Posts about Silver Spring

It also got approval from the Hearing Examiner, Lynn Robeson, who basically serves as a judge for the county's zoning code. Then it went to the County Council, but they rejected the zoning change due to opposition from residents only want single-family homes in their neighborhood.

The County Council asked EYA to come back with a new proposal, and they did, which was just approved by the Hearing Examiner. The examiner's office released this 111-page report detailing how they came to their conclusion.

Top: The originally proposed site plan. Bottom: The new site plan.

The site will now be zoned RT-12.5, which still allows townhouses, but at a lower density. There will be only 64 townhouses, instead of 77 as EYA first proposed, while the number of county-mandated moderately-priced dwelling units will drop from 13 to 8. The houses will be placed further away from Springvale Road to appease residents of that street, while a private street for the new development has been moved.

Because of these changes, half of the site is set aside as open space, including wider courtyards between townhouse rows and a larger park at the corner of Springvale Road and Pershing Drive. There's also more open space around the historic Riggs-Thompson House, which was built by the founder of Riggs Bank was originally going to be saved in the first proposal.

Neighbors continue to oppose townhouses

Nonetheless, some neighbors weren't satisfied. No fewer than 6 civic associations opposed the project, including the adjacent Seven Oaks-Evanswood Civic Association (SOECA), but also Lyttonsville and South Four Corners, both of which are several miles away from the site.

Residents complained about the loss of large trees, while others questioned that EYA's traffic studies showing no increase in nearby congestion. SOECA president Vicki Warren said there wasn't enough open space around the Riggs-Thompson House, though historic preservation planner Judith Christensen said she could "live with" what was provided because the county's Historic Preservation Commission would have a say in how it was used.

Many complained that the project's layout resembled military barracks, though the "alternative plan" submitted by Kenneth Doggett, SOECA's "expert land planner," looks much like EYA's proposal, but with fewer houses.

Doggett's proposal for the Chelsea Court site.

In response, EYA tried to show how Chelsea Court fit into the local context. Vice president Aakash Thakkar displayed a model of Clarendon Park, a project they built in Arlington with a similar layout, and noted how the end houses were designed to look like single-family homes, helping them blend into the neighborhood.

Miguel Iraola, a planner at Hord Coplan Macht who's designing the project, offered several precedents throughout Silver Spring, Wheaton and Bethesda that are similar in design or density to their proposal. Neighbors Maria Schmit and Tom Anderson claimed that they weren't comparable to Chelsea Court, but Robeson agreed with Iraola's conclusion.

With the hearing examiner's approval, the new Chelsea Court proposal will now go before the County Council once again, and I hope they approve it as well. EYA has worked hard to meet the neighborhood's concerns, crafting a project that not only respects the site's history but its current surroundings.

They also have a good track record for creating quality infill projects, which many neighbors recognize. "Based on EYA's National Park Seminary [in Forest Glen], I am convinced this new development will be attractive—just as attractive as our existing neighborhood and perhaps even more so," wrote SOECA resident Leslie Downey in a letter to the Planning Board last year.

Many Silver Spring residents say they want to support local businesses, are upset about traffic congestion, and are concerned about safety. Yet they are often the same ones who oppose projects like Chelsea Court, which would generate more customers, allow more people to walk, bike or use transit instead of driving, and provide more "eyes on the street."

We could do far worse than this. Chelsea Court has been fully vetted and dutifully revised, and now it's time to get it built.

Being in downtown Silver Spring less than a mile from the Metro, the 2½ acres the police station sits on are very valuable. Perhaps a better use for this site would be a mix of studio space and artist housing, not unlike Renaissance Square and the Mount Rainier Artist Lofts, two apartment buildings in the Gateway Arts District, or the Brookland Artspace Lofts, a building in Northeast Washington. All three buildings rent apartments and live-work units at subsidized rates to people who earn their living making art.

These buildings, which are each 100% occupied, offer artists who often have low incomes a quality place to live. According to the Census, the median rent in below-the-Beltway Silver Spring is $1206 a month, but actual apartment listings suggest that's only enough for a one-bedroom apartment. Meanwhile, a one-bedroom in the Brookland Artspace Lofts with studio space rents for $970, while a two-bedroom is just $1,205.

We could turn the police station into an arts center as proposed, but also build low-rise artist housing around it. A smaller community garden could be built, or it could instead be located in any of the 46 other parks in below-the-Beltway Silver Spring and Takoma Park. The lawn in front of the police station could still become a small public space for the neighborhood.

The Mount Rainier Artist Lofts. Image from Google Street View.

This proposal would cost more to build and may require public money. The Brookland Artspace Lofts in the District, developed by the same company that built the apartments in Mount Rainier, received $11 million in construction funding and tax credits from the DC Department of Housing and Community Development. If a funding source is found, however, artist housing could provide more customers for local businesses while developing a more substantial and diverse arts scene.

When I suggested this to Karen Roper and Steve Knight, two of the residents leading the push for the Station Arts Center, they were skeptical. "It's a little more unstructured and bohemian," Knight says. "I know one of the artists we talked to, she's married and has a house and a family." He wants to know "how strong of a need" there is for artist housing in Silver Spring.

"My neighbors ... bought their houses cheap" decades ago, says Roper. "They're looking for studio space." She notes that "two, possibly three" buildings with subsidized apartments will be built on Fenton Street in coming years, while a developer wants to renovate the Eagle Bank building at Sligo Avenue and Fenton Street into "microlofts," or small apartments geared at single adults.

One of the reasons the county may support the current Station Arts Center proposal is because of their experience with the new police station in White Oak. Plans to sell extra land around the station to build a mix of affordable and market-rate housing in 2009 were met with intense community opposition before they eventually backed down. Whether the county uses the old police station property to meet its affordable housing goals or make money by selling it to a private developer, dealing with angry neighbors will be inevitable.

Floor plan of typical apartment at Brookland Artspace Lofts.

That's why Roper and her neighbors are trying to start the conversation about development. "We wanted to get out there and make our pitch before somebody came in and did the same old, same old," she says. "I would like to see some imagination in this county. It's not about how much you develop, it's about how you develop."

Roper wants the Station Arts Center to distinguish Fenton Village from the rest of Silver Spring, calling it the "only thing that represents us and who we are."

As I've written before, having spaces for making art makes our community stronger. Even if I don't agree with every part of the Station Arts Center concept, I'm glad that neighbors are being proactive about what they'd like to see in their community.

That said, Karen Roper might be okay with a few more apartments if they allowed the neighborhood to keep its artistic flair. "I'd rather live in a dense, crowded place with artists and musicians," she says. "When you take that character away, you just have a bunch of crap next to each other."

Many of those neighbors were artists who lacked space to work. "[They] have outgrown working in their attics or basements and they're ready to move to something bigger or more serious," says Knight.

Roper worries that new development would make downtown Silver Spring "an audience district" by pushing them out. "We're an arts district that has no space for artists," says Roper. "East Silver Spring is full of artists. That's who we've always been."

The Gateway Arts Center in Brentwood. Photo by Anne Marchand on Flickr.

One of those artists, Laurie Breen, located her studio in the Gateway Arts Center in Brentwood, which opened two years ago in a former government surplus warehouse. Run by the Gateway Community Development Corporation and the Prince George's County Department of Parks and Recreation, the center holds classes, has two galleries, along with studios for 13 artists.

Roper wanted to create a place like that in Silver Spring. Her group envisions turning the 1960's-era police station into the Station Arts Center, a place where local artists can make and display their work and residents take classes. The parking lot in back would be turned into a community garden with 44 plots and "plenty of parking," while the front lawn would become an outdoor hangout like "the Turf," the temporary green that stood where Veterans Plaza is today.

The station is located between downtown's high-rises and the porch-fronted bungalows of East Silver Spring, and both Roper and Knight refer to it as a good place for a "transition" or "buffer" between the two while reinforcing the community's character. A thousand units will be built in Fenton Village over the next few years, says Roper, but "there's no green space, there's no community gardens, and there's no space for artists."

Knight and Burditt introduced the Station Arts Center concept in a column for the Silver Spring Voice. To "prove a need and a desire" for the project, the group is circulating a petition.

Civic groups and the Silver Spring Citizens Advisory Board have also been receptive. "When I pitched the idea of an arts center and community garden, people loved it," Roper says, adding that David Dise, director of the county's Department of General Services, called it the "best proposal he'd ever heard for Silver Spring."

Roper, Knight and Morales took a quick tour of the police station and found it wouldn't take much to turn it into an arts center.

"I think you could go in there on Day 1 and have a fairly reasonable artist space," says Knight, noting that the building and its mechanical systems were in good repair, but could be reconfigured easily. "I don't think there's anything sacred [architecturally] about the building. It provides a pretty good blank slate to start with." There are also more unusual features, like an underground shooting range beneath the parking lot, which Roper says would make a "cool darkroom" for photographers.

There are some issues, namely a lack of natural light. But "if the resources presented themselves," Knight says, "it wouldn't be really impinging the building's structural integrity if you wanted to punch some more windows into it."

Roper's excited about the building's aesthetic qualities. "The police station is funky and square and 60's in look ... it lends itself well to an arts center," she says.

The Parks Department is "extremely enthusiastic" about the community garden, she adds, because the site is already publicly owned and fenced off, requiring little additional work. Knight notes that there was a "pretty positive response" to one at Fenton Street Park, two blocks away.

Meanwhile, the lawn in front of the police station would become a "front yard" that Knight compares to "the Turf." It would be a "more casual outdoor space for people where you can just walk out, lay out a beach towel and get a tan."

"We're not going to blanket the police station in Astroturf," he jokes.

Though the design isn't finished, Roper estimates that it will cost $750,000 to renovate the police station. She is currently looking for a nonprofit group to operate the arts center, which would sustain itself by renting between 25 and 50 studios to working artists, offering classes to the public and some sort of "retail place."

"All we need from the county is a short-term lease," says Roper. "We don't need any funds from them."

Will the Station Arts Center plan work? We'll look at it in more detail tomorrow, along with one change I think could make it better.

So many things are wrong with this deal that it's hard to list them all. It's an unnecessary giveaway to a prosperous private company that has already received millions from the county. 300 parking spaces currently open to the public will be fenced off and unavailable to others. And everyone will suffer from the traffic and pollution that subsidized employee parking creates.

Meanwhile, neighbors who park in the Kennett Street garage are upset because they will soon be charged double what Discovery would pay.

Public parking is out of control in Montgomery County. It's heavily subsidized by taxpayers; the bonds sold to build garages in Silver Spring are paid off out of the county's general fund. Yet the county went to the expense of building a new parking garage when an existing garage one block away is full of empty spaces.

When Montgomery can't find anything better to do with its garages than give them away, it's a strong signal that it's time to stop building new ones. In a county desperately short of affordable housing for people, affordable housing for automobiles does not deserve to be a priority. Parking should pay for itself in Bethesda and Silver Spring.

Between my parents, who listened to adult contemporary, and my friends who were getting into musical theatre, I was anxious to hear music I could actually relate to. Green Day was pretty easy to find: on the radio, on television, and in the halls of Blake High School, on t-shirts and patches sewn to jean jackets.

Their songs were fast and catchy, though as a preacher's kid, I was initially horrified by the foul language. But I'd spent plenty of mindlessly dull afternoons like the ones Billie Joe Armstrong described in "Longview," and was relieved to know someone else felt the same way.

Meanwhile, I'd never been to Washingtonian Center before the evening of the party. Walking felt like a punishment, something I did on those "Longview" afternoons when I didn't have a ride to any place more interesting. On those days, I'd walk 45 minutes to the shopping center closest to my parents' house, down streets with look-alike 1950's ranch houses and all while not seeing another person. It was boring, but slightly better than being at home.

Washingtonian Center in 2006.

At the Washingtonian Center, walking suddenly became something fun. We could walk from the movies to an artificial lake, then look in store windows on our way to dinner. And we could do all of this while being around and looking at other people. Not only was it better than sitting at home alone, but it was more fun than going to the mall.

I didn't question Washingtonian Center's authenticity at first, perhaps because I couldn't yet tell the difference between it and a traditional downtown. But I definitely wondered why Green Day called themselves a "punk band," which didn't seem to describe a group who played stadiums. Punks, I imagined, were more likely found in places like Phantasmagoria, the grungy and now-closed punk club in Wheaton.

But both of these experiences served as a sort of gateway to more "legitimate" pursuits. It's because of Green Day that I made friends with similar taste in music who would later introduce me to "actual" punk bands like Fugazi or invite me to see their band play shows in punk houses. (The webcomic Nothing Nice to Say jokes that Green Day fans get into real punk out of embarrassment for liking Green Day.)

And it's because of Washingtonian Center that I began to explore downtown Silver Spring before it became a new "town center" in its own right, and taking Metro into the District to wander around there. I've always been interested in architecture, but it's trips to places like Washingtonian Center which got me excited in the spaces between the buildings, which is why I'm currently in school for urban planning.

People may call downtown Silver Spring "fake," but it gets people excited about urban places.

Much as I wouldn't have gotten into real punk if I hadn't listened to Green Day, I wouldn't be so excited about walking down real city streets had I not walked down a fake city street first. So for that reason, I'm not bothered when a new development is compared to a small town or an Italian piazza. Some of these places are like the Good Charlotte of urbanism, unable to be even a good fake downtown.

But like a good punk song that can teach you to see yourself and your world differently, I'm convinced that a walk down a good urban street can do the same, whether it's in a city or a suburb, old or new.

For more on the topic of punk rock and New Urbanism, check out this post from Scott Doyon comparing the two.

These restrictions make it difficult and expensive to run a bar, which encourages owners to locate in areas where there's already a bar scene with a guaranteed customer base. Hence, there are lots of bars in Bethesda and relatively few elsewhere. Yelp counts 25 bars in downtown Bethesda and just 9 bars in downtown Silver Spring, including Babe's Sports Bar, which closed earlier this month. And both pale in comparison to Clarendon, which with 44 bars has the highest number of any neighborhood outside the District.

This hurts bars in other parts of Montgomery County, who lose customers just by not being where all of the other bars are. It's especially hard for bars like Piratz Tavern. Though I've enjoyed myself thoroughly each time I went there, I can safely assume that not everyone wants to go to a bar and drink grog and sing sea shanties.

Piratz was a niche business, like a Korean restaurant or a record store, reliant on a small portion of the general public for their customer base. Niche businesses need a lot of people coming to the area to ensure that enough of them want what you're selling. That requires a high population density, like in the Akibahara "geek ghetto" in Tokyo, or a concentration of businesses serving a niche population, like Annandale, whose 900 businesses catering to Koreans make it a destination for Greater Washington's Korean community.

When you have a lot of people coming to your area, niche businesses can thrive. But in Silver Spring, where the bar scene and thus the pool of potential customers is very small, anything too unusual will get squeezed out.

Bars along H Street NE. Photo by the author.

Successful nightlife districts offer visitors lots of choices for dinner, drinks, and entertainment options. That's why Joe Englert purposely opened several unique venues at once along H Street NE in the District. He provided lots of reasons for lots of different kinds of people to come there, drumming up a substantial bar scene in a short period of time and helping to revitalize the neighborhood, which in turn produced more bars and restaurants.

Silver Spring could do the same if Montgomery County made it easier to open a bar here. Making the area a bigger nightlife destination could draw business to existing bars while encouraging new bars to open. It could also provide enough customers for niche bars like Piratz Tavern. Not only that, but it could also make the area safer, getting people on the streets at night when the sidewalks are normally empty.

Piratz Tavern didn't just fail because it was a pirate-themed bar. It failed because there aren't enough bars, pirate-themed or otherwise, to create a critical mass of bargoers in Silver Spring. Unless things change, the new Corporate Bar & Grill will struggle as well.

The residential component comes in three parts:

A 20-story apartment tower with studio, one-bedroom, and two-bedroom units. Home Properties claims it will be the tallest building in Silver Spring, but at 200 feet tall, it's actually just the tallest apartment tower, because there are four taller office buildings in downtown Silver Spring. The tallest building in Montgomery County, meanwhile, will be this 300 foot tall apartment tower in White Flint.

Not everyone will love the sleek, modern design, though one of the commenters on the Just Up the Pike Facebook page called it a "watered-down" version of The Standard Hotel in New York, which is encouraging.

The long strip windows are an interesting break from the typical window-balcony-window rhythm of many residential buildings. It's not totally clear from these images what materials will be used on the building's exterior, but it looks comparable to the metal cladding used on Cityline, a building Shalom Baranes designed in Tenleytown.

At the tower's base will be 7 row houses with rooftop decks. This is a variation of the "Vancouver point tower," which is basically an apartment tower with townhouses on the bottom. It kills two birds with one stone, providing the density of a high-rise building above while creating a low-rise, human-scaled experience at the street level.

Not only does this put people on the sidewalks, but it gives them something interesting to look at, not just driveways like some other downtown Silver Spring buildings.

A 5-story "loft-style" building with apartments and retail space. The Planning Department says this building will be about 80 feet high, suggesting that there will be some nice, tall ceilings inside. I'm not sure if storefront retail would be successful here, as it's currently a little off the beaten path. Improving the site's connections to the surrounding area will be important.

That's why the project also includes an extension of Dixon Avenue, which currently ends a block north at Bonifant Street. Home Properties will build the portion of the new street that passes through their site. Eventually, Dixon Avenue will continue south to Silver Spring Avenue.

Along with another new street connecting Ripley and Bonifant, Dixon Avenue will connect Eleven55 to the Metro and the rest of downtown Silver Spring. This will require tearing out part of the massive public parking garage on Bonifant or removing it completely, which may not happen for a long time.

Finally, the developer will build a quarter-acre pocket park at the with public art commemorating the life and works of environmentalist Rachel Carson, who wrote the book Silent Spring from her house in nearby White Oak.

Many of downtown Silver Spring's pocket parks are poorly designed and seldom used, but this one looks pretty good. For starters, placing it at the end of the block allows the new buildings to cozy up to the sidewalk, exactly as buildings in urban neighborhoods are supposed to do.

It's hard to imagine it today, but one day this park will be surrounded by a new Silver Spring Transit Center, several new buildings, and a partially elevated Purple Line. It'll be a valuable green oasis in the midst of the city, ensuring that people will want to use it.

Eleven55 isn't the only cool new building going up in the Ripley District. The Solaire apartments, being built across the street, will have live-work apartments that allow residents to run small businesses from home. At Ripley and Georgia Avenue is the new headquarters of translation company ALC, which placed a striking modern addition above a 1920's-era shop building.

The Ripley District may be a "made-up" neighborhood, but it's shaping up to be a pretty nice place. It's encouraging to see that architects and developers alike are beginning to embrace good urbanism, rather than settling for suburban-style buildings with huge driveways, as was once proposed for this site. Hopefully, Eleven55 will set the standard for new construction in downtown Silver Spring.

A friend's recent housing search offers an interesting example of the phenomenon.

Up until a few months ago my friend lived in a brand new, and quite expensive, building in White Flint. When they announced a rent increase, she decided to look elsewhere. I suggested downtown Silver Spring, thinking that the increased supply of housing units there in recent years would result in lower rents. After doing some research, my friend determined that rents in Silver Spring were comparable to what she was seeing in White Flint.

New buildings, it turns out, are expensive even if there are lots of them. Of course, Silver Spring's desirability in general has also greatly increased recent years, which is why there are so many new buildings there in the first place.

There are more people who are interested in paying to live in Silver Spring than there were a decade ago. While there are now more residential units than before, there is simply far more demand than the new buildings can accommodate to keep rents stable.

Just up the Red Line in Wheaton the situation is a little different. Wheaton is still a few years away from revitalization on the scale of Silver Spring. It is a much less desirable location. Therefore, one would suppose that rents there would be less expensive.

Because Wheaton is a less desirable location, it has fewer new buildings than Silver Spring. But it does have a few. If one compares the rents for a new building in Wheaton to those of a similar new building in Silver Spring, the listed rents are comparably expensive.

Despite the location differences, they are both new buildings. And new buildings have high rents.

Older buildings compete with newer buildings by offering lower rents.

In the specific case of downtown Silver Spring, the older buildings can charge almost as much as the new buildings because the area is so desirable that there is a supply shortage. If there were enough supply to meet the demand, the older buildings would be the first to become more affordable.

Buildings in the same location compete with each other for tenants. New buildings offer amenities, and old buildings offer affordability. Previously new buildings eventually become comparatively old, and therefore eventually have to compete more strongly on price.

The key lesson is that we must produce enough new urban buildings today to meet tomorrow's affordable housing needs. Our current affordability problems are due in no small part to a failure in the late 20th Century to produce enough urban buildings that we would today consider "old". We must not repeat that mistake.

The Laurel Macy's has managed to remain open for years despite much of its host mall being shuttered. That store would likely have closed years ago if it wasn't making money, especially in the wake of the Great Recession.

Similarly, if it had not been profitable the White Flint Bloomingdale's would have closed in 2007 when another location of the luxury retailer opened a mere 3 Metro stations away.

Within the Favored Quarter, the most economically competitive and healthy part of our region, only the largest and most dynamic enclosed malls are continuing to thrive. The rest are slowly dying.

In Maryland, Montgomery Mall is the most vibrant, while in Virginia the Tysons cluster reigns supreme.

When the White Flint redevelopment plan was approved in 2010, it provided the owners of White Flint Mall the opportunity to earn a healthier profit by giving the market more of what it wants: walkable urbanism.

Elsewhere in the region the malls are doing as bad or worse. Most have either closed or are in the process of being converted to walkable town centers.

Arlington has had success turning the area around its two enclosed malls into mixed-use towns, first at Ballston and now at Pentagon City, where the process is still under way.

In Fairfax, Springfield Mall is slated for redevelopment, and Fair Oaks Mall is actively considering a mixed-use future.

In Prince George's County, the area around the Mall at Prince George's (formerly Prince George's Plaza) has been undergoing a process similar to Pentagon City. At Bowie Town Center, County officials are looking at adding more entertainment and housing options.

Meanwhile, urban shopping areas that I mentioned three years ago have increased in prominence:

In the District of Columbia, there are four shopping districts that support clusters of national retail chains that are usually mall-based: Downtown (Old Downtown clustered around Metro Center), Connecticut Avenue between Farragut Square and Dupont Circle, Friendship Heights, and Georgetown. Columbia Heights is emerging and has a different mix of retailers.

Silver Spring's retail is more vibrant than ever. The space vacated by Borders was quickly filled by Smart Toys. Bethesda and Clarendon are continually adding to their mixture of chains and smaller upscale retailers. Wheaton is a work in progress.

Even outside the Beltway, urbanism is catching on. Rockville Town Square and Gaithersburg's Washingtonian Center are growing, and National Harbor is setting the standard for Prince George's County. Two decades ago, all those developments likely would have been enclosed malls.

While purely car-dependent malls aren't going to go completely extinct, they are becoming far more rare. In the future, it is likely the only enclosed malls that remain will be the largest super-regional "winners" inside the Favored Quarter. Meanwhile, no new malls are planned.

As the 21st Century continues, both living and dead mall sites will be either be completely redeveloped or will evolve into mixed-use walkable urban places. Retailers will continue clustering at transit-oriented, walkable urban locations, both downtown and at new suburban "uptowns."