Renderings for mixed-use development at Georgia Avenue and Spring Street have been gestating for nine months, but the planning board’s top commissioner says the bun isn’t ready to leave the oven.
“I want to make it very clear that the board has not approved any specific design concept for the project, and it will not do so until there has been an opportunity for full and meaningful public participation,” board chair Royce Hanson wrote in a letter posted Friday.
The project — dubbed Silver Place — would drop housing, retailers and possibly office space on the site now occupied by the planning department’s headquarters. The department also would get a new mother ship out of the development deal.
Some residents of Woodside and Woodside Park have criticized the project’s transparency and worried that the housing element — and the perceived congestion that comes with it — would steer the project.
At least three articles this summer — first on The Penguin, then in the Gazette and Washington Post — have publicized the residents’ concerns.
“You’re not just the regulator, you’re the beneficiary,” one unnamed resident was quoted in The Penguin article. “It must have some oversight.”
Hanson’s letter attempted to wipe the sweat from some brows.
“We are still a few steps away from starting the design process, which cannot begin until we have agreed on roles of the respective team members and have secured an appropriation of funds to support the process, including public participation,” he wrote.
This Thursday, the full planning board meets with its legal team to draft a memorandum of understanding for the project. The memo, Hanson explained, concerns the responsibilities of the public and private partners, not the buildings’ locations, size or design.
Because contract negotiations are involved, the memo will be drafted behind closed doors, Hanson wrote. Public meetings will be held after the memo is hammered out.
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The proposed Silver Place is within the central business district and should have the same high occupancy and density that other buildings in the zone have. If residents of Woodside Park are upset because this smart growth design may be too high for them or create too much traffic, then that is too bad.
“The proposed Silver Place is within the central business district and should have the same high occupancy and density that other buildings in the zone have.”
That’s a bit of an oversimplification. The site is on the very edge of the CBD – past Spring, it’s all residential on Georgia until you hit 16th. This development is literally being built next door to them – is it really so improper to consider their desires as well?
I still think that “Woodside is the enemy” is completely overblown, I may add. I’m friendly with at least a couple dozen families in that area, and I’ve never heard them ever say anything negative about the revitalization of downtown Silver Spring. Quite the opposite – most of them are delighted that the neighborhood isn’t the crime-ridden ghetto it used to be.
As a Woodside Park resident who has been following this closely, I must point out that I have never heard any Woodside Park resident oppose development of the Silver Place parcel. No one wants to save the current parking lot. The concerns are, first, that the development across Spring Street from our neighborhood, especially from Fairview Park west to Georgia Avenue, not tower over our houses and townhouses and that the new construction is set back a little rather than being right on the curb or sidewalk. The townhouses on 2nd Avenue across near the Metro station would be a good example of the kind of siting and height that would be fine. This is the edge of the CBD and the development should recognize the transition to residential.
Second, we are concerned that the M-NCPPC is both the regulator and the client for this project. That is an inherent conflict of interest and something needs to be established to ensure that the M-NCPPC applies the same standards to their own project as they apply to every other project.
I lived in downtown SS for a few years before buying.a home in the burbs. Its many things, but ghetto isn’t one of them. Cabrini Green, Robert Taylor Homes and Liberty City are ghettos. Woodside? Not so much.
Let’s stick to basic NIMBY arguements and leave broad cultural generalizations out here, please.
Life was simple in the 50’s, but the US population has doubled since then and growth is inevitable. We are inside the beltway, and we have 2 choices. We can become a first class entity through our own development, or DC’s doormat. DC will keep growing, and no matter what happens with the projected Silver Place, that area will be totally different in 20 years. We can mark our territory now, or wait till DC sprawls over and through our fair city.
AverageBro…since you want to talk about broad cultural generalizations, the communities you bring up might not quite fit the actual definition of ghetto either. Seems we all want to use the word to overemphasize what we believe to be less than desireable.
The first use seems the harshest:
[Origin: 1605–15;
The first use seems the harshest:
[Origin: 1605–15;
OK, let’s try again:
Origin: 1605–15; It, orig. the name of an island near Venice where Jews were forced to reside in the 16th century Venetian, lit., foundry for artillery (giving the island its name), n. deriv. of ghettare to throw VL *jectāre; see jet1
Joe, I’m well aware of the origins of the word ghetto. The Venice ghettos you speak of were segregated from the rest of the city by gates, but were ecomonically self sufficient and in fact, quite prosperous. I seriously doubt that this is the definition the original poster alluded to. Judging by followup comments like the one about DC “spilling over” I’m pretty sure my assertion is correct.
Relax guys, SS won’t be turning into Barry Farms anytime soon. Exhale.
I was more exaggerating for effect. Being Jewish myself, I am quite well-aware of the original meaning of the word, thanks.
Let me restate what I meant: downtown Silver Spring has had a checkered past, and most Woodside residents are glad that it’s become a safe, friendly, upper-class place.
Getting back to my original point, Woodsiders simply don’t want the new development across the street from them. Sure, they wanted the revitalization to occur half a mile from their homes, but not across the street.
The suggestion of duplicating the townhouses by the Metro station is comparing apples and oranges. Those townhouses were the first residential structures in the CBD for the new revitalization. They were simply a test case.
If Woodsiders are truly the limousine liberals I think they are, they should embrace smart growth, which begins in their backyard.
Borderline says: “Getting back to my original point, Woodsiders simply don’t want the new development across the street from them. Sure, they wanted the revitalization to occur half a mile from their homes, but not across the street.” This is uninformed nonsense. As I said earlier, I haven’t heard even one Woodside Park resident oppose development of the M-MCPPC headquarters site and parking lot. We are saying that development should be compatible with the site’s location at the very edge of the CBD and next to a residential neighborhood. In this regard, the M-NCPPC should simply apply the same standards it applies at the edge of all other CBDs to its own development project.
As I’ve argued in these comments sections before… either we have a CBD or we don’t. The CBD is only 360 acres, which comes to a little over half a square mile. If you want the exact calculations for my forthcoming argument here, look back to previous postings on this blog it’s in detail there. But the short of it, is that if you take a half block around the entire perimeter of the CBD you come up with over a third of the land area of the CBD. So if we’re going to place some “transitional area” requirement around the perimeter of the CBD, then we might as well have never zoned 1/3 of it CBD in the first place. The townhouses across the street are set back significatly, through a wooded park as it is. Requiring that we place ANOTHER land-wasting development like Cameron Hills inside the CBD will only further drive up the exponentially increasing cost of living in downtown. Populations are growing and people are moving back into cities, we can’t fight that. High population densities improve crime rates by increasing pedestrian traffic – particularly important during late night hours.. take a look at manhattan if you don’t believe me, not to mention the environmentally responsible stand of housing as many people as possible within walking distance to a city subway. Not and environmentalist? OK then take the fiscal stand. The more people commuting on the subway, the fewer of your tax dollars will need to subsidize it – The public subsidy for the NYC subway is HALF of Metro’s and the fares are STILL lower. Do we seriously need to make anymore arguments why the merits of population density in urban districts near mass transit FAR outweigh a tall building through a half a block of trees, 4 lanes of traffic and a wide center median across from someone’s townhouse.