Planning board commissioners made it clear Thursday that if MoCo exec Ike Leggett wants The Fillmore in downtown Silver Spring, he’d better kiss their collective bumper — just kiss it!
A loud discussion — on whether to allow the planned Colesville Road music hall to satisfy public-space requirements for an adjacent sister project — got louder when commissioners and Fillmore groupies crossed paths.
Jean Redicker, president of Silver Spring’s chamber of commerce and a Fillmore fan, argued that a planned pedestrian path running through the sister project’s site should be scratched from the hood’s sector plan. It’s a straight-up bad idea, she testified.
“It ranks up there with the Forest Glen Bridge,” Redicker said. “As a woman, I wouldn’t use it. It’s got to go.”
And that’s when things got ugly.
“How in the world can that determination be made if a plan [for the sister project] hasn’t been filed?” planning board chair Royce Hanson said, sounding just a little ticked. “Aren’t you making a wild guess that the board would deliberately create an unsafe path?”
With that, Hanson opened the first can of worms. According to a proposed zoning change, The Fillmore’s developer wouldn’t need a game plan for the sister project for up to 10 years, even 15 years if necessary. And it’s that player to be named later that didn’t sit well with Hanson, he expressed.
Planning commish John Robinson was a little more direct with his objection to scrapping the path. “Safety has nothing to do with this,” he told Fillmore groupies.
The project’s developer, he said, “doesn’t want the uncertainty of a path that adversely affects the economics. The safety stuff is a red herring to find a way to knock out the sector-plan requirement that the county executive or developer finds inconvenient.”
Can of worms number two: Another proposed zoning change gives the music-hall’s sister project a pass on the pathway if the PD determined it would create an unsafe environment. That hook “takes away the board’s ability to weigh that kind of public benefit,” newly appointed commish Amy Presley said.
“If you want to go through a charade where the county executive directs the chief of police to make a finding that the path is unsafe, then okay,” commissioner Robinson threw out there. “But let’s not fool ourselves.”
Diane Schwartz-Jones, an assistant chief administrative officer for MoCo exec Ike Leggett, admitted the proposed changes had more to do with the cost of doing business in Montgomery County.
“We’re not going to get people to go at risk, to pay the money to go through the [regulatory] reviews if there’s no certainty that the [project] plan will be accepted,” Schwartz-Jones told the board.
Thus popped open can of worms number three: The complicated land-for-music swap that tied the county, the Lee Development Group and concert promoter Live Nation in a fat Gordian knot costing $8 million in public funds.
Leggett gave the project a green light last summer to feed downtown’s economic redevelopment — to the dismay of those who wanted a smaller, gentler Birchmere club on the site, as well as those who wanted a second 9:30 Club.
If the proposed zoning change bites the dust, “it reinforces the idea that Montgomery County is closed for business,” the chamber of commerce’s Redicker warned.
The board’s new guy grew a little misty. Commish Joe Alfandre called the meshugas “a heartache ['... nothin' but a heartache ...'], like a family tearing itself apart.”
“This is our Rockefeller Center, but it’s the devil in the details that’s getting to us,” Alfandre said.
Photos by Ron Pace and Jennifer Deseo, for The Silver Spring Penguin.
August 21, 2008
9 Comments at "Music hall trips over planning board’s path"
What a bunch of BS.
I want a music hall in DTSS, but this is the absolutely wrong way to go about getting this done. It was Lee Development Group that sat on the property for 18 years and have decided to keep the “sister project” aka the parking lot adjacent to their building undeveloped. It’s illegal for legislation to be passed to benefit one entity and look at what is happening right now. The Lee Development Group wants to change the laws so that they can give a property they’ve let fall by the wayside in order to get more time to develop a nearby property– property that in 10-15 years will probably double in value.
Public amenities come at the end of projects, not at the beginning, and to call the Fillmore a public amenity is one stretch of the truth. Parks & community centers are public amenities, not private music halls operated by multi-national corporations. First 8 million in taxpayer funds (that could be used to cover the massive budget shortfall), then a change in the liquor laws, then the extension of the A&E tax credits, and now this. PLEASE.
I want to hear the music, but frankly I don’t want it coming from the Fillmore or whatever branded chain music venue Live Nation wants us to pay for. We can do better than this.
RW makes some excellent points. And I am truly tired of the stinky Swiss cheese mess that our zoning is becoming. Anbody can do whatever they darn please with their own hairstyle. But land is a different matter.
Thank you, Jennifer for covering this meeting. Too many editors think ZZZzzzz when they think of zoning. But zoning is about land, and land is literally the base for everything we do in this world.
Speaking of paths and bridges: the missus and I were having dinner in Abol on Saturday night (sheesh, has that place gone downhill fast!), and were discussing how that side of Colesville Road could really use a bridge to the AFI side, to make it more convenient for pedestrians to get from that busier side to the restaurants on the Abol side of the street.
The missus pointed out a large glass wall right above the Roundhouse Theater (something I’d never noticed as a pedestrian), and it seems that this would be the ideal beginning point for a glass-enclosed bridge over Colesville, with entry/exit points on both sides of the sidewalk.
Just thought I’d express that, as well as express my support for replacing the Fillmore with the Birchmere, but getting something –any music hall — finally built.
Quoting from the story:
Wow. According to Leggett’s representative, we need to assure development applicants that their proposals will be approved or they won’t propose to build anything. If that is the case, why bother having a planning and review process at all. And Leggett was the slow growth candidate!
Leaving evil multi-national corporations aside, I thought Mr. Leggett had negotiated a preaty good deal with Live Nation…where’s the give and take now that it’s getting to crunch time? I hope we don’t blow this one because everyone wants to be the smartest kid in the room. Silver Spring is a city, and as such buildings in it’s central core should be designed as such. I don’t recall any tot-lot’s outside of Carnegie Hall! We don’t need another dangerous and never-used pocket park, we need a thriving Music venue to help bring life to DTSS.
After a careful reading of the legislation and hearing/reading a number of opinions one way or another, I will be asking the council to support the legislation for the following reasons.
1. The ZTA represents a welcome change in the process, one that reverses the order in which communities can receive and benefit from a public amenity before a project is built, rather than some unspecified time in the future. This is why we still don’t have a civic building downtown after all these years.
2. I believe that reversing the process provides a powerful incentive for a developer to deliver the amenity as promised. Otherwise, the county could simply withhold approval of the final project. As it is, it appears there is virtually no enforcement of these kinds of agreements until and unless the situation becomes egregious. Remember Clarksburg? And nothing happened to resolve that situation until citizens put a lot of their own time and energy into bringing it to the county’s attention.
3. The ZTA provides an additional boost to projects that improve an arts and entertainment district, which means other A&E districts will benefit—Bethesda, Wheaton or any other district that may be designated in the future. Public support for the arts is a long-standing, appropriate and accepted practice, and I believe this action is part of that tradition.
4. The extended time allowed for a project approval is appropriate and necessary because it accounts for the fact that a developer may not have a viable project lined up. Remember, under the current process, a developer first brings a specific project to the table and then amenities are a part of the approval discussion. To get to that point may well have taken years of the developer’s time, which is not part of the current clock. This ZTA takes that part of the process into account, recognizing the time it takes to find anchor tenants with letters of intent, etc., or whatever else is needed to produce something that looks viable, doable and appropriate for the location.
5. I do not believe that master plans, sector plans and the like should be treated as sacred texts. They are a guide, but were never intended to envision all circumstances, which of course is impossible. After all, even the Constitution is amended when an appropriate public good is identified. This change to benefit arts and entertainment opportunities in the county is to my mind an appropriate public good that is sufficient reason to pass this legislation.
6. The national entertainment community, via their trade press, as well as the development community, is closely watching this process. If this project goes down in flames, especially after the Birchmere debacle, there will be serious damage done to our county’s reputation as a place to build and grow businesses. In this economic climate, that is especially worrisome.
First off, let me state I wanted Birchmere. But what has bugged me from the start of this fiasco is the private deal making. It started with the Birchmere, ended with the Fillmore. As a taxpaying resident of SS/MoCo county I don’t see why this wasn’t opened up for all music concerns to bid on? With an open process I strongly believe we’d have gotten a much better financial deal. It may have even precluded some of the power play and pissing contests now going on.
My daughter sat in a temporary classroom last year (sadly not uncommon) and the county is making private sweetheart deals. I know that that 8mil if saved wouldn’t end up in the county school budget. It’s just that it reeks of the overspending that’s killing us all. Let the music venues bid and lets make a better deal. That’s the absolute fairest solution. It seems too far gone at this point to start it all over again, but I’d welcome it.
I appreciate your comments, Dad Report. But as you said:
Looking forward, how should county residents proceed in the matter of this zoning change? Thumbs up? Or thumbs down?
Jennifer, You’re right. I’m a realist enough to know this should go forward now, still irks me though. As far as the zoning changes go I think we’ve given more than enough in this deal. I would deny that. 15 years is too long. I’ll be dead by the time the first spade of dirt turns over at that rate. I don’t think it’s too much to ask to see what the benefactors of this deal have in mind there and when.
I’m also sick of Ike’s whining that no one will want to deal with Silver Spring if this thing tanks or gets messier than it is now. Money is money, and there is always another deal. I think Ike and his minions need to work better with the planning board, et al. There is a “we know best, please step to the side” tenor to their comments.
Music schmusic build something already and stop this mishegas. What with the arguing, the yelling, the . . .
Holler back.