Monday, September 05, 2016

East Village at North Bethesda Gateway headed to Planning Board Thursday (Photos)

Phase 1 building of
East Village at
North Bethesda Gateway
East Village at North Bethesda Gateway, another major, mixed-use development in the Pike District, is headed to the Montgomery County Planning Board for review on September 8. The site is in the southeast quadrant of Nicholson Lane and Huff Court, and is known as the Eisinger property. Later, the site will connect to Rockville Pike via the Fitzgerald Auto Mall property.
Aerial view of the site
The developer is proposing to build East Village in two phases, each with a mixed-use residential building. Those phases will be separated by a new Bethesda Lane-style "street" and plaza. Phase 1 will have up to 382 residential units, and up to 20,000 SF of retail/restaurant space. When Phase 2 is complete, there will be up to 614 residential units, and up to 34,000 SF of retail space on the site. 12.5% of the units will be MPDUs, the minimum required by Montgomery County.
Phasing of the project; new
pedestrian street will run
west-to-east between them
There will be a total of 701 parking spaces (with 416 of those going into Phase 1), more than the minimum required. Planning staff is proposing 100 private, and 10 public, bicycle parking spaces.
Aerial view of
urban plaza
and fountain
An urban plaza will later be created on Huff Court. Anchored by a fountain, and surrounded by retail and restaurants, the plaza will unite the two halves of a through-block connection. The plaza will be visible from Rockville Pike.

Planning staff is recommending approval of the project, with conditions.

Renderings via Montgomery County Planning Department/Foulger-Pratt

5 comments:

  1. Anonymous8:25 AM

    Another unattractive community that doesn't mesh into a plan.
    It's like MoCo isn't truly redefining the suburbs, just putting them closer together with taller units.

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  2. Anonymous1:47 PM

    This is great! So much better than the low rise low density development there now.

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  3. Anonymous5:07 AM

    This is great! Buildings don't need to be "attractive" - individually distinctive buildings tend to create crappy cityscapes. On the other hand, a lot of boring buildings together can make for a great city. Just look at Paris. Engaging, human-scaled ground floor design is most important.

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  4. Anonymous5:39 AM

    This is great! Good riddance to all the crappy individual low density one story ugly buildings.

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  5. Anonymous6:42 AM

    This site plan has been reviewed by the planning staff for nearly two years. I wonder what caused the extreme delay was? I assumed that the project was cancelled. The site looks really rough: weeds and vines taking over, a crumbling vacant building...

    ReplyDelete