The MoCo planning board has spent the last few years cooking up designs for new headquarters on Georgia Avenue, but the owners of downtown’s City Place shopping center have another idea: Move that joint into the mall.
In a Jun 11 letter to planning board chair Royce Hanson, developer Walt Petrie pitched the idea of housing the planning department inside the mall’s future nine-story office tower, which will sit above the shopping center on Colesville Road and Fenton Street. That rings up to 210,000 square feet of leg room for the department, the letter stated.
As a bonus, auditoriums within the former AMC movie theater on the mall’s fifth floor can be used for large public meetings, Petrie wrote.
The proposal comes at a time when the planning department is equally hard up for space and cash. Valerie Berton, a spokesperson for the department, told The Penguin that plans to replace the department’s old digs on Georgia Avenue at Spring Street with new digs at the same site are on hold. Pin that on “budget challenges and the county council’s request,” she wrote in an email.
While Berton didn’t say the department was entertaining Petrie’s pitch, it was weighing the pros and cons of moving into a building away from its current site. The department was also considering whether to move forward with its plans to develop Silver Place, the on-site mixed-use project that will include its new digs, and whether it should just put up with what it has now, she said.
“Preliminary analysis shows a significant cost to staying in our building, given its age and the need for annual maintenance,” Berton wrote. Planners should have a final report ready for the county council this fall, she added.
Read 
What the hell are they building now? Learn more from 
Boxed wines and rosés are back in vogue. Just ask The Penguin's sommeliers.
Library + Planning Department = much improved City Place.
Twitter user @jtomassini pointed out this Gazette article describing a bid to move planners into a future building at 8711 Georgia Ave:
“New SilverPlace site could cut costs, time” (The Gazette, Feb 11, 2009)
Given falling commercial rents in the region, I think developers are going to compete hard for tenants.
I never understood why City Place Mall went downhill so fast.
That AMC multiplex was nice! During the first few years, my friends and I would drive up here from College Park and Greenbelt just to see things in that new AMC theater — Army of Darkness and Crooklyn on opening days
What happened?
That mall should be a lot nicer. Wheaton mall got an upgrade so why can’t City Place?
Verry interesting! More actual, card-carrying members of the public could attend meetings. Planning Board meetings now have that small-Southern-town feel — so this could open things up.
What about Sligo’s suggestion, put the library in there, too? That would end the ped bridge angst, and those $$ could go for improvements at a lot of crosswalks.
Yes! (City Place Library, City Place Planning). Or if they’re looking for a “trophy building” they could put them in the new civic building … :)
This sounds like an interesting proposal. I’ll bet that Planning will say that there is not enough info in the proposal, there will be all kind of problems, and that it will cost more, and be inadequate, etc…
The idea makes too much sense so don’t expect this to ever happen….
While on this fantasy, how about locating the proposed Fillmore into City Place especially if anyone is seriously interested in seeing a music hall built before the next Presidential election.
Editor’s note: Phil Olivetti is a member of Silver Spring’s citizens advisory board and co-chair of the economic development committee. — JD (Jul 8, 2009)
Personally it makes more sense to me to have the Planning Department in its own building. Public accessibility is greatly affected when you have to enter another building and then find the actual office or meeting rooms for community meetings, etc. That’s why they have their own building right now, and it’s why they will have their own building in the future.