Third time the charm for sale of National Labor College?
The debt-crippled National Labor College announced that it
is selling its 46-acre Silver Spring
campus to the Amalgamated Transit Union, marking the third time in the past
year that the school said it found someone to take the prime property off its
hands.
No terms were released for the deal, which was disclosed
during the college’s final graduation commencement on April 26.
An announcement posted on its website Tuesday says simply, “it is
anticipated that the property that the College campus sits on will be sold by
the end of July to the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), so the beautiful
property will stay in the labor family, which is wonderful. The Workers
Memorial will also stay on the property, as ATU has agreed to serve as the host
for the memorial, and everyone at the ceremony on April 26 was very pleased
that the memorial did not have to be moved. We will all still be able to visit
a place that has meant so much to so many over the decades.”
http://www.nlc.edu/may2014/
http://www.nlc.edu/may2014/
The college has operated at the site immediately north of a
Beltway exit since 1974. The property has an assessed value of $44.8 million
but is considered to be worth far more, with the possibility of rezoning
allowing about 2 million square feet of development under the draft White Oak
master plan.
There were no details about the ATU’s plans for the site,
which sits at 10000 New Hampshire Avenue and includes the Lane Kirkland Center,
a 72,000-square-foot conference and training facility that opened in 2007 and
was closed and put on the market in 2012.
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| Lane Kirkland Center at National Labor College |
Also not talking is DC-based Monument Realty, which the
college announced in December struck a tentative deal to buy the property.
“We are still in negotiations with the National Labor
College but unfortunately cannot comment more than that,” Pam Zandy, the firm’s
media contact, said in an email message.
The Monument deal was announced last year following the earlier
unraveling of an agreement by the college to sell to a partnership between Reid
Temple African Methodist Episcopal Church and Housing Opportunities Commission
of Montgomery County.
The Reid Temple plan fell apart amid complaints that Montgomery
County officials questioned whether building a church and affordable housing
was the best use of the property. http://www.gazette.net/article/20130816/NEWS/130819458&template=gazette
The site offers prime footage in the heart of the proposed
White Oak science gateway, a high-density project that County Executive Ike
Leggett is pushing to bring thousands of well-paid jobs to the neglected eastern
corner of Montgomery. Right now, the area has a bunch of strip malls, a few small
medical buildings and little other private employment (unless Washington
Adventist Hospital wins approval to relocate). County officials are trying to
put in place a new White Oak master plan covering about 700 acres, which could
allow redevelopment of the labor college, a former gravel pit operation, two
large open-air shopping malls and thousands of multi-family apartment units. http://www.montgomeryplanning.org/community/wosg/#schedule
What the White Oak sector offers is the headquarters of the
federal Food and Drug Administration, which is undergoing a consolidation
program on the site of the old Naval Surface Weapons Center. Much of the FDA
move from Rockville and Bethesda is complete and when it is over, about 9,000
federal workers will be at the site, which is one mile north of the labor
college property.
The FDA is the driving force before the rewrite of the White
Oak master plan, which county officials hope will attract new jobs in the
manner of the I-270 biotech corridor. Of course, it could just end up a massive
zero-sum game hurting the west side of the county, if private contractors
feeding off of the FDA follow it to the White Oak area.
That could explain why county officials want to dictate the
shape and timing of redevelopment of the labor college, which could end up competing
with a public-private partnership to transform the nearby Percontee gravel pit
into a $3.2 billion life sciences village complete with office, laboratory, and residential
space.
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| Rendering by Torto Gallas and Partners |
The Leggett administration added 115 acres of county-owned land to the 185-acre Percontee site between U.S. 29 and Cherry Hill Road.
If approved by the County Council, the gravel site one day
could have 7 million square feet of commercial space and 5,360 residential
units and more than 10,000 new jobs. To accommodate that much growth, Percontee and the Leggett
administration pushed the Planning Board to scrap existing transportation
capacity standards in favor of an alternative development staging process tied
to a requirement that 30 percent of trips to the new White Oak sector be made
without cars.
Unfortunately, the council and the planning board have been
engaged in a game of tag since September over moving forward with the White Oak
master plan. The Planning Board twice sent a report recommending approval to
the council, which has batted back with a demand that the board address
concerns about an imbalance between development and transportation. The entire transportation
concept hinges on creation of a rapid bus system (or BRT [bus rapid transit] as
intermodal policy wonks insist on calling it to make it sound sort or railish) that
would create dedicated bus lanes on Rt. 29 and other major highways.
But the council passed a long-range transit plan in November
minus the Rt. 29 bus lanes in the Four Corners area southwest of the White Oak
sector, saying that the busy area has “very limited opportunities to expand the
right-of-way.”
With the County Council and the Planning Board stuck playing
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