While preservationists and developers have danced forever around the historic value of downtown’s Falkland Chase apartments, a new issue has come into play: What can redevelopment on the northern parcel do (or not do) for Silver Spring’s renters?
At a public hearing before the county council Tuesday night in Rockville, Mary Reardon, with the Silver Spring Historical Society, argued that constructing 1,040 new apartments on the north side of East-West Highway and 16th Street didn’t justify the eviction of 182 existing occupants.
“Is it really good public policy to destroy housing to gain more housing?” Reardon testified. “It should be offensive to affordable-housing advocates.”
Wayne Goldstein, with Montgomery Preservation, went a step further and asked: Does Montgomery County really need more affordable housing? At February’s urban-district advisory committee meeting in downtown Silver Spring, Goldstein told committee members that the county was good with what it had.
“We are meeting the housing goals using sites never considered for housing. The need has been met,” Goldstein said in February, and reiterated (more or less) Monday night to the county council. “You don’t need to meet the housing goals with development at Falkland Chase.”
Au contraire (French for “hellz no”), said Robert Goldman, with the nonprofit Montgomery Housing Partnership. Crib costs in MoCo are still high despite the recession, he testified, and more families are dealing with less income. On top of that, home foreclosures are forcing former bourgeoisie to seek a cheap place to crash among the proletariat.
Ditto, said Richard Pavlin, another affordable-housing advocate.
“What the developer is offering is why I think lower-income families will benefit from redevelopment at Falkland North,” he testified. “Why aren’t we on the side of tenants?”
Aside from the whole affordable-housing argument, others said redevelopment would impact the hood in other ways. Felicia Eberling, a Colespring Plaza resident and former Falkland renter, called the green acreage “an asset to our neighborhood and part of our heritage. It’s a consolation for the rest of us who live in high rises.”
And forget about the automobile traffic, especially at the traffic triangle where Eastern Avenue, 16th Street and Colesville Road collide. That mess would only get messier if more people moved into the area, said Jerome Paige, of the North Portal Estates Civic Association in The District.
“Many of my neighbors view downtown Silver Spring as our downtown,” he told the council. “What happens on East-West Highway and 16th Street affects my neighborhood directly.”
The county council has final say on whether all three Falkland parcels should be preserved, or just the western and southern parcels while the north side is reworked. The council’s housing committee mulls over this one on Mar 23.
Photo: The cuppola on Falkland Chase’s southern parcel. Credit: J. Deseo/SSP.
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.