A development project planned for Fenton Village turns a cold shoulder to East Silver Spring and existing businesses on Fenton Street, neighbors complained at a recent public forum.
Proposed designs for the Studio Plaza project would draw pedestrians away from Fenton Street businesses by placing retail and green space along an interior courtyard, area residents said during a public forum Wednesday night.
Currently, the 10-year-old project proposes to plop a half-acre green space (below, left) on a block sandwiched by Georgia, Thayer and Silver Spring Avenues, and Fenton Street. Four buildings — three of them residential — would surround that park, developer Bob Hillerson explained.
Most of the project’s buildings would have street-level retail — a total 61,000 square feet of it — with some next to the interior park and along a pedestrian alley through the site (above, right). That game plan would give residents in Fenton Village and the nearby Ripley District a central place to hang, Hillerson said.
And that didn’t groove with some residents’ ideas of what Fenton Village should be.
“It looks like you made a green area that caters to people who live there. There’s nothing activating the other streets,” Debbie Spielberg, an East Silver Spring resident and member of Silver Spring’s citizens advisory board, said. “It looks in, instead of looking out.”
East Silver Spring resident Karen Roper (below) added that the alley’s retailers should not make the place a shopping destination like Downtown Silver Spring, as developer Hillerson suggested. Rather, they wanted the businesses to serve basic services like dry cleaning and shoe repair, as the planning department’s sector plan suggests.
But Gary Stith, director of Silver Spring’s regional center, asked people not to sweat it. “More retail there will create a draw and will help existing businesses,” he told forum participants.
The project has already displaced at least two businesses — Roadhouse Oldies Records, and and the Silver Spring Market, both of which worked a Hillerson-owned building slated for demolition on Thayer near Georgia. The record shop recently moved to a storefront on Silver Spring Avenue, which Hillerson offered to them.
But the Silver Spring Market, now on Fenton near Sligo, wasn’t extended an invitation to stay on Hillerson property, he said.
“I didn’t renew their lease because the pan handlers used to stand out front, ask for money, go inside to buy beer, urinate and vomit in public, then do it all over again,” Hillerson claimed.
Hillerson’s next move for the Studio Plaza development is to file a project plan with the planning department, with a public hearing anticipated for April or May 2009.
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I would like to clarify my objections to the design of this development. The design is for an independent village with over 1,000 residents with a PRIVATE ROAD and its OWN SECURITY FORCE. This makes it separate from the rest of Fenton Village and creates a destination (like a shopping mall) for the rest of Fenton Village. This development has no relation to the rest of Fenton Village and is almost like a gated community plopped down in the middle of our Village. The design is almost identical to downtown SS which understandably was designed to be a destination. Officials readily admit that the security force in downtown, while keeping the private area safe, have pushed the crime to areas outside.
Fenton Village is small enough that I believe it should be one Village and not a series of independent, private villages. If each block is developed as a self contained, private village with its own roads and police, what happens to the areas surrounding these – Thayer, Bonifant, Fenton and Georgia Ave. There is no relationship to the whole Village and no synergy. Fenton Village just becomes a series of private shopping malls with housing on top. I think we can do much better than that.
I think it’s a great project and the new street will add needed texture to the street life of Fenton Village. The way they incorporate Mayor’s lane with the public space is wonderful and gives the pedestrian more options to roam around. I agree with the previous post that we don’t need a private village with in Fenton Village, but if it’s like Ellsworth Promenade, I don’t think that will be the case. Ellsworth is open to the public at all hours of the day, and I appreciate the extra security guards. This project is exactly what Fenton Village needs, which is some life. The other day I walked in to the famous cobbler and asked him if he could fix my shoes to which he curtly replied “NO!” So I don’t know what “village” we are talking about, but I’m not feeling it.
This is sensible and good for Fenton Village. But it involves cleaning up the neighborhood and bringing in some “corporate” presence — and therefore it is dead on arrival. Even if a majority of people in greater SS favor it, the disapproval of some is enough to kill it because, in Montgomery County, the interests of the many must always take a back seat to the dreams others have of a non-corporate, think-small utopia.
BTW — one of the opponents spoke of crime being “pushed” int areas outside the Ellsworth strip. I’ve been assured by civic leaders that crime is SS is only a “perception.”
I agree w/Thayer-D & GB. While the artist’s illustrations may have looked like an inward turning development, it isn’t. There are no gates to the pedestrian areas and nothing restricting any memeber of the public from walking through it or patronizing the retail.
This development will further animate Fenton Village by placing 1,000 residents and their guests right in the middle of it. The new residents will move there not to get away from the surrounding retail, but because it is so close. They WANT to be in a walking neighborhood and will spend money at surrounding retail & services that offer a good value, quality product and service. Frankly, there are plenty of existing Fenton Village business that don’t do that so it’s nice to see the bar will be raised.
The fear of “corporate” influence is short sighted. Corporations come and go as we see in our current down turn, but good brick and mortar buildings last a lot longer. Look at all the royal palaces and churches everyone loves in Europe, who even knows what autocrats built them today. It’s the same with these projects, let them build the best thing for Fenton Village architecturally and urbanistically and guaranteed time will change whatever tenants might be in there for the first phase of their life. The old “corporate” JC Penny is now going to be a Music Hall. Let’s just not scare everything that could be good if not perfect.
Yes indeed, bricks and mortar do last longer. Why then do we continue to get crappy Dryvit-covered projects designed/built to last a generation when an actual brick/limestone and mortar structure as the historically designated 1927 Silver Spring Armory was allowed to be demolished?
One of the reasons we get crappy Dryvit covered projects is that we spend so much time complaining about the evils of corporations and not enough time holding developers feet to the fire on guaranteeing the best for our community. As for historic buildings to be saved, I’m all for it. One of Silver Spring’s best historical assets is the Georgia Avenue main street strip between Sligo and Wayne. Now that we’re in a down turn it would be great to give it a historical status so when the developers come a knocking, there would be something in place to help save it.
I see you people are exposing Pure Communisium by deleting what I posted yesterday in reguards to Individuals that express HATRED towards Improving Ecomic and Business Growth in Silver Spring by Sabatoging All Forms of Modernize Office/Upscale Retail Growth in Silver Spring.
Rich
As editor of The Penguin, I do not delete comments without marking them as such (”This post has been deleted”, etc). Your previous comment may have been caught in our spaminator.
If you have something constructive to say, feel free to post again.
Jennifer Deseo
Editor
>>“I didn’t renew their lease because the pan handlers used to stand out front, ask for money, go inside to buy beer, urinate and vomit in public, then do it all over again,” Hillerson claimed.<<
I would like to see ONE police complaint filed on this – I walked by the old location at least twice daily and now pass the new location even more frequently — and I have never witnessed anything close to what Hillerson alleges. (As a matter of fact, I’m consistently hit up for change at the Safeway entrances across the way.) The SS Mart is not a business I ever personally patronize, but I would not describe it as being a public nuisance or adding to public drunkeness and destructive behavior.
Since I was not able to attend the presentation, I can’t comment on the project particulars – though the phrase “interior park and along a pedestrian alley” does not sound like a postive contribution to the health of Fenton Village as a whole. My big question would be WHAT retailers with any business sense would sign a lease for an interior-facing alley space??
>>”I would like to see ONE police complaint filed on this – I walked by the old location at least twice daily and now pass the new location even more frequently — and I have never witnessed anything close to what Hillerson alleges. (As a matter of fact, I’m consistently hit up for change at the Safeway entrances across the way.) The SS Mart is not a business I ever personally patronize, but I would not describe it as being a public nuisance or adding to public drunkeness and destructive behavior”<<
I can tell you that is a pretty fair assessment of the SS Mart that was at the old location. The owners are good people, but they did little to distract people hanging around the store. I stopped going there because I always felt like I had to run in and out before getting hit up for change (they wacthed me from the window so they knew I had cash.)
The place is better now that is further away from the Progress Place.