For years, the Lee Development Group has run a parking lot off Georgia Avenue in downtown Silver Spring. But MoCo exec Ike Leggett would like to see another kind of business occupy that space: a new Fillmore music hall.
“We’ve been operating a viable parking business [there] for 18 years,” Bruce Lee, president of the Lee Development Group, told a small crew of local bloggers Thursday. “It’s successful as a parking business.”
But if the rock-n-roll gods are smiling on Silver Spring, a 2,000-seat concert venue will drop on the old JC Penney site on Colesville Road. The publicly funded project would take a 10,800 square-foot bite out of Lee’s lot on Georgia Avenue between Colesville Road and Cameron Street (above), and would open through the historic department-store facade along Colesville (below).
There are just a couple of hitches. While Lee’s company is willing to donate the undeveloped real estate, current zoning laws won’t allow the future music hall to qualify as the required public-use space for a larger, as yet unplanned sister project. Furthermore, Lee’s company would have no more than 15 years to pull that sister project together on the parking-lot site.
Two proposed zoning changes on the county council’s docket would untie that Gordian knot. However, the county planning board has already said no freakin’ way, believing the zoning changes trash any sway the board has on that player to be named later.
“We’re taking the risk because we’re putting ourselves on a timeline,” Lee argued. “We’re not ready to go at this point.”
Actually, the company hasn’t been ready to build on the parking-lot site for a while. In 1987, the family-owned company opened its adjacent Lee Plaza office building on the corner of Georgia and Colesville (below). But a slower-than-anticipated return on investment, plus the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s, left the company with a bad taste in its mouth.
“We sat empty for three years, and it broke our back,” Lee said. The company would never again build office space without leases signed and tenants ready to move in on day one, he added.
“The numbers have to work, they have to be economically viable,” he said. “I don’t know how long it’s going to take for the economy to turn around.”
Lee also didn’t know when plans for the parking lot’s development would be ready to go. (Originally, he asked for an 18-year window in which to hit the planning board with designs. That number was knocked down to 10 years with an optional 5-year extension.)
Still, the county exec’s office is eager to move on the music hall, Diane Schwartz Jones, Ike’s assistant chief administrative officer, told bloggers. The project has already bagged $8 million in public funds, a signed lease with concert promoter Live Nation, and Lee’s donated land, valued at $3 million, she said.
“This area [the north side of Colesville Road] has struggled with blighted conditions for 20 years,” Schwartz Jones (above) said. “We have the opportunity to fix a run-down, vacant storefront.”
(”I hate the way it looks,” Lee chimed in.)
Schwartz Jones also said the economic-development project potentially can keep commuters in downtown Silver Spring after hours, as well as invite visitors from jurisdictions next door. Translation: More money is pumped into the neighborhood’s restaurants and shops, and maybe the streets won’t look so empty.
It’s the music hall’s potential as an economic shot in the arm that the county exec’s office is touting. But that enthusiasm for downtown’s economic revitalization stops at Lee’s property line: The land won’t be seized under eminent domain, Schwartz Jones said.
“There’s no money for condemnation,” said Schwartz Jones, a condemnation lawyer by trade. In addition to paying for the property, the county would cough up severance fees to cover the Lee Company’s losses, she explained.
Lee (above) wasn’t digging the idea of eminent domain, either. The property’s hypothetical seizure would “take away a perfectly viable [parking] business,” he protested.
So what’s a developer to do if the proposed zoning changes are rejected, and the music-hall plans go down the drain? Wait again for the real-estate market to improve, Lee replied.
“We’ve been making money on the site with parking. It’s a very viable business,” Lee said. “Or we can always do this the old-fashioned way and put in a pocket park,” he quipped.
Lead photo: Developer Bruce Lee spelled things out for local bloggers Thursday at the Silver Spring Regional Center. Credit: J. Deseo/SSP.
Photo of Lee Plaza courtesy of Flickr user Pinachina. Embedded photos courtesy of SolarNavigator.net and Silver Spring Daily Photo. Original photos by Jennifer Deseo and Ron Pace for The Penguin. (Holler!)
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Hahahaha, at least someone realizes how ridiculous those concrete slabs with 2 benches all over downtown are getting.
Man, who’s holding this thing up!!!
A: What’s the difference between holding a 15 or 18 year limit on how to develope their own property?
Dosen’t the planning board realize that the chances of the parking lot getting developed are vastly improved if this
project get’s completed? More people, more buisness, better chances of development?
B: And why does anyone think the flood gates will be laid open if they give them a slide on the (outdated) public-use
requirements? What slides did they give the Ellsworth Promenade project to allow that to go through,
demolishing the beautiful and historic armory?
Unfortunatley, some compromises will have to be made. I would rather rally around the beautiful “main street” portion of Georgia Avenue, between Sligo, and Bonifant than worry about what a developer wants to put in a parking lot surrounded by ugly high rises.
Who owns the strip of languishing retail/restaurants on the north side of Colesville? Is it Lee?
If so, then how can he in all seriousness say “I hate the way it looks”? That’s freaking absurd–he is responsible for the way it looks. Perhaps if the Lee Company sunk some money into cleaning up the existing storefronts he’d have his share of quality tenants who want to move in (i’m not referring to the JC Penney bldg). At minimum, he could raise rents for the existing tenants because of the curb appeal improvements which usually translate to more foot traffic/revenue.
Between the awful kaleidoscopic canopy collection (how’s that for alliteration), the shitty signage and the endless crap filling up every glass storefront it’s no wonder the area looks so bad. I’m not saying we shouldn’t move forward with the Fillmore and provide incentive to the Lee’s, but to suggest the area looks so awful because we don’t have a Fillmore agreement is pure nonesense.
Mr. Lee: you have to spend money to make money. Surely you have enough in your reserves to clean up the fronts of those buildings yourself.
Sorry to do this to you, Woodsider, but here goes: Lee doesn’t own those storefronts. What he does own are the Lee Plaza building, the JC Penney site, and the parking lot behind those storefronts along Colesville.
Thanks for the clarification…so who does own them? Are they all individually owned or as a block?
The same criticism applies regardless of ownership.
We should start a grassroots campaign to get the owner(s) to clean up shop. They need to know the community wants better (than a new hot pink canopy) for the whole stretch. It’s no different than in nice neighborhood where one homeowner keeps a pickup in the font yard on blocks and never mows his grass.
The owners of that run down strip of shops between the JC Penny and the Lee building are are elderly individuals – and they aren’t to blame for the way it looks. The local historical society has deemed those structures ‘historical’ – therefore they can’t be changed. There was actually a plan to remodel the first 3 storefronts next to the Lee Building into a more presentable, modern facade but the historical society stepped in and said No. Apart from that, they don’t provide any funding for any maintenance of these ‘historical’ facades. Ridiculous, don’t you think?
Editor’s note: This person’s screen name has been modified. — JD (Aug 4, 2008)
Oh, and about that hot pink canopy at the corner of Fenton and Colesville – T-mobile actually wanted to make that storefront a lot different than it looks now. Remember that for a while they had walled up that corner building for construction? Well the historical society stopped that pretty quickly. They put a STOP-ORDER on their construction because they were altering a historically deemed structure. So the best T-mobile could get away with was to put a new canopy to try to hide the hideous storefront of these old buildings.
Editor’s note: This person’s screen name has been modified. — JD (Aug 4, 2008)
Of course the owners (”elderly individuals”) are to blame. They can work within the restrictions of the historical designation just like the owners of the block caty-corner did (the one with American Apparel). That renovation was expensive but they completely replaced the tenant mix in teh process and it looks fantastic.
On a shoestring budget, the owners of the block with the JC Penney could make drastic improvements if they would replace and unify the canopies, simplify the color variety, freshen the logos and for goodness sake, get the tenants to clean the crap off their storefronts. It might not be the perfect solution but it would make a tremendous improvment that would bring in customers. I’d put my money that these “elderly owners” are waiting for a bailout from MoCo or waiting for a developer to buy them all out and fund their retirement. If they are as conservative as the Lee family, we’ll all retire before seeing any changes.
Actually, I’m told that in at least one case, the owner doesn’t even live in this country. Can’t say how old he is. :-) But, yes, there are multiple owners on that block, which is one reason why it’s been hard to get some sort of comprehensive redevelopment.
And don’t get me started on the “historic” preservation . . .