Posts about Public Spaces

It sounds far out, but it might actually work. Montgomery County is blessed with a number of above-ground public parking garages in the downtowns of Silver Spring, Bethesda, and Wheaton. Their rooftop levels have great views, but outside of a few events each year, most of them are empty.

Our parking garages may not be as pretty as the Herzog and de Meuron-designed garage in Miami Beach which doubles as an event space. But since many of our garages are intended for commuters, they're usually next to Metro stations or bus stops, meaning you don't have to drink and drive.

Unfortunately, most parking garage roofs in Montgomery County are blocked off with chains when they're not being used for parking. County police threaten to arrest anyone who tries to go up there.

In 2011, photographer Chip Py attempted to do a photo shoot of a popular go-go band atop a parking garage in downtown Wheaton. He'd been detained by police for taking pictures there before, so he decided to contact the Department of Transportation, which manages the garages.

"It was 13 people, lights and everything. And I didn't want to risk going in there and getting it shut down," Py said. But officials from the county said he'd get arrested for trespassing. "You can't do anything in there except park a car," he remembers being told.

Of course, people go anyway. One Saturday afternoon last year, I decided to visit the top floor of every parking garage in downtown Silver Spring. As with any forbidden-but-accessible place in the urban realm, I also found teenagers. On one garage roof, I walked into a stairwell to leave and stumbled on two kids sketching and listening to music on a little boombox. The smell of pot wafted through the air. I wanted to ask, "Why are you here?" but before I could, they freaked out and packed up.

To me at least, the answer is obvious. I remember sneaking onto the roof of the Town Square Garage on Ellsworth Drive with my friends from high school before it opened in 2004. There's the thrill of breaking the rules, yeah, but there's also the great view and the feeling like you're in the middle of everything and completely alone at the same time.

That's not too different from being in a great urban park or plaza. Public parking garages belong to the public, and we should think about them as part of the public realm. In other words, Montgomery County should take advantage of all this empty space they have, especially since it's not being used for parking. Of course, not all parking garages are engineered to actually hold people, like this one in Phoenix that violently shook when Arizona State University students held a dance party on top. We'd have to make sure that our garages were up to the task.

In recent months, there's been a lot of talk about growing the county's nightlife scene. However, it's primarily been about street-level drinking, or in the case of the Quarry House Tavern in downtown Silver Spring, subterranean drinking.

Not only would rooftop events on parking garages be a good use of wasted space, but they might be unusual enough to draw people here for a night out. The DC area may have a lot of rooftop bars, but definitely not one like this.

For more examples, check out this photoset of views from parking garages in downtown Silver Spring.

Done well, the headquarters could be a catalyst, drawing people and investment to the area while serving as an example of everything Montgomery County stands for. Done poorly, it'll be a black hole, sucking the life out of Wheaton and hampering its redevelopment. How can we Montgomery County get this right? Here are a few suggestions:

Mix it up.

The current concept is to build a 150,000-square-foot building that would contain the two departments' headquarters, a credit union, a day care center and an underground parking garage. A second building could later be built behind it with apartments and ground-floor shops.

That seems a little backwards. After all, the headquarters would directly face the new town square, which would be a more desirable location for retail than farther up the block as proposed. Restaurants and cafés with outdoor seating could help add life to the square, while putting offices there that close at 5 pm would just create a dead spot.

Montgomery County should follow Arlington's lead. Its located its Department of Community Planning, Housing and Development and other government agencies in Courthouse Plaza, a complex with ground-floor shops, restaurants, a movie theatre and a farmers' market surrounding a pedestrian mall. While the space isn't as robust or lively as Clarendon next door, it's active throughout the day and the week and serves as an anchor for the larger neighborhood.

Engage the public.

Planning isn't the sexiest government agency. Little kids don't idolize zoning clerks the way they do fire fighters and police officers, and with one exception you won't find many television shows about planners. Nonetheless, planners play an important role in shaping our communities, and the new headquarters provides an opportunity to tell that story.

One example of how to do that is the House of Sweden in Georgetown, which houses the embassies of both Sweden and Iceland, plus offices and a conference center. Designed to reflect the Swedish ideals of openness, transparency and democracy, the building is open to the public and hosts exhibitions, talks, and concerts showcasing the nation's arts and culture.

The Planning Department already holds public events like last fall's open house or their annual speaker series. These events, usually on weekends or during the evening, could help activate the building outside of the Planning Board's twice-weekly meetings.

It would be cool if the building's design could make those activities visible from the street, the same way that the House of Sweden's lobby opens to the Georgetown Waterfront. It could include a small gallery to showcase the latest projects, allowing residents to find out what's happening in their community while, say, going out for dinner.

Design for a statement.

Most modern public buildings are unremarkable and undistinguished. For every gorgeous, inspiring edifice like the Civic Building, there's a Transit Center whose design prioritizes utility and little else. That's not acceptable for an agency committed to improving the the county's built and natural environment.

In 2011, the District of Columbia moved its Office of Planning and other agencies into Waterfront Station, a mixed-use project on the site of the former Waterside Mall in Southwest. Designed by renowned local architects Shalom Baranes Associates, Waterfront Station earned LEED Gold certification from the United States Green Building Council due to the use of energy-conserving features like a green roof and shading devices to reduce heat gain from sunlight.

Like in Arlington, there are shops and restaurants on the ground floor, including a Safeway. The Office of Planning itself doesn't necessarily engage the public, as it's located on the 6th floor and you have to go through security to reach it. However, placing this agency and others in this complex still makes a meaningful statement about the District's commitment to urban revitalization and environmentally-sensitive development.

I've been skeptical in the past about the merits of relocating the Planning Department and Department of Parks to Wheaton, but now that it's basically a done deal, let's make this the best project we can. For decades, Montgomery County has been a leader in innovative planning, and now it's time for county officials to put their money where their mouths are.

The plinth is the key to the project, allowing the architects to connect the addition to the new building without degrading Edward Durell Stone's marble box. Holl used a similar scheme to add a large addition to the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City. Blending this plinth into the onramps of the Roosevelt Bridge creates the appearance that it is part of the landscape, with small objects on top of it. The plinth is stepped down on the land side, to let light in to the rehearsal spaces and create privacy amid the highway mess.

Down the ramps, the riverside pavilion will house a stage for small performances. Located right on the Rock Creek multi-use trail, it would break up a loud, boring stretch of the trail. Passers-by might find a show to linger at. Parents could bring kids to music classes by bike, then enjoy time to themselves without getting back into cars. Importantly, it connects the project to the Georgetown waterfront, meaning that a night at the opera might be more pedestrian.

It does not, by any means, eliminate the Kennedy Center's isolation, which comes from the I-66 spur that cuts a deadening trench into Foggy Bottom. However, lightly noted in one of Holl's watercolors is a pedestrian bridge to an unspecified destination. This might be the missing piece that would make the expense worth it.

Such a bridge would make the Kennedy Center accessible by foot from both sides. But it would have to be executed as well as the river-side connectors. If the bridge is not kept busy with activity somehow, like the floating pavilion does, it will not be well-used.

The plan is considerably more modest than the previous expansion plan by Rafael Viñoly, which would have cost $650 million but patched together the urban fabric on E Street. Although this plan does not preclude that more ambitious project in the future, it fulfills some of aims of that design.

Therefore, this plan also opens the site up to more audacious rethinking of the Center's location in the city. For example, replacing the highway to nowhere with a high-capacity boulevard and filling in blocks recovered from the project would reduce the need for a multi-million dollar deck and expensive structural systems.

This new building looks to positively alter the riverbank, aesthetically and functionally. It is a positive step forward that avoids the pitfalls of a grandiose scheme. However Holl's design evolves, by the intended completion in 2018, could be the first phase of rethinking Foggy Bottom as a more human-scale environment and reconnecting DC's arts center to the rest of the city.

The Blairs were built in the early 1960's on the former site of Falkland, the mansion of Montgomery Blair, postmaster general under President Abraham Lincoln. A series of additions and renovations by owner Tower Companies followed in the early 2000's. Today, the 27-acre complex contains over 1400 apartments in 10 buildings, the Blair Shops, a 100,000 square foot strip mall, and a 67,000 square-foot office building.

A few years ago, county planners did a study of potential sites for new, large parks in the area, identifying the Blairs as a possibility. Their drawings of the site show how the site could be redeveloped, with a park measuring several acres in place of the Blair Shops parking lot and high-rise apartments above the shopping center. A street grid would connect the site to the surrounding area, while structured parking garages would make up for the lost parking lot.

While there are currently no firm details about how and when the Blairs will be redeveloped, the Tower Companies' website suggests that they eventually plan to have 2800 apartments and 450,000 square feet of total development, nearly double the amount of space there today. It's also unclear whether the park will be publicly or privately owned, though ideally it would be owned by the county.

Glass's tweet says that public meetings on the project will be held early next year. Until then, the potential for a big new park in downtown Silver Spring is exciting. The availability of and access to open space has been a growing issue in the Downcounty in recent months, particularly with residents concerned about new development.

A few blocks from the Blairs, a group of South Silver Spring residents upset that a proposed apartment building on Newell Street will block their views are lobbying to have that property turned into a park. Meanwhile, residents in Wheaton successfully persuaded the county to buy a former art school for parkland instead of letting townhouses be built there.

Montgomery County will continue to grow, and new residents will need places to live, work and shop. They'll also need parks for gathering, recreation and enjoying nature. However, we've seen how poorly-designed, poorly-located parks can be underused, dampen foot traffic and even hurt nearby shops and restaurants.

We can't let that happen again, and the best way to do that is to plan for new parks, not just put them wherever someone doesn't want something built in their backyard. Building a park as part of redeveloping the Blairs means it can be designed as a part of the neighborhood as opposed to an afterthought or leftover space. And since the redevelopment will have to be reviewed and approved by the Planning Board, there will be many opportunities for community input as well.

A well-designed urban park can be a great asset for residents and businesses alike. Hopefully, a new park at the Blairs will do that for downtown Silver Spring.

The Pennsylvania Avenue parklet was the most active in town, with a stream of events throughout the day. The programming kicked off with yoga and a storytelling session for families with members of the DC Public Library. Later in the day, Common Good City Farm hosted a fruit pie demonstration. Between events, visitors had plenty of opportunities to sit back and enjoy the spacious grass and seating.

Casey Trees participated in Park(ing) Day for the second consecutive year, this time occupying three spaces at 12th and G Streets NW, near Metro Center.

"[Last year] at Dupont Circle, it was a little easier for people already to see an urban landscape, but down here there are almost no trees," spokesman Christopher Horn told The Washington Post. "We've definitely had more people stop this year and ask, 'what's this?'"

Casey Trees brought shade trees from its farm in Berryville, Va., as well as a wide variety of plants, many of which were available for sale. Their park also featured picnic tables, a bean bag toss, and complimentary iced tea and lemonade, which visitors appreciated during the hottest part of the day.

In Rosslyn, Artisphere hosted two Park(ing) Day spaces, in conjunction with their Beyond the Parking Lot exhibit that is on display until November 4. The small park made the most of its size with a various plants, a small table, and chairs.

Artisphere's space included the must-see attraction of the Park(ing) Day: a giant shopping cart that that was an oversized piece of art and a donation bin for the Arlington Street People's Assistance Network (A-SPAN). A-SPAN encouraged passersby to drop gently used professional clothing into the cart to help with its homeless job placement programs.

Another parklet in Arlington, outside of Courthouse Metro station rounded out the Park(ing) Day festivities in the area. Visitors to this parklet were entertain in high style, with white tablecloths topping tables set in the repurposed parking spaces and surrounded by plants.

Even though Park(ing) Day is just one day each year, it's a lasting reminder of the tradeoffs we make with our public space.

There are some real gems of public spaces in here, some very old and some very new. Most descriptions remain positive even about those sites, like Freedom Plaza, which don't really activate the street at all and sit barren most of the time. The descriptions do allude to some controversies, like the location of the World War II memorial, or the way the Mall suffers from insufficient maintenance and heavy use.

The spaces in the guide range from the monumental core to Brookland, Deanwood, and the Pentagon area in Arlington. The guide concludes with one element that's slightly out of the box, but still definitely an example of public space design: DC's bicycle network.

Jennifer Toole, founder of Toole Design, the firm that has designed many bicycle facilities and traffic calming treatments for DC streets, writes a short tour on Capital Bikeshare covering 14th Street, the 15th Street cycle track, the Pennsylvania Avenue lanes, Union Station's Bikestation, and the Metropolitan Branch Trail.

Even though a crowd of people might be on the other side of that wall, interacting with the memorial, talking about their experiences in the Ukraine, talking about hunger problems, whatever it might be, if you're on the other side of that wall, nothing is going on.

I think we suggested at the time of the commission meeting that it might be ameliorated with a lower hight so that you can see that there are people on the other side of that wall, or maybe some porosity or transparency, so that it wasn't just a blank wall. I think the pattern that was picked is very lovely; I like the interplay of the shadows of the trees on the wall, but it doesn't really take away from the fact that it's a public space deadening element.

One thing that might make a difference is in the new design, the deeper landscaping is also clearly a front and a back. So you have a low wall, but people are not going to be inclined to be facing out toward F Street because it seems like in that landscaped area, no feet should be in that area, no people should be sitting and facing that direction.

Wells worried about the potential for the blank wall to attract crime at night:

I am a strong believer and agree that we use public space when we can as teaching spaces, especially in the nations capital, and this fits into a vision for what our city should be. But I am also concerned this is an area where we have a lot of tourists, where folks are walking at night. There are not a lot of eyes on the street as you have in some other areas. This clearly creates potentially a nice hiding space.

Peter May, of the National Park Service, defended the design:

I understand the concern, but don't necessarily agree that it is as negative an effect as Ms. Tregoning suggests. Given the full range of things we have looked at for this memorial, this is by far the best concept. Some of the suggestions for making it more porous or lowering the height would significantly diminish the concept.

Given the expanse of F Street, and the liveliness of what happens along F Street along its entire length, particularly across the street, I don't think this is particularly deadining.

It's certainly not without precedent to have a 1-sided memorial ... it does exist in other circumstances with memorials in certain settings. This is a lot more successful than those in setting the memorial confortably on the site.

It is admittedly a 1-sided experience, but frankly, the concept doesn't work when you try to make some of the changes that were suggested. I think it is an excellent design and am very very pleased with it as it is.

May wasn't the only person less concerned about blank walls; Presidential appointee John Hart said, "Having a blank wall is not necessarily a detraction."

Tregoning took exception to May's point:

I am underwhelmed by the argument that we've done worse in other parts of the city. I'm sure that's true, but I think that by creating a back to this memorial that's hidden from everything that happens on the other side, it does create not just safety issues.

These are areas where people can undertake activities unobserved by people on the other side of the wall, whatever those activities might be. If you create a blank wall that's clearly the back of something, given the other activities that take place in the area, you will find that it attracts some amount of disamenity in terms of how it ends up getting used.

Another commissioner noted that there are homeless shelters in the area, and Tregoning added that she was referring to the two Irish pubs nearby.

Tregoning also suggested the applicant use a lighter colored stone for the paving and benches. That would keep the surfaces cooler in the summer, she noted, and make it a more enjoyable place to sit for lunch.

Former DC Councilmember and mayoral NCPC appointee Arrington Dixon suggested a translucent wall to create less of a barrier, and noted that "wheat grows in sunlight." Architect Mary Kay Lanzillotta, from Hartman Cox Architects in DC, replied that the design came out of a design competition, and the entry called for a bronze sculpture, so her firm did not explore that type of option.

Lanzillotta gave some insight into her thinking around the issue:

I think the prominent elevation here, and the way that people will experience this—many people—will be driving down Mass Ave and North Capitol. Those are the 2 prominent streets here, and that is why the memorial was turned towards that direction as well.

We can certainly hope Lanzillotta was not saying that she was more concerned with the experience for those driving through the area than those walking through the site or trying to use the plaza. A design philosophy centered around a "drive-by" experience instead of the pedestrian scale was responsible for many of the worst planning mistakes of the past, like L'Enfant Plaza, mistakes NCPC is now trying to correct.

Urban designers have learned through painful experience that blank walls can be some of the most destructive elements that get created with good intentions. This isn't a very large blank wall, but it's a blank wall just the same, and it's disappointing to see this level of unconcern from NCPC staff, NPS, the architect and others.

The empty public reservations in DC will turn into memorials over time. That's appropriate. These can be memorials that either contribute to the urban experience or detract from it. Each piece matters, even small ones, because they add up to a whole. NCPC and the federal commissioners will rightly put interpretive experiences foremost in their priorities, but they should also take great care to respect and enhance the pedestrian experience as they review and approve new memorials.

Here is the video from the meeting. The presentation about the memorial starts at 14:48 in the video and the question and answer period starts at 26:55.

The National Capital Planning Commission sees most empty triangles like this one as spots for future memorials, and Congress likes to authorize memorials, like this one. These spaces are also part of a city, whose people need spaces to sit outside, eat a snack, run around, and more.

Fortunately, the two don't have to conflict. A number of memorials work well as public spaces at the same time. An oft-cited example is the Navy Memorial, at 8th and Pennsylvania, NW. It's an attractive fountain which sports a mast with naval flags, quotations from famous commanders, a map of the world's oceans, and more. Plus, it's a great spot to sit outside on a nice day and eat lunch.

The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial isn't bad. Others do little; the memorials to Samuel Hahnemann (founder of homeopathy) and Daniel Webster (statesman and orator) in the triangles next to Scott Circle are just large statues in the midst of some grass and paths; their presence doesn't create any usable public space. Some of the fears around the proposed Eisenhower Memorial involve design elements that could detract from people actually using the square.

The Ukranian famine memorial will sport a 6-foot bronze wall, with a bas-relief facing Massachusetts Avenue. In front of the wall will be a plaza, open to Mass. Ave. and with benches on 2 sides.

NCPC, DC historic preservation officials, and the Commission on Fine Arts all pushed the memorial designers to improve the way it backs onto F Street. The original submission lacked any design for the back of the wall along F, and tall cylindrical trees might have "create[d] a large vegetation wall that might overwhelm pedestrians."

In response, the designers moved the wall farther from F Street, reducing its visual size from the sidewalk, added some texture to the back, and changed the trees to ones that will leave open space at eye level. It's still not ideal; it's still a blank wall with some ground cover in front, but it's an improvement and the whole wall is not very large.

The whole design is definitely better for public space than the "Tear Drops on a Wheat Field" finalist design, which would have filled the whole site with tall vegetation and plopped some big glass bubbles in the center.

More memorials will keep coming. Congress has authorized an Adams Memorial to the two presidents and the rest of the Adams Family. NCPC, preservation boards, and residents can work to ensure that that memorial not only avoids being creepy, kooky, mysterious or spooky, but also serves to enhance the urban experience instead of detract as it also helps people remember.

Retailers in an urban area like downtown Silver Spring rely on foot traffic, not car traffic. They need lots of shoppers walking in front of their windows, because a few of them will actually come inside. But new storefronts in the area are often too far from the sidewalk or each other to let that happen.

Each of those three projects, like most new buildings in downtown Silver Spring are required to have a pocket park. Some are more successful than others, but most create gaps in the street wall, the part of the building that faces the street. Street walls need to be continuous, and they need lots of storefronts to work well.

Renowned Danish urban designer Jan Gehl notes that successful shopping streets have storefronts about 25 feet wide. This means that a pedestrian walking at normal speed will see something new about every 5 seconds, keeping their attention.

In addition, pocket parks placed directly in front of a building separate the shops from the sidewalk, discouraging pedestrians from wandering over because they can't see what's going on inside. If that pocket park is intentionally or unintentionally designed to repel people, no retailer can survive there.

If you don't believe me, just look at any successful retail street in Greater Washington, from M Street in Georgetown to Woodmont Avenue in Bethesda to Mount Vernon Avenue in Alexandria's Del Ray neighborhood. The shops all have narrow storefronts, there are few gaps between them, and they're close to the street. As a result, these streets can keep stores in business.

Not surprisingly, retailers moving to downtown Silver Spring are finding spaces next to the sidewalk. At the Veridian, an apartment building on East-West Highway, there's a small grocery store and a Papa John's on the sidewalk, but two other spaces facing a large and well-landscaped park have been empty since the building opened three years ago.

Of course, that doesn't mean that any space on a sidewalk will immediately get filled, especially if they're off the beaten path. Most of downtown Silver Spring's shops and restaurants are east of Georgia Avenue and south of Colesville Road; naturally, that's where the most activity is. Shoppers may be reluctant to wander even a few blocks away from that area, which in turn makes retailers reluctant to open there. That's a large part of why there are so many vacancies along East-West Highway and Cameron Street.

The key to making retail work in those places is to create a destination, even for people living in the immediate area. One way to do that is with a well-used park. A few weeks ago, I got an email from Eitan Gutin, who lives with his family in the Galaxy, a new apartment building on 13th Street.

Its pocket park, which is shared with two other buildings, "gets plenty of use," he wrote. "People often sit at the tables in the shade to eat or do work, and on the weekend the playground has at least one or two families for a good chunk of the day."

This is the kind of public space a shop wants to be next to. All three of the surrounding buildings open onto the park, meaning there's lots of foot traffic going through it. And the space is used for a variety of activities throughout the day—Gutin says a Jewish prayer group even has potlucks there—meaning it's busy at all times. Unfortunately, most of the Galaxy's ground floor is a parking garage, which was a missed opportunity for good retail.

How can create more successful retail space and public spaces in downtown Silver Spring? For starters, we should concentrate our open space. Instead of requiring that every building have a little park where nothing happens, we should encourage the creation of a few larger parks where lots of activities can occur. Fortunately, the county is already exploring ways to do this.

In turn, we need to concentrate retail activity. New retail space should be located near existing stores and restaurants, so they can form a more substantial destination. We should also make sure that existing shops aren't displaced by buildings with no stores in them, which puts gaps in the street wall.

In an urban area like downtown Silver Spring, successful retail and successful public space can go hand in hand. The key is making sure that they're both designed and located to get people using them.