Council members lean towards redevelopment at Falkland Chase

By Jennifer Deseo | Mar 24, 2009

Two out of three county council members on the housing committee agreed: Redevelopment plans for the Falkland Chase apartments should be allowed to roll forward, they said Monday afternoon in Rockville.

Committee members Michael Knapp (D-District 2) and Nancy Floreen said during a scheduled meeting that they were cool with redevelopment on the complex’s northern parcel, on the northeast corner of East-West Highway and 16th Street.

“It’s a pretty good deal,” Floreen told her colleagues. The at-large Dem calculated rents on more than 120 of the 1,020 proposed high-rise residential units would be stabilized for 20 years. Currently, 182 garden-style apartments — some of which are rent stabilized — sit on the northern parcel.

Floreen and Knapp also indicated they would back the county planning board’s idea of declaring buildings on the complex’s southern and western parcels historic. If the entire county council goes with that flow, the New Deal-era apartments would be spared the wrecking ball forever and ever (or at least until someone proposes a reversal to the county’s atlas of historic buildings).

So what did that dissenting committee member have to say?

“We’re at risk of decreasing the housing diversity,” council member Marc Elrich told his colleagues. The at-large Dem worried the site’s proximity to a Metro station and construction costs would jack rents through the shiny new roof.

“When all is said and done, this will be a significant loss in affordable housing at this site. I don’t see much value here, except in the 125 proposed MPDUs [moderately priced dwelling units],” he said.

Elrich also said car traffic along East-West Highway, 16th Street and nearby Colesville Road would be disatrous if a proposed Harris Teeter supermarket were to open on the redeveloped site. Even if apartment dwellers in the immediate hood walked to the store, many more would drive, he argued.

“We’re not getting much for what we’re giving away,” Elrich told his colleagues. “I don’t think it’s a good deal.”

The housing committee discusses the Falklands again next week before hitting the full county council with its final recommendation.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Mr T in DC.

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Affordable housing is new focal point in Falkland Chase debate

By Jennifer Deseo | Mar 11, 2009

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.

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Harris Teeter hearts Silver Spring, developer says

By Jennifer Deseo | Feb 23, 2009

Southern supermarket chain Harris Teeter wants in on downtown Silver Spring’s consumer action, but only if it can find a retail space big enough to house one of its stores, one developer claimed.

Don Hague, whose company wants to redevelop the northern end of the Falkland Chase apartment complex, told Silver Spring’s urban-district advisory committee Thursday that Harris Teeter execs are “very committed” to opening a store in downtown Silver Spring.

“They wanted 50,000 square feet [of retail space] and 200 parking spaces,” Hague explained to the committee. Under a previously proposed design, the redeveloped section of Falkland Chase would have accommodated such a store.

The developer — New York-based Home Properties — and big boys at The Teet even had a draft lease, Hague said. But pressure from preservationists, the county planning board, affordable-housing advocates, the economy and anyone else you can name prompted Home Properties to scale down the design, and shrink the retail space in the process.

Despite that, Teet execs still want in on downtown Silver Spring, Hague said. The crappy housing market has steered Harris Teeter away from vacant suburban developments, and pointed them directly at populated urban areas, he explained.

“If we can still get them 50,000 square feet, Harris Teeter will come,” Hague said.

Of course, that’s if Home Properties can move forward with its redevelopment plans. Area preservationists have long argued that the Falkland Chase apartment complex, which straddles the intersection of 16th Street and East-West Highway, should be spared the wrecking ball as an example of New-Deal garden-style apartments.

There’s also the matter of booting 182 households currently occupying apartments on the northern parcel.

“Do you really think it’s good public policy to displace middle-income households to get more affordable housing?” Mary Reardon, with the Silver Spring Historical Society, told the advisory committee. “For more affordable units, we’re giving up an historic building.”

Ernest Bland, an East Silver Spring architect and member of the advisory committee, agreed. “We’re losing more and more nice things about Silver Spring, and I put Falkland Chase in there,” he told his colleagues.

Bland also sweated how the increased human density would strain infrastructure and traffic flow along East-West Highway. The proposed redevelopment jacks the number of apartments on Falkland Chase’s north parcel from 182 to more than 1,000 units, Hague said.

Ain’t nobody building nothing on the northern parcel until the county council settles the preservation issue. They could declare all, some or none of Falkland Chase’s three sections eligible for historic preservation.

The county council looks that salty dog in the eye in mid March.

Photos courtesy of the Harris Teeter Co.

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‘Little fish, big fish’ battle over Fenton Village alleys

By Jennifer Deseo | Feb 19, 2009

MoCo’s planning board put the temporary kibosh on one Fenton Village development last Thursday after commercial neighbors said their businesses would suffer from its construction.

“There are at least three property owners being severely impacted, and we don’t see any agreement among the parties to remedy these things,” planning commish John Robinson said of the Studio Plaza project.

Its developer, Bob Hillerson, has asked the county to surrender four Fenton Village alleys so that he can move forward with the mixed-use project. But adjacent shops rely on those alleys off Thayer and Silver Spring Avenues, Mayor Lane and Fenton Street for deliveries and trash removal, neighboring property owners testified.

“We’re going to lose the Thai Market, the Ethiopian coffee house and the Korean salon,” Mike Gerecht, who owns a commercial building on Fenton and Silver Spring, testified. “I’m concerned about my tenants and merchants. We’re struggling in this economy.”

Another landlord, 85-year-old Athena Kalivas, said losing alley access would put an end to things at her property on Thayer near Fenton. The short commercial building has been her family’s enterprise since the 1950s, and it’s where her husband died.

“The big fish eats the little fish, and I’m the little fish. I don’t want Mr Hillerson to take my rights,” Kalivas wailed before the planning board. “Don’t let him take my bread and my medicine! Don’t let him take my life!”

But according to Bob Dalrymple, legal eagle to developer Hillerson, Kalivas agreed on paper to allow Hillerson to retrofit her building. That would give delivery and trash-collection trucks the wiggle room needed to access tenant businesses once the Studio Plaza project was completed, he told the board.

Still, board members found the adjustments wouldn’t do enough for large delivery trucks, and they weren’t in the business of enforcing private agreements, board chairperson Royce Hanson told Dalrymple. In fact, they didn’t even know why Hillerson’s request to abandon the publicly owned alleys had come to them before going to the county council.

That’s when Dalrymple cited Chicken v. Egg, where the request could have gone in any order to the planning board or county council. However, he wanted to be sure that both bodies were cool with surrendering the alleys before his client got any deeper into the process, he explained.

Planning commish Robinson said things would have gone over a lot smoother with the board, and subsequently with the county council, if they had sensed peace and harmony between Hillerson and his neighbors. Instead, the board put off its decision — and recommended that the county council do the same — until the project’s plans undergo deeper scrutiny.

“We’re asking these people to rely on our assurances that they’ll be taken care of. But it’s obvious that the people of Silver Spring are not prepared to rely on the board’s assurances when this issue comes back up at the project plan’s review,” Robinson said.

Photo of Mayor Lane at Silver Spring Avenue by J. Deseo/SSP.

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Planners: Snip county’s string around Silver Place project

By Jennifer Deseo | Dec 8, 2008

Sure, the county’s planning department could use some cash to design its new offices on Georgia Avenue and Spring Street. But planning commissioners said Thursday they didn’t want any big debts — financial or otherwise — with the county government.

“I’m worried about not having this project completely under our control so we can keep moving,” commish Joe Alfandre told staffers at the board’s weekly meeting. “The more we’re needy, the tougher this is going to be for us.”

At least $1 million is needed to score preliminary architectural designs for the board’s new auditorium, a seven-story office tower, and the public atrium between them (above). That bit of cash could be borrowed (with interest) from the county council, Al Warfield, with the planning department’s financial office, explained to the board.

But then, the project would need an undetermined assload more money from the county to get architectural details cooking in earnest. The planning department hits up the county council for an appropriation sometime this month, though the council won’t work on it until after its holiday recess, project manager Dan Hertz said.

And it’s that county appropriation that has commish Alfandre sweating. “We might be beholden a litlle more than we think if we have to depend on the county,” he told his colleagues.

What the county might behold unto the planning department is unclear. So far, early concepts for Silver Place drop 150,000 square-feet of office space on Georgia and Spring, plus 305 residential units towards the site’s northeast end (below).

Community members previously said they worried about traffic volumes with the number of apartments to be built there. Meanwhile, people in the business community complained about Silver Place’s zero retail space. It’s unknown where any of the county council members stand on either issue.

Still, the planning board doesn’t want too much of the county’s money if it means wearing a studded, black-leather leash around its collective neck. Instead, the department might tap into “a couple hundred thousand” left over from June’s public design meetings, conduct DIY engineering surveys, and negotiate with dime-a-dozen architects scrounging for work in this crappy economic environment, project manager Hertz suggested.

The planning department meets with the county council’s planning, housing and economic development committee Monday afternoon to discuss the project. Construction on the office space could start in 2010, with completion in 2012.

Renderings courtesy of SilverPlaceWorkshop.com.

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Fenton Village condo developer told to deliver the goods

By Jennifer Deseo | Dec 2, 2008

The issue of concrete sidewalks versus granite paving outside a Fenton Village condominium seemed trivial. But the county planning board’s recent discussion on the matter hinted at the fury to build and buy condos during the area’s housing boom.

On Nov 20, the planning board ruled that the Lofts 24 condominium on Fenton and Bonifant Streets deserved granite paving (below, left) at its entrances, as was proposed previously by Virginia-based developer MAB, and not the concrete crap that was actually used (below, right).

Granite pavers in front of the Lee building on Colesville Road. Concrete surface at Lofts 24 entrance.

Sandra Pereira, with the planning department, told the board that granite was “an integral part of the building’s design, and part of the public amenities in the original site plan.”

So why was concrete used in the first place, if the original game plan called for granite?

“We had to make a decision on the spot,” Alex Diaz, with MAB, testified. Granite was a tough find and would have stalled construction by as much as 16 weeks, he explained. On top of that, the company and its general contractors were under the gun to get the project finished.

“The building had to be delivered,” Diaz said. “It was not our intention to ignore the wishes of the planning board.”

But fancy sidewalks weren’t the only element scratched during construction. According to Ferris Curry, a member of the Lofts 24 condo board, skylights drawn into original planning board-approved plans were left out of the final product.

Installation of those skylights would have violated height restrictions in the area, so MAB and planning staffers agreed to nix them, official documents state. But the developer continued to refer home buyers to designs that included the rooftop windows, Curry testified. It was only during Curry’s walk-through inspection of his brand-new, top-floor digs that he learned the skylights were out.

“At that point, we were being pushed to close on the property,” Curry told the board. He wasn’t offered a price break, and any delay in closure would have added penalty fees to the tab, he added.

Planning commish John Robinson felt Curry’s pain. But the planning board wasn’t equipped to force a developer to fulfill a business obligation if it meant violating county codes, he said. (Translation: Take ‘em to court.) However, the board could force MAB to tear out the concrete walkways and drop in some granite — as was so ordered.

MAB’s reps weren’t digging the idea. The work would cost the company $141,000, and no contractor would be willing to take the liability risk of futzing around the building’s pipes and wiring, Gus Bauman, legal eagle for MAB, testified. Diaz also warned that reworking the sidewalks could lead MAB into bankruptcy.

“That’s your problem,” commish Robinson and chair Royce Hanson said simultaneously.

“I’m not buying into the economic-waste argument,” Robinson told MAB reps. “We can’t make exceptions here and then make exceptions for others as well. You’re not providing us with an alternative solution.”

MAB has about one month to pitch a game plan outlining how and when the concrete will be replaced.

Photos courtesy of MNCPPC.

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