ROCKVILLE — Members of two county council committees voted down the possibility of building a footbridge between Silver Spring’s new library and the Wayne Avenue garage.
If the issue is accessibility for disabled bookworms, then find a cheaper way to do it, members of the human services and economic development committees charged Tuesday afternoon.
“There’s got to be a more creative solution to this problem,” council member Marc Elrich told panelists from the county’s departments of general services and transportation.
The discussion got hot sometimes, with council member Michael Knapp (D-District 2) accusing department reps of blowing off any idea other than the proposed $700,000 footbridge. ”Anything we say here, you’re going to disagree with,” he told general services director David Dise.
But plenty of scenarios were bounced around, including one that would lift the entire building an extra story so that five parking spots for disabled drivers can sit under it. That game plan would have cost the county about $3.5 million, Dise said.
Reps for the county’s planning department had a different idea: Lay down five head-in parking spaces on Bonifant Street. Once the project’s residential component is in the can on Bonifant near Fenton Street, the county can buy a couple of spaces in its underground garage. Estimated cost of that game plan: $420,000, according to planner Anthony Penns (or $2 million, if you ask the department of general services).
Planner John Carter indicated that head-in parking on Bonifant would not reduce parking opportunities for people in need of a Burmese fix, something that council member George Leventhal (D-At large) sweated during the discussion.
The problem with putting disabled drivers on Bonifant is the slope along Fenton Street. It’s a six-degree incline along Fenton from Bonifant to Wayne, where the library will sit. The Americans With Disabilities Act recommends a maximum five-degree incline for an accessible path, Dise said.
Still, Cindy Buddington, chair of the county’s commission on people with disabilities, told council members she’d be willing to work with Dise’s department and planners to hammer out a solution if the bridge is axed.
And so the bridge was axed. Council members Knapp, Elrich, Nancy Floreen (D-At large) and Nancy Navarro (D-District 4) voted nea; Leventhal was the bridge’s sole supporter at the dais.
The committees’ recommendation to nix the bridge now goes to the full council for a final say. Knapp indicated the council would vote down the bridge as well.
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What the hell are they building now? Learn more from 
Boxed wines and rosés are back in vogue. Just ask The Penguin's sommeliers.
More creative than a giant bridge?! No, not possible.
On a more serious note, I thought this day would never come…
Wow. Just like that it’s over? What soap opera are we going to follow now?
wombat: the golf course
Also waiting in the wings – the continued nonexistence of the Fillmore concert hall.
A bit of fiscal restraint on the part of the Council, very refreshing. Perhaps they will become comfortable with the concept. In terms of serving access for people with disabilities — the bridge was to connect the county parking garage to the library — why not increase the number of handicapped reserved spaces on the garage ground level, and then those in wheel chairs can wheel across the street and into an elevator in the library. Is there anything unreasonable about that?
Craig – very reasonable option.
I also applaud the fiscal restraint of the Council. In addition to the Wayne Ave garage, there is also a small County lot on Bonifant St next to Mandalay. The number of handicap reserved spaces could also be increased there also. Instead of spending $420,000 for 5 parking spaces, the county could spend a couple of hundred dollars on handicap parking signs and increase the number of handicap spaces in two county owned garages each located right across the street from the site of the future library.
Glad the bridge was nixed- we need feet on the street.
“the continued nonexistence of the Fillmore concert hall.”
Oh right! I’d forgotten all about that.
You can’t get me worked up about the golf course though. It was all over between me and the golf course years ago when they stopped letting people sled on it when it snows.
Did they ever allow that?
When I was a kid, there was a hole in the fence along Dallas Avenue that we used to sneak through to go sledding. One of the best sledding places and there was no one there. I always assumed it wasn’t permitted.
Really the tragedy is when Holy Cross expanded and killed the most popular sledding spot in all of Silver Spring. I used to trudge half a mile through snow to sled there.
Well, they didn’t used to stop it, when we first moved here. We would bring our cross-country skis. But then one year we showed up and the police were there waiting to shoo people away.
To secure a sufficient number of handicapped parking spaces without a bridge, given the expected library use by the disabled and given ADA requirements, will cost far more than $700K or $800K. It’s pure economics (vs. Planning Board and Council politics). Watch what’s going to happen and you will see–and pay.
JKS — please explain, more details,
Full details cannot be given in this limited space. (Unfortunately, Greater Greater Washington, which usually does a good job, had terrible reporting in this case.) The long and the short of it is that General Services, which will build the Library, has costed out the different ways of providing handicapped parking. These alternatives were not well presented at the Committee meeting. But before the full Council, on 28 July, you will hear what all this costs, and notice that the bridge is reasonable.
You may still get a wholly ideological-political vote by the Council, of course, but let’s hope for some reason on the part of some Council members.
Two of the ADA-accessible alternatives pitched by the department of general services were presented at the public forums.
The first requires the building to be raised one story to allow five designated parking spots to sit on the ground floor. The department of general services rang this up at no less than $3 million (on top of the building’s construction cost).
The other alternative was to dig an underground garage beneath the library building. This would cost something million dollars, too. (Don’t remember the projected figure, but it was up there.) But architects on the project said it couldn’t happen anyway: There wouldn’t be enough space to build the entrance ramp.
At Tuesday afternoon’s meeting with county council members, the planning department proposed head-in parking along Bonifant to serve as designated spaces. They estimated this would cost $450,000. The department of general services said it would cost $2 million. Who knows.