The county planning board has selected a preliminary design for its new Silver Spring headquarters. The project, which will sit on Georgia Avenue and Spring Street, will include more than 300 residential units.
At Thursday morning’s meeting, the planning board agreed to negotiate with SilverPlace LLC for their preliminary design of the board’s new headquarters.
The proposed nine-story glass and masonry building will sit on Spring Street, directly across the street from Fairview Road Park. The building’s green features include an east-west orientation that takes advantage of natural light, a “garden” for collecting rain water, and a green roof.
The remainder of the 3.2-acre lot will hold an eight-story residential building at the corner of Georgia Avenue and Spring Street, and four- and five-story apartment buildings along new and existing roadways. SilverPlace LLC believes it can build 358 residential units, 91 of which will be sold as condominuims.
Access will come from three proposed points along Spring Street’s curvature, the existing Planning Place, and a proposed northward extension of Fenton Street. The roadways will permit reduced-speed vehicular traffic through a landscaped, European-inspired plaza.
The plaza will incorporate 47,000 square feet of ground-level retail, a cascading water feature and a two-story supermarket near Georgia Avenue. The overall plan leaves room for a prospective office building at the corner of the Fenton Street extension and Cameron Street.
According to planning department staff, the design was chosen for its architectural design, land use, layout of retail space and number of residential units. The design also does not require county subsidies for residential development.
Illustrations by Bozzuto Developers.
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Good find! I love the size of this project (almost too much). But I HATE the P&P New headquarters building design, it is UGLY!
That is actually minor though in the great scheme of things. A least it has the potential to be changed.
The best parts of this project are the additional office space and bio-spring.
Oh yeah, Silver Spring’s own Torti Gallas will design the residential portion. They will finally design something in Silver Spring after a long while.
The site plan shown does not indicate what is proposed along Spring Street from opposite Fairview Park to Georgia Avenue. Neither does it show what is proposed for along Georgia Avenue. A residential neighborhood is across Spring Street from the site. The height and massing of whatever is being proposed needs to be sensitive to the residents across the street. This is along the very edge of the business district. It should be built with sensitivity to its residential neighbors.
Four- and five-story residential buildings will hug the curvature of Spring as it bends towards Georgia. An eight-story residential building will sit at the corner and wrap around Georgia.
Opposite the park on Spring, the development unfolds into a plaza (above), with the planning board’s new digs to the south.
Thanks for your comments!
I have just one word for this . . . COOL! and I love the “green building aspect of it”, Thanks for the scoop.
I have several questions, and a pending email to Mike Reilly the project manager.
1. How high do you plan to build on Spring street facing Woodside Park? In my view, the structures facing Woodside park should not be very high at all.
2. Is there green space in this development?
The picture starts to explain that, but it is too small to judge
3. What can be done to keep folks from cutting through Woodside Park to get to the Silver Place?
This remains a really big question.
4. Are you planning on keeping the median strip on Spring Street. I hope so. To that end, when are you going to replant the median, the oaks there are all dying?
Cutting into the median would lead to a big fight, in my opinion.
5. I would like to see the next set of drawings when you release them. Are other drawings available now? Is a model available?
I sent these five questions to Mike Reilly. He is the project manager. The comments afterwards were just added.
Joe
1207 Ballard Street
Silver Spring Maryland
Based on the rather outrageous density of the EDGE project, the space “reserved,” for a speculative office building should be left as green space.
You can find a few more illustrations of the planning board’s new headquarters at this website.
The depiction of the plaza (above) was photographed at a planning board meeting last October, when three developers pitched for the project. What you see here is what they offered there and then.
BTW, you can click on the thumbnails to enlarge the images a little.
Thanks again for all your comments!
I have to strongly agree with the comment that the P & P building is ugly. You can do much better than that.
We are getting a group together to make sure that the needs of the community are met. Send me an email if you are interested.
Editor’s note: Please send responses directly to Joseph Boggi.
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