring up to twelve holes, with new fairways, tee boxes, greens, cart paths, water hazards and sand traps. It adds a lighted multi-story driving range with ball-tracking technology and illuminated targets, a lighted short-game area that may include a chipping course with sand trap practice, a lighted putting course, new irrigation, new fences and new maintenance facilities. A new food and beverage building called the Back 9 Grill would go between the 12th and 13th holes off Soapstone Drive. Answering a county question about it, the applicant put the building at about 2,000 square feet and said it should count as part of the golf course use under the zoning ordinance rather than as a separate restaurant. Opponents have described it as a standalone restaurant, and no county staffer has taken a position on the classification in the published file.
Quitno has described the largest design changes landing on the first, eighth and ninth holes, essentially swapping the front and back nine, with stated goals of keeping 18 holes, keeping par above 70 and preserving as much yardage as possible. Lindley has described the irrigation system as near the end of its life, with worsening soil compaction and drainage. Plank has said so many golf balls are packed into the driving range turf that digging down two feet would turn up little else, which he gave as the main reason grass will not grow there.
Plank has also indicated the course work and the housing construction would be coordinated and could run at the same time, and the project team has said it hopes to hold the disruption to roughly one playing season.
The plan keeps approximately 100 acres in open space, and the landscape sheets label a substantial eastern portion of the course as not part of the application at all.
How Reston got here, 2012 to now
2012. RN Golf Management, majority owned by Northwestern Mutual, asked Fairfax County to confirm the land could be developed residentially. On June 20, 2012, the county zoning administrator ruled the opposite, finding the property restricted to open space uses under the Reston Master Plan, which is folded into the county’s Comprehensive Plan. Rescue Reston formed that summer.
2015 and 2016. The Board of Zoning Appeals reversed the zoning administrator in 2015. Fairfax County went to court, joined by Reston Association and abutting homeowners, and on November 6, 2015 the Fairfax County Circuit Court granted the county summary judgment, vacating the BZA decision. The owner’s attorneys notified the Supreme Court of Virginia on March 4, 2016 that they would not appeal. No appellate opinion exists, so that round produced a trial court judgment and an abandoned appeal, not binding precedent.
2019. War Horse Cities, led by Scott Plank, bought the course with Baltimore-based Weller Development for about $23.75 million, as first reported by the Washington Business Journal. Recent county records and coverage name only War Horse Cities and Virginia Investment Partners 2019 LLC. KemperSports took over course operations in July 2020.
2022. The owners nominated the property for a comprehensive plan change, proposing open space plus a mixed-use village. Hunter Mill Supervisor Walter Alcorn declined to advance it, and neither Reston course made the county’s work program that December.
2025. A second nomination went in through the site-specific plan amendment process. County planning staff recommended against it in April. The Planning Commission leaned against it at a May workshop, then voted 8 to 4 in June to add it at low priority. On June 10, 2025 the Board of Supervisors declined to put it on the work program, closing that track.
2026. The owner shifted to the by-right approach, filing the three PRC plan applications in the first months of the year. Alcorn’s public comments moved toward process rather than position, noting that any Virginia landowner may request a rezoning and that he looked forward to hearing from the public as the application moved through review.
Where the opposition stands
Reston Association’s board voted on June 25, 2026 to take a formal position against housing on the course. The motion, from at-large director John Farrell, directed staff to prepare a position document for the Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors. Its framework reaffirms Reston as a two-golf-course community, opposes residential development on the property, and opposes lighted driving ranges, night golf and new buildings next to neighborhoods. RA said more than 600 members responded to a survey, with 91 percent supporting an advocacy role.
An RA staff memo counts about 1,080 RA-member households bordering the course. Staff cited traffic, noise, light, stormwater and ecological effects, along with maintenance of native plants and wildlife.
RA’s leverage here is political rather than legal, and the reason matters for anyone reading a resale packet. Neither the golf course nor the proposed homes fall under Reston Association governance. The property sits inside the Reston PRC zoning district, a Fairfax County designation, which is why a county-approved PRC Plan is required even for housing the owner considers by right. When the owner’s attorney floated a package in 2025 under which new homes would join RA as dues-paying members, that proposal only made sense because the land sits outside RA today.
Where the schedule stands
Several outlets reported the Planning Commission hearing for September 23, 2026. It will be heard on November 4.
The Planning Commission’s September 23 agenda lists all three applications under items administratively moved to other dates, and the county’s Hunter Mill District land use page now shows November 4. Worth knowing: November 4 had been sitting in the county’s file for months. The Zoning Evaluation Division’s own memo of April 10, 2026 listed it as the tentative hearing date, and Patch reported a November 4 vote back in May. The September date circulated through RA’s June board materials and FFXnow’s July coverage, so the two dates ran in parallel for months before the agenda settled it.
The application status sat at “waiting for resubmission” in the county database as of late July, which often precedes a schedule change, though the county has not published a reason for the move. Rescue Reston has told supporters to expect a staff report around mid-October. No Board of Supervisors date is scheduled.
One procedural detail is worth flagging for anyone whose main concern is traffic. In October 2025 the applicant’s engineer asked the county whether a traffic impact analysis was required and argued it was not, on the grounds that a PRC Plan does not change land uses already approved and carries no rezoning or proffers. After follow-up questions from county transportation staff, the county replied in February 2026 that because no rezoning, proffer amendment or special exception had been filed, no determination was needed at that time, and that adding such an application would require the applicant to resubmit and provide a transportation statement or traffic analysis. No traffic impact analysis sits in the file as the applications stand, though transportation review still happens within the county’s review of a PRC Plan. Rescue Reston has raised the same point with its supporters.
What this means if you own or are buying near the course
If you own a home backing the course. Nothing has been approved. The November 4 hearing produces a recommendation to the Board of Supervisors, not a final decision, and the Board has not scheduled its own hearing. Watch for the staff report in October, because the county’s read on the 1966 entitlement question is the most important document still to come.
If you are buying near the course. Ask whether a property abuts the B-555 land on the western edge or sits along the eastern holes the plan leaves alone. Those are different exposures, and the maps in the county file distinguish them clearly. Virginia sellers are not required to research the status of neighboring land for you, so that diligence falls to your side of the table.
If you are selling. Buyers who follow Reston news will raise this. A specific answer helps: which applications are pending, where the housing would sit relative to the home, and what the current schedule is. Vagueness invites the worst assumption.
On the golf question itself. The two outcomes people usually describe, keeping the course exactly as it is or losing it entirely, are not the only ones on the table. The filed plan keeps 18 holes and roughly 100 acres of open space while adding lighting, a taller range structure and a new building. Whether that reads as preservation or erosion is a judgment call, and it is close to the actual question in front of the Planning Commission.
The short version
An owner who paid about $23.75 million for a golf course in 2019 has spent seven years working to get housing onto part of it. Two attempts to change the Comprehensive Plan failed. The current approach sidesteps that fight by arguing a 1966 approval already permits the housing, which turns a political question into a legal and technical one. Three applications are pending, the Planning Commission takes them up November 4, and the county’s staff report in October will be the first real signal of how the argument is landing.
We track Reston development filings week by week, and we are happy to walk through what any of this means for a specific street or a specific house. Reach out if that would help.
