Development
Proposed Walmart undermines Rockville Pike redevelopment
For years, Montgomery County officials have been trying to remake Rockville Pike's retail strip into an urban boulevard. Yet thanks to a fluke in zoning, Walmart could drop a standard suburban big box in the middle of an urban neighborhood trying to become more walkable.
Pike Center today. Photo by M.V. Jantzen on Flickr.
The new Walmart would be located at Rockville Pike and Bou Avenue, just north of Montrose Road in the Pike Center shopping center.
According to the Washington Post, the store would be considerably smaller than traditional Walmarts, with about 80,000 square feet of floor space. By comparison, a typical modern supermarket is about 60,000 square feet, while larger Walmart Supercenters can reach 185,000 square feet.
Renderings from the Post show the Walmart displacing an existing row of shops in the strip mall, which include national chains like Office Depot and CiCi's Pizza in addition to local businesses like Bagel City.
This would be the third Walmart in Montgomery County, after an existing store in Germantown and another proposed store on Connecticut Avenue in Aspen Hill. But unlike those stores, which are far from Metro, the proposed Rockville Walmart is a half-mile from the Twinbrook station. Despite County Executive Ike Leggett's assertion that the store is "consistent" with the county's goal of building around public transit, this proposal completely undermines those intentions.
A new Walmart would undermine plans to revitalize Rockville Pike.
Plans by the City of Rockville and Montgomery County envision Rockville Pike as an urban boulevard with tall buildings against the street, not behind big parking lots. By bringing shops, housing and offices together near Metro stations along the Pike, planners hope to make it easier for people to walk, bike or take transit to their destination, providing alternatives to driving and reducing congestion.
In order to do so, higher-density development has been approved around the Twinbrook and White Flint Metro stations, the latter of which was written up in the New York Times as a model for suburban redevelopment. Residential and office towers have already begun sprouting up along Rockville Pike.
The proposed Walmart, however, sits along a short stretch of the Pike that falls under a completely different plan that was drafted in 1992 and still allows strip shopping centers. This kind of development is exactly what the community is trying to prevent from being built along Rockville Pike in the future.
It'll only encourage more people to drive to Rockville Pike rather than taking advantage of other modes of transportation, creating more traffic. But it's likely that Walmart chose to locate in Pike Center because it was easy to build a conventional store there, without going for a time-consuming zoning change or building in a more expensive, urban format that doesn't just cater to drivers.
Two of the eight stores Walmart plans to build in Greater Washington will take an urban form. Their proposed store on New Jersey Avenue in the District will sit at the base of an apartment building, while a new store in Tysons Corner, which is undergoing a transformation similar to Rockville Pike, will be part of a larger complex with a gym and offices. Ironically, those two branches and the one on Rockville Pike are all being developed by JBG Rosenfeld, whose vice president Jay Klug called Walmart "pretty enlightened" about building stores to fit an urban context.
Walmart has the right to build as they see fit so long as the zoning allows them to do it. Yet their store as proposed is completely inappropriate for Rockville Pike as it tries to become a denser, more urban corridor. Last week, the Montgomery County Council introduced a bill requiring big-box stores to craft community benefits agreements to reduce any negative impacts on the surrounding neighborhood. They might also want to figure out how to make this big-box store fit into the new Rockville Pike before it brings down one of the most ambitious suburban redevelopment projects in the country.
 | A planner and architect by training, Dan Reed is interested in suburban retrofits. Dan works for the Friends of White Flint, writes his own blog, Just Up the Pike, and serves as the Land Use Chair for the Action Committee for Transit. Dan lives in Silver Spring.    |
Comments
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by mike on Oct 20, 2011 11:59 am • link • report
"Krista C. Di Iaconi, a principal at Chevy Chase-based JBG Rosenfeld, said the company also plans to develop 200 to 250 apartments at the site. Two levels of underground parking will be built, she said."
by Tony on Oct 20, 2011 12:24 pm • link • report
If proposed Walmart is following the existing zoning, then the problem is the zoning. It is not reasonable to expect Walmart to carry the urban torch -- it is not their business to remake the suburbs.
by goldfish on Oct 20, 2011 12:50 pm • link • report
Some people will want to blame Walmart. But, the real blame goes to the folks who wrote the zoning code with such a glaring loophole.
by Falls Church on Oct 20, 2011 1:30 pm • link • report
by oboe on Oct 20, 2011 1:46 pm • link • report
by Miriam on Oct 20, 2011 1:56 pm • link • report
Does Walmart really think they can steal the market there?
by John M on Oct 20, 2011 2:23 pm • link • report
The drawings in the Post (I've seen them on their mobile website, but not on their full website) show a Walmart, albeit a smaller one (I did mention that), behind a big parking lot with an apartment building next door, but it too is behind a big parking lot. That's hardly an urban or "mixed-use" design. And it's still not enough for what Rockville Pike is supposed to become. If MoCo hadn't set the bar so high, this wouldn't be an issue.
At the same time, I agree that MoCo, not Walmart dropped the ball in not ensuring that this chunk of Rockville Pike is in line with the rest.
by dan reed! on Oct 20, 2011 2:31 pm • link • report
However, whenever I see these stories I always pause to question whether we'd be having the same debate about an 80,000 sq.ft Harris Teeter, Target, or (gasp!) Wegmans.
Still, I do think that Wal-Mart have made some incredibly good attempts to understand and adapt to urban markets (far more than any other national retailer I can think of), and it's upsetting to see them undermined and derailed because of the company's prior reputation. Their proposed NJ Ave store is a damn convincing argument that somebody at Wal-Mart really does get it.
I don't even particularly like Wal-Mart, and have plenty of reasons to think that they're a nasty company. However, when I see them making strides in the right direction, I don't want to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
by andrew on Oct 20, 2011 2:33 pm • link • report
There is no lack of retail to serve the needs of this community! Put it somewhere else Mr Leggett!
I don't want Rockville to be the dumping ground for all the big box stores being displaced from the new White Flint City rising down the street.
Has anyone really thought about how bad the traffic already is (and will grow) once the Bou Ave road extension to Montrose open. Add into that a major retailer like this and forget it.
I already switch my driving patterns to east/west on the weekends to avoid the north/south gridlock. I don't have time to sit in traffic (and I simply won't go anymore).
Put is somewhere else!!!
by armchairquarterback on Oct 20, 2011 3:18 pm • link • report
..well, unless it also comes with re-developing the rest of that strip mall into something actually worthwhile, of course.
by Justin..... on Oct 20, 2011 3:28 pm • link • report
:)
Of course as we have seen urban jurisdictions can also have cultural and legal inertia. And of course both can face problems with the economics of retrofitting physical legacy development.
Right now I don't think there is a jurisdiction in the region better prepared in its political and social cultural for urbanism than Arlington County Virginia. Whether Arlington is a suburb or a city is a matter of Talmudic subtelty, and unless there is a prize for bragging rights I'm not sure it matters.
by AWalkerInTheCity on Oct 20, 2011 3:54 pm • link • report
by Froggie on Oct 20, 2011 5:34 pm • link • report
by Rich on Oct 20, 2011 7:11 pm • link • report
by Cyrus on Oct 20, 2011 9:40 pm • link • report
by MattF on Oct 21, 2011 8:33 am • link • report
Leggett doesn't care either, he only wants the money. Shame on him as well! The past few years we have been hearing about the great developments that are going to come to White Flint and Twinbrook and how they will focus on walkability and bringing storefronts to the street, to put an end the strip mall era and car-dependent retail on the pike. We've also been hearing about the up-and-coming Rockville Pike, which will resemble the boulevards of Madrid or Champs Elyssees. Obviously that was just baloney. All the county and JBG care about is money money money, without caring about how their greed affect others. Shame on both!
I spoke with a traffic rep at JBG who was trying to sell me the story that because Wal-mart will be close to Twinbrook Metro it won’t have a big impact on traffic. Does he thikg we are really that stupid??? The fact that Twinbrook is close by will have no positive impact on traffic. That’s just JBG’s marketing strategy!
I hope MoCo’s development council is not naive enough to buy that story. Similarly, when I talked to another JBG rep and told them I couldn’t believe they were proposing another strip mall after what they have been promising for White Flint and Twinbrook they guy said “well, this is not really a strip mall…we are putting in a green roof on it!” are you serious??? Is that your saving grace? Shame on you JBG. To top it off, yet another JBG rep said “oh this will only add 20 cars to the congestion that is already on Rockville Pike” and when I looked at her like a deer in the headlights and she realized she was just pulling numbers from thin air she pointed me to the traffic rep who clarified that they expect over 450 additional cars during peak hour. So let’s see, we have about 3 peak hours of “rush hour” in the morning and 3 in the evenings. So this will result in an impact of about 2,700 additional cars a day, during those peak hours. That’s just insanity…!
MoCo development council: I beg you not to go through with this terrible idea. Outside of the money factor, this proposal by JBG doesn’t benefit anyone!
by Pro development anti big box traffic on Oct 21, 2011 10:17 am • link • report
by Alison Bowser on Oct 21, 2011 12:45 pm • link • report
However, this will absolutely have a negative impact on traffic - not just on 355, but also on Twinbrook Pkwy and the very poorly designed Montrose/Randolph interchange. There is no excuse for not turning this into a mixed-use development, and there is no excuse for leaving out some of the businesses that anchor the existing Pike Center (Bagel City, Cici's, Fridays).
What I do find ridiculous is that the other new Walmart in Aspen Hill - which is actually a "Supercenter" - is less than a 10-minute drive away from the Pike. Isn't one store enough?
by ND on Oct 24, 2011 1:24 am • link • report
-One, JBG is selling us a bridge in Manhattan if they are honestly trying to say that the proposed Wal-Mart's geographic proximity to Twinbrook will have any impact whatsoever on easing the traffic congestion the store will create. That's complete nonsense. People will drive to the Wal-Mart, and the Wal-Mart shoppers coupled with several hundred new residents (some who may drive, others who may not) will unquestionably have a negative impact on traffic congestion. There's really no debating that point.
-Two, that a Wal-mart strip mall is basically going to replace an existign strip mall is, as Dan accurately notes, completely contrary to what MoCo's planners are trying to do along that portion of the Pike. Leggett can spin this however he wants (and he undoubtedly will), but an 80k sf store set back behind a sea of parking is not in any way aligned with what is happening north and south of this location along the Pike. And this move virtually guarantees that this site will remain unchanged for decades to come, which is the real harm here.
-Three, this Wal-mart is redundant with other existing retail options already nearby. As others have noted, there is a Target directly behind the proposed Wal-Mart, and several grocery stores within a 1/2 mile radius. In short, this is a development that isn't filling a need while contributing negatively to the traffic flow and streetscape of a corridor desperately trying to shed its image as a strip mall-dominated parking lot.
Heck, I'll ad a fourth reason as well: I love me some Bagel City, and anyone that displaces them gets a massive thumbs-down in my book. Here's hoping BC can land a nice spot nearby.
by Ben on Oct 24, 2011 4:30 pm • link • report
by Rob Smith on Oct 25, 2011 2:34 pm • link • report
I for one will boycott this Wal-Mart and once again vote against Ike.
Is there anyway to prevent this from being built?
by Ben on Oct 26, 2011 8:41 am • link • report
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