The Silver Spring Penguin

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.