A major rehabilitation project continues at the Montgomery County Waverly Public Parking Garage 47 at 7401 Waverly Street in downtown Bethesda. All of the concrete decks in the garage are being replaced in phases, requiring the closure of about 250 long-term parking spaces in the current phase. The plumbing, electrical and lighting systems are also being entirely replaced.
Parking is still available in the other areas of the garage. The project is behind schedule, as it was originally to have been completed by April 2022.
Interesting Bethesda trivia: The Waverly Garage is one of several County-owned properties that occupy the right-of-way for the canceled Northwest Freeway. It would have run parallel to Wisconsin Avenue in a trench, behind the businesses on Wisconsin, and connect Tenleytown, Georgetown and Rosslyn (via the also-canceled Three Sisters Bridge and I-66 extension) to the Capital Beltway near Elmhurst Parkway. This is why, today, you can walk faster along Wisconsin Avenue than you can drive during rush hour. Heckuva job, Brownie!
4 comments:
Hah, yet another example of Bethesda pretending itself a mini Manhattan. Before mourning too deeply the unrealized ambition of extending 70S/270 through Bethesda and into DC-proper, pause and reflect on how well a similar vision worked for the Bronx, when Robert Moses destroyed thriving communities to bring forth the Cross Bronx Expressway, which cut off neighborhoods formerly accessible to each other and plunged that northern NYC borough into poverty and blight from which it has never recovered. When his proposed Lower Manhattan Expressway signalled a similar fate for Manhattan's Little Italy and SoHo neighborhoods, he met his Waterloo --the project was scrapped, and Moses with it.
It is an interesting trivium to point out, Robert, that Bethesda had been in the gun sights of planners eager to bulldoze a multi-lane highway through the then-sleepy little commercial town of Bethesda. But Heckova job, Brownie? How could you think building this would have been a desirable, fortuitous turn of events for the area?
I hope it is okay to include this link, to a story on the proposed 70S extension into DC. I am not affiliated with this blog in any way, and if it's not cool to include, please erase this paragraph and the link that follows:
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2006/12/1959-northwest-freeway.html
11:12: I am familiar with that blog, it's an excellent historical resource. I don't think it would have been as bad as it sounds to have the freeway run on that route through East Bethesda, because it would have not only been below-grade, but they also could have decked over the whole thing, and put development, recreation centers, schools or parks on top of it.
Moses has been largely cast as a villain by contemporary history, but I think New York would be worse off without the transportation system and grand park facilities he was able to build. Our region has dropped the ball on both its road and rail transit network development.
So I take it redevelopment of this site via the county's RFP process a few years ago yielded nothing? That's really unfortunate. These garages really need to be put underground with something more lively above-grade.
Hopefully they'll put a decent number of car charging stations in the garage as part of the renovation. There simply aren't enough car charging stations in the area to make owning an EV a good experience yet.
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