A potential pedestrian safety nightmare has been sidestepped in front of the future Marriott Bethesda Downtown hotel at 7707 Woodmont Avenue. Marriott International employees were expected to park in the Woodmont Corner public parking garage directly across the street from the hotel and new corporate office tower when they open in 2022. A planned crosswalk between the hotel and the garage is meant for those employees and other pedestrians to utilize. But concerns over the safety of a high-traffic unsignalized crosswalk can be put aside, as a new traffic signal is now being installed at that spot.
This will regulate traffic on Woodmont, as well as some of the garage vehicular traffic. Just how many Marriott employees will be using this is not yet known. Prior to pandemic-related layoffs and work-from-home options, Marriott's HQ had 3300 employees on-site, 2500 of whom drove to work. Also notable, as seen in the photo above, is the opening and first use of the hotel's porte cochere off-street driveway - an increasing rarity in new developments in Montgomery County.
15 comments:
Marriott supposedly was moving headquarters to Bethesda because the new location was less than 2 blocks away from Metro and therefore a convenience for their employees. Now the employees are going to be able to use the public garage across the street and therefore will take spaces away from shoppers, diners etc. Parking in the public garage is already a challenge. No need to make it worse. Marriott employees need to park in the Marriott garage.
This signal will also create a nice break in traffic for the two vehicular garage exits onto Woodmont from the massive five story deep underground parking deck under the HQ and new hotel. At the time of site plan approval, Marriott calculated that 40% of their 3500 onsite employees (and their corporate visitors) would either use the Metro, ride-share, carshare, bike or walk to and from their workplace. A huge increase from their current campus.
Good move for pedestrian safety. They should also put some rumble strips in this section to alert motorists to this crossing.
This should serve nicely to further impede the flow of traffic.
With all their construction billions, why didn't the hotel colossus build a sky bridge to their donated-&-off-limits-to-the-public garage? The technology worked well enough around the corner, at 7610 Old George.
To clarify for the commenters who haven't followed the process: Marriott is paying the county $40M to lease the spaces in the garage - the spots were certainly not "donated." And the garage will remain open to the public in evenings and on weekends to ensure adequate capacity at times of higher demand.
I believe that Marriott’s deal to use the county garage during business hours is temporary but I can’t recall for how long. Marriott believes that over time, more and more staff will choose to take the Metro, carpool, Uber, bike or walk to work over time. Not much sense to build a skybridge to only use it for a few years.
Marriott agreed to pay full price to the county for exclusive use of every parking space in that deck, so a nice income stream into the county parking deck fund. Evening and weekend use by the public will still be available.
Will executives have parking within the headquartes?
@7:11 -- My math isn't very good, so I hope you'll help me out.
Garage #11, Woodmont Corner, is listed with 1,091 short- and long-term spaces. Let's round that down to an even 1,000.
https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/DOT-Parking/Parking-Facilities/BethesdaPLD.html
As Robert has noted, and as is listed in red on the above linked-to page, "On or about February 1, 2022, the new rate in this facility will be $1.50/hour" That should work out to a maximum of $1,500/hour for the facility, yes?
*Multiply that by an eight-hour workday and you get $12,000 a day potential revenue.
* Multiply by M-F five days and we're at $60,000/week.
* Multiply $60,000 by the 52 weeks a year this will be reserved for Marriott employees and we see it's $3,120,000 dollars in potential work-hour parking revenue that the facility could generate.
"Ah," you say, "But I already told you Marriott is paying the county $40M to lease those spaces."
Yes, but that's $40M over the course of 20 years, at least if this article is to be believed.
https://www.baltimoresun.com/business/bs-bz-marriott-headquarters-incentives-20161018-story.html
$40M divided by 20 is. . . yup, $2M Marriott is paying to the county for $3.12M worth of parking.
By my calculations, that means the new hoteliers are making out like bandits, saving themselves more than $20M on the two decade agreement. True, technically, the spaces were not "donated." But the nominal price the company is paying to lease the spaces is pretty close to it.
@11:05
The cost of parking was increased 50% for all us suckers only after Marriott signed the 20 year contract at the $1.00/hr/space price
"You're welcome"
You're right, your math isn't very good. Marriott is paying $2m a year for off-peak use of a garage that yields $1.8m a year in total revenue. On top of the $2m lump sum, the county will also be able to separately charge for evening use of the spaces, yielding even more $$. The garage will also remain free and open to the public on weekends. If you don't recognize the above as a win-win-win then I don't know what to tell you.
@11:05 You're looking at the hourly rate. The rate is lower in county garages for daily or monthly parkers.
I was walking by the porte cochere today. It's way too small for a hotel. You couldn't even squeeze a minibus (like the type used for airline crew) and a car side-by-side in it.
You're assuming the garage is/was 100% occupied during the 8 hour work day when in fact it was often close to empty. Guarantying $2MM of revenue for daytime garage hours is a huge win for the County.
I am 11:05. I stand humbled and chastened, now altogether convinced the garage's being off-limits during business hours for the next twenty years will have no impact at all on either parking in the area or on the financial burden borne by the county, by which I mean the taxpayers.
Of course it'll have an impact on the financial burden borne by the county. More parking money in county coffers, a new billion dollar office building and flagship hotel, 3000 employees supporting downtown Bethesda businesses, etc. obviously has an impact. It's just not a negative one, much to your chagrin.
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