Cascades Open Space and Landscape Master Plans

The Cascades Community is a 6,500 unit, 2,500 acre planned unit development located along the Potomac River and Route 7 in Sterling, Virginia. Developed during the 1990’s and early 2000’s Cascades remains a very popular location in Eastern Loudoun County due to its proximity to Dulles Airport, the Toll Road, Reston and Tysons Corner. The community is designed with significant open spaces based and planning and natural areas connecting to regional park spaces along the Potomac River. Although suburban, Cascades maintains an extensive pedestrian network linking residents to shopping, transit stops, schools, churches, and its 5 community centers.

Cascades took on an initiative in 2014 to review their landscape and amenities to maintain their competitiveness with newer communities, realizing they were in a superior location. In addition to the amenities project, Cascades has reviewed their landscape master plan. Like most planned communities Cascades features extensive landscape buffers, street trees, gateways, and natural areas. LPDA was retained by the community to analyze and propose near term and long term design and maintenance solutions for the communities landscape areas.

LPDA has been working with the Cascades on 2 projects over the last 2 years. One project is to look at modernization of exterior amenities associated with the clubhouses. Like most planned communities, several of the clubhouses were used for sales and marketing purposes. Most of the clubhouses involved the same program, primarily pools and tennis. The intent of LPDA’s master planning work was to review the amenities provided in newer communities and make modifications to the existing clubhouses to provide these elements. LPDA worked with the community on the design, phasing strategy and cost analysis of the improvements. Further, LPDA reviewed these plans with Loudoun County to understand the required plan changes to facilitate approvals and construction.

PROJECT PARTICULARS

Location:
Loudoun County, VA
Client:
Cascades Community Association
Scope:
Master Planning, Public Participation, Design Development, Construction Documentation and Administration
Scale:
2,500 Acres