Photo: I can almost smell the rock and roll. Credit: J. Deseo/SSP.
Montgomery County officials and a local developer are at the “one-yard line” in talks to bring the Fillmore music-hall project into the end zone and score that elusive touchdown.
“We’re saying 30 to 60 days, but hopefully, we’re closer than that,” Bruce Lee, of the Lee Development Group, told the Washington Business Journal. “We have several meetings over the next couple of weeks and are wrapping up the details.” (more…)
Credit: J. Deseo/SSP
The construction of downtown Silver Spring’s music hall is stuck in neutral because its developer is worried about the joint’s impact on an adjacent, still unknown project, MoCo exec Ike Leggett said Saturday. (more…)
ROCKVILLE — For those about to rock, the county at some point will salute you at its new Silver Spring music hall, a spokesperson for MoCo exec Ike Leggett said Monday afternoon.
“We’ve exchanged a few final draft contracts with developers, and we’re still in negotiations,” Diane Schwartz-Jones, assistant chief administrative officer for Leggett, told the county council’s economic development committee. “We’re working diligently on it.”
She couldn’t say more because the wheeling and dealing to construct a 2,000-seat venue on Colesville Road are still in the works. However, she indicated that negotiations would wrap soon, and that an announcement on who would design and build what was forthcoming.
The project, which hooked up the county with concert promoter Live Nation and the Lee Development Group, plants a new Fillmore music hall on what used to be a JC Penney department store. The state and county have coughed up a combined $8 million cash money to cover most of the publicly owned facility’s construction costs. Meanwhile, Live Nation will rent and run the joint, and will pick up the estimated $2 million tab to install interior stuff, like stage lighting and, well, a stage.
The Lee Development Group, which owned the JC Penney site, donated that piece of real estate to the county for the music-hall project. In exchange, the company can count the music hall as its required public-use space when it constructs a larger building on an adjacent parking lot along Georgia Avenue near Colesville Road.
Once the county seals the deal with whomever is designing this thing, the project must go before the county planning board for regulatory review. According to the county’s lease with Live Nation, the facility must be ready to roll by July 2010.
Photo: A poster announces the new Filmore venue on Colesville Road. Credit: J. Deseo/SSP.
The guy who runs DC’s 9:30 Club said it’s not too late to let him pick up the tab on Silver Spring’s proposed music-hall project.
In a Sep 11 letter to county council prez Mike Knapp, Seth Hurwitz, whose company also runs Columbia’s Merriweather Post Pavilion, argued that the county’s deal to build a music venue for rival rocker Live Nation wasn’t a done deal.
“It’s clearly not too late to reconsider,” Hurwitz told Knapp. “You can still redirect millions of dollars to what we expect government to invest in: education, public safety, social services and transportation -– not a nightclub.”
And then Hurwitz said it straight up: “My offer still stands to build the music hall with my own money,” to the tune of up to $10 million.
Hurwitz originally pitched the privately funded construction of 9:30 North in September 2007 through a series of letters to MoCo exec Ike Leggett (D). But by then, Leggett said Hurwitz’s overtures were too little, too late.
If current plans roll, the state and county will cough up a combined $8 million to build the 2,000-seat venue, which the county will own when all is said and done. Live Nation, which also runs NoVa’s Nissan Pavilion, inked a lease in January and will run the planned Colesville Road joint. The land — and its historically designated Art Deco facade — will be donated by the Lee Development Group, which currently runs the site as a street-level parking lot.
But before anyone does anything, the county council must consider proposed zoning changes that would make construction happen. The first proposed change would allow the music venue to fulfill public-space requirements for a larger, adjacent project. The other change would give the Lee Development Group up to 15 years to build that adjacent project.
County council member Valerie Ervin (D-District 5) said her colleagues were leaning towards approval of those zoning changes. “I have confidence that there’s an understanding of the importance of the Fillmore [music hall] to Silver Spring,” she told The Penguin Wednesday during a groundbreaking ceremony for downtown’s civic building.
“The will of the body is to move forward,” Ervin added.
The council’s planning, housing and economic-development committee mull over the details on Sep 29.
Photo: The Colesville Road site of the proposed music-hall project. Credit: R. Pace/SSP.
For years, the Lee Development Group has run a parking lot off Georgia Avenue in downtown Silver Spring. But MoCo exec Ike Leggett would like to see another kind of business occupy that space: a new Fillmore music hall. (more…)
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