UPDATE — A development group and the county’s planning board agreed to a deal that will shift public space from outside a Georgia Avenue office building to a park in Fenton Village.
Image: Coming soon to Georgia Avenue. Courtesy of MNCPPC.
The agreement, forged at the Nov 19 planning board hearing, allows an office building planned for 8621 Georgia Ave to align its facade with neighboring buildings, without surrendering 20 percent of its 30,400 square-foot lot to public use, as required.
Instead of giving up 6,080 square feet of Georgia Avenue streetscape, the agreement calls for only 1,760 square feet of onsite public-use space, planning board documents read.
In exchange for the extra street frontage, the 8621 Limited Partnership development group must pay nearly $583,000 into an “amenity fund” that will help finance redevelopment of the Fenton Village Urban Park, two thirds of a mile from the planned office building.
That patch of grass sits on Fenton Street and Philadelphia Avenue, surrounded by short bungalows and auto-repair shops. Ultimately, the planning department hopes to expand the park to 1.3 acres, the department’s website declared. It’s not known when that will happen.
Image: Public space proposed for 8621 Georgia Ave. Courtesy of MNCPPC.
As for the planned Georgia Avenue building, it will include 185,000 square feet of office space starting on the fifth floor. Its ground level will have 6,200 square feet of restaurant space (no tenant has been named). And in between that will be enough parking for 289 cars, according to planning department documents.
That 1,760 square feet of onsite public-use space will consist of a plaza, outdoor seating for the restaurant and a piece of public art, planning department documents described. Exactly what kind of art will occupy the plaza was not announced.
Update: Contrary to what was stated in the article earlier, the planning department has no plans of building a skate spot in the Fenton Village Urban Park. — JD (Dec 9, 2009)
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Regarding that 14,000 square foot skatepark in Fenton Park, “After taking broad public input, the Planning Board decided not to recommend this facility in the next parks Capital Improvements Program (CIP). At this time, the facility has not been specifically included in the CIP.”
In other words, neighbors didn’t want it, and there are no indications that this skatepark is still going to be built. On Nov. 4th, when 30 or so skaters showed up for a meeting with Park & Planning on the proposed Woodside “skate spot” (a 3,000 square foot facility which has now been delayed), a Park & Planning rep spoke with skaters before everyone else arrived (skaters were the first to show up), and she talked up the planned Takoma/Piney Branch skatepark as something for us to look forward to (on track to open in 2011), but did not mention a thing about the Fenton skatepark.
The Addendum to 2008 Master Plan Status Report, which lists projects included in the Master Plan and their status, mentions “Replace Interim Skateboard Facility.” The interim facility that’s supposed to be replaced is the former East of Maui, built in the late 1990s, that was located where Silver Plaza is now. In the status column, showing what’s been done on each of the projects listed in this report, for this item, the status lists “no progress to date.”
It looks like the Fenton Park skatepark was going to replace East of Maui, and there was a lot of movement on it in 2005, when the Citizens Advisory Board approved it and even made it a priority. But in the entire past year that I’ve been advocating for a legal place for skateboarders to skate, not one official or community leader has mentioned the Fenton Park skatepark.
Thanks for your comment, SkaterMom. Where did you get the quote in your first paragraph? If you’ve got a link to it, please include that in your response.
You’re welcome, Jennifer.
The quote is from a link you provided — in the 5th paragraph, 2nd sentence of your blog post, where you hyperlinked the word ‘website’.
Editor’s note: D’oh! Guess I should have read a little further down the page. Will fix the article to reflect no skate spot in the park. Thanks! — JD (Dec 9, 2009)
Thank goodness the planning board made this decision. I hope they do it much more often for future developments too. The last thing we need in DTSS are more of the little-used pocket parks associated with so many of the newer buildings. Much better to make developers pay into a pool and then build a REAL park of the size necessary to be of true benefit to the community.
The two currently-landscaped sections of Fenton Gateway Park are now separated by a plumbing business on thecorner – that land has been purchased and the company given 1 year to vacate, that should happen by summer 2010. Then, finally, the middle section can be landscaped and the 3 sections joined to span the corner.
The county then plans to buy the 3 house parcels “behind” the park to make it deeper. Offers have been made several times in the past decade, but the owner is holding out.
Fenton Gateway Park borders a large church, residences, several small businesses, and is less than a block from Montgomery College.
According to the CBD Master Plan it is planned to be an entry park for Fenton Village with public art and green-space plus eventually signage to greet folks coming from Takoma Park, DC, and PG County into our community.
Surrounding citizens (both business owners and residents) have been working together for well over a decade to get this GREEN space completed for our community. I’m ecstastic at the news of dedicated funding finally for it.
Has anyone considered some skate areas that could be designated on certain days? For example, the north side of Colesville Road essentially has a 2-level sidewalk. One Sat. evening I was scrambling to get to the FedEx shop next to Rite Aid. The upper section, next to the huge red-brick office complex, was full of skateboarders. I dropped down to the sidewalk next to the street, continuing my brisk schleup.
Could someone set up some temporary ramps on weekend afternoons/evenings for the skaters in that area? There may be other paved surfaces that could present possibilities at certain times. We desperately need more green space. I can’t see taking away from a current or potential green space. Why can’t we make better use of the paved space we have? Also, I have no problem sharing sidewalk space with skateboarders. I would rather encounter skateboarders on sidewalks than some of the fellow Metro riders I have found in the Gallery Place station.
LuvMyHood, I wish more people thought like you. As an interim solution, I’ve been begging for a skate spot — pretty much any skate spot (as long as the ground is good) for the entire past year, since we lost skating on lower Ellsworth, because since then skaters have been getting kicked of every single skate spot in the area.
We desperately need an actual skatepark. Skateparks save lives — while skateboarding is statistically safer than playing basketball, the vast majority of skateboarding related deaths are motor vehicle-related, and almost no deaths happen inside skateparks. And the need for a downtown skatepark is expressed in the Master Plan. And skateboarding is *the* fastest growing sport in America, and even back in 2003 there were 11 million skateboarders (some sources put that number closer to 20 million today), so the need for a downtown skatepark is clear — both for skaters, and to protect property from skating-related damage.
Park & Planning proposed a “skate spot” (too tiny to be called a skatepark) for Woodside Park…but what they proposed is less than one-fourth the size of the park they previously planned for Fenton…when the number of skaters in the area has grown by leaps and bounds. And, even what they have proposed has been delayed, and Park & Planning won’t tell me for how long.
Dan Reed of Just Up The Pike recently recommended that we get an entire floor of the Wayne Ave. garage. Years ago, the Planning Board itself said that space in under-used garages should be considered for use as a skatepark. Using a garage does not take away the tiniest bit of green space.
Local skaters don’t even care if anyone puts a thing in the garage — we just want the space so that these kids, (some as young as 12) who are absolutely passionate about skateboarding, can just do what they love, and stay healthy and active and out of trouble, like we want them to.
we’ve been asking for an alternative to Ellsworth for a full year and we’ve gotten nothing. also, we need a permanent skatepark, not temporary solutions. According to statistics, there are almost one thousand daily skaters in Downtown. This is a number that cant be ignored.
This is wonderful news, and I look forward to a green oasis growing in this spot. It will also be a wonderful amenity for people living in the high rise apartments nearby.
SkaterMom, Beach Drive is closed to cars on Sundays, so people can bike. I wonder if something similar could be done for skateboarders, closing some paved areas that are very quiet at certain hours, and using them for skateboarding.
A park in a garage sounds good now, but demand for the parking will grow if all the planned stuff happens.
I liked the decision made by the building planning board for this building.
LuvMyHood, yes, blocking an area off to traffic to allow skateboarding is what used to happen, and we need to have that again — as an interim solution. That’s what we’ve been asking for, for the past year.
But in the long-term we need a skatepark. A real one. And one large enough to accommodate the huge community of skaters we have here in Silver Spring. Kids have been asking for that for 10 years. The Planning Board said we should have it. And all available data points to the need for this, and to the fact that it’s in the county’s economic interest to build one. (The Planning Board has said we need 15 skateparks in the county — at this point we only have 1, in Olney.)
LuvMyHood, I don’t know who first said this, but this is a very apt quote: “when a city doesn’t have a skatepark, that city BECOMES a skatepark.”
Skatermom
– what about the skate parks in G-burg, Kensington & Rockville? Do they not count as “in the county” because they are city-run? By my count that is at least 4 plus one coming to Takoma Park.
BUT BACK to the Fenton Park great news for much needed hgreen space – wish MNCPPC would update their web site and map of it to show the more recent land acquisitions for this park.
Also we Fenton Park neighbors were promised park signage and trash cans for the landscaped portion on Burlington Ave. Still waiting a year later…
Kathy, there are currently 2 skateparks in the county — Gaithersburg and Rockville. K-town is a homemade park with boxes and other equipment made by the kids themselves. Much of what the kids built there is now gone.
And I’ll clarify my comment — the Planning Board says they need to build 15 skateparks, and of those, only one has been built (Olney.)
Regarding Takoma/Piney Branch skatepark, (which will not be ready until at least 2011) — the Planning Board’s documents state clearly that this park is meant to be a “small scale” community park — primarily for use by that community. It was meant to augment the larger, more “urban” 14,000 square foot Fenton Park, which is now not going to be built.
Oops…I meant to say 3 skateparks, Gaithersburg, Rockville, and Olney. And absolutely nothing in or near Silver Spring.