An email circulating the interwebs asks Silver Spring’s civic associations how they’d like to rock downtown’s new civic building.
“Is your group likely to want to hold your monthly meetings here? Will you want to program some of the spaces for the public? Might you hold an annual fundraising activity?” Susan Hoffmann, marketing director for the Silver Spring regional center, inquired in her email. “Get back to me with that information.”
Photo: Methinks I see a rink. Credit: J. Deseo/SSP.
Construction on the public building has been cooking with oil on the southeast corner of Fenton Street and Ellsworth Drive for more than a year. By the time this joint opens next summer (that’s Hoffmann’s prediction), there will be seven spaces available for rent: four activity rooms, an exhibit hall and “great hall”, and a courtyard for kicking it al fresco.
Rental rates haven’t been determined yet, Hoffmann wrote.
Hoffmann’s email query isn’t meant to carve room reservations in granite, she indicated. Instead, it’s “the opportunity for our staff to get a sense of what likely needs exist within the residential, not-for-profit, and private sectors” from opening day until the end of 2011, she wrote.
The building’s adjacent plaza will contain a veterans memorial, a lighted pavilion and a seasonal ice rink.
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.
I live right behind the site. Is it my imagination, or are they creating a new road between the civic center and the vacant lot behind it, connecting Ellsworth with the Whole Foods parking lot? And wasn’t the ice rink supposed to be indoors originally?
Shouldn’t this type of market assessment be done before the building is designed?
710 – not indoors, but with a kinda shell over it.
Carig – that was over 10 years ago and the building specs have changed (re: smaller room and capacity than first planned) so I’d say a re-survey is definitely needed.
I’d personally like to see it used for community shows like the old glass bead event that was at the Armory and the clothing swap hosted recently at the FIrst Baptist.
I’d just love to park in the building! Parking access to the Whole Foods shopping center on the weekends is so bad, I’ve given up shopping at Whole Foods and Strosniders. My money’s going to up Rte 29 to where parking is easier.
I gotta agree with Craig above – shouldn’t the whole issue of how they’re going to use the building be addressed prior to actually building the damn thing. Seems like they’ve gone and built themselves this thing and haven’t a clue what to do with it. It really begs the question, do we need the civil center? I’m not saying we don’t, but equally it doesn’t exactly sound like Susan Hoffman’s email is helping to convince us that we do.