Courtesy of Flickr user Johnny Dollar. Reposted with permission.
On Monday, the Public Broadcasting System announced that “The Antiques Roadshow” will be rolling through Washington, DC, this August. For the uninitiated, the program brings tchotchke collectors out of the woodworks to have their stuff appraised by professional antique dealers. Some of it is crap, some of it is big money, all of it is entertaining.
So what would “Roadshow” pros think of the tiki mugs above? (more…)
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.
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…)
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 The Penguin's coverage of a mass-transit project that might roll through downtown Silver Spring.
What the hell are they building now? Learn more from The Penguin's development coverage.
Boxed wines and rosés are back in vogue. Just ask The Penguin's sommeliers.
