The Silver Spring Penguin

Image: A rendering of the Studio Plaza project, as seen from Fenton Street. Courtesy of MNCPPC.

The county’s planning board said Thursday afternoon that it was mostly cool with what one developer has in mind for Fenton Village. But board members also warned of further regulatory hurdles, the project’s potential to sterilize the place, and the developer’s bad rep in the neighborhood. (more…)

It’s an enigmatic neck of the woods, but if some people had their way, Fenton Village would be a cozy haven for short buildings and small businesses.

At a public forum last Wednesday night in Fenton Village (where else?), about 50 area residents and business owners pulled together a wish list of how development should roll in the hood just south of Wayne Avenue. Currently, the area is sprinkled with squat commercial buildings and weed-strewn lots in between.

But a couple of development projects — the Bonifant Plaza residential gig, and the big Studio Plaza mixed-use project — will alter that landscape, for better or for worse. And those at the public forum wanted to be sure that things would swing for what they considered the better.

One of the big hits on the forum participants’ collective wish list was the desire to keep new buildings in the hood on the short side. Existing buildings on Fenton Street’s west side are about 20 to 40 feet tall, but zoning laws would allow new buildings to reach 60 feet in height. New residential projects can actually reach 110 feet between Fenton and Georgia Avenue if they contain affordable housing units.

That kind of height would create a canyon effect that wouldn’t gel with the preferred “human scale” of existing buildings, some participants expressed.

“Developers are building these faux Main Streets, and we have the originals here,” Jerry McCoy, with the Silver Spring Historical Society, said. “We’re in danger of losing them.”

Another big theme was the desire to retain and attract independent businesses to the hood. (Emails also requested a greater variety of shops, forum coordinator Debbie Linn said.) One way to do that would be to offer rent-subsidized retail space, or to negotiate cheaper retail rents with developers in exchange for greater building densities, some suggested.

And then there were calls to improve traffic flow, access to mass transit, and pedestrian safety on Fenton Street. That kind of action would make the place more inviting to shoppers, participants said.

But who will be shopping in Fenton Village, forum coordinator Linn asked. Should the hood be designed to serve downtown residents only? Or should it be a “destination” for visitors from other parts of the region? No consensus was reached.

So what’s next? The information and opinions gathered that evening will be used to guide Silver Spring’s citizens advisory board in its consideration of specific issues, Darian Unger, board chairperson, said.

Photos by Ron Pace for The Penguin.