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Only the non-angled parking spaces
along 46th street and to the right of the
left horizontal island in the
compass shape will become green space here;
the rest will be filled by an angled 7-story building |
Remember when the Montgomery County Council approved the Bethesda Downtown Plan last year, and promised public parking lots on the edge of Bethesda bordering the Town of Chevy Chase would become parks and green space? In fact, the
document the Council approved specifically stated the plan would "Convert county-owned surface parking lots to parkland/neighborhood greens to the
maximum extent feasible." As I predicted, reality is going to be quite different, based on a plan introduced by developer EYA at a public meeting last night.
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This is the only part of Lot 10
shown as becoming green space
in the proposed development |
A seven-story residential building and 12 townhomes will take up the majority of what are now public parking lots between Walsh Street and Willow Lane in this vision. Left as green space will be only half of the parking lot behind the strip of buildings that includes the Montgomery Farm Women's Market and Villain & Saint today, and the rear strip of parking lot east of the central island in Lot 10 south of Leland Street (behind Miller's Furs today). Suddenly, most of the promised green space has become yet another residential development.
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Council candidate who will put the
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Councilmembers and Planning Board commissioners have often cited the pie-in-the-sky promise of big parking lots turning into green space along the edge of Chevy Chase when residents have complained that the public space promised elsewhere in town is - surprise, surprise - not materializing. Properties north of here that also border Chevy Chase already had their green space reduced to narrow green strips by the Council.
Ultimately, this situation is not the developer's fault. They are only going to do what your elected officials allow them to do. The issue here, is that the Council promised more, while not actually writing it into the plan - just as they did at Westbard, Lyttonsville and elsewhere. And these are lots the Council had total control over, as they are currently County-owned. Heckuva job, Brownie!
17 comments:
Half of a parking lot is about to become a park. Why is that not progress?
I do not believe this proposal has been approved at any level.
This is only a conceptual plan at this point, and was a direct response from parking officials that asked a simple qustion. They asked the developer what would they need to build to justify the cost to place all 300 surface spaces in an underground parking deck, and create as large a green space as possible. Their initial concept presented last night, added about 132 apartment and 18 rowhouse condos in a 4 to 7 story high wing on the west side of both parking lots. This is in addition to the roughly 200 apartments currently proposed in the tower.
In exchange for this increase, the developer believes they (for no cost to the county) could underground all 300 spaces and build the parks.
This seems to me to be a fair trade. The developers estimate the cost to undeground a parking space to be $50,000 to $70,000 per space, so at least a $15,000,000 cost they would eat, plus the cost to build the parks.
The conceptual massing models presented last night showed stepping building massing that they claim is compliant with Bethedsa Design Guidelines. Theses steps in massing seem to add a more traditional character to the buildings stepping from 2 to 5 and 6 to 7 levels to reduce the scale on frontages opposite the Farm Women’s Market and existing single family house to the east.
This looks like a nice way to create and pay for a nice buffer for residents to the east, and add some very large parks at the edge of downtown. The idea to create a food hall environment around the Farm Women’s Market that would be operated by the folks that operate the Union Market seems like a nice way to operate this puppy. It could be a great new destination in town. They also proposed a more traditional massing on the tower, and have deleted the cantilevered elements currently under review.
I think this is a good start to accomplish many of the goals of the sector plan, and will really clean up the area, and showcase the FWM, providing and active set of uses for this tire and old (but historically designated) market.
By the way, these “green strips” as you refer, are actually 65’ wide on the south, expanding to 158’ on the north side and 350’ long. Combined with Elm Street Park to the north, the new parks would create a dramatic green wedge on three blocks, in addition to a wide landscapes area around the FWM.
This is a superb idea, and is my opinion, is a win win for the town of Chevy Chase, Bethesda and the county.
Your comment that the added residential building would take the majority of the parking lots space is simply incorrect. They indicated that about 63% of the existing parking lots would be concerted to parks and green space, width some paved walkways and enhanced plazas. And only 37% of the existing impervious parking lots would be built upon. They also propose a nice 60’ wide covered walkway that connects the FWM to the new wedge shaped green spaces. A bit like the portals on Bethesda Lane. The base of each wing facing the WFM would include artisanal food vendors that would compliment the FWM that would be a food hall, surrounded by outdoor dining. A bit like the Easren Market in SC or Union Market. The retail would total about 30,000 SF and would include fresh food sales, cafes, and restaurants, amid would be privately operated and managed by the same firm the operated the very popular Union Market. This firm is onboard and apparently very excited by the idea. The did indictated that they would not be interested in such and idea if it only included the FWM, and suggested that such and idea would be very challenging at such a small scale.
Let's entertain Robert's claims that the county council and Hans Riemer are greedy, corrupt, criminals. Let's also pretend that its 2019 and Dyer just won an at-large seat to the council. Now how exactly does he address this situation?
Bethesda clearly needs green space. There are only two ways for the county to build sizable public parks: purchase the extremely expensive land from private owners or convert their own property. In this case the county has chosen to do the latter.
Now that the land has been earmarked, the county can either add tens of millions to an already bloated budget to build a park that will probably be completed years behind schedule, or the county can spend $0 by conveying a portion of the land to a developer in return for them building the park AND replacement parking.
Of course there's also the option of retaining the wasteful acres of asphalt surface parking in the middle of a dense urban area. So as a newly elected councilman, what would Robert do?
The council does not have "total control" over the parking lots. They are operated by the county DOT which is under the direct control of Exec. Leggett and eventually his successor.
This is an incredible chance to get much needed park space, bury those nasty parking lots, gets the developer to create an appropriately scaled development that buffers the neighboring homes and expand and potentially improves Elm Street Park.
This seems like the best way to ensure that the FWM gets updated and adaptively reused as a modern food hall, instead of the existing tacky flea market that it has become. Perhaps once a noble place for farm women to sell fresh produce, it has deteriorated to a cheesy and unsightly ad hoc market for bad artists to sell their black velvet Elvis paintings. I'm not a fan of the existing architecture, but if properly renovated and incorporated with surrounding food hall uses, this could become a great destination that is easily walkable for many residents, hotels, the new Metro and Purple Line Stations and the Capital Crescent Biker Hiker Trail and 250 space bike parking station currently under construction at the Apex site. In fact the surface and tunnel CCT routes pass right thru the site, so they will be a great node on the trail for hikers and bikers to stop for some fresh veggies or a quick meal. If this is anything at all like the Eastern Market or the Union Market Food Hall, Bethesda and the Town of Chevy Chase would be well served.
There is going to be 4,000 square feet of new parkland where none was before, where there is currently asphalt.
Only Robert Dyer could see this as a bad thing.
I thought the whole parking lot was supposed to become green space. That is what county officials led us to believe. I think the county would be better off eliminating the parking spaces altogether so that it can maximize the space available for a park. We can always find space for more parking, but once that land is built up, there is no chance that it will ever be a park.
If EYA thinks that having 300 public parking spaces under its building would be helpful, it should build them and operate it as a private run lot. Montgomery County should get out of the business of providing parking spaces in urban centers. If there is a market need, the market will deliver parking spaces and price them appropriately.
12:02: You seem to conveniently forget that as County assets, the fate of the parking lots was indeed within total control of the Council when they were discussing the Bethesda Downtown Plan. Moreover, the Executive Branch can do nothing without funding appropriated by the Council.
The main issue here is that the Council sold this plan with the fantasy of large parks along the border of Chevy Chase, when that was total malarkey. They have dismissed complaints about the lack of central open space by saying, "well, you're still going to get those big parks along the edge of town." In fact, we are not.
Residents were betrayed yet again by our crooked planning board and County Council. But, as Randy Travis once said, "I told you so."
While your site does have amazing breaking local news about Bethesda, I tend to think Google doesn't count you as official news because you use the site as a platform for your own political campaign.
4:00: That's actually not true. I've applied to Google News several times over the last six years, and only this year have I included this site in my campaign. In 2014, for example, I did not use this site to promote my campaign.
But on Election Day in 2014, so many voters told my volunteers at the polls in Bethesda - "Is that the Robert Dyer who has the blog? If I had known, I would have voted for him!" - that I am making sure there is NO MISUNDERSTANDING I am running for office this year.
So in short, no, that's not the reason Google has excluded me.
Now, if telling the true facts about Montgomery County can be described as bias, then so could Bethesda Magazine and the Washington Post be flagged for bias for having a pro-government bias. Yet, both are in Google News. All news sites have a slant or bias, but only mine is singled out. #ThingsThatMakeYouGoHmmmmmmm
"so many voters told my volunteers at the polls in Bethesda - "Is that the Robert Dyer who has the blog? If I had known, I would have voted for him!""
How many "volunteers", and how many "voters"?
So you don’t consider 63% of the the existing parking lots being converted to parks, with a total area of 5.86 acres of park area when combined with a renovated and an improved Elm Street Park as a “big park at the edge of town” ? Yes it is not 100% of the current parking lot area, but nearly 2/3 of the space. To me this is a great way to fully fund the creation of a great new set of linked parks into a very long and wide wedge, underground all 300 parking spaces and create a dynamic new food hall within and around the FWM. To allow the developer to construct low rise terraced apartmrnts and townhouses on a small part of the existing parking lot seems to be a reasonable idea to me. The residents on the east side will be overlooking a great new green space instead of those nasty parking lots. The low scale housing will be a nice transition and buffer to the so called Darth Vader building and to the new towers proposed south and west of the FWM site.
I don’t understand why you are not more supportive of this concept. I was at the town meeting and I thought the audience was generally favorable, with some nice applause during and at the end of the meeting. EYA seemed to offer a sense of flexibility to work with town and county to help build a consensus to get this project going.
But you don't actually tell the "truth." Just some slanted, exaggerations tossed in a word salad.
Truth - The sun rose this morning amid cloud cover.
Dyer version would be:
The sun, embarrassed by the anti-Bethesda tactics of Hans Riemer, rose this morning hiding itself behind clouds.
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