Hello I'm gonna be late for Christmas just two days is all
Sorry I'll be late again for Christmas just two days is all
Spent last night on a cot in the hospital hall
Well I meant to go out shopping bring some presents home
I planned to spend last night shopping bring some presents home
But I drank up my whole paycheck and passed out all alone
I got off work a little early tried to make it home on time
Yes I left work a little early hoped to make it home on time
Hit happy hour hard throwing down tequila salt and lime
Well it's Christmas eve and I had way too much egg nog
Said it's Christmas eve and I drank much too much egg nog
Wrapped my car around a pole didn't see it in my fog
Can you phone the lawyer can you post my bail
Please phone the lawyer need you to post my bail
I don't want to spend another Christmas sitting in a jail
God I know I have a problem my life's a wreck I must confess
Yes I have a problem things never work out for the best
Just let me get past Christmas I swear I'll clean up my mess
Well it’s just twelve steps after Christmas I've got to make amends
Twelve more steps after Christmas must make it up to family and friends
Let me kill this last bottle it’s my higher power amen amen amen
A look at the unincorporated, ill-defined, misunderstood city at the heart Montgomery County, MD.
Friday, December 26, 2014
Monday, November 24, 2014
Awkward Holiday Card: A service for busy people who want to stay in touch but only once a year
Have a Merry Holiday of Your Choice (pending Board of Education approval)!
Dear friends and family, we wish you a warm and fruitful
A. Christmas and New Year.
B. Milad un Nabi.
C. .ראש הגולדרייך בפלורידה
It's my job to write this year because
A. _______ is so busy trying to complete her master's thesis.
B_________is swamped learning new dogma through re-education at work.
C. I still haven't found a job.
We've had a busy year filled with challenges and opportunities and, as always, personal growth. As usual, _________ leads the way in the last category, making leaps and bounds on the way to adulthood.
We were so proud when _________, our oldest
A. was accepted at ___________ colleges.
B. was released early for good behavior.
C. finally mastered bladder control.
As for our youngest, we are still committed to
A. public school
B. Montessori
C. home schoolin
and you should see how ________
A. covered our refrigerator with arts and crafts.
B. tells the teacher, "I don't have to listen to you."
C. wipes after pooping.
As I said, this has been a year of personal growth when
A. ______ ran her/his ____ marathon.
B. ______ lost ____ pounds.
C. ______ finished watching the first season of "Breaking Bad."
Not to be outdone, I
A. started to learn to speak _________.
B. finished raking the leaves.
C. memorized all the robot's lines in "Lost in Space" (the TV series, not the movie).
And we also have experienced amazing spiritual growth as well, as we
A. affirmed our personal relationship with יהוה, Jesus and الله.
B. adopted a kosher/vegan diet.
C. surrendered all our time and possessions in obeisance to our daughter.
We would love to see all of you next year. But we are spending this season close to home because
A. we spent all our money on a new roof and Disney videos.
B. I still have no job.
C. we prefer our own company.
Thursday, October 9, 2014
Marchone’s Italian deli changes name to Filippo’s (not Felipe’s)
By Sonny Goldreich
Visit the Italian deli in the Wheaton Triangle and you find things virtually the same as you remember, whether it’s been a month, a year or four decades since you last picked up one of Marchone’s famous cold cut subs.
There’s the same festive awning, striped with the green, white and red from Italy’s Tricolore flag. Above, five windows have their own green awnings that stand out against the white-washed brick building. Below is the red banner with the white letters that proudly announces Filippo’s Italian Specialties.
Wait. What?
That’s right, Marchone’s Italian Specialties, open since 1955, is now Filippo’s, named for its long-time manager and partner and now, sole owner.
“I’ve been over here 27 years,” Filippo Leo said with a strong Italian accent during an interview on Monday. “I was partner with Frank Marchone, as everybody knows.”
But not everybody knows that Leo took over the business after Marchone died in 2012 (a year after the death of Frank’s uncle, Thomas Marchone, who founded the deli). Even many who profess long-time loyalty to the place were taken aback by the name change. In fact, a customer errantly posted on Facebook that “Marchones (sic) is now named Felipe’s,” setting off a period of digital mourning.
Most reactions posted over the weekend to Facebook’s nostalgia-driven “You know you're from Wheaton, MD because...” page lamented the passing of a childhood icon or the changing face of their old neighborhood.
But, as often happens on the Wheaton page, a handful of bigots were put off by the Felipe’s mistake and the misconception that another business was now catering to Spanish-speaking customers. Several offered snarky comments directed against Wheaton’s Hispanic residents.
This went on for two days, even after I posted a photo of the new sign saying “Marchones (sic) is now Filippo’s” and Frank Marchone’s sister gave her blessing to Leo.
“Filippo is Italian....not that it should matter,” Jeanne Marchone Morin wrote.
One reaction to a separate announcement by Leo concluded, “please done (sic) change anything at the Sub Counter, I pray it stays Italian and not Hispanic.”
This was posted after Leo wrote “PS; I'm Italian born in Sicily!”
Other Facebook postings offered a hint at a battle for control of the deli since Frank Marchone died. One poster describing himself as a friend of the Marchone family said, “Filippo basically stole it out from the other Marchone's (sic) that were still majority owners.”
Leo responded that he was forced to change the name to Filippo’s after a “long litigation with his heir left me no choice.”
“It's still me Filippo that year after years (sic) have kept the business going,” he wrote.
Marchone’s daughter, Darlene Marchone, posted that “You [Leo] had to change the name because you did not honor my father and your agreements.”
But she concluded that, “The Marchone's (sic) have not said a Word or threw it up on Facebook. So it's plain and simple if you like the food go please leave the comments to your selves. We would like to move on and be in peace.”
Leo declined further comment on the dispute during an interview.
In any case, the deli seems carefully preserved, except for leasing out about half its original space to Cambio de Cheques, one of two check-cashing businesses in the Wheaton Triangle strip. The contraction was prompted about 20 years ago by shrinking demand for Italian groceries, but Filippo’s still stocks imported olive oil, canned tomatoes, boxed pasta and other dry goods.
“I’m very happy that you made it Filippo’s and it’s a fabulous store,” long-time customer Anita Pedreira, who stopped in with her husband Frank, said to the proud owner. “This is the last real Italian deli left.”
Filippo’s truly is the only game in town since Lucia’s on University Boulevard closed and was replaced last year by Mi La Cay, which specializes in Vietnamese pho and banh mi subs.
Visitors to Filippo’s are drawn to the back, where the sub counter beckons with the scent of garlic and tomato sauce. The menu is the same as always, except for the recent addition of a Philly Steak & Cheese sub.
If you make it past the case of cookies and cannolis, you find a bewildering assortment of cheeses. Next is the centerpiece, the meat case, filled with Capocollo and Soppressata and Genoa salami and other Citterio products made from every cut of pork you can imagine.
All things Italian was Marchone’s reason for success and that remains Leo’s mission.
“I made a promise to Tom Marchone,” he said. “I always called him uncle and he called me nephew. He opened up Italian specialty store and it will stay Filippo’s Italian Specialties.”
It will also remain in Wheaton, despite county plans to turn the triangle and its surface parking lot into a pedestrian town center. Leo has rejected multiple offers to move to Rockville Town Center and other places along Rockville Pike.
“I’m a Wheaton guy and I stay over here,” said Leo, who lives in nearby Aspen Hill. “I just signed a five-year lease with option for another five years.”
I left with a bag of cookies and half a pound of marinated olives, the same ones my father introduced me to 45 years ago. All fat and shiny, they float in tubs of brine. Black or brown or multiple shades of green, I could taste them in my mind even before I smelled them.
The lunch-time customers also come in every shade and Leo greeted them by name and in their own language, easily shifting from Italian to English to Spanish.
That might not suit the Facebook English-only crowd who likely would boycott a place called Felipe’s, but it makes perfect sense for a businessman who plans to stay in Wheaton no matter what changes come its way.
“They said I was a Mexican,” Leo said with a sad shake of the head. “I don’t know why people have to say that.”
Visit the Italian deli in the Wheaton Triangle and you find things virtually the same as you remember, whether it’s been a month, a year or four decades since you last picked up one of Marchone’s famous cold cut subs.
There’s the same festive awning, striped with the green, white and red from Italy’s Tricolore flag. Above, five windows have their own green awnings that stand out against the white-washed brick building. Below is the red banner with the white letters that proudly announces Filippo’s Italian Specialties.
Wait. What?
 |
| Filippo Leo put his name on the deli after 27 years. |
“I’ve been over here 27 years,” Filippo Leo said with a strong Italian accent during an interview on Monday. “I was partner with Frank Marchone, as everybody knows.”
But not everybody knows that Leo took over the business after Marchone died in 2012 (a year after the death of Frank’s uncle, Thomas Marchone, who founded the deli). Even many who profess long-time loyalty to the place were taken aback by the name change. In fact, a customer errantly posted on Facebook that “Marchones (sic) is now named Felipe’s,” setting off a period of digital mourning.
Most reactions posted over the weekend to Facebook’s nostalgia-driven “You know you're from Wheaton, MD because...” page lamented the passing of a childhood icon or the changing face of their old neighborhood.
But, as often happens on the Wheaton page, a handful of bigots were put off by the Felipe’s mistake and the misconception that another business was now catering to Spanish-speaking customers. Several offered snarky comments directed against Wheaton’s Hispanic residents.
This went on for two days, even after I posted a photo of the new sign saying “Marchones (sic) is now Filippo’s” and Frank Marchone’s sister gave her blessing to Leo.
“Filippo is Italian....not that it should matter,” Jeanne Marchone Morin wrote.
One reaction to a separate announcement by Leo concluded, “please done (sic) change anything at the Sub Counter, I pray it stays Italian and not Hispanic.”
This was posted after Leo wrote “PS; I'm Italian born in Sicily!”
Other Facebook postings offered a hint at a battle for control of the deli since Frank Marchone died. One poster describing himself as a friend of the Marchone family said, “Filippo basically stole it out from the other Marchone's (sic) that were still majority owners.”
Leo responded that he was forced to change the name to Filippo’s after a “long litigation with his heir left me no choice.”
“It's still me Filippo that year after years (sic) have kept the business going,” he wrote.
Marchone’s daughter, Darlene Marchone, posted that “You [Leo] had to change the name because you did not honor my father and your agreements.”
But she concluded that, “The Marchone's (sic) have not said a Word or threw it up on Facebook. So it's plain and simple if you like the food go please leave the comments to your selves. We would like to move on and be in peace.”
Leo declined further comment on the dispute during an interview.
In any case, the deli seems carefully preserved, except for leasing out about half its original space to Cambio de Cheques, one of two check-cashing businesses in the Wheaton Triangle strip. The contraction was prompted about 20 years ago by shrinking demand for Italian groceries, but Filippo’s still stocks imported olive oil, canned tomatoes, boxed pasta and other dry goods.“I’m very happy that you made it Filippo’s and it’s a fabulous store,” long-time customer Anita Pedreira, who stopped in with her husband Frank, said to the proud owner. “This is the last real Italian deli left.”
Filippo’s truly is the only game in town since Lucia’s on University Boulevard closed and was replaced last year by Mi La Cay, which specializes in Vietnamese pho and banh mi subs.
Visitors to Filippo’s are drawn to the back, where the sub counter beckons with the scent of garlic and tomato sauce. The menu is the same as always, except for the recent addition of a Philly Steak & Cheese sub.
If you make it past the case of cookies and cannolis, you find a bewildering assortment of cheeses. Next is the centerpiece, the meat case, filled with Capocollo and Soppressata and Genoa salami and other Citterio products made from every cut of pork you can imagine.
All things Italian was Marchone’s reason for success and that remains Leo’s mission.
“I made a promise to Tom Marchone,” he said. “I always called him uncle and he called me nephew. He opened up Italian specialty store and it will stay Filippo’s Italian Specialties.”
It will also remain in Wheaton, despite county plans to turn the triangle and its surface parking lot into a pedestrian town center. Leo has rejected multiple offers to move to Rockville Town Center and other places along Rockville Pike.
“I’m a Wheaton guy and I stay over here,” said Leo, who lives in nearby Aspen Hill. “I just signed a five-year lease with option for another five years.”
I left with a bag of cookies and half a pound of marinated olives, the same ones my father introduced me to 45 years ago. All fat and shiny, they float in tubs of brine. Black or brown or multiple shades of green, I could taste them in my mind even before I smelled them.The lunch-time customers also come in every shade and Leo greeted them by name and in their own language, easily shifting from Italian to English to Spanish.
That might not suit the Facebook English-only crowd who likely would boycott a place called Felipe’s, but it makes perfect sense for a businessman who plans to stay in Wheaton no matter what changes come its way.
“They said I was a Mexican,” Leo said with a sad shake of the head. “I don’t know why people have to say that.”
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
GoodFellas: "What do you do? I'm in construction." Copacabana in Silver Spring?
By Sonny Goldreich
The announcement that native Cuban celebrity chef Alex Garcia plans to open a restaurant anchoring the Downtown Silver Spring complex set my mind to wondering about how big a splash he could make.
I reached out to the group behind the project yesterday and asked whether the eatery will have room enough for live music and dancing, the sort of nightlife that Montgomery County planners have been begging for to help reverse the aging of our tax base.
"With construction not yet under way, we have not finalized our entertainment offering," Garcia's partner, Spencer Rothschild, wrote back in an email that somehow got stuck in my junk file.
That's not much but it's enough to start speculating about the possibilities of enlivening Silver Spring and giving The Peterson Cos. a shot at improving the cool factor of their property.
Consider Garcia and Rothschild's other ventures. Never mind that Garcia starred on the Food Network. Never mind that the partners have a string of Latin fusion eateries in several boroughs of New York. Never mind that they launched their own brand of rum this summer. Never mind that their AG Kitchen could erase the bad taste of Romano's Macaroni Grill, which has been closed for almost a year.
The big news is that that Rothschild and Garcia also revived the Copacabana, in the latest incarnation of the storied nightclub known for its original Mafia backers, New York Yankee brawlers and Barry Manilow kitsch. The club was the setting for one of the most famous scenes in Martin Scorsese's "GoodFellas," when Ray Liotta walks Lorraine Bracco through the kitchen out to the front row and the nice Jewish girl falls in love with the Irish-Sicilian wiseguy.
Rothschild and Garcia reopened the Copa in 2011, and it has hosted top salsa musicians like Willie Colón and generations of sequined dancers.
The original Copacabana debuted in 1940 with mobster Frank Costello as a partner. Despite its name borrowed from the famous Brazilian beach, the club featured Chinese food and was segregated until Harry Belafonte broke the color line in 1950. Now, the Copa hosts live bands, Garcia's classic southern hemisphere dishes and a rooftop dance floor overlooking Times Square.
That's a bit much to pack into kid-friendly Downtown Silver Spring. But Macaroni Grill left a big hole, 7,700 square feet, to be exact, room enough for 180 diners. And here's the thing, that's even bigger than the original AG Kitchen on New York's Upper West Side, which has a 120-seat dining room and a 30-seat lounge.
So there is room enough for Garcia and Rothschild to include a stage and small dance floor that could feature some of the same hot Latin bands that show up at the Copa. I like to think they are planning something more ambitious than a Latin comfort food eatery. Something that will draw the crowds like the original Art Deco Silver Spring Shopping Center and the Silver Theatre did when they opened in 1938.
Perhaps they will create a spot where white, black and Hispanic (somebody has to come up with a way to write that where everyone or nobody is capitalized) revelers could mix more easily than they do as they pass each other strolling down Ellsworth Avenue without making eye contact.
It would be nice if Silver Spring could host the sort of all-colors venue that a small army of development lawyers and zoning functionaries earnestly tried to plan out in a report released last year by the Montgomery County Nighttime Economy Task Force.
Now would be a good time for the County Council to dust off that document and pass legislation that would give night life entrepreneurs some more flexibility to help mend Montgomery's fractured hipness.
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
Celebrity Chef Alex Garcia filling Macaroni Grill vacancy in Downtown Silver Spring
By Sonny Goldreich
Celebrity chef Alex Garcia is coming to Downtown Silver Spring, filling the huge vacancy left last year by the departure of Romano's Macaroni Grill with his 180-seat Latin American fusion restaurant AG Kitchen.
Garcia, a native of Cuba, will open his first eatery outside of New York City next year, according to The Peterson Cos., the Fairfax-based firm that owns the mall fronting Georgia Avenue between Colesville Road and Ellsworth Drive.
"This is definitely long-awaited news and we're thrilled," said Laurie Yankowski, Peterson's regional marketing director.
The 7,700-square-foot restaurant's entrance will face the mall's interactive fountain and will feature outdoor seating. But Garcia's arrival will also reanimate the iconic Art Deco front of the mall, where a closed sign now steers Macaroni grill customers to its Gaithersburg and Alexandria locations. The mall, along with the AFI Silver Theatre next door, faced the wrecking ball before preservation activists compelled Montgomery County to save the complex in 1984.
Set to open next Spring, the restaurant will also bring foodie buzz to an area that critics have long complained has offered mostly cookie-cutter food. Along with Macaroni Grill, which closed last November, other major spaces are filled by national franchises Red Lobster and Panera, and locally based Austin Grill and Lebanese Taverna.
AG Kitchen will specialize in American and Latin "comfort classics" and will be similar to Garcia's New York restaurant, according to a Peterson press release. It will his serve signature dishes, including seafood paella and "NYC’s Best Cubano" sandwich.
"The introduction of Alex Garcia’s award-winning Latin cuisine is a win for Washington area foodies," said Kelly Price, Peterson's vice president for retail asset management. "We are particularly delighted to deliver on Silver Spring’s desire for a lively, independent restaurant that reflects the community’s vibe."
Garcia, former host of “The Melting Pot,” on the Food Network, is considered a leader of the Nuevo Latino cooking movement, and AG Kitchen's menu reflects the influence of Cuban, Caribbean, Brazilian and American palates. He has run numerous menus in New York, including Calle Ocho, Havana Café and the revived Copacabana Supper Club.
Celebrity chef Alex Garcia is coming to Downtown Silver Spring, filling the huge vacancy left last year by the departure of Romano's Macaroni Grill with his 180-seat Latin American fusion restaurant AG Kitchen.
Garcia, a native of Cuba, will open his first eatery outside of New York City next year, according to The Peterson Cos., the Fairfax-based firm that owns the mall fronting Georgia Avenue between Colesville Road and Ellsworth Drive."This is definitely long-awaited news and we're thrilled," said Laurie Yankowski, Peterson's regional marketing director.
The 7,700-square-foot restaurant's entrance will face the mall's interactive fountain and will feature outdoor seating. But Garcia's arrival will also reanimate the iconic Art Deco front of the mall, where a closed sign now steers Macaroni grill customers to its Gaithersburg and Alexandria locations. The mall, along with the AFI Silver Theatre next door, faced the wrecking ball before preservation activists compelled Montgomery County to save the complex in 1984.
Set to open next Spring, the restaurant will also bring foodie buzz to an area that critics have long complained has offered mostly cookie-cutter food. Along with Macaroni Grill, which closed last November, other major spaces are filled by national franchises Red Lobster and Panera, and locally based Austin Grill and Lebanese Taverna.
AG Kitchen will specialize in American and Latin "comfort classics" and will be similar to Garcia's New York restaurant, according to a Peterson press release. It will his serve signature dishes, including seafood paella and "NYC’s Best Cubano" sandwich.
"The introduction of Alex Garcia’s award-winning Latin cuisine is a win for Washington area foodies," said Kelly Price, Peterson's vice president for retail asset management. "We are particularly delighted to deliver on Silver Spring’s desire for a lively, independent restaurant that reflects the community’s vibe."
Garcia, former host of “The Melting Pot,” on the Food Network, is considered a leader of the Nuevo Latino cooking movement, and AG Kitchen's menu reflects the influence of Cuban, Caribbean, Brazilian and American palates. He has run numerous menus in New York, including Calle Ocho, Havana Café and the revived Copacabana Supper Club.
Friday, September 5, 2014
Up Georgia Update: Demolition begins at Privacy World in Glenmont to make room for townhouses
By Sonny Goldreich
Workers began demolishing a corner of the aging Privacy World apartments this week next to the Glenmont Metro station, where developers plan to build a townhouse cluster as the first stage of a 1,550-unit mixed-use complex.
The project has been touted as the spark for broader redevelopment along the stretch of Georgia Avenue north of Wheaton, where county officials hope a new sector plan will attract investment in the dilapidated Glenmont Shopping Center and surrounding apartment complexes.
Under a permit issued August 29, three garden apartment buildings and a long-vacant bank site are being leveled at the northeast corner of Glenallan Avenue and Layhill Road. The 9.5-acre site—which includes a wooded lot that abuts a Metro rail storage yard—sits directly across Glenallan Avenue from the Metro, which is the last station on the eastern leg of the Red Line.
A pair of excavator tractors knocked down one apartment building and started work on a second Friday along Layhill Road, just west of the rail yard.
Winchester Homes plans to build 171 four-story townhouses at the corner, including 22 moderately priced dwelling units. Approved first phase construction also allows another 54 townhouses and a six-story, 250-unit apartment building with 4,000 square feet of retail space.
When completed, the new Glenmont Metrocenter complex could occupy 2.5 million square feet of space where the 352-unit Privacy World now stands. If fully built, the 31 acre-complex would include 1,325 multifamily units, 225 townhouses, and 90,000 square feet of commercial space, room enough for an upscale grocery and other retail.
Later construction would include the retail space and three new apartment buildings. Plans call for reserving 14.5 percent of the housing for moderately priced dwelling units.
County planners have been pushing redevelopment of Glenmont since a new sector plan was passed in 1997. It included denser zoning to encourage transit-oriented development next to the Metro station that opened in 1998. The updated sector plan approved this year has been paired with a new enterprise zone that offers businesses state income tax and property tax credits to help create and retain jobs.
But there has been no significant development within a mile of the subway since the Red Line was completed.
The last of the 18 existing Privacy World buildings was completed in the 1960s.
The staged redevelopment of the complex allows for plenty of time for the Glenmont market to adjust to the transformation of Privacy World. According to its website, completion of the last stage of redevelopment will be in 2022.
The new complex will offer as many as 1,550 apartment and townhouses built in six stages over two phases of construction. Developers will preserve 77 existing apartment units while 775 new apartments and townhouses are built in the first phase, according to approved planning documents. The second phase calls for replacing the 77 remaining units and constructing up to 698 new units, for a total of 775 new apartments.
That will allow current tenants to stay in Glenmont. The Privacy World website says "The management will make every effort to offer alternate units in other buildings in the community, whenever possible, for those residents who wish to remain at Privacy World."
Workers began demolishing a corner of the aging Privacy World apartments this week next to the Glenmont Metro station, where developers plan to build a townhouse cluster as the first stage of a 1,550-unit mixed-use complex.
The project has been touted as the spark for broader redevelopment along the stretch of Georgia Avenue north of Wheaton, where county officials hope a new sector plan will attract investment in the dilapidated Glenmont Shopping Center and surrounding apartment complexes.
Under a permit issued August 29, three garden apartment buildings and a long-vacant bank site are being leveled at the northeast corner of Glenallan Avenue and Layhill Road. The 9.5-acre site—which includes a wooded lot that abuts a Metro rail storage yard—sits directly across Glenallan Avenue from the Metro, which is the last station on the eastern leg of the Red Line.A pair of excavator tractors knocked down one apartment building and started work on a second Friday along Layhill Road, just west of the rail yard.
Winchester Homes plans to build 171 four-story townhouses at the corner, including 22 moderately priced dwelling units. Approved first phase construction also allows another 54 townhouses and a six-story, 250-unit apartment building with 4,000 square feet of retail space.
When completed, the new Glenmont Metrocenter complex could occupy 2.5 million square feet of space where the 352-unit Privacy World now stands. If fully built, the 31 acre-complex would include 1,325 multifamily units, 225 townhouses, and 90,000 square feet of commercial space, room enough for an upscale grocery and other retail.
Later construction would include the retail space and three new apartment buildings. Plans call for reserving 14.5 percent of the housing for moderately priced dwelling units.
County planners have been pushing redevelopment of Glenmont since a new sector plan was passed in 1997. It included denser zoning to encourage transit-oriented development next to the Metro station that opened in 1998. The updated sector plan approved this year has been paired with a new enterprise zone that offers businesses state income tax and property tax credits to help create and retain jobs.
But there has been no significant development within a mile of the subway since the Red Line was completed.
The last of the 18 existing Privacy World buildings was completed in the 1960s.
The staged redevelopment of the complex allows for plenty of time for the Glenmont market to adjust to the transformation of Privacy World. According to its website, completion of the last stage of redevelopment will be in 2022.
The new complex will offer as many as 1,550 apartment and townhouses built in six stages over two phases of construction. Developers will preserve 77 existing apartment units while 775 new apartments and townhouses are built in the first phase, according to approved planning documents. The second phase calls for replacing the 77 remaining units and constructing up to 698 new units, for a total of 775 new apartments.
That will allow current tenants to stay in Glenmont. The Privacy World website says "The management will make every effort to offer alternate units in other buildings in the community, whenever possible, for those residents who wish to remain at Privacy World."
Wednesday, September 3, 2014
County housing agency teams up with Lee for 3-building complex in Silver Spring
By Sonny Goldreich
The county’s Housing Opportunities Commission today approved a plan to increase its stock of affordable housing in downtown Silver Spring, under a proposal to redevelop a pair of its buildings in partnership with Lee Development Group, which will add a third tower offering a mix of low-income and market-rate units.
The preliminary project plan submitted to the county Department of Planning would create a 908-unit, mixed-income complex two blocks from the Metro Red Line station, where the housing agency now owns the 160-unit seniors’ Elizabeth House and the 312-unit mixed-income Alexander House. When the multi-phase Elizabeth Square project is completed, the three buildings will occupy about 771,000 square feet of space, an increase of 314,000 square feet over the existing buildings.
“It really revives what has been a rather quiet corner and makes it an amenity-rich, transit-oriented community,” said HOC housing acquisition manager Christopher Donald. “And it’s important to understand that but for public housing, this would not be happening.”
The new community would transform the blocks bounded by Fenwick Street to the North, Second Avenue to the East, Metro rail lines to the West and Apple Street to the South. The new housing plaza will feature public-use facilities, including a swimming pool and fitness center and Holy Cross health system’s senior source and wellness center.
"Our partnership with Lee Development Group is a first-of-its-kind public/private initiative," Stacy L. Spann, HOC’s executive director, said in a press release. "With Elizabeth Square we’re looking to change the paradigm of how we connect clients to high-quality, amenity-rich housing in Montgomery County, and hopefully elsewhere, as we demonstrate this model can be successful.”
Lee Development brings to the table Fenwick Professional Park, a two-story townhouse-style office complex built in 1953. The office park will be demolished to make room for the new expanded Elizabeth House, ensuring that existing senior tenants will not face the disruption of relocating during construction of their new home, Donald said.
"We joined with HOC for this project because we are confident that Elizabeth Square will elevate the vision for HOC’s affordable housing, while bringing a new community to Silver Spring that will be attractive to retailers, residents and the surrounding neighborhood, at the same time addressing the need for more affordable homes, said Bruce Lee, president of Lee Development.
Construction on the new 277-unit Elizabeth House is expected to start in 2016 and take two years to complete. The existing 160 affordable units will be moved to the new building, and about half of the additional 117 units will be set aside for affordable housing. HOC will own the building and Lee will own the underlying property under a long-term ground lease.
In the second development phase, Lee will demolish the existing Elizabeth House, which was built in 1966, and replace it with a 319-unit, mixed-income building.
Alexander House, which was completed in 1996, will undergo a full renovation and maintain its mix of units, with 40 percent of its apartments set aside for low-income renters.
Elizabeth Square is the latest in a series of HOC redevelopments of aging properties with private partners.
“The strongest, most sustainable affordable housing deals—those that don’t need deep subsidies—are mixed income,” Donald said. “That’s best practice in affordable housing.”
The housing agency owns or manages 6,998 units and is on an aggressive campaign to add more through redevelopment with private partners. Backed by a $246.9 million budget, the HOC has positioned itself as a real estate development firm.
In the past year, the agency has moved toward a major expansion of affordable housing not just in the Georgia Avenue corridor but in expensive areas of the county where land costs typically put neighborhoods out of reach for anyone not making an upper-bracket income.
In July, the HOC won sketch plan approval from the county Planning Board to develop 329 new apartments and townhouses in Chevy Chase, which will replace 68 garden-style apartments owned by the agency. The project involves a deal with developer EYA of Bethesda, which bought a portion of the site to build the townhouses, netting $19-24 million for the housing commission.
Now, the agency is seeking higher density for its 157-unit Barclay apartment building to position it for redevelopment as part of the new Bethesda Central Business District master plan that the county is writing.
The county’s Housing Opportunities Commission today approved a plan to increase its stock of affordable housing in downtown Silver Spring, under a proposal to redevelop a pair of its buildings in partnership with Lee Development Group, which will add a third tower offering a mix of low-income and market-rate units.
 |
| The proposed Elizabeth Square complex, courtesy Lee Development Group |
“It really revives what has been a rather quiet corner and makes it an amenity-rich, transit-oriented community,” said HOC housing acquisition manager Christopher Donald. “And it’s important to understand that but for public housing, this would not be happening.”
The new community would transform the blocks bounded by Fenwick Street to the North, Second Avenue to the East, Metro rail lines to the West and Apple Street to the South. The new housing plaza will feature public-use facilities, including a swimming pool and fitness center and Holy Cross health system’s senior source and wellness center.
"Our partnership with Lee Development Group is a first-of-its-kind public/private initiative," Stacy L. Spann, HOC’s executive director, said in a press release. "With Elizabeth Square we’re looking to change the paradigm of how we connect clients to high-quality, amenity-rich housing in Montgomery County, and hopefully elsewhere, as we demonstrate this model can be successful.”
Lee Development brings to the table Fenwick Professional Park, a two-story townhouse-style office complex built in 1953. The office park will be demolished to make room for the new expanded Elizabeth House, ensuring that existing senior tenants will not face the disruption of relocating during construction of their new home, Donald said.
"We joined with HOC for this project because we are confident that Elizabeth Square will elevate the vision for HOC’s affordable housing, while bringing a new community to Silver Spring that will be attractive to retailers, residents and the surrounding neighborhood, at the same time addressing the need for more affordable homes, said Bruce Lee, president of Lee Development.
Construction on the new 277-unit Elizabeth House is expected to start in 2016 and take two years to complete. The existing 160 affordable units will be moved to the new building, and about half of the additional 117 units will be set aside for affordable housing. HOC will own the building and Lee will own the underlying property under a long-term ground lease.
In the second development phase, Lee will demolish the existing Elizabeth House, which was built in 1966, and replace it with a 319-unit, mixed-income building.
Alexander House, which was completed in 1996, will undergo a full renovation and maintain its mix of units, with 40 percent of its apartments set aside for low-income renters.
Elizabeth Square is the latest in a series of HOC redevelopments of aging properties with private partners.
“The strongest, most sustainable affordable housing deals—those that don’t need deep subsidies—are mixed income,” Donald said. “That’s best practice in affordable housing.”
The housing agency owns or manages 6,998 units and is on an aggressive campaign to add more through redevelopment with private partners. Backed by a $246.9 million budget, the HOC has positioned itself as a real estate development firm.
In the past year, the agency has moved toward a major expansion of affordable housing not just in the Georgia Avenue corridor but in expensive areas of the county where land costs typically put neighborhoods out of reach for anyone not making an upper-bracket income.
In July, the HOC won sketch plan approval from the county Planning Board to develop 329 new apartments and townhouses in Chevy Chase, which will replace 68 garden-style apartments owned by the agency. The project involves a deal with developer EYA of Bethesda, which bought a portion of the site to build the townhouses, netting $19-24 million for the housing commission.
Now, the agency is seeking higher density for its 157-unit Barclay apartment building to position it for redevelopment as part of the new Bethesda Central Business District master plan that the county is writing.
Friday, August 29, 2014
A Song for Labor Day: What the Rich Man Said
By Sonny Goldreich
Well the rich man said to the poor man
you’ve got to get a job
Yes the rich man said to the poor man
you’ve got to get a job
Can’t help you anymore
I’ve been carrying you too long
Well the poor man said to the rich man
you sent my job overseas
Yes the poor man said to the rich man
you sent my job overseas
I just want what once was mine
Give back what you stole from me
Well the rich man said don’t blame me, man
Your problem’s not with me
Yes the rich man said don’t blame me, man
Your problem’s not with me
You know that sloth’s a sin
And, yes, so is envy
Well the poor man said I work when I can
But the factory’s not hiring
Heard the poor man said I work when I can
But the factory’s not hiring
I can’t make it here anymore
But it’s not that I’m not trying
Well the rich man said stick to the plan
That’s how you get ahead
Yes the rich man said stick to the plan
That’s how you get ahead
You have to stay in school
If you want to make serious bread
Well the poor man said that’s a sham
Can’t afford no university
Yes the poor man said that’s a sham
Can’t afford no university
There’s no money on the table
after I feed my family
Well the rich man said trust in God’s plan
Heaven helps those who help themselves
Yes the rich man said pray to God, man
Heaven helps those who help themselves
Life up there is bound to be better
if you don’t depend on someone else
The poor man said I’ll go to Satan
if I can’t find another path
The poor man said I’ll go to Satan
if I can’t find another path
One day soon I’m going to help myself
to everything you have
Well the rich man said to the poor man
you’ve got to get a job
Yes the rich man said to the poor man
you’ve got to get a job
Can’t help you anymore
I’ve been carrying you too long
Well the poor man said to the rich man
you sent my job overseas
Yes the poor man said to the rich man
you sent my job overseas
I just want what once was mine
Give back what you stole from me
Well the rich man said don’t blame me, man
Your problem’s not with me
Yes the rich man said don’t blame me, man
Your problem’s not with me
You know that sloth’s a sin
And, yes, so is envy
Well the poor man said I work when I can
But the factory’s not hiring
Heard the poor man said I work when I can
But the factory’s not hiring
I can’t make it here anymore
But it’s not that I’m not trying
Well the rich man said stick to the plan
That’s how you get ahead
Yes the rich man said stick to the plan
That’s how you get ahead
You have to stay in school
If you want to make serious bread
Well the poor man said that’s a sham
Can’t afford no university
Yes the poor man said that’s a sham
Can’t afford no university
There’s no money on the table
after I feed my family
Well the rich man said trust in God’s plan
Heaven helps those who help themselves
Yes the rich man said pray to God, man
Heaven helps those who help themselves
Life up there is bound to be better
if you don’t depend on someone else
The poor man said I’ll go to Satan
if I can’t find another path
The poor man said I’ll go to Satan
if I can’t find another path
One day soon I’m going to help myself
to everything you have
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
Walmart Drops Aspen Hill Superstore Plan
By Sonny Goldreich
Citing Montgomery County’s lengthy approval process, Walmart dropped its plan to build a superstore in Aspen Hill, its would-be landlord, Silver Spring-based Lee Development Group, announced Tuesday.
This is the second time that a store proposal by the discount retail giant has fallen through since 2012, even though the Bentonville, Arkansas firm managed to fight off regulatory hurdles raised by various County Council bills.
Walmart “has decided against moving forward with its plans because of the uncertain length of the county’s planning and regulatory processes,” according to a Lee press release. The big-box company wanted to build a 118,000-square-foot store with expanded grocery offerings at 4115 Aspen Hill Rd., the site of a vacant office building.
Lee intends to move forward with its proposal to rezone the property, which sits next to the intersection of Georgia and Connecticut avenues about five miles north of downtown Silver Spring.
“We are confident that this is a great retail location, ultimately offering much-needed shopping options to the under-served Aspen Hill community,” Bruce H. Lee, president of Lee Development, said in the press release. “Once the property is zoned appropriately for retail use, we expect strong interest from retailers looking to come to Aspen Hill."
The site is occupied by a sprawling 262,923-square-foot office building, which has been empty since 2010, when BAE systems/Vitro consolidated its operations to Rockville. The county Department of Planning has recommended reclassifying the property as a commercial/residential town zone, allowing for a dense mix of uses (see Planners endorse Walmart, green office building at ends of Georgia Avenue corridor).
A public hearing for the proposal has been set for Sept. 11, when the Planning Board will consider the change under the Aspen Hill minor master plan amendment process. The minor amendment is a fast-track process designed to address smaller areas in a speedier time frame than rewriting an area’s entire master plan.
County planners said last month that a commercial/residential zone makes sense for Aspen Hill because of poor demand for large-scale office buildings throughout the region. The property is also at the site of a proposed transit station as part of a rapid bus line that would run between downtown Silver Spring and Olney.
Walmart would have brought 300 jobs to the site of a circa 1968 office building that used to provide strong foot traffic for about 1 million square feet of neighboring retail in three strip malls. The store would have added a third grocery option for Aspen Hill residents, in competition with a Giant Food across the street and a Lotte Plaza Asian Market two blocks to the south.
United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400—the union that represents Giant employees—has been in the forefront of opposition to Walmart, which is seen as a threat to nearby jobs. The group failed to win passage of a council bill that would have required big box stores to seek community benefits agreements with at least three civic groups on issues like living wages or traffic improvements.
The Planning Board approved a pair of zoning text amendments targeting big box stores. The first—enacted by the council—aimed at a proposed Walmart on Rockville Pike by limiting new stores within half a mile of a Metro station to 80,000 square feet and requiring that they be paired with smaller retailers in a mixed-use project. A second measure targeting the BAE site—but never passed by the council—would require that the proposed Aspen Hill store go through the special exception review process in addition to the property being rezoned from its current office space designation.
The Rockville Walmart plan has been frozen since the strip mall it would have replaced was sold in 2012.
The Aspen Hill Walmart would have filled a huge hole for Lee. The firm would have been positioned to create something of a superstore cluster, paired with a Kohl’s department store and a Michael’s craft store across the street in Lee’s Northgate Shopping Center.
The Walmart plan has divided Aspen Hill, where some looked forward to new jobs and retail options and others feared the effects on already crowded traffic and surrounding businesses.
A new group, Aspen Hill Homeowners Group, organized in opposition to Walmart, and many residents’ yards have been papered with signs opposing the rezoning in recent months.
The long-established Aspen Hill Civic Association—which has more than 200 members—supports rezoning the Lee property but has remained neutral on which businesses might occupy the site.
A local business owners group supported the Walmart project.
“On behalf of the Aspen Hill Business Coalition, I’d like to express our utmost disappointment with the news that Walmart is withdrawing their plans for the BAE/Vitro site,” Boris Lander, co-president of the organization and owner of two nearby Dunkin Donut stores, said in the Lee press release. “After working diligently for two years, our organization will continue to work to urge a rezoning of the property in order to help local businesses and to revitalize our community by providing the opportunity to bring in a major retailer and present more shopping choices.”
.
Citing Montgomery County’s lengthy approval process, Walmart dropped its plan to build a superstore in Aspen Hill, its would-be landlord, Silver Spring-based Lee Development Group, announced Tuesday.
This is the second time that a store proposal by the discount retail giant has fallen through since 2012, even though the Bentonville, Arkansas firm managed to fight off regulatory hurdles raised by various County Council bills.
Lee intends to move forward with its proposal to rezone the property, which sits next to the intersection of Georgia and Connecticut avenues about five miles north of downtown Silver Spring.
“We are confident that this is a great retail location, ultimately offering much-needed shopping options to the under-served Aspen Hill community,” Bruce H. Lee, president of Lee Development, said in the press release. “Once the property is zoned appropriately for retail use, we expect strong interest from retailers looking to come to Aspen Hill."
The site is occupied by a sprawling 262,923-square-foot office building, which has been empty since 2010, when BAE systems/Vitro consolidated its operations to Rockville. The county Department of Planning has recommended reclassifying the property as a commercial/residential town zone, allowing for a dense mix of uses (see Planners endorse Walmart, green office building at ends of Georgia Avenue corridor).
A public hearing for the proposal has been set for Sept. 11, when the Planning Board will consider the change under the Aspen Hill minor master plan amendment process. The minor amendment is a fast-track process designed to address smaller areas in a speedier time frame than rewriting an area’s entire master plan.
County planners said last month that a commercial/residential zone makes sense for Aspen Hill because of poor demand for large-scale office buildings throughout the region. The property is also at the site of a proposed transit station as part of a rapid bus line that would run between downtown Silver Spring and Olney.
Walmart would have brought 300 jobs to the site of a circa 1968 office building that used to provide strong foot traffic for about 1 million square feet of neighboring retail in three strip malls. The store would have added a third grocery option for Aspen Hill residents, in competition with a Giant Food across the street and a Lotte Plaza Asian Market two blocks to the south.
United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400—the union that represents Giant employees—has been in the forefront of opposition to Walmart, which is seen as a threat to nearby jobs. The group failed to win passage of a council bill that would have required big box stores to seek community benefits agreements with at least three civic groups on issues like living wages or traffic improvements.
The Planning Board approved a pair of zoning text amendments targeting big box stores. The first—enacted by the council—aimed at a proposed Walmart on Rockville Pike by limiting new stores within half a mile of a Metro station to 80,000 square feet and requiring that they be paired with smaller retailers in a mixed-use project. A second measure targeting the BAE site—but never passed by the council—would require that the proposed Aspen Hill store go through the special exception review process in addition to the property being rezoned from its current office space designation.
The Rockville Walmart plan has been frozen since the strip mall it would have replaced was sold in 2012.
The Aspen Hill Walmart would have filled a huge hole for Lee. The firm would have been positioned to create something of a superstore cluster, paired with a Kohl’s department store and a Michael’s craft store across the street in Lee’s Northgate Shopping Center.
The Walmart plan has divided Aspen Hill, where some looked forward to new jobs and retail options and others feared the effects on already crowded traffic and surrounding businesses.
A new group, Aspen Hill Homeowners Group, organized in opposition to Walmart, and many residents’ yards have been papered with signs opposing the rezoning in recent months.
The long-established Aspen Hill Civic Association—which has more than 200 members—supports rezoning the Lee property but has remained neutral on which businesses might occupy the site.
A local business owners group supported the Walmart project.
“On behalf of the Aspen Hill Business Coalition, I’d like to express our utmost disappointment with the news that Walmart is withdrawing their plans for the BAE/Vitro site,” Boris Lander, co-president of the organization and owner of two nearby Dunkin Donut stores, said in the Lee press release. “After working diligently for two years, our organization will continue to work to urge a rezoning of the property in order to help local businesses and to revitalize our community by providing the opportunity to bring in a major retailer and present more shopping choices.”
.
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
Upscaling of Wheaton continues with plan to redevelop low-income Ambassador Apartments
By Sonny Goldreich
The upscaling of downtown Wheaton—in size and wealth—takes another leap forward this summer at the crumbling Ambassador Apartments, where the county Housing Opportunities Commission is negotiating to redevelop the subsidized rental project into a mixed-income, mixed-use property.
Details are still undecided on the future of the 162-unit building, which sits at a prime spot opposite the Westfield Wheaton shopping center at 2715 University Blvd. West on the northwest corner intersecting Veirs Mill Road. But new zoning pushed by the HOC allows for a much larger building that will include market-rate units to help support preserving the current number of cheaply priced apartments within walking distance of the Wheaton Metro station.
The stage was set for redevelopment in 2012, when the new Wheaton sector plan included much denser zoning that would allow for what the HOC calls a “landmark structure” that could reach as high as 130 feet and total as much as 275,252 gross square feet. That’s almost twice the size of the existing 137,675-square-foot-building, which includes the HOC’s six stories of mostly tiny efficiency apartments atop ground-floor retail space owned by the Potomac-based Willco Cos., and an attached parking garage. The complex sits back from Veirs Mill Road, at the far end of a parking lot that includes a small vacant bank building.
By comparison, The Exchange at Wheaton Station at the south end of downtown Wheaton occupies 800,000 square feet, including 486 apartment units in a 17-story building with a ground-floor Safeway grocery and underground parking.
“HOC and its development partner, Willco Companies, are in the preliminary stage of vetting design concepts and assessing feasibility,” commission spokesman Scott Ellinwood said in an email. “The team is still exploring multiple options for the site to utilize the significant [floor-to-area ratio] available to the agency.
The building—which started life as a Howard Johnson hotel in 1959—was converted into low-income housing in 1992, when kitchens were added to every unit. In between, the hotel switched brand names to Best Western and the ground-floor Embassy restraurant—a rare white tablecloth spot in Wheaton—survived for a time after the birth of the Ambassador. Now, the property is best known as the site of CASA's first day laborer employment center.
The HOC issued a request for development proposals in 2012, seeking plans to improve its finances while preserving 162 units of affordable housing. The building is carrying about $8.2 million in debt.
The HOC named Pennrose Properties as the developer of the new project last year, and will soon turn over management of the existing building to the Philadelphia-based firm. The HOC and Pennrose are working out details of a development plan, which will decide the new building’s size and the number of market-rate and low-income units.
“HOC and Willco are considering several possible mixed-income and/or mixed-use solutions,” Ellinwood wrote.
Pennrose was selected in part because its proposal most closely matched the HOC goal of maximizing use of space allowed under the new Wheaton sector plan zoning. The firm has developed 12,000 units in more than 180 affordable, mixed‐income, and mixed‐use projects, including five Baltimore properties.
The Ambassador units are little changed since the 1992 hotel-to-apartment conversion. The original apartment developer, IDI, which also built Leisure World south of Olney, created 156 efficiency units—mostly less than 300 square feet—and six one-bedroom units of about 500 square feet. All units come furnished and are reserved for renters earning less than 60 percent of area median income, pegged to the 2013 federal published income limit for a one‐bedroom unit of $48,330.
Pre-development plans calls for speeding up the relocation of tenants from the building, which was temporarily condemned in January, when pipes froze and a water main break caused fire sprinkler and central boiler systems failures. More than 200 residents were relocated to hotel rooms for 24 hours.
As of early May, 135 units were occupied, but the HOC hopes to double the pace of tenants leaving to 12 rooms per month, through a combination of natural renter attrition and relocation to other county or alternative low-income housing. The pre-development plan stipulates that “no announcement of relocation of residents or actual relocation will be undertaken prior to approval of the full relocation plan, including costs and implementation.”
With no development agreement in place, construction on the new project is at least two years away, given the time it takes to clear anything through the Planning Board’s approval process.
The upscaling of downtown Wheaton—in size and wealth—takes another leap forward this summer at the crumbling Ambassador Apartments, where the county Housing Opportunities Commission is negotiating to redevelop the subsidized rental project into a mixed-income, mixed-use property.
Details are still undecided on the future of the 162-unit building, which sits at a prime spot opposite the Westfield Wheaton shopping center at 2715 University Blvd. West on the northwest corner intersecting Veirs Mill Road. But new zoning pushed by the HOC allows for a much larger building that will include market-rate units to help support preserving the current number of cheaply priced apartments within walking distance of the Wheaton Metro station.
The stage was set for redevelopment in 2012, when the new Wheaton sector plan included much denser zoning that would allow for what the HOC calls a “landmark structure” that could reach as high as 130 feet and total as much as 275,252 gross square feet. That’s almost twice the size of the existing 137,675-square-foot-building, which includes the HOC’s six stories of mostly tiny efficiency apartments atop ground-floor retail space owned by the Potomac-based Willco Cos., and an attached parking garage. The complex sits back from Veirs Mill Road, at the far end of a parking lot that includes a small vacant bank building.
By comparison, The Exchange at Wheaton Station at the south end of downtown Wheaton occupies 800,000 square feet, including 486 apartment units in a 17-story building with a ground-floor Safeway grocery and underground parking.
“HOC and its development partner, Willco Companies, are in the preliminary stage of vetting design concepts and assessing feasibility,” commission spokesman Scott Ellinwood said in an email. “The team is still exploring multiple options for the site to utilize the significant [floor-to-area ratio] available to the agency.
The building—which started life as a Howard Johnson hotel in 1959—was converted into low-income housing in 1992, when kitchens were added to every unit. In between, the hotel switched brand names to Best Western and the ground-floor Embassy restraurant—a rare white tablecloth spot in Wheaton—survived for a time after the birth of the Ambassador. Now, the property is best known as the site of CASA's first day laborer employment center.
The HOC issued a request for development proposals in 2012, seeking plans to improve its finances while preserving 162 units of affordable housing. The building is carrying about $8.2 million in debt.
The HOC named Pennrose Properties as the developer of the new project last year, and will soon turn over management of the existing building to the Philadelphia-based firm. The HOC and Pennrose are working out details of a development plan, which will decide the new building’s size and the number of market-rate and low-income units.
“HOC and Willco are considering several possible mixed-income and/or mixed-use solutions,” Ellinwood wrote.
Pennrose was selected in part because its proposal most closely matched the HOC goal of maximizing use of space allowed under the new Wheaton sector plan zoning. The firm has developed 12,000 units in more than 180 affordable, mixed‐income, and mixed‐use projects, including five Baltimore properties.
The Ambassador units are little changed since the 1992 hotel-to-apartment conversion. The original apartment developer, IDI, which also built Leisure World south of Olney, created 156 efficiency units—mostly less than 300 square feet—and six one-bedroom units of about 500 square feet. All units come furnished and are reserved for renters earning less than 60 percent of area median income, pegged to the 2013 federal published income limit for a one‐bedroom unit of $48,330.
Pre-development plans calls for speeding up the relocation of tenants from the building, which was temporarily condemned in January, when pipes froze and a water main break caused fire sprinkler and central boiler systems failures. More than 200 residents were relocated to hotel rooms for 24 hours.
As of early May, 135 units were occupied, but the HOC hopes to double the pace of tenants leaving to 12 rooms per month, through a combination of natural renter attrition and relocation to other county or alternative low-income housing. The pre-development plan stipulates that “no announcement of relocation of residents or actual relocation will be undertaken prior to approval of the full relocation plan, including costs and implementation.”
With no development agreement in place, construction on the new project is at least two years away, given the time it takes to clear anything through the Planning Board’s approval process.
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Transit union moving HQ to National Labor College site after $31 million sale
By Sonny Goldreich
UPDATE: The Amalgamated Transit Union today officially announced plans to move its international headquarters from DC to the site of the National Labor College in Silver Spring, which I reported yesterday.
About 40 to 50 union staff will make the move to the new White Oak headquarters, which ATU president Larry Hanley confirmed sold for $31.4 million. The facility will offer classes to train union and community leaders, he said, but it will no longer provide college degrees, as the NLC did before closing its doors in April.
The ATU will revive the "original purpose of the training center from 1970, training working union member and community leaders," Hanley said in an interview.
He also scoffed at a lawsuit against the college seeking to block the sale filed last month by DC-based Monument Realty, which signed a letter of intent to buy the property in December. The suit will not complicate the sale of the campus, Hanley said.
"We're the labor movement," he said. "We don't respond to bullies. This is just a land grab by a greedy developer and it was laughed out of court by the judge."
A judge denied Monument's motion for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction on July 25. The court determined that the firm had suffered no irreparable harm and had "no chance chance of success," Hanley said.
"Today the ATU has stepped up and assumed a greater leadership role in the molding of minds, values and progressive reform for both Canada and the United States, where we represent more than 190,000 workers. The state of the art conference and training center will again be a hub of activity for ATU and the entire labor movement," Hanley said in a press release. "It represents a new beginning in terms of our capacity to train not only our leaders and members, but also those who work every day to improve the life of our society."
ORIGINAL STORY 7/29/2014
The Amalgamated Transit Union plans to move its national headquarters from DC to the site of the debt-crippled National Labor College in Silver Spring, where it will continue to offer classes after paying $31.4 million for the prime property.
The deal was expected to close by Thursday (July 31), after the Maryland Board of Public Works voted to approve the sale and forgive a claim on $2.75 million granted by the state to support the college since 1999. Most proceeds of the sale will go to pay off debt owed to the Bank of America, which holds a first lien on the property and has delayed moving to foreclosure for more than two years.
“The whole house of labor is very disappointed about this turn of events but we’re glad to keep it in the labor family,” college president Paula Peinovich, said during the board’s July 23 meeting.
The property—which has dormitory, classroom and office space totaling 287,071 square feet—sold for far less than its $47.4 million assessed value after two earlier deals fell apart.
The college closed its doors in April after offering university degrees since 1974. The campus was founded and backed by $5 million annually from the AFL-CIO, but it ran into financial trouble during a recent expansion, including construction of the Lane Kirkland Center, a 72,000-square-foot conference facility completed in 2007 with the help of $2 million from state taxpayers.
The transit union will acquire the 45.8 acres campus and its 10 buildings, which sit in the middle of the White Oak science gateway master plan approved Tuesday by the Montgomery County Council. It is a mile south of the FDA headquarters complex, next to a Beltway exit at 10000 New Hampshire Avenue.
Gov. Martin O’Malley cast the only vote against approving the sale and forgiving the state grants, which are supposed to be paid back if the property changes hands. He wanted to defer a vote until officials had a chance to further explore the college’s assets.
But state Comptroller Peter Franchot and Treasuer Nancy Kopp accepted the college’s argument that the property likely would fetch a lower price at auction, should Bank of America proceeded with foreclosure next month.
Sue Payne, an aide to state Del. Pat McDonough, R-District 7 (Baltimore and Harford Counties), testified against approving the sale, which she said amounted to an “inside contract” between affiliates of the AFL-CIO, while “the taxpayers are left holding the bag.”
O’Malley also questioned why the $2.75 million in state grants couldn’t have been folded into the price paid by the transit union.
Attorney James Gentile, the college’s general counsel, responded that the transit union offer was a fair one, considering that an earlier deal struck last year with Reid Temple and the Montgomery County Housing Opportunities Commission was valued at only about $27 million before the sale fell apart.
He said the college had hoped to pay off the state and stay afloat as an online school, but the real estate market made that impossible and the threat of foreclosure did not give the college time to wait for a better deal.
“This is the best offer we got,” Gentile said. “We originally hoped to sell the property for significantly more money.”
The sale to the transit union would cover only a $31.08 million settlement with the bank and broker fees, he said.
Gentile added that the labor college is its own non-profit entity that operates independently from the AFL-CIO, which no longer owns the property.
The sale will also support the state’s interest in preserving the site as a labor education facility, because the transit group plans to train its own staff as well as other union workers, Peinovich said. The property will remain the home of the college’s Bonnie Ladin Union Skills Program, which will offer expanded continuing education classes for union leaders, staff, and activists, she said.
The transit union also will preserve the property’s national monument to workers killed on the job.
The union's move to Silver Spring also reflects a recent commitment to train its leadership and members across the nation in political engagement to support increased transit spending.
"Our board voted ... to buy the National Labor College so we could start a permanent training center," ATU president Larry Hanley said in April during the Labor Notes union organizing conference.
UPDATE: The Amalgamated Transit Union today officially announced plans to move its international headquarters from DC to the site of the National Labor College in Silver Spring, which I reported yesterday.
 |
| The sale includes this 72,000-square-foot building completed in 2006. |
About 40 to 50 union staff will make the move to the new White Oak headquarters, which ATU president Larry Hanley confirmed sold for $31.4 million. The facility will offer classes to train union and community leaders, he said, but it will no longer provide college degrees, as the NLC did before closing its doors in April.
The ATU will revive the "original purpose of the training center from 1970, training working union member and community leaders," Hanley said in an interview.
He also scoffed at a lawsuit against the college seeking to block the sale filed last month by DC-based Monument Realty, which signed a letter of intent to buy the property in December. The suit will not complicate the sale of the campus, Hanley said.
"We're the labor movement," he said. "We don't respond to bullies. This is just a land grab by a greedy developer and it was laughed out of court by the judge."
A judge denied Monument's motion for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction on July 25. The court determined that the firm had suffered no irreparable harm and had "no chance chance of success," Hanley said.
"Today the ATU has stepped up and assumed a greater leadership role in the molding of minds, values and progressive reform for both Canada and the United States, where we represent more than 190,000 workers. The state of the art conference and training center will again be a hub of activity for ATU and the entire labor movement," Hanley said in a press release. "It represents a new beginning in terms of our capacity to train not only our leaders and members, but also those who work every day to improve the life of our society."
ORIGINAL STORY 7/29/2014
The Amalgamated Transit Union plans to move its national headquarters from DC to the site of the debt-crippled National Labor College in Silver Spring, where it will continue to offer classes after paying $31.4 million for the prime property.
The deal was expected to close by Thursday (July 31), after the Maryland Board of Public Works voted to approve the sale and forgive a claim on $2.75 million granted by the state to support the college since 1999. Most proceeds of the sale will go to pay off debt owed to the Bank of America, which holds a first lien on the property and has delayed moving to foreclosure for more than two years.
“The whole house of labor is very disappointed about this turn of events but we’re glad to keep it in the labor family,” college president Paula Peinovich, said during the board’s July 23 meeting.
The property—which has dormitory, classroom and office space totaling 287,071 square feet—sold for far less than its $47.4 million assessed value after two earlier deals fell apart.
The college closed its doors in April after offering university degrees since 1974. The campus was founded and backed by $5 million annually from the AFL-CIO, but it ran into financial trouble during a recent expansion, including construction of the Lane Kirkland Center, a 72,000-square-foot conference facility completed in 2007 with the help of $2 million from state taxpayers.
The transit union will acquire the 45.8 acres campus and its 10 buildings, which sit in the middle of the White Oak science gateway master plan approved Tuesday by the Montgomery County Council. It is a mile south of the FDA headquarters complex, next to a Beltway exit at 10000 New Hampshire Avenue.
Gov. Martin O’Malley cast the only vote against approving the sale and forgiving the state grants, which are supposed to be paid back if the property changes hands. He wanted to defer a vote until officials had a chance to further explore the college’s assets.
But state Comptroller Peter Franchot and Treasuer Nancy Kopp accepted the college’s argument that the property likely would fetch a lower price at auction, should Bank of America proceeded with foreclosure next month.
Sue Payne, an aide to state Del. Pat McDonough, R-District 7 (Baltimore and Harford Counties), testified against approving the sale, which she said amounted to an “inside contract” between affiliates of the AFL-CIO, while “the taxpayers are left holding the bag.”
O’Malley also questioned why the $2.75 million in state grants couldn’t have been folded into the price paid by the transit union.
Attorney James Gentile, the college’s general counsel, responded that the transit union offer was a fair one, considering that an earlier deal struck last year with Reid Temple and the Montgomery County Housing Opportunities Commission was valued at only about $27 million before the sale fell apart.
He said the college had hoped to pay off the state and stay afloat as an online school, but the real estate market made that impossible and the threat of foreclosure did not give the college time to wait for a better deal.
“This is the best offer we got,” Gentile said. “We originally hoped to sell the property for significantly more money.”
The sale to the transit union would cover only a $31.08 million settlement with the bank and broker fees, he said.
Gentile added that the labor college is its own non-profit entity that operates independently from the AFL-CIO, which no longer owns the property.
The sale will also support the state’s interest in preserving the site as a labor education facility, because the transit group plans to train its own staff as well as other union workers, Peinovich said. The property will remain the home of the college’s Bonnie Ladin Union Skills Program, which will offer expanded continuing education classes for union leaders, staff, and activists, she said.
The transit union also will preserve the property’s national monument to workers killed on the job.
The union's move to Silver Spring also reflects a recent commitment to train its leadership and members across the nation in political engagement to support increased transit spending.
"Our board voted ... to buy the National Labor College so we could start a permanent training center," ATU president Larry Hanley said in April during the Labor Notes union organizing conference.
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
State turns Glenmont history into piñata as it demolishes 1953 fire station
By Sonny Goldreich
The State Highway Administration knocked down a big piece of Glenmont history today, as a crew demolished the clock tower at the fire station that protected the north Silver Spring neighborhood since 1953
Making room for a road interchange, a worker operating a Hitachi excavator tractor treated station #18 (formerly Kensington Volunteer Fire Department No. 18) like a piñata, repeatedly poking and prodding its 40-foot tower with a steel beam until it toppled.
“I was in that tower many times to stretch the fire hoses to dry them,” said Richard Bourque, a former cadet at the station.
The demolition is part of a $74.8-million project to build a traffic bypass around Glenmont, where Randolph Road will run beneath Georgia Avenue. The knockdown of the old station will be followed by the start of construction of a new $14.8 million station in the fall across Georgia at the southwest corner of the intersection with Randolph. The 19,150-square-foot structure will be about three times the size of the old one, which cost $93,000 to build, including $18,000 for the land.
When the station opened, community leaders staged a parade that drew more than 1,000 visitors.
Now, Bourque stood alone in the hot morning sun, snapping pictures as the building fell away, brick by brick. He hoped to recover a couple of those bricks in honor of his late brother, Donald Bourque, who also started at the station as a cadet and rose to fire chief of the Kensington volunteer department during a 30-year career.
"She was built to last," Bourque said, as the tractor grabbed the steel beam to take another whack at the tower.
There was a feeble attempt to preserve the old station under the process of writing the new 2013 Glenmont Sector Plan, which is designed to bring higher-density development to the 300 acres surrounding the last subway station on the Metro Red Line. Montgomery’s Historic Preservation Commission recommended saving the structure, which was the northernmost county facility when it was built.
But the station was doomed by the state highway paving imperative and the Planning Board denied it historic protection. Now all that will remain of the structure is an original architectural model on display at the county fire and rescue training academy in Rockville.
Station #18 relocated temporarily in April to the Grandview Avenue site of the former Wheaton Fire and Rescue Station, which moved to a new, $14 million station less than a mile south of the Glenmont station. The Wheaton station is 29,000 square feet and includes 7,400 square feet for a community room and kitchen on the upper floor.
The county fire department will take ownership of the new Glenmont station, which allowed it to qualify for $4 million in federal funding.
The county has chosen a colonial design with peaked roof lines for the new Glenmont station, echoing the old one. Planners rejected modern-looking options that featured flat or asymmetrical roof lines.
Plans call for four vehicle bays, which is twice the number of the old facility. The station will sit at the location of the former Glenmont Elementary School, which was leveled as part of the state interchange project.
Hughes Group Architects, based in Sterling, Va., designed both the new Glenmont and Wheaton stations.
The State Highway Administration knocked down a big piece of Glenmont history today, as a crew demolished the clock tower at the fire station that protected the north Silver Spring neighborhood since 1953
Making room for a road interchange, a worker operating a Hitachi excavator tractor treated station #18 (formerly Kensington Volunteer Fire Department No. 18) like a piñata, repeatedly poking and prodding its 40-foot tower with a steel beam until it toppled.“I was in that tower many times to stretch the fire hoses to dry them,” said Richard Bourque, a former cadet at the station.
The demolition is part of a $74.8-million project to build a traffic bypass around Glenmont, where Randolph Road will run beneath Georgia Avenue. The knockdown of the old station will be followed by the start of construction of a new $14.8 million station in the fall across Georgia at the southwest corner of the intersection with Randolph. The 19,150-square-foot structure will be about three times the size of the old one, which cost $93,000 to build, including $18,000 for the land.
When the station opened, community leaders staged a parade that drew more than 1,000 visitors.
Now, Bourque stood alone in the hot morning sun, snapping pictures as the building fell away, brick by brick. He hoped to recover a couple of those bricks in honor of his late brother, Donald Bourque, who also started at the station as a cadet and rose to fire chief of the Kensington volunteer department during a 30-year career.
"She was built to last," Bourque said, as the tractor grabbed the steel beam to take another whack at the tower.There was a feeble attempt to preserve the old station under the process of writing the new 2013 Glenmont Sector Plan, which is designed to bring higher-density development to the 300 acres surrounding the last subway station on the Metro Red Line. Montgomery’s Historic Preservation Commission recommended saving the structure, which was the northernmost county facility when it was built.
But the station was doomed by the state highway paving imperative and the Planning Board denied it historic protection. Now all that will remain of the structure is an original architectural model on display at the county fire and rescue training academy in Rockville.
The county fire department will take ownership of the new Glenmont station, which allowed it to qualify for $4 million in federal funding.
The county has chosen a colonial design with peaked roof lines for the new Glenmont station, echoing the old one. Planners rejected modern-looking options that featured flat or asymmetrical roof lines.
Plans call for four vehicle bays, which is twice the number of the old facility. The station will sit at the location of the former Glenmont Elementary School, which was leveled as part of the state interchange project.
Hughes Group Architects, based in Sterling, Va., designed both the new Glenmont and Wheaton stations.
Wednesday, July 9, 2014
Planners endorse Walmart, green office building at ends of Georgia Avenue corridor
By Sonny Goldreich
A pair of major real estate projects at either ends of Silver Spring’s Georgia Avenue corridor—an expansion of United Therapeutic’s downtown headquarters and a Walmart in Aspen Hill—gained momentum from Montgomery County planners this week.
Roughly the same size, they reflect dramatically different development visions. The first was conceived as a vertical high-tech temple to environmentally sensitive design, while the latter promises a horizontal low-price Mecca for lowest common denominator suburban sprawl.
Glass and steel don’t usually exude much warmth, but drug-maker UT’s new 121,724-square-foot office building would generate enough on-site renewable energy to keep it off the power grid. The site plan for the 6-story “net zero” project—which would replace a 3-story public parking garage—has been hailed for its green design that relies on solar and geothermal power for the property, which sits less than half a mile from the Silver Spring Metro station. The Planning Department has recommended approval of the site plan and a July 17 hearing is scheduled for the building, which the Planning Board approved at the project plan stage last year.
But the big news comes at the northern end of Silver Spring, where the Planning Board on Thursday (July 10) approved a public hearing draft of an Aspen Hill minor master plan amendment that supports the concept of building a 118,000-square-foot Walmart superstore at a vacant office building site. The board heard Planning Department staff presentation on the amendment and scheduled a public hearing for September 11.
The amendment—pushed by property owner Lee Development Group—would allow construction of the store on the site of the vacant BAE Systems/Vitro office building at 4115 Aspen Hill Road. The 1968 relic sits empty since the military contractor relocated to Rockville in 2010.
Planners agreed with Lee that there is no demand for office space on the 10-acre site, noting that currently “there is roughly 10 million square feet of vacant office space in Montgomery County, and nearly 70 million square feet of vacant space” in the DC metro region.
The planning draft added that the 242,000-square-foot BAE building “accounts for the vast majority of office inventory in Aspen Hill. Consequently, the loss of the building’s sole tenant in 2010 and the owner’s reported inability to release the space has had an outsized impact in Aspen Hill, where the vacancy rate has hovered at around 71 percent. The Vitro vacancy has pushed the vacancy rate in its wider Kensington-Wheaton office submarket to around 25 [percent].”
The empty building, which is west of Georgia Avenue at the intersection of Connecticut Avenue and Aspen Hill Road, is at least two miles from the nearest Metro subway station in Glenmont. But the property sits within easy walking distance of a proposed rapid bus transit station at Georgia and Connecticut, which would seem to support mixed-use retail and residential development.
Despite the location, a planning department market analysis concluded that “additional retail square footage could be supported in the trade area, whereas townhouses may be supported, but their feasibility is less certain at this time.”
So that leaves retail, in this case big box retail. Really big box retail, like the Walmart kind that the County Council failed to block in 2012 after much huffing and puffing to curb so-called category killer stores.
With plans to use 45 percent of the Walmart space for a grocery section, the project has generated intense opposition from the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which represents Giant grocery employees across Aspen Hill Road. Aside from the obvious traffic issues, some opponents also question Walmart’s impact on small specialty retailers (including some in Lee-owned Northgate Plaza across Connecticut Avenue from the BAE building).
The planning draft —which reads in places like it could have been written by a Lee lawyer—helpfully addresses those concerns.
The draft says that “New big-box stores or shopping plazas do not necessarily cause nearby stores to decline. For example, they may enhance the competitiveness of existing stores that sell similar or complementary products by increasing the overall number of customers drawn to the area.”
Regarding grocery stores, the draft notes that “an Aldi supermarket and a forthcoming Wegman’s are adjacent to a Wal-Mart in Germantown.”
And planning staff report that “Big box stores commonly co-locate with other large retailers,” often forming super centers. Within a few blocks, Aspen Hill already has many retailers found in such clusters, such as Kohl’s, Home Depot, Michael’s and Kmart.
All of that suggests that Walmart could co-exist with its retail neighbors rather than cannibalizing them. But Kmart might be the exception, which could result in Aspen Hill trading one big vacant space for another.
The planning draft notes that “While a direct competitor in the discount department store category, the existing Kmart is older, less visible from main streets, and does not sell groceries. Without improvements, K-Mart may experience increased competition and could potentially face significant economic pressures. If a vacancy results, it could be challenging to find a similar tenant.”
Overall, Aspen Hill does not lack for retail services. The planning draft cites “roughly 1.26 million square feet of retail space,” including the nearby strip center cluster at the intersection of Bel Pre and Layhill roads. “Of this amount, around 74,000 square feet (5.8 percent) was vacant as of the end of 2013.” The area is mostly stable, with most of its shopping malls built before 1970 and boasting occupancy rates of between 96 percent and 100 percent.
But one store closure can have a major impact, such as in Plaza del Mercado on Layhill Road, which planners say “accounts for nearly half of Aspen Hill’s vacant retail space,” since a Giant closed in 2011 and dumped 25,000 square feet on the market. The space has been filled recently by discount furniture stores on a month-to-month basis, while nearby residents appeal for a new grocery to move in.
No such questions exist for the United Therapeutic’s project in downtown Silver Spring, which has seen its total office space actually shrink in recent years as property owners tear down old commercial buildings and replace them with new apartment complexes.
The firm’s new building at 1000 Spring Street would replace a 152-space garage with 111,724 square feet of office and laboratory space, 10,000 square feet of street-level retail and equal parking space. The complex would expand by more than 50 percent UT’s neighboring headquarters campus, which already occupies more than 200,000 square feet after it doubled in size with an expansion completed in 2009
Unlike most of the typical glass boxes in the DC region, the building would add some architectural drama to the southwest corner of Colesville Road and Spring Street. The design looks a bit like a docked ocean liner, featuring an elliptical shape reaching 90 feet high and a prominent prow with mesh ventilation panels.
More dramatic, the building is a rare project that relies entirely on non-carbon power to provide heating, cooling and electricity. Most green-certified properties win brownie points for buying renewable solar or wind capacity on existing power grids that are fueled mostly by environmentally questionable coal, oil, gas, nuclear and hydroelectric power.
A pair of major real estate projects at either ends of Silver Spring’s Georgia Avenue corridor—an expansion of United Therapeutic’s downtown headquarters and a Walmart in Aspen Hill—gained momentum from Montgomery County planners this week.
Roughly the same size, they reflect dramatically different development visions. The first was conceived as a vertical high-tech temple to environmentally sensitive design, while the latter promises a horizontal low-price Mecca for lowest common denominator suburban sprawl.
Glass and steel don’t usually exude much warmth, but drug-maker UT’s new 121,724-square-foot office building would generate enough on-site renewable energy to keep it off the power grid. The site plan for the 6-story “net zero” project—which would replace a 3-story public parking garage—has been hailed for its green design that relies on solar and geothermal power for the property, which sits less than half a mile from the Silver Spring Metro station. The Planning Department has recommended approval of the site plan and a July 17 hearing is scheduled for the building, which the Planning Board approved at the project plan stage last year.
 |
| montgomeryplanningboard.org/agenda/2014/documents/AspenHill_000.pdf |
But the big news comes at the northern end of Silver Spring, where the Planning Board on Thursday (July 10) approved a public hearing draft of an Aspen Hill minor master plan amendment that supports the concept of building a 118,000-square-foot Walmart superstore at a vacant office building site. The board heard Planning Department staff presentation on the amendment and scheduled a public hearing for September 11.
The amendment—pushed by property owner Lee Development Group—would allow construction of the store on the site of the vacant BAE Systems/Vitro office building at 4115 Aspen Hill Road. The 1968 relic sits empty since the military contractor relocated to Rockville in 2010.
Planners agreed with Lee that there is no demand for office space on the 10-acre site, noting that currently “there is roughly 10 million square feet of vacant office space in Montgomery County, and nearly 70 million square feet of vacant space” in the DC metro region.
The planning draft added that the 242,000-square-foot BAE building “accounts for the vast majority of office inventory in Aspen Hill. Consequently, the loss of the building’s sole tenant in 2010 and the owner’s reported inability to release the space has had an outsized impact in Aspen Hill, where the vacancy rate has hovered at around 71 percent. The Vitro vacancy has pushed the vacancy rate in its wider Kensington-Wheaton office submarket to around 25 [percent].”
The empty building, which is west of Georgia Avenue at the intersection of Connecticut Avenue and Aspen Hill Road, is at least two miles from the nearest Metro subway station in Glenmont. But the property sits within easy walking distance of a proposed rapid bus transit station at Georgia and Connecticut, which would seem to support mixed-use retail and residential development.
Despite the location, a planning department market analysis concluded that “additional retail square footage could be supported in the trade area, whereas townhouses may be supported, but their feasibility is less certain at this time.”
So that leaves retail, in this case big box retail. Really big box retail, like the Walmart kind that the County Council failed to block in 2012 after much huffing and puffing to curb so-called category killer stores.
With plans to use 45 percent of the Walmart space for a grocery section, the project has generated intense opposition from the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which represents Giant grocery employees across Aspen Hill Road. Aside from the obvious traffic issues, some opponents also question Walmart’s impact on small specialty retailers (including some in Lee-owned Northgate Plaza across Connecticut Avenue from the BAE building).
The planning draft —which reads in places like it could have been written by a Lee lawyer—helpfully addresses those concerns.
The draft says that “New big-box stores or shopping plazas do not necessarily cause nearby stores to decline. For example, they may enhance the competitiveness of existing stores that sell similar or complementary products by increasing the overall number of customers drawn to the area.”
Regarding grocery stores, the draft notes that “an Aldi supermarket and a forthcoming Wegman’s are adjacent to a Wal-Mart in Germantown.”
And planning staff report that “Big box stores commonly co-locate with other large retailers,” often forming super centers. Within a few blocks, Aspen Hill already has many retailers found in such clusters, such as Kohl’s, Home Depot, Michael’s and Kmart.
All of that suggests that Walmart could co-exist with its retail neighbors rather than cannibalizing them. But Kmart might be the exception, which could result in Aspen Hill trading one big vacant space for another.
The planning draft notes that “While a direct competitor in the discount department store category, the existing Kmart is older, less visible from main streets, and does not sell groceries. Without improvements, K-Mart may experience increased competition and could potentially face significant economic pressures. If a vacancy results, it could be challenging to find a similar tenant.”
Overall, Aspen Hill does not lack for retail services. The planning draft cites “roughly 1.26 million square feet of retail space,” including the nearby strip center cluster at the intersection of Bel Pre and Layhill roads. “Of this amount, around 74,000 square feet (5.8 percent) was vacant as of the end of 2013.” The area is mostly stable, with most of its shopping malls built before 1970 and boasting occupancy rates of between 96 percent and 100 percent.
But one store closure can have a major impact, such as in Plaza del Mercado on Layhill Road, which planners say “accounts for nearly half of Aspen Hill’s vacant retail space,” since a Giant closed in 2011 and dumped 25,000 square feet on the market. The space has been filled recently by discount furniture stores on a month-to-month basis, while nearby residents appeal for a new grocery to move in.
No such questions exist for the United Therapeutic’s project in downtown Silver Spring, which has seen its total office space actually shrink in recent years as property owners tear down old commercial buildings and replace them with new apartment complexes.
 |
| montgomeryplanningboard.org Site Plan #820140110 |
The firm’s new building at 1000 Spring Street would replace a 152-space garage with 111,724 square feet of office and laboratory space, 10,000 square feet of street-level retail and equal parking space. The complex would expand by more than 50 percent UT’s neighboring headquarters campus, which already occupies more than 200,000 square feet after it doubled in size with an expansion completed in 2009
Unlike most of the typical glass boxes in the DC region, the building would add some architectural drama to the southwest corner of Colesville Road and Spring Street. The design looks a bit like a docked ocean liner, featuring an elliptical shape reaching 90 feet high and a prominent prow with mesh ventilation panels.
More dramatic, the building is a rare project that relies entirely on non-carbon power to provide heating, cooling and electricity. Most green-certified properties win brownie points for buying renewable solar or wind capacity on existing power grids that are fueled mostly by environmentally questionable coal, oil, gas, nuclear and hydroelectric power.
Saturday, July 5, 2014
A Pain in the Grass/A House on My Back
By Sonny Goldreich
There's a sweet spot in the night sky early in July, when the sun is fully set, the horizon is blanched of color and the moon is climbing high.
That's the moment, away from city lights, when a man can connect with nature, wander about in the growing darkness and peer through the gloom with the penetrating eyes of a hunter-gatherer ancestor.
This is when I finally decided to drag out the mower after three weeks of rain and a lifelong hostility to yard work.
The only thing I could see was a pain in the grass.
If I don't cut it, someone will complain to the county, putting me on the threatened fine list with the house on the street behind ours, the one where the bottom-feeding mortgage servicer's neglect drives down neighboring property values years after the owner who defaulted on his loan died. Someone cuts the grass regularly—once every summer—but the grazing deer take care of most of the trimming.
Hiding behind the clouds, the moon was of little use to light my way and the night sky offered only humidity and the threat of another deluge. Fortunately, the assortment of weeds that I call the lawn had grown to at least 18 inches, so I could feel where I plowed as I dragged my 50-pound, smoke-belching, ear-pounding mower back and forth across my plot of hell.
One advantage of cutting the grass in the dark is that there's no need to avert my gaze from the new neighbors. No need to talk to the guy whose wife is out there every week with her shiny red Toro. No need to talk to the other couple, who recently invested in dozens of plants to spruce up the landscaping left by the previous owners, who grew too old to care or notice.
Is there anything as pointless as a suburban lawn?
It lies there, always growing but never improving, like a sullen 20-something watching internet porn in the basement, whose ambition never extends beyond where to buy some grass. Only the grass in the yard can’t be disposed of in little plastic bags.
Like the teenager, you can try to ignore your yard but it won’t go away. Leave it alone and it will drive you to tears as the pollen invades your sinuses.
And, of course, the neighbors make matters worse. They cut the grass every week, making your lawn look neglected. They use edgers to create little ditches at the curb. They attach the bag to the mower to suck up all the clippings. And they spray weed killer twice a month to eradicate crabgrass and dandelions.
Their every little obsessive lawn care act serves as a rebuke to your sloth.
Worse, they apply stream-killing fertilizer, which blows on your yard and makes your grass grow thicker and faster.
Some neighbors do all this work by themselves, spurred by some recessive agricultural gene. Other neighbors spend a fortune hiring somebody to do all the work, presiding over a small serfdom governed by a monthly service contract.
In the past (or now on PBS shows), a manicured expanse of turf signified the wealth and decadence of French and British landed gentry. Every estate had a crew of gardeners. Some cut the grass. Some pruned the flowers. Some sculpted the bushes. And an army of peasants gathered the clippings and hauled them away.
Once a week, the aristocrats would actually walk their grounds, croquet mallets in hand. Or they would sit under a cupola, ordering where to move human chess pieces.
But in the land of the meritocratic middle class, there is little significance to gentrified greenery, when everyone shares the American dream of owning a home with a front and back yard.
For me, the height of the grass simply measures my lack of interest. The annoyance the yard causes is measured by the number of dead lawn mowers on my front porch.
But in my underwater corner of Silver Spring, a fresh-cut lawn still carries some value by signaling that the homeowners probably still live there and pay their mortgage.
Even so, I take no pride in my yard. I gain no satisfaction in tending my quarter acre. I win no victory in bending nature to my will.
Cutting the grass reminds me of my childhood, when I would take hours—sometimes days—to finish the job. The fact that we bought my parents' home only underscores the ceaseless Sisyphean nightmare.
The horrible reality is that as soon as I finish mowing the lawn, the grass has grown and it's time to cut it again.
There's a sweet spot in the night sky early in July, when the sun is fully set, the horizon is blanched of color and the moon is climbing high.
That's the moment, away from city lights, when a man can connect with nature, wander about in the growing darkness and peer through the gloom with the penetrating eyes of a hunter-gatherer ancestor.
This is when I finally decided to drag out the mower after three weeks of rain and a lifelong hostility to yard work.
The only thing I could see was a pain in the grass.
If I don't cut it, someone will complain to the county, putting me on the threatened fine list with the house on the street behind ours, the one where the bottom-feeding mortgage servicer's neglect drives down neighboring property values years after the owner who defaulted on his loan died. Someone cuts the grass regularly—once every summer—but the grazing deer take care of most of the trimming.
Hiding behind the clouds, the moon was of little use to light my way and the night sky offered only humidity and the threat of another deluge. Fortunately, the assortment of weeds that I call the lawn had grown to at least 18 inches, so I could feel where I plowed as I dragged my 50-pound, smoke-belching, ear-pounding mower back and forth across my plot of hell.
One advantage of cutting the grass in the dark is that there's no need to avert my gaze from the new neighbors. No need to talk to the guy whose wife is out there every week with her shiny red Toro. No need to talk to the other couple, who recently invested in dozens of plants to spruce up the landscaping left by the previous owners, who grew too old to care or notice.
Is there anything as pointless as a suburban lawn?
It lies there, always growing but never improving, like a sullen 20-something watching internet porn in the basement, whose ambition never extends beyond where to buy some grass. Only the grass in the yard can’t be disposed of in little plastic bags.
Like the teenager, you can try to ignore your yard but it won’t go away. Leave it alone and it will drive you to tears as the pollen invades your sinuses.
And, of course, the neighbors make matters worse. They cut the grass every week, making your lawn look neglected. They use edgers to create little ditches at the curb. They attach the bag to the mower to suck up all the clippings. And they spray weed killer twice a month to eradicate crabgrass and dandelions.
Their every little obsessive lawn care act serves as a rebuke to your sloth.
Worse, they apply stream-killing fertilizer, which blows on your yard and makes your grass grow thicker and faster.
Some neighbors do all this work by themselves, spurred by some recessive agricultural gene. Other neighbors spend a fortune hiring somebody to do all the work, presiding over a small serfdom governed by a monthly service contract.
In the past (or now on PBS shows), a manicured expanse of turf signified the wealth and decadence of French and British landed gentry. Every estate had a crew of gardeners. Some cut the grass. Some pruned the flowers. Some sculpted the bushes. And an army of peasants gathered the clippings and hauled them away.
Once a week, the aristocrats would actually walk their grounds, croquet mallets in hand. Or they would sit under a cupola, ordering where to move human chess pieces.
But in the land of the meritocratic middle class, there is little significance to gentrified greenery, when everyone shares the American dream of owning a home with a front and back yard.
For me, the height of the grass simply measures my lack of interest. The annoyance the yard causes is measured by the number of dead lawn mowers on my front porch.
But in my underwater corner of Silver Spring, a fresh-cut lawn still carries some value by signaling that the homeowners probably still live there and pay their mortgage.
Even so, I take no pride in my yard. I gain no satisfaction in tending my quarter acre. I win no victory in bending nature to my will.
Cutting the grass reminds me of my childhood, when I would take hours—sometimes days—to finish the job. The fact that we bought my parents' home only underscores the ceaseless Sisyphean nightmare.
The horrible reality is that as soon as I finish mowing the lawn, the grass has grown and it's time to cut it again.
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
Montgomery County Voters Rank First in Apathy
By Sonny Goldreich
In a primary election marked by low voter turnout statewide, Montgomery County distinguished itself by caring the least.
Only 102,263 out of 630,254 eligible county voters bothered to participate in yesterday's poll, which effectively decided our next county executive and council, governor and who we will send to the General Assembly and Congress, given Democrats' overwhelmingly advantage in party registration.
That's a voter turnout rate of 16.23 percent, the lowest in the state.
The county that should be the junkyard dog of state politics showed one more time that it's a pocket poodle that can be carried around and played with like a toy.
I won't even go into the fact that Montgomery voters overwhelmingly spurned two home-grown gubernatorial candidates in favor of Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, a former Prince George's County delegate. Everyone has their reasons for choosing a candidate.
But in an election characterized by a hotly contested county executive race and open council and State House seats, fewer than one out of six of Montgomery County's voters showed up yesterday or during eight days of early voting that ended Thursday.
You want to know how pathetic that is? Baltimore County reported a higher turnout, with 105,088 citizens voting, even though Montgomery County has 47.9 percent more eligible voters. That's a rate of 24.67 percent of voters who performed their most basic duty. Baltimore County's turnout rate beat Montgomery by 52 percent.
I should note that from its lofty perch where it sees little on the ground in Maryland, the Washington Post editorialized on election day that the primary vote should be moved back to September to improve turnout. The date was changed to "comply with a new federal law making it easier for overseas service members to vote. The law requires that absentee ballots be mailed 45 days in advance of federal elections in November; officials said a September date didn’t provide enough time." But it seems that June is a month for vacations and such, when folks (like WPost editors?) have no time to vote or pay attention to the hundreds of campaign flyers and email clogging their mailboxes.
The problem is that the WPost argument doesn't pass the numbers test. State election results show that the primary turnout has been dismal in Maryland, and especially in Montgomery, no matter when it is held.
For the 2010 gubernatorial primary held in September, Montgomery County had a 20 percent voter turnout rate, compared to 25.4 percent statewide. For the 2012 presidential primary staged in April, MoCo turned out 15.8 percent, compared to 18.8 percent statewide.
What we have here is a bunch of lazy saps, especially in Montgomery County, with its huge population of professionally politically engaged types like federal workers, congressional staff, lobbyists, association officials, union activists, random lawyers and fundraisers and assorted other percentage-takers.
For the 102,263 Montgomery County residents who voted this time, you can pat yourselves on the backs for caring who represents you.
For the 527,991 losers who are eligible to vote but wouldn't get off their asses, you can go to hell, because you have affirmed the contempt Annapolis holds for Montgomery County.
So, no more whining when the General Assembly screws us once again at budget time and cheats us of desperately needed funding to operate our overcrowded schools or to build new ones.
Your complaints about high taxes and Montgomery County's function as the state ATM will be ignored.
Nobody in Annapolis will care about our overwhelmed subway and road systems.
Montgomery County had the opportunity to show Annapolis that we're pissed off about getting pissed on and instead most voters pissed away the chance.
You didn't vote. So you don't count.
In a primary election marked by low voter turnout statewide, Montgomery County distinguished itself by caring the least.
Only 102,263 out of 630,254 eligible county voters bothered to participate in yesterday's poll, which effectively decided our next county executive and council, governor and who we will send to the General Assembly and Congress, given Democrats' overwhelmingly advantage in party registration.
That's a voter turnout rate of 16.23 percent, the lowest in the state.
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| Maryland Board of Elections |
I won't even go into the fact that Montgomery voters overwhelmingly spurned two home-grown gubernatorial candidates in favor of Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, a former Prince George's County delegate. Everyone has their reasons for choosing a candidate.
But in an election characterized by a hotly contested county executive race and open council and State House seats, fewer than one out of six of Montgomery County's voters showed up yesterday or during eight days of early voting that ended Thursday.
You want to know how pathetic that is? Baltimore County reported a higher turnout, with 105,088 citizens voting, even though Montgomery County has 47.9 percent more eligible voters. That's a rate of 24.67 percent of voters who performed their most basic duty. Baltimore County's turnout rate beat Montgomery by 52 percent.
I should note that from its lofty perch where it sees little on the ground in Maryland, the Washington Post editorialized on election day that the primary vote should be moved back to September to improve turnout. The date was changed to "comply with a new federal law making it easier for overseas service members to vote. The law requires that absentee ballots be mailed 45 days in advance of federal elections in November; officials said a September date didn’t provide enough time." But it seems that June is a month for vacations and such, when folks (like WPost editors?) have no time to vote or pay attention to the hundreds of campaign flyers and email clogging their mailboxes.
The problem is that the WPost argument doesn't pass the numbers test. State election results show that the primary turnout has been dismal in Maryland, and especially in Montgomery, no matter when it is held.
For the 2010 gubernatorial primary held in September, Montgomery County had a 20 percent voter turnout rate, compared to 25.4 percent statewide. For the 2012 presidential primary staged in April, MoCo turned out 15.8 percent, compared to 18.8 percent statewide.
What we have here is a bunch of lazy saps, especially in Montgomery County, with its huge population of professionally politically engaged types like federal workers, congressional staff, lobbyists, association officials, union activists, random lawyers and fundraisers and assorted other percentage-takers.
For the 102,263 Montgomery County residents who voted this time, you can pat yourselves on the backs for caring who represents you.
For the 527,991 losers who are eligible to vote but wouldn't get off their asses, you can go to hell, because you have affirmed the contempt Annapolis holds for Montgomery County.
So, no more whining when the General Assembly screws us once again at budget time and cheats us of desperately needed funding to operate our overcrowded schools or to build new ones.Your complaints about high taxes and Montgomery County's function as the state ATM will be ignored.
Nobody in Annapolis will care about our overwhelmed subway and road systems.
Montgomery County had the opportunity to show Annapolis that we're pissed off about getting pissed on and instead most voters pissed away the chance.
You didn't vote. So you don't count.
Friday, June 20, 2014
Crowded schools threaten economic growth in Silver Spring and throughout Montgomery County
By Sonny Goldreich
Popular (and Fox News-fevered) imagination holds that Montgomery County schools are overrun and overwhelmed by a wave of immigrant children, especially in the Silver Spring corridor.
And there is some truth in that view. But it’s also true that the county is trying to cope with a wave of privileged white students, with some of the most crowded schools in Bethesda and the new boomtown area of Clarksburg.
The fact is that the county remains a popular place to raise families but education resources are overtaxed for communities of all income levels and demographic backgrounds. That’s the case both for schools in the struggling Wheaton, Kennedy and Northwood clusters and for the nationally celebrated “W” high schools—Walt Whitman, Walter Johnson and Winston Churchill.
That’s the message in the new Fiscal Year 2015 Annual School Test approved last week, which determines whether there will be a moratorium or payments imposed on home developers who want to build where classrooms are overcrowded.
So many schools are overcrowded at various levels that some new residential development could be blocked by a moratorium, which kicks in when a school cluster exceeds 120 percent of enrollment capacity.
The very real possibility exists of a housing development moratorium this year—which could impact the Georgia Avenue corridor stretching from Wheaton to Glenmont—because of severe overcrowding currently afflicting area schools. That’s because middle schools in the Wheaton High School cluster already are at 119.2 percent utilization. So the area faces a possible development halt when fiscal year 2015 starts July 1, if any new housing is approved and the rate ticks above 120 percent.
Wheaton High School itself is not considered a problem because it is now only 21 students above its 1,320 capacity and it will have room to grow to enrollment of 1,596, with a new facility and separate Edison High School next door now under construction.
Elsewhere at the high school level, Clarksburg also faces a possible moratorium, with a 116 percent utilization rate. In Bethesda, Whitman’s rate stands at 112.7 percent, followed by Walter Johnson (112.6 percent).
New housing development already is subject to a special crowded school facility payment in 16 of the county’s 25 high school clusters. The fee kicks in when high, middle or elementary schools exceed 105 percent of their enrollment capacity. The payment rate is $19,514 per elementary school student, $25,411 per middle school student, and $28,501 per high school student.
In the Silver Spring and Downcounty area, Blair has a 113.5 percent utilization rate at the middle school level, followed by Northwood (112.8 percent for middle schools and 111.9 percent for the high school). Einstein High School has a 108.6 percent rate and Kennedy’s middle school level is at 107 percent.
The somewhat contrary lesson to be learned is that county officials need to encourage more growth—commercial growth, especially east of Connecticut Avenue—by lowering tax and planning barriers. That would add the kind of high-paying private sector jobs that broaden the corporate and personal income tax base in Montgomery County as it faces a future of limited federal government expansion.
You won’t find any hint of that challenge in the latest school test report, which, as always, is a relatively bloodless document. It makes no reference to zoning density or gridlock traffic.
But there is a telling detail that suggests how the economy has hit even Montgomery County’s rich. The report noted that a “pronounced increase in enrollment is also attributed to students entering MCPS from nonpublic schools. This trend is driven by the reputation of the public schools and, more recently, to the impacts of the recession on households’ ability to afford nonpublic schools.”
The report also notes that very little enrollment growth is due to the proliferation of new multifamily housing built before and after the recession.
The report said that “There are many more existing homes available for resale, and rental units for lease, than there are new residential units coming on the market in any given year. Therefore, turnover of existing residential units has a much greater impact on enrollment change than new home sales and new apartment rentals.”
As always, the Planning Board routinely approved the report June 12 without raising basic issues like high taxes, the school test scores achievement gap, language hurdles, or racial and income demographics.
Those are the sort of red meat debates that have seized election year public attention, which was briefly captured by a county report in April that compared 11 high-poverty high schools in the Silver Spring and Gaithersburg areas to 14 low-poverty high schools serving Bethesda, Chevy Chase, Potomac and other neighborhoods.
Overall, the Office of Legislative Oversight (OLO) study described a back-to-the-future Montgomery County similar to 60 years ago, that has become unofficially resegregated despite the 1954 Supreme Court Brown vs. Board of Education ruling that declared separate black and white schools unconstitutional.
The report finds “an increase in the stratification of MCPS high schools by income, race, and ethnicity. OLO also finds that the achievement gap between high- and low-poverty high schools has widened among a majority of measures considered,” including graduation rates, dropout rates and college admission test performance.
The county Board of Education will likely struggle this year with how to address the fact that its system of student choice and magnet programs has failed to close the achievement gap or better integrate schools in the Downcounty and Northeast consortia or the Gaithersburg area. The obvious answer—creating magnet programs countywide and opening high-performing schools to all students—is an obvious non-starter, given the prohibitive political clout of the W schools’ parents.
So that will leave the Planning Board and the County Council tasked with creating a regulatory and tax environment that will steer much more future commercial development to Montgomery’s east side, which will attract high-performing students.
Let’s hope they remember that when the election is over.
Popular (and Fox News-fevered) imagination holds that Montgomery County schools are overrun and overwhelmed by a wave of immigrant children, especially in the Silver Spring corridor.
And there is some truth in that view. But it’s also true that the county is trying to cope with a wave of privileged white students, with some of the most crowded schools in Bethesda and the new boomtown area of Clarksburg.
The fact is that the county remains a popular place to raise families but education resources are overtaxed for communities of all income levels and demographic backgrounds. That’s the case both for schools in the struggling Wheaton, Kennedy and Northwood clusters and for the nationally celebrated “W” high schools—Walt Whitman, Walter Johnson and Winston Churchill.
That’s the message in the new Fiscal Year 2015 Annual School Test approved last week, which determines whether there will be a moratorium or payments imposed on home developers who want to build where classrooms are overcrowded.
So many schools are overcrowded at various levels that some new residential development could be blocked by a moratorium, which kicks in when a school cluster exceeds 120 percent of enrollment capacity.
 |
| Wheaton High School is not overcrowded and a new facility is under construction. But its middle school cluster already is so far beyond capacity that it could trigger a moratorium on new housing. |
Wheaton High School itself is not considered a problem because it is now only 21 students above its 1,320 capacity and it will have room to grow to enrollment of 1,596, with a new facility and separate Edison High School next door now under construction.
Elsewhere at the high school level, Clarksburg also faces a possible moratorium, with a 116 percent utilization rate. In Bethesda, Whitman’s rate stands at 112.7 percent, followed by Walter Johnson (112.6 percent).
New housing development already is subject to a special crowded school facility payment in 16 of the county’s 25 high school clusters. The fee kicks in when high, middle or elementary schools exceed 105 percent of their enrollment capacity. The payment rate is $19,514 per elementary school student, $25,411 per middle school student, and $28,501 per high school student.
In the Silver Spring and Downcounty area, Blair has a 113.5 percent utilization rate at the middle school level, followed by Northwood (112.8 percent for middle schools and 111.9 percent for the high school). Einstein High School has a 108.6 percent rate and Kennedy’s middle school level is at 107 percent.
The somewhat contrary lesson to be learned is that county officials need to encourage more growth—commercial growth, especially east of Connecticut Avenue—by lowering tax and planning barriers. That would add the kind of high-paying private sector jobs that broaden the corporate and personal income tax base in Montgomery County as it faces a future of limited federal government expansion.
You won’t find any hint of that challenge in the latest school test report, which, as always, is a relatively bloodless document. It makes no reference to zoning density or gridlock traffic.
But there is a telling detail that suggests how the economy has hit even Montgomery County’s rich. The report noted that a “pronounced increase in enrollment is also attributed to students entering MCPS from nonpublic schools. This trend is driven by the reputation of the public schools and, more recently, to the impacts of the recession on households’ ability to afford nonpublic schools.”
The report also notes that very little enrollment growth is due to the proliferation of new multifamily housing built before and after the recession.
The report said that “There are many more existing homes available for resale, and rental units for lease, than there are new residential units coming on the market in any given year. Therefore, turnover of existing residential units has a much greater impact on enrollment change than new home sales and new apartment rentals.”
As always, the Planning Board routinely approved the report June 12 without raising basic issues like high taxes, the school test scores achievement gap, language hurdles, or racial and income demographics.
Those are the sort of red meat debates that have seized election year public attention, which was briefly captured by a county report in April that compared 11 high-poverty high schools in the Silver Spring and Gaithersburg areas to 14 low-poverty high schools serving Bethesda, Chevy Chase, Potomac and other neighborhoods.
Overall, the Office of Legislative Oversight (OLO) study described a back-to-the-future Montgomery County similar to 60 years ago, that has become unofficially resegregated despite the 1954 Supreme Court Brown vs. Board of Education ruling that declared separate black and white schools unconstitutional.
The report finds “an increase in the stratification of MCPS high schools by income, race, and ethnicity. OLO also finds that the achievement gap between high- and low-poverty high schools has widened among a majority of measures considered,” including graduation rates, dropout rates and college admission test performance.
The county Board of Education will likely struggle this year with how to address the fact that its system of student choice and magnet programs has failed to close the achievement gap or better integrate schools in the Downcounty and Northeast consortia or the Gaithersburg area. The obvious answer—creating magnet programs countywide and opening high-performing schools to all students—is an obvious non-starter, given the prohibitive political clout of the W schools’ parents.
So that will leave the Planning Board and the County Council tasked with creating a regulatory and tax environment that will steer much more future commercial development to Montgomery’s east side, which will attract high-performing students.
Let’s hope they remember that when the election is over.
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
You read it here first
After a month online, it's time for That's Silver Spring to beat its chest a little.
Today, the Gazette (the Washington Post local that killed my commercial real estate column after nine years in April), finally chased my June 12th story on redevelopment of The Blairs, which is the biggest project to move forward in Silver Spring since Discovery Communications moved there in 2003.
So what else have the Gazette and its owner, The Washington Post, not been covering?
How about the future of the National Labor College, which had been a source of burning concern for both the Gazette and the Post? Well, neither has bothered to chase my story that the Amalgamated Transit Union plans to buy the prime property in the White Oak science gateway area.
And neither has followed my story that another furniture store has moved into the space vacated by Giant Food in Plaza Del Mercado, where nearby residents have been calling and petitioning and praying for a new grocery store.
And neither news outlet cares enough about my backyard to duplicate my report that WMATA plans to demolish and redevelop the abandoned KFC eyesore it owns next to the Glenmont Metro station.
And finally, neither of my Big Print rivals care like I do that Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett has sharpened a stick to spur redevelopment in his neighborhood by soliciting plans to build a grocery store next to where Giant Food stands in the way of repopulating the almost empty Burtonsville Crossing strip mall.
So, keep reading the Gazette or Washington Post if you want to hire a handyman. But read That's Silver Spring first if you want the news.
Today, the Gazette (the Washington Post local that killed my commercial real estate column after nine years in April), finally chased my June 12th story on redevelopment of The Blairs, which is the biggest project to move forward in Silver Spring since Discovery Communications moved there in 2003.
So what else have the Gazette and its owner, The Washington Post, not been covering?
How about the future of the National Labor College, which had been a source of burning concern for both the Gazette and the Post? Well, neither has bothered to chase my story that the Amalgamated Transit Union plans to buy the prime property in the White Oak science gateway area.
And neither has followed my story that another furniture store has moved into the space vacated by Giant Food in Plaza Del Mercado, where nearby residents have been calling and petitioning and praying for a new grocery store.
And neither news outlet cares enough about my backyard to duplicate my report that WMATA plans to demolish and redevelop the abandoned KFC eyesore it owns next to the Glenmont Metro station.
And finally, neither of my Big Print rivals care like I do that Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett has sharpened a stick to spur redevelopment in his neighborhood by soliciting plans to build a grocery store next to where Giant Food stands in the way of repopulating the almost empty Burtonsville Crossing strip mall.
So, keep reading the Gazette or Washington Post if you want to hire a handyman. But read That's Silver Spring first if you want the news.
Thursday, June 12, 2014
Tower scales back first phase in giant redevelopment of The Blairs complex
By Sonny Goldreich
The Tower Cos. has scaled back the size of the first two
residential buildings in its massive redevelopment of The Blairs complex in
Silver Spring, under a site plan the firm filed with Montgomery County.
The ultimate 20-year build-out still calls for a 3.8
million-square-foot gateway neighborhood bordering DC, which would double the
number of existing residential units to 2,800 and the amount of commercial
space to 450,000 square feet. The site plan will not be available to the public until it is assigned to a county Department of Planning reviewer by the end of the month, but the first two apartment buildings have been redesigned to present less of a monolithic face to Eastern Avenue, according to company officials who have been conducting meetings with community groups in recent weeks.
What that means is the two apartment buildings will offer a combined 500 units, instead of the 527 included in the master and preliminary plans approved last year. Tower’s goal is to welcome the public to enjoy the acres of parks and new retail space as commuters come off the nearby Metro subway or drive by on their way home from work.
What that means is the two apartment buildings will offer a combined 500 units, instead of the 527 included in the master and preliminary plans approved last year. Tower’s goal is to welcome the public to enjoy the acres of parks and new retail space as commuters come off the nearby Metro subway or drive by on their way home from work.
“This will not be a walled off, private development. This
will be something that you’re really encouraged to interact with your neighbors,”
Luis Bernardo, principal and partner at Design Collective, the project’s architect,
said at a Blairs community meeting last month, which can be watched online. “We’ve really scaled down the project and had it stepped down to the community.”
The first 275-unit building will reach a height of 14 floors
nearest the center of the 28-acre complex. The second 225-unit structure will
max out at 18 floors. But they both will step down to seven floors, then five, along
Eastern Avenue. The units fronting Eastern will look like town houses, similar to the Blair Towns, a 78-unit apartment project on the Colesville Road side of the complex that Tower completed in 2004.
“The original plan had 14 stories coming all the way up to
Eastern Avenue,” Bernardo said.
The buildings also will feature design elements that mark a
dramatic break with the drab uniform red brick of the vacant four 5-story Blair
Towers buildings that were completed in 1959 and the neighboring 1960s-era
glass high-rises. Plans include several types of windows, masonry color and
roof gardens to provide “a very rich and complex read to the architecture that
wasn’t present in the earlier buildings,” Bernardo said.
The first two apartment buildings will focus construction on the
lower half of the property bordering DC. In the upper half, Tower plans to
redevelop 85,196 square feet of retail and restaurant space, which includes a
54,000-square-foot Giant Foods grocery store that has 10 years left on its
lease.
Ultimately, the project calls for a total of 125,000-square-feet
of retail, a 200-room hotel and a 200,000-square-foot office building, which
will replace a 72,562 square-foot one. The hotel and office space are part of Tower's Phase 2 site plan, which has not yet been submitted to the county.
The Blairs complex sits within easy walking distance of the
Metro and is bounded on the northwest by Colesville Road, on the south by Blair
Mill Road, on the northeast by East-West Highway and on the southwest by
Eastern Avenue.
Demolition of the four Blair Towers buildings should start
later this year after permit approval, with site plan clearance expected by the
end of the year, according to Sri Velamati, Tower’s vice president of
development. Construction on the first building should start by the middle of
2015 with delivery by the end of 2016. The construction of the smaller
building should be completed by late 2017.
The buildings will share an underground parking garage,
which is part of Tower’s broader goal to “turn parking lots into parks,” Velamati
said during the community meeting last month.
The firm sped up plans for a public dog park, which will be
part of the first phase construction, rather than follow after the two apartment buildings are completed, as originally planned.
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