Man, I took a quick look at the Penguin event calendar and thought this would be the week I could finally hit Spring Break in Daytona. No meetings scheduled. No laundry to do. No character testimony on behalf of the guys in the Penguin mailroom.
But as it turns out, there is one gig on Tuesday, and it’s a goody:
Tuesday
1:45 p.m. The county council decides whether the Falkland Chase apartments should be preserved as historic structures, or partially demolished to make way for denser housing. This free event takes place at the county council’s office building (100 Maryland Ave, Rockville) and is open to the public.
Photo courtesy of Flickr user Arjun Mehta.
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The Falklands are a treasure and part of what made Silver Spring. The buildings continue to enhance our community. They are a visual pleasure of sensible housing set in green environment. Best of all they are already built. We should not blithely toss these structures in the landfill. Such change is not what we voted for and not what Smart Growth is about.
As stated before in the Penguin, the proposal for N Falkland does not help the community. Sure downtown sites proximate to transit should be considered for higher density development — but what is proposed is quite wrong. It is the usual auto-centric development. It is not transit-oriented development and worst of all it includes an auto traffic destination within the proposed development — a supermarket. Wrong location; bad location.
As it stands N Falkland provides a relatively affordable housing alternative that is fast disappearing from SS. It has a below market rents on some units which can be continued, and additional units could be made more affordable if that is the county’s objective. A little creativity by the county could make this happen.
WIth massive public investments in transit underway within spittin’ distance of N Falkland — the Sarbanes Transit Center and the Purple Line (which will trimming the N Falkland site a bit) it should make it even more compelling to minimize auto-centric development in downtown SS.
You can call the Falkland proposal many things (anti-historic preservation for example), but saying it is not Transit Oriented Development is simply incorrect. Putting more housing, stores & services within walking distance of a metro station is the only way to keep our traffic from getting as bad as it would get from otherwise less proximate development. Notice I didn’t say that any of this would alleviate traffic problems. That will never happen until we run out of fuel.