While Montgomery County elected officials and developers were plotting the future of the Chevy Chase Library last month, Columbia Country Club was taking steps to assure the future of another lucrative property across from it will be on its terms. The private country club has purchased the First Church of Christ, Scientist at 7901 Connecticut Avenue. According to Maryland real estate records, the sale closed Aprill 27, 2022. The club paid $3,500,000 for the property.
Columbia Country Club fought the Purple Line for over two decades. But after developers secured a majority of County Council seats in 2002 with the End Gridlock candidate slate, they rolled the dice on defying the club, and the streetcar-turned-light-rail project was finally approved. When no officeholder paid a price at the ballot box, Montgomery County cartel-controlled officials had a new confidence in ramming unpopular projects through in neighborhoods once considered too powerful to antagonize, changing political calcuations in the county forever. Nobody beats the Columbia Country Club became a maxim of the past, and the Planning Board and County Council are now free to consider bulldozing single-family home neighborhoods for multifamily structures with Thrive 2050, or thumbing their collective noses at Kenwood to give Little Falls Parkway a "road diet" - or close it altogether, as has been openly floated.
Last week, the County Council voted to consider redeveloping the Chevy Chase Library site at 8005 Connecticut with residential housing. The vote followed weeks of debate, as housing advocates pressed County Executive Marc Elrich to demolish the library rather than renovate it, and put apartments on top of a new library building. Elrich finally agreed to "explore" the possibility, a risky political move for an executive who won the Democratic primary with a razor-thin majority in 2018. If the vote is that close again July 19, Chevy Chase residents alienated by that betrayal could cost Elrich the election, as they have overwhelmingly opposed the housing option in feedback collected by the County.
What will ultimately rise across from the country club at the library site, who will be able to afford to live there, whether developers will get to cheaply profit off public land that would otherwise be astronomically priced on the market, and who will pick up the tab are all in the realm of speculation. The future uses of the adjacent Chevy Chase Fire Department property may now also be on the mind of developer-backed politicians and concerned neighbors alike. Fire stations are potential "co-located" housing sites under the County's new calculus.
In contrast, Columbia's purchase of the church gives the country club total control of what will happen on that site. It can assure the church and reading room can continue to use that property. Any other future use of that land will be determined by the club, not politicians. Expansion of the new Chevy Chase Lake urban zone southward will have to reckon with a familiar old foe when it reaches 7901 Connecticut: Columbia Country Club.
What a smart move. Too bad they can't buy the library site as well. Well done.
ReplyDeletesuper elite country club buys valuable land on busy street near public transportation and within walking distance of a new grocery store, restaurants and other services to keep people from someday living there ... what a heartwarming story.
ReplyDeleteImagine all the affordable and luxury housing that could be built on these courses. Each one could be a mini city. And many like Columbia and Kenwood are in close, now considered urban areas.
ReplyDeleteAny chance the county uses eminent domain?
We all know this poster is actually representative Moon from Takoma Park. You ain't fooling no one.
DeleteIt makes sense really. Large tracts of open land close-in that less than 1% of our county population will ever be allowed to use. And there's a housing crisis.
DeleteMy impression, as reported in the 9/25/13 The Washington Post article, "Purple Line route changed to spare part of Columbia Country Club golf course," is Columbia abandoned its objections to the Purple Line once the developers modified the trolley's path to a route less obtrusive/offensive for club members. It had less to do with the Council rolling the dice to defy the Mighty Columbians than it did with the toffs and swells at the club having gotten what they wanted from the PL builders: cleaner sight lines from the mixed grill and less damage to the back nine. Once that end was achieved the club dropped all objections/legal challenges to the PL's proceeding, and to hell with consequent damages to the neighborhood or the community.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/purple-line-route-changed-to-spare-part-of-columbia-country-club-golf-course/2013/09/25/91cf55e4-252d-11e3-b75d-5b7f66349852_story.html
It's precisely the sort of vindictive, churlish behavior one expects from a second-tier club whose members look enviously at the infinitely more elegant Chevy Chase Club, down the street, and at the superlative course(s) offered at Congressional. But, while it falls short the mark for exclusivity and actual golf, Columbia did, with its PL "negotiations," earn itself at least one distinction: it is indelibly stained as a Judas. Their membership sold out the community and welcomed the bulldozers to the doorsteps of Chevy Chase. . . just not their own, my dear.
Obama is member so it's pretty pitiful.
ReplyDeleteObama is an honorary member as Bob Hope was. He's never played golf there and likely never will so bugger off.
DeleteHe actually has played there but we can't expect worshipers to check facts.
DeleteNext up: Women's Club of Chevy Chase, actually
ReplyDelete"Any chance the county uses eminent domain?"
ReplyDeleteAll the county would need to do is encourage state reps to stop the massive property tax handouts wealthy clubs receive. These close-in country clubs only exist in their current form because they pay pennies in taxes on their hundreds of acres.
By all means, we should band together to do everything in our powers to assure the last square meter of green space is paved over and built upon. Rather than shoving ever more people into the county, requiring ever more housing and infrastructure to support them, what say we step back and recognize that perhaps we have reached capacity to accommodate people. That's not racist, it's not NIMBY. It is an acknowledgement that resources are not infinite, and that people who are already here selected these communities for the "lifestyle," (for lack of more efficient term,) they had to offer. Just because you are the last person in the lifeboat doesn't mean you can't say it's full. (Full disclosure, my family has lived in Montgomery County since the 19030s.)
ReplyDeleteWhere is it written we have an obligation to accommodate the influx of people arriving in the area? The poem on the Statue of Liberty is pretty and all, but it is a *poem*, not a legally binding piece of legislation. My question has zero to do with the national debate on our immigration policies. I am talking about the ever-increasing population of Montgomery County, and when it's okay to say, "You know, I think we're full."
The county is putting the cart before the horse with their Thrive 2050 arguments. "There will be several hundred thousand more people here by 2045. We need to build apts and duplexes in single-family home neighborhoods to house them all." Uh huh. How to you pay for the schools, sewerage, power grid, healthcare, fire and police protection, libraries, and the rest to accommodate the additional bodies? "All those residents will pay through taxes." How many scores of billions of dollars will it take to put in place the needed improvements? Don't think for a minute that tax bills will go down with Thrive 2050. All the required infrastructure must be paid for somehow. Assume, rather, the county will continue to hike your tax burden as they destroy the community you moved to, by adding apartments and duplexes at every opportunity. What right-thinking person will voluntarily pay ever more to live in an area that is increasingly crowded and ever less like the area that attracted them to begin with? Robert has documented for some time the flight of businesses and retail from the county --Moribund! I predict the residential equivalent will hasten as more and more and more people are jammed into the area, like classic scenes of Japanese commuters being packed about subway cars. On the other hand, if people would simply stand and give voice to the obvious, that we already have more than enough people, thankyouverymuch, we may still be able to salvage something of the appeal and charm that drew us to MoCo in the first place.
And no, I'm not a member of any of the clubs mentioned in this comments string.
"it's not NIMBY"
ReplyDeleteIt's the literal definition of NIMBY, guy. Don't know why you typed up 500 words on it, anyways. No one is coming for your gated country club, master.
@10:16 — NIMBY would be to suggest I don’t want [more people] in *my* community. My too-long-for-your-limited-attention-span post is saying I don’t want the additional people *anywhere.* your logic would hold that unless you welcome or accept unwelcome change you are guilty of NIMBYism. Nope. That’s why I also wrote “just because you’re the last one in the boat doesn’t mean you can’t say it’s full.” Montgomery County is full. We can’t take care of the people we have. The solution surely can’t be adding even *more* people to the mix.
ReplyDelete"I don’t want the additional people *anywhere.*"
ReplyDeleteEugenicists: the ultimate NIMBYs.
@2:30 -- You clever thing, you've seen right through me, caught me red-handed. When I write that Montgomery county is at capacity, what I really mean is "Kill everyone else." I thought I'd concealed my ambition better, but you're too sharp by half.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your deep concern for those not yet living in the area. Where is your concern for those of us already here, or is it something analogous to the "pro-life" movement, whose agonizing for the "unborn" ends once the fetus crosses the birth canal.
Tell me, in your universe, what is the right answer when the elevator on which you are riding, which clearly states its maximum capacity, has reached that limit with more people still pressing to climb aboard? Is saying, "Sorry, this car is full," eugenicist NIMBYism or is it a reflection of the situation and a concern for the safety and well-being of those already aboard the car? Would you shout down the other passengers who voice concern that overloading the carriage may well send it plummeting to the basement, killing all aboard? If not, why? MoCo's infrastructure can't cope with the people we already have living here. Is your answer to cut down every last tree and pave over the last blade of grass so we can all live cheek-by-jowl in a concrete jungle, just so whoever wants a MoCo zip code can claim one? I'd like to live in a giant house on a double lot in Chevy Chase Village. Where do I protest the unfairness of my not being able to afford to? What is it that makes MoCo attractive to people that they want to move here instead of into an extant concrete jungle, like DC or Crystal city? Perhaps it is that MoCo isn't those places --yet. Shoving high-density housing, duplexes, accessory apts in every corner of the area will serve to make the county just as miserable a place to live as the city.
I - a lifelong MoCo resident - moved out of MoCo one year ago to nearby Loudoun Co VA and now I have experienced how PROFESSIONAL civil planners do things RIGHT!! OMG what a difference from the cluster **** that MoCo roads are!! [NOTE - there IS footage somewhere of former Councilmember Leventhal saying during a Council meeting that their 'GOAL is to make driving SO PAINFUL that it forces everyone out of their cars' No council members dissented, as I recall. IDK how to find such video footage but I promise you it exists.]
ReplyDeleteBefore the troll screech starts of 'why are you still interested in MoCo if you mooooved?!?!?!' it is because I still have many friends and loved ones who are not currently unable to escape MoCo for a variety of reasons, and I want to do what I can to help them. But I am not sure it's possible. MC might have to turn into Detroit before they see the rebirth that Detroit has seen in recent years, but not before a whole lotta pain and suffering that the local lawmakers inflicted upon the people. Useful idiots in MoCo are clueless that they will end up on the bottom of the pile with the collectivist agenda that they push for. But apparently they are looking forward to "having nothing and owning nothing, and liking it." as the WEF Klaus Schwab proclaims.
I can assure you that curmudgeony homosapiens have always claimed their tribe/town/country/world is "full." They've never been right and neither are you.
ReplyDeleteIt's the NIMBY circle of life for millennia now: be young, move somewhere, see it change, get defensive, die, someone young moves in, sees it change....
@6:21 Rather, young move into area because it is desirable, then change the environment so totally that what made the place desirable is destroyed.
ReplyDeleteYou just repeated what I said. The area has passed you by. It's the cycle of generational change. It's not 1930 anymore and - guess what? - surely people whined about when your family moved to MoCo and "changed the environment," too. Times change and so do housing and lifestyle preferences. The free market responds to those preferences and the people who don't like it move or die off. It's as simple as that.
ReplyDelete