The Silver Spring Penguin

Photo: I can almost smell the rock and roll. Credit: J. Deseo/SSP.

Montgomery County officials and a local developer are at the “one-yard line” in talks to bring the Fillmore music-hall project into the end zone and score that elusive touchdown.

“We’re saying 30 to 60 days, but hopefully, we’re closer than that,” Bruce Lee, of the Lee Development Group, told the Washington Business Journal. “We have several meetings over the next couple of weeks and are wrapping up the details.”

It’s been a long-ass road to bring the Fillmore project to someone’s concept of fruition. Concert promoter Live Nation inked a deal with the county in January 2008 to rent out the Colesville Road music hall, which will sit where there once was a JC Penney department store. At the time, county officials predicted the $8 million music hall would be open by 2010.

But the Lee Development Group, which is offering the land as required public-use space for a larger adjacent development, wants all assurances that the project next door won’t be screwed by the music hall’s construction, MoCo exec Ike Leggett told The Penguin in May.

“Everyone’s super-lawyered up,” Leggett said at the time.

And about that adjacent project: There are no final plans for it yet. However, the Lee Development Group hinted at a 7-story, 215,000 square-foot office building on Georgia Avenue, plus a 14-story, 139,000 square-foot hotel behind the music hall on Fenton Street (below), WBJ reported.

Image: The once and future project behind the Fillmore music hall? Courtesy of Hickock Cole/Lee Development Group.

“We’re not asking for additional density, we’re not asking for money,” Lee told the Washington Examiner last week. “We’re not asking for anything outside the box.”

Meanwhile, members of the county council are getting antsy about these ongoing negotiations. Council member Marc Elrich (D-At large) was frustrated with the lack of updates, the Examiner wrote. And council member Duchy Trachtenberg (D-At large) was troubled by the project’s (lack of) progress and said the council would have a “robust conversation” about it if a deal wasn’t reached soon, the Examiner added.

Members of Silver Spring’s citizens advisory board have also expressed concern with what’s up. In June, board member and Montgomery Hills resident Phil Olivetti worried the county would not meet its July 2010 deadline to turn over the music hall’s keys to Live Nation, which could result in a penalty fee.

The county’s lease with Live Nation allows for 30 days’ wiggle room if a third party (read: the county planning board) gets in the way of the Fillmore’s construction. Up to nine more months can be added to complete the music hall if both parties agree to it.

Another board member, East Silver Spring’s Kathy Stevens, was concerned that too few details on the negotiations were getting to the masses. ”We have this canyon of what was told by the county, and this wasteland of what’s not known,” Stevens said in June. “I hope there’s an interim point to have a little more honest dialog.”