Posts about Falkland Chase

Preservation

Preservation shouldn't stop future history at Falkland Chase

by Dan Reed   •   February 11, 2010 10:58 am

"Whenever there is a project plan that involves a historic property, designated or not, we will testify against the project," said Mary Reardon of the Silver Spring Historical Society.

It's not surprising that an organization devoted to preserving the history of Downtown Silver Spring would fight to save historic landmarks. In the case of Falkland Chase, that's a New Deal-era apartment complex dedicated by Eleanor Roosevelt. But is it really in the community's best interest to oppose any possible change whatsoever?

Residents and historians have fought to save the garden apartments at East-West Highway and 16th Street from the wrecking ball for nearly thirty years. But a few of the garden-style buildings were still torn down in the 1990's to build Lenox Park, a high-rise complex at East-West Highway and Colesville Road.

Four years ago, Falkland owner Home Properties first proposed redeveloping another portion of the complex on the north side of East-West Highway. The drawings they released in 2008 showed a gigantic tower-in-the-park that was totally inappropriate for what should be a pedestrian-oriented urban neighborhood, and at the time, I said that preserving the entire complex was better than letting anything like that happen.

Public Spaces

Breakfast links: More pedestrians there, more cars here

by David Alpert   •   February 27, 2009 8:58 am

Midtown Manhattan's Broadway to go pedestrian-only: Times Square and Herald Square are some of the nation's most crowded outdoor spaces. Diagonal Broadway jams up traffic on Sixth and Seventh Avenues, by taking away traffic signal time from the avenues. Yesterday, New York announced an innovative solution: close Broadway to traffic in these areas. Pedestrians may finally have enough room, and it'll actually reduce car delays. (Tips: Greater Greater Dad, Robert H.-D., Andrew K., and others.)

Go blogs! Yesterday's Broadway announcement is also a huge win for Streetsblog, the New York City Streets Renaissance Campaign, Transportation Alternatives, and other advocates who have persuaded the NYC government to completely transform its approach to transportation. A Wednesday segment about the future of news on NPR's Marketplace mentioned the rapid rise of small, online-only news operations focused on city government, local politics, and development.

T4A launches platform: The national Transportation For America coalition officially launched their platform on Capitol Hill today. It calls for this fall's transportation bill (TEA) to fund a 21st-century network that allocates transportation dollars based on objectives, like lowering carbon emissions and ensuring economic access, rather than set amounts for highways and (much smaller amounts) for transit.

PG neighbors debate highway widening, light rail: Residents of Temple Hills, Clinton and Brandywide debated widening Route 5 south of the Beltway. Some residents are eager for the widening, while others don't want the sprawl it will bring to southern Prince George's and counties to the south; some are pleased about the county's proposed light rail corridor, while others worry about the development that could result. (Gazette)

Reject a bungalow, get a skinny box: A developer built a 12-foot-wide modernist house on a lot in Arlington after neighbors rejected a zoning variance to put two bungalows in the place of one.

Up in Montgomery-land: The new Paint Branch High School in Burtonsville will be much worse for walkers (JUTP) ... The debate over Falkland Chase continues (Gazette) ... JUTP's Dan Reed and some friends encountered a Rockville leasing agent who said they "don't look like [they] could afford to live here" (Diamondback Online)

And: The Historic Preservation Review Board approved the revised design for the Whitman-Walker redevelopment project at 14th and S (CSNA) ... Metro has started layoffs (Examiner) ... the Senate passed the voting rights bill, with an amendment repealing DC's gun laws, but which will probably come out in conference. (Post, City Paper) ... The Virginia House rejected a bill to give residents the right to dry clothes on clotheslines.

Roads

Weekend reading: Calm during the storm edition

by David Alpert   •   September 6, 2008 10:22 am

Cornhusker calming in Chevy Chase: Residents are concerned about speeding drivers on Nebraska Avenue just west of Rock Creek Park, reports the Current. DDOT is reconstructing that segment of road, but residents argue the agency didn't adequately communicate plans while they were in development (a common problem across the city).

The article isn't clear about what exactly residents want. It quotes DDOT's Karen LeBlanc explaaining why they can't install speed bumps (which aren't really a good way to slow traffic, anyway), but speed bumps aren't the only kind of traffic calming. The road will have new sidewalks and bulb-outs at intersections, all good steps.

Farragut transfer moving forward: WMATA's Chief of Staff Shiva Pant answered Chuck Coleman's question about the out-of-system Farragut transfer idea at Friday's lunchtime chat. According to Pant, "It is something that is part of our next fare software upgrade. Once that is in place, we should be able to move forward with that idea."

One more step for Falkland Chase: The Montgomery County Planning Board approved plans to demolish one-third of the mid-century garden apartment complex near downtown Silver Spring to build a "luxury high rise", preserving the other two-thirds as historic while also enabling new and partly affordable housing. (Washington Post via Just Up the Pike). Both JUTP and I have criticized the proposed new tower for its very poor urbanism; it'll be up to the Planning Board to push something better.

Physically attracted to their cars: Wired relays a study which measured hormone levels in men and women after hearing the sounds of various cars. High-end sports cars generated the most arousal, particularly in women. Nature or nurture? How about playing background sounds of a Lamborghini in the subway? If subways were privately run, I suspect the operators would do just that, just like stores pipe in odors to draw out greater spending behavior.

More wards? Better ANCs? Richard Layman wonders if we need more, smaller wards, which triggers an interesting discussion about at-large Councilmembers (more? fewer?), improving ANCs (more professional staff?) and other government reform ideas.

Parking

Breakfast links: People aren't so dumb edition

by David Alpert   •   July 7, 2008 11:14 am

It might be well past breakfast for you, but thanks to fog in Boston and AirTran's crappy customer service, I got home at 3 am last night, so it's breakfast time for me.

ANC 6D pleased with new parking rules: As officials contemplate some tweaks to the performance parking pilot in Ward 6, ANC 6D (Southwest Waterfront and Near Southeast) made it clear that unlike some of their neighbors on Pennsylvania Avenue, they strongly support keeping the current rules, especially the evening hours that limit visitor parking into the night as well as during the day. (Hill Rag)

A better option for Falkland Chase: Just Up the Pike, critic of the badly designed redevelopment proposal for Falkland Chase in Silver Spring, reviews a somewhat better plan from the state Park and Planning department with streets dividing superblocks and buildings that better connect to the street. The MoCo Planning Board will consider this project on Thursday.

"Some suburban drivers" turn out to be a minority: BeyondDC notices that the poll attached to yesterday's Post anti-pedestrian hatchet job shows 53% (up to 54% as of this writing) in favor of the proposals (and 71% of DC residents).

Development

Suburban sensibility in Silver Spring submission

by David Alpert   •   June 6, 2008 9:51 am

Yesterday, I wrote about the historic preservation fight underway in Silver Spring as a developer seeks to add more housing right near downtown Silver Spring. There's a strong dose of NIMBYism in the drive to landmark the existing Falkland Chase low-density apartments, but as commenter Dan Reed pointed out, there's also a strong dose of bad design in the proposed redevelopment.

This building typifies what I call "suburban sensibility," placing something that looks generally like a suburban hotel in the middle of an urban grid, like Newport in Jersey City, NJ (right across the Hudson from Manhattan), the Hilton Washington just north of Dupont Circle, the Marriott Wardman Park, or the Watergate apartments. Each of these uses architecture to separate from rather than connect to the city. Each sets its entrance away from the road, separated by a driveway loop, forcing people on foot to cross wide car-oriented spaces. And each creates large visual empty spaces rather than the continuous streetscape found in vibrant urban neighborhoods.

The left-hand picture shows the main resident entrance. Cars have a very wide driveway while pedestrians are crammed into a much narrower space. And the entire driveway loop, with wide turns and a green but unusable space in the center, will force people to walk all the way around to get in and out.

On the right is the project's attempt to somewhat engage the street by putting a grocery store near the sidewalk. But they've still put a landscaped barrier in between, still separating the complex from the rest of the city. And what's with that winding path the woman is walking along, which for no discernible reason winds one way and then the other? Do they really think people will walk all the way around instead of just cutting across those bushes?

Critics also say this building is too tall. Ironically, the pressure to preserve the rest of the Falkland Chase apartments may contribute to the height—by allowing the developer to make money on only a small portion of the property, it increases the need for height on that one fragment. Moderate height throughout the area with a more street-oriented urban feel would serve Silver Spring much better.

Update: Dan has more on his blog.

Development

Silver Spring taxidermy

by David Alpert   •   June 5, 2008 1:06 pm

Historic preservation can mean a lot of things. To some, it's about keeping a vibrant, architecturally interesting neighborhood and ensuring pieces of a coherent whole aren't ripped out indiscriminately. To others, it's about maintaining a few significant pieces of notable architecture, like an art museum for buildings. And to some, it's about stopping any development that would make a town bigger and busier.

In Silver Spring, a preservation fight over the fairly bland Falkland Chase apartment complex appears to be mostly number three (neighborhood taxidermy) couched as number two (Eleanor Roosevelt cut the ribbon on the complex, and it was one of the first post-war apartment complexes with affordable housing).

But as Marc Fisher points out in today's column, the irony of landmarking this complex is that its historical significance as middle-class housing will be the very thing stopping it from becoming new middle-class housing for the modern era. And if we landmark everything near every downtown in the region, we won't be able to provide affordable and sustainable housing to anyone as gas prices climb. A little house out in a new suburb for everyone just isn't a realistic form anymore.

Silver Spring, Singular said the same things back in December. Speaking of Silver Spring, Singular, that site's header image depicts the Art Deco strip mall at Colesville and Georgia that's also historically preserved. I continue to be very skeptical of landmarking a parking lot, whether it was the first strip mall parking lot or not. I'd certainly preserve the Art Deco facade itself, but there's no reason the parking lot couldn't become a public square with perhaps a few floors of apartments behind and on top.