Who We Are
The Wharf in Reston, VA is a community of townhomes surrounding a pair of ponds on top of a hill overlooking Lake Audubon.
The Wharf was born in in 1977 from an idea conceived by Reston architect Michael Oxman. "When I decided to become a townhouse developer for my own design," he said in a 1977 architectural magazine review, "I looked first at some lakefront property. Trouble is, only 20 percent of the townhouses on those sites are actually on the water. Those sell quickly, then there is often a long period trying to sell the off-water homes." (AE Concepts in Wood Design, Jan-Feb 1978, p. 9). The Wharf originally included 55 townhouses clustered around two ponds, and built to look like a New England fishing village. By the summer of 1988, homes on the east side were complete as well.
Our Ponds
Our ponds are delicately balanced living ecosystems. Because the Wharf is located at one of the highest points in Reston, our ponds are not runoff ponds like other Reston lakes. Rather, our ponds are more akin to mountaintop lakes since they are not contaminated from fertilizer and waste running off with rainwater as is the case of ordinary lakes. Water to our ponds is provided by two fresh water wells.
The ponds are stocked with blue-gill sunfish and large mouth bass in a ratio of ten sunfish to one bass. The sunfish were selected because they eat mosquito larvae, and the bass were selected upon the recommendation of the U.S. Department of Agriculture to keep the sunfish population under control.