The Silver Spring Penguin

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.