The county planning board on Thursday waved bye-bye to one slice of the Falkland Chase apartment complex, making way for possible redevelopment of the site.
“Allowing the redevelopment of the north parcel and preserving the two south parcels will achieve a higher level of public interest than would preservation of all three parcels,” planning staffers argued in documents released last week. And the planning board was with them all the way.
The entire complex — a cluster of short, garden-style apartments — saddles East-West Highway between Colesville Road and 16th Street. Home Properties, which owns the joint, had plans to trash the plot on East-West Highway’s north side to erect high-rise apartment buildings.
However, area preservationists argued the buildings — all of them — held historic significance and should be spared the wrecking ball. The complex, they said, was a primo example of New Era, garden-apartment architecture and should be preserved in perpetuity.
Screw that, countered those in favor of redevelopment. The complex sits one block from the Silver Spring Metro station and was too important in encouraging transit-oriented growth, they said. And the planning board agreed.
The matter now moves on to the county council, which will give final say over whether the northern parcel gets the ax. The planning board recommended preservation for the complex’s southern and western parcels.
Lead image courtesy of Flickr user Mr T in DC.
Updated Sep 5, 2008, at 2:40 p.m. for compliance with the Star Trek reference.
Nov 17, 2008
9 Comments at "Planning board axes Falkland north parcel"
The right decision and the right compromise. Hopefully, Home Properties won’t build the massive monolithic looking structure from their original renderings but instead follow the recommendations of the planning board to break the property up into smaller “blocks” with multiple buildings that better relate to the street and pedestrians. Either way, I plan to be the first customer in the new Harris Teeter (in three or more years!).
Awsome, finally some common sense!!! Garden apartments are any apartments sitting in a bunch of green, and the north parcel was sitting in a bunch of parking lined with green. If any apartment should have been saved it was the one that got lost for the Library. Viva Silver Springopolis.
Good. And a new supermarket can’t come soon enough!
CORRECTION: The needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few, or the one.
To clarify, the planning board’s decision doesn’t approve construction of the new project. It only recommends a pass on historic preservation, which could lead to the demolition of those existing buildings.
Any project that might go up on that site still must go through planning board review.
And *that* is when the union at Giant will raise holy hell.
As a former three-year resident of Falkland Chase, I regret the selfish cave-in of the Planning Board. Once again, the developers decide what’s best for the public! Meanwhile, affordable housing continues to disappear. The current owners of Falkland are from Texas and are contributing their expertise to make Silver Spring look like Houston, i.e. reckless sprawl where the only building criteria is an empty — or — old space.
For those of us who are jealous of county cops who start off at $50K+, ride around in cars they take home, and then collect disability with their retirement (or 34% do), and envious of teachers who take home $80K (avg) and once retired, contribute ZERO to their health benefits, the disappearance of affordable housing is very sad. Not all of us wish to live in Yuppieland with worshipers of Mammon.
Maybe we should just build a fence around Silver Spring, with gates manned by our brave police force. Then those disgusting people who work with their hands to change the diapers of the trophy children and mow the lawns of the Chablis Set can enter at dawn, but leave at dusk. Let them find residence somewhere else! In disgust, D.F. Shaw
Editor’s note: Thanks for your comment, DFS. According to Home Properties’ website, the company is based in Rochester, NY, not Texas. — JD (Sep 6, 2008)
It’s great we are concentrating on encouraging people to ride metro by building huge apartment buildings on top of Wheaton, Takoma, and Silver Spring stops. But Metro seems to be caving in on itself. It’s a single track system besieged with delays and repair schedules. (It took me 2 hours to get from Metro Center to Silver Spring one night because of track work forcing lucky metro riders to get shuffled on and off various shuttle buses). Instead of yet another huge suburban monolith, it would be nice to see the same amount of urban planning dedicated to making metro reliable again - before we go squeezing more and more people into those broken down standing-room-only boxcars.
If Home Properties builds what it intends (or similar) there will be far more affordable units in DTSS than there are now. Read their proposal and you’ll see the creative way they are doing this in the propsed new and original remaining sections.
Holler back.