A public-private development on Georgia Avenue has some residents worried about who’s in the driver’s seat.
The Silver Place project would put apartments, retail and a new planning department mother ship at the southeast corner of Georgia Avenue and Spring Street. However, some neighbors fear the housing element — and the perceived congestion that comes with it — would lead the charge.
“It seems we’re dancing around the driving force,” one unnamed man told residents and planning staffers at a meeting Tuesday night. The project’s priorities should be more clearly outlined, he suggested.
“You’re not just the regulator, you’re the beneficiary,” another unnamed man said. “It must have some oversight.”
Mike Riley, who has been managing the project for the planning department, explained the whole deal was in its infancy. A memorandum of understanding (MOU) — a nonbinding, rough outline of who’s responsible for what — is still in negotiations, he told residents.
Once the MOU is signed, the planning department must hit up the county council for funding. The department also must haggle for land on the project site that currently belongs to Silver Spring’s parking district, Riley explained.
Only then can the planning department carve agreements with developers in granite.
“The MOU is really just the first step,” Riley told residents. “Until we execute it, there’s no mechanism for us to move forward and digest what we’ve heard [from residents].”
After the meeting, Riley told The Penguin he understood why residents were frustrated. Conceptual renderings of the project had not been redrawn, giving residents the impression that their earlier suggestions were ignored, he said.
Still, Riley had hope in the process. “I don’t think it’s ever too soon” to get the community involved, he said.
Barbara Ditzler, president of the Woodside Park Civic Association, agreed. Despite the disenfranchised taste in the community’s mouth, she was confident that changes to the project’s design would be made.
After all, “they could have just gone ahead and built it,” Ditzler said.
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Maybe developers and the county planning agency have reservations about the NIMBY resistance to projects. Local neighborhood folk don’t have degrees in architecture and planning; some ideas offered by local citizens don’t fit in the master plan.
The downtown area of Silver Spring is going through the biggest radical change in decades. Long-time residents of the Woodside communities are going through some shock at the transformation. I can understand their concerns.
Do you know if the spec office space that was 150,000 square feet is still part of the plans?
Regarding the speculative office space along Georgia Avenue, it’s still in the game plan.
Also, the planning board mother ship has grown from 120,000 sq ft to 170,000 sq ft. Planning staffer Mike Riley said The Gazette’s earlier report of shrinking the auditorium — from 300 seats to fewer than 200 — were incorrect.
IHateYuppies might want to check his facts before he says “Local neighborhood folk don’t have degrees in architecture and planning.”
The neighborhoods around the CBD are full of knowledgeable professionals. For example, Woodside Park is home to several architects, including the architect responsible for the design of the covers being built over outdoor Metro escalators. And as far as planners are concerned, Woodside Park is the home one of the members of the Planning Board.
Woodside Park residents, through the Civic Association, are on the record as being concerned with specific aspects of the project, such as the massing and height of the buildings to be built along Spring Street, which is supposed to be a transition to the residential neighborhood on the other side of the street. There isn’t NIMBY opposition to the project itself.
He goes on to say “Long-time residents of the Woodside communities are going through some shock at the transformation.”
In fact long time residents, who lived through the CBD’s bad years, generally have been very supportive of appropriate redevelopment of downtown Silver Spring. Continuing deterioration of the CBD threatened the stability of the surrounding residential neighborhoods. Without the strong political support for the current redevelopment by the residents of the surrounding neighborhoods, it probably wouldn’t have happened.
After all, their opposition was a major factor in killing the huge ill-conceived “American Dream” mega-mall project, and they could have killed the current redevelopment to if they were all NIMBYs and IHateYuppies seems to think.
The same number of new citizens are going to enter the country every year. The same number of people are going to have babies. The same number of jobs are going to draw people to the washington region.
Build big tall residential building within walking distance to mass transit, and a larger percentage of the population is going to get to work using environmentally sustainable methods that take traffic OFF of the congested highways. Sure, some of those people will drive to work. But better they do it from downtown SS than from Columbia.
Restrictive “congestion” regulations and complaints should be banned from discussion of projects within 3/4 of a mile walking distance… 1 mile or so line of sight of any rail station, metro, marc or otherwise.
I love woodside, I do, it’s a beautiful neighborhood – but I can’t afford going-on 1mil for a home, and neither can a lot of other people. The more residential there is in walking distance of transit, the more people can afford to live in a sustainable manner.
That sight isn’t even within view of 95% of woodside, there’s MAYBE a dozen homes across spring street that will even be able to see it.
We need to continue developing the downtown core so that smart growth occurs. There are many areas of the core that are bordering sections of single family homes. This is a neccessary change that residents of those homes will have to adjust to.
Bob makes some good points. My concern is that the interests of the Woodside community might impede future developments in the downtown area.
I have always been suspicious about the motives of Woodside residents. The exchange between Councilman Elrich and several posters in the Silver Spring Scene blog further supports my feeling that Woodside residents want to curb economic development and residential projects. There are some fairly influential people who live in the Woodside community and they have the ear of key Montgomery County officials. A luxury that Silver Spring residents in LESS prosperous neighborhoods can afford.
We need more housing in downtown Silver Spring: more condos, more rentals. A higher supply of housing in DTSS means more affordable living for middle class people. The Woodsiders are more inclined to fight such developments because of traffic concerns–quality of life concerns.
In the end, this project will not be toned down because of some concerns of Woodside residents. Across the fairly wide and leafy Spring Street lay some townhomes behind even more trees, as well as a few other single family homes which are already exposed to the mid- to highrises less than a block away. We’ve got some amazing people working on this project, and you can be sure that the planners here will be working their butts off to get what they want, while also taking in public concerns (with the knowledge that the extremely small minority against the denser parts of this project will be the most vocal).
I forgot to add…
This is an opportunity to show the rest of the county and region what a mixed-use development should look like. Since the Planning Department is initiating this project, it will be looked upon as an example for developments across the area. If they mess up and don’t include denser residential, office space, as well as retail, the department will probably be derided in the future for not taking their own advice and creating a smart, transit-oriented development in a dense urban area.
I hope that ghastly Park and Planning headquarters design was completely thrown out. I really don’t know what the Smith Group was thinking; I think I vomited in my mouth a little bit when I first saw it.
You probably shouldn’t lump all Woodside residents in with the NIMBY group. Not only am I in favor of the development this site and others in the DTSS core, but everyone of my neighbors is as well. We all know that what is good for DTSS is good for us.
Woodsider is right. The only people that MIGHT have concerns are the ones who live directly across Spring Street from the development. As long as the development makes better use of its Georgia Avenue frontage and does not rely as much on Spring Street for traffic entrance/exits, traffic concerns of those in the adjacent should be kept to a minimum. As it is, it is not easy to get into that portion of Woodside from Spring Street. Spring is mostly used as a through street.
And while there are plenty of architects in Woodside, let’s not forget the Landscape Architects, Urban Planners (sometimes the same thing) and Civil Engineers…all of whom are not only able to read and understand the site specific plans, but are able to place the development within the context of the surrounding neighborhood (urban or residential). I personally know 2 or 3 of each that live within a few miles of here.
I’m interested in the comments so far and am looking forward to more discussion.
As a Woodside resident, I’m not opposed to the development of the site. It’s a great opportunity for a non-profit agency to create an exemplary model that may influence commercial development.
However, I don’t like the current plan, where the Park & Planning agency is turning over most of the site to standard commercial development in turn for a ca. $70M dollar headquarters that has expanded to 170,000 s.f. since the first design in February.
And they’re not even getting maximum residential occupancy. The residential developer is Bozutto, which has given this area the hit-and-run 5-story apartment wall at the convergence of Viers Mill & Georgia. Anything over 5 stories requires steel framing, which decreases the per-unit profit. So these apartment/condos will be 5 stories.
At this point we have no opportunity to be heard or discuss options because Park & Planning, which is both the beneficiary and regulator, has turned down requests to work with a community advisory committee or independent, outside planning agency.
Editor’s note: Just an FYI … Some posts have been appearing as long paragraphs. I’ve been breaking them down into smaller, easier-on-the-eye paragraphs with line breaks. Unless noted, none of the content has been edited. Thanks! — JD (Jul 13, 2007)