Transit-center construction included contamination cleanup, county official confesses

By Jennifer Deseo | Oct 27, 2009
Photo: Rainy days and toxic mud pits always get me down. Credit: J. Deseo/SSP.

Photo: Rainy days and toxic mud pits always get me down. Credit: J. Deseo/SSP.

Here’s the good news: Some of the construction work at Silver Spring’s transit-center site is cooking with oil. The bad news: It had also been cooking with nasty chemicals in the soil.

Crews at the Colesville Road site removed soil tainted with unspecified petrochemicals as part of their excavation work, David Dise, director of the county’s general services department, told The Penguin at Saturday’s library book fest. Peg that petrol on a fuel storage facility that Dise said was on that site back in the day.

“There are guys in Tyvek suits and respirators digging up what looks to be an underground conduit of some type,” Penguin reader Michael observed two weeks ago. “They are keeping the dust down with a water spray, bagging the material in plastic, and putting it into dumpsters lined with plastic. It must be some type of hazmat.”

“Amusing thing is watching the supervisor with no protective gear on at all standing right next to the workers. At one point he was even hosing down the debris himself,” Michael added. (more…)

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Leggett unveils design for new downtown library

By Jennifer Deseo | Oct 26, 2009
Photo: MoCo exec Leggett showed off designs for the new library Saturday. Credit: J. Deseo/SSP.

Photo: MoCo exec Leggett showed off designs for the new library Saturday. Credit: J. Deseo/SSP.

After months of public meetings and debate, MoCo exec Ike Leggett finally revealed exterior designs for downtown Silver Spring’s new library.

“This will be a monument to the community,” he declared Saturday at a book festival inside ye olde library on Colesville Road.

The glass and limestone building will sit at the southwest corner of Wayne Avenue and Fenton Street, with a section hanging over a possible Purple Line light rail station. Access to the library’s third floor entrance will be at either Wayne Avenue or along Fenton Street, where escalators and stairs will be installed. Sorry, trebuchet fans.

“We wanted this library to look snappy with pizzazz,” David Dise, director of the county’s general services department, told the 45 people packed into ye olde library’s large meeting room. The new joint would serve not only as a bookend (ha ha) to the Downtown Silver Spring development, but also as a gateway to the underdeveloped Fenton Village neighborhood, he explained. (more…)

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So you’ve got a civic building in the works. Now what?

By Jennifer Deseo | Oct 22, 2009

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.

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.

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Skateboard spot proposed for Woodside park

By Jennifer Deseo | Oct 19, 2009
Photo: One skateboarder tore it up in front of the Silver Spring regional center last summer. Credit: Kim Bieler.

Photo: One skateboarder tore it up in front of the Silver Spring regional center last summer. Credit: Kim Bieler.

MoCo’s planners propose to throw down a temporary skateboarding spot just north of Silver Spring’s central business district, they announced Friday afternoon.

The “skate spot” will sit in what used to be a tennis court at the Woodside Urban Park on Georgia Avenue and Spring Street, sandwiched between the park’s basketball courts and gymnasium. The 3,000 square-foot spot will have “street-style obstacles” like concrete ledges and embankments for boarders to skim.

“The new skate spot will provide youth in the community with better and enhanced play opportunities,” read a planning department newsletter being snail mailed to area residents.

Preliminary plans for the skate spot are already cooking and will be open to sidewalk shredders by January 2010, the newsletter predicted. The temporary spot could become permanent if residents feel it’s a good fit for the park’s overall renovation. Public meetings will be held on the subject in the next few months, the newsletter read.

A playground near First Avenue is also slated for renovations, planners announced. It’s not known whether that work will close the playground temporarily, or when the work will wrap.

Photo courtesy of Kim Bieler.

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Downtown bank building on preservation wishlist

By Jennifer Deseo | Sep 30, 2009

Silver Spring’s preservationistas want a 1950s Georgia Avenue office building placed on a statewide list of endangered sites.

Photo: The Perpetual Bank Building. Courtesy of MNCPPC.

Photo: The Perpetual Bank Building. Courtesy of MNCPPC.

Jerry McCoy, president of the Silver Spring Historical Society, told The Penguin via email that his organization wants the Perpetual Building added to Preservation Maryland’s protection wishlist. The building at 8700 Georgia Ave currently houses a SunTrust Bank branch, as well as studio space for the dance troupe Tappers With Attitude.

But the five-story, 51-year-old building once served as a branch of the Perpetual Bank, according to documents submitted previously to the county’s planning board. Preservationists claim the bank financed many Montgomery County homes back in the day, and was among the first banks to give mortgages to the county’s black residents.

“The loss of this building would result in a significant loss to the architecture of Silver Spring,” Marcy Stickle, a member of Silver Spring’s historical society, testified at a 2008 planning board meeting. Isabelle Gournay and Mary Corbin Sies, both associate professors with the University of Maryland, labeled the building’s style “suburban Baby Boom modernism”. (more…)

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Transit-center crews to blast into bedrock

By Jennifer Deseo | Sep 29, 2009
Photo: Commuters hustle past the transit center construction site. Credit: J. Deseo/SSP.

Photo: Commuters hustle past the transit center construction site. Credit: J. Deseo/SSP.

Here’s the good news: Some of the construction work at Silver Spring’s transit-center site is cooking with oil. The bad news: The heavy lifting is still to come.

According to a newsletter from the county’s department of general services, crews slaving in the sand pit have replaced utility lines that cross the site outside the Silver Spring Metro station. That includes phone, gas and sewage lines, plus a fat Pepco duct bank (whatever that is).

Sticking with the up side, crews wrapped work on temporary erosion-control gear, including storm-water management ponds near the corner of Colesville Road and Wayne Avenue. They also tested the bedrock beneath all that sand to determine how deep in the ground the transit center’s foundation has to go, the newsletter explained.

Now the bad news. Excavation, blasting (that’s right — I said blasting) and installation of supporting structures are planned for the fall, the newsletter read. Crews also will put up a large retaining wall next to the MARC and Red Line tracks, though the newsletter did not explain why it was needed. (more…)

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