Another Bethesda developer seeks hotel use, as demand for luxury apartments remains weak

The housing type Montgomery County elected officials and planners insist is the most-needed and most-popular has few takers on the actual real estate market. Developers have been unable to fully lease-up the new rental apartment towers delivered in the post-recession era with traditional tenants paying full freight. Instead, building owners have converted varying numbers of units to hotel, dorm-room, corporate housing and other uses. With hotel uses, some owners have resorted to unofficial airbnb rentals, while the owners of others like The Elm have sought legitimacy by having the County approve an official hotel designation for a set number of apartments. Developer MACAW 100, LLC is now seeking to take the latter approach.

MACAW 100 had previously received approvals for a 12-story residential building with 76 units at 4824 Edgemoor Lane, a property currently occupied by a single-family home. Now it is requesting amendments to its Preliminary and Site plans that would increase the total number of units to 111, but designate up to 65 of them as hotel rooms. Montgomery County planning staff asked the applicant to refer to the hotel rooms as "Short-Term Residential Rentals" (STRRs), which are regulated more like airbnbs than traditional hotel rooms. 

22 units will be designated "co-living" units. This means they will have several bedrooms leased by individuals or couples, who will all share the common kitchen, living and bathroom areas of the apartment.

With 111 units, the applicant will provide 45 parking spaces, the minimum required by Montgomery County at this location. That is because of the proximity of the site to the Metropolitan public parking garage, which is located diagonally across the street. Interestingly, when the project was approved for 76 units, the plans included 65 parking spaces. One short-term parking space will be provided for deliveries and ridesharing pick-ups and drop-offs. 54 long-term bicycle parking spaces will also be provided.

Residents of adjacent residential buildings have submitted letters and emails to the County Planning Department, raising several concerns about the revisions to the project. These include traffic circulation, the proposed location of the building's garage entrance, the minimal setbacks from the property line for the building's footprint, the lack of space between the building and next-door neighbor The Chase, skepticism over the adequacy of the drop-off parking space, the lack of new public meetings for the community prior to the upcoming public hearing on the proposal, the fact that the new traffic measurement numbers are showing only two additional vehicle trips for the 111-unit building than had been estimated for the 76-unit building, and proposed windows that will face The Chase.

The Montgomery County Planning Board will review the amendment requests at its Thursday, March 9, 2023 meeting. Planning staff are recommending approval of the amendments with conditions. 

Despite promises by the Montgomery County Council and Planning Board over the last two decades, apartment rents in Bethesda have continued to rise, not fall, as thousands of new units are built. There is very little demand for such expensive apartments, leading developers to find new uses such as hotel rooms. Much like the $2+ million duplexes and $1 million condos that will result from the controversial Thrive 2050 County master plan, the reality of Montgomery County's developer-enriching buildapalooza growth policies doesn't match up with the "deeply-affordable," "missing middle," and increasingly-desperate race-baiting hype that surrounds it. 

The new rental housing - when tenants can be found - is for the well-off, and the privileged business traveler and tourist. If you live downtown - especially in or near a new apartment building - you're probably familiar by now with that Bethesda post-recession phenomenon, the luggage-on-wheels brigade: the folks you see walking into the lobbies of new apartment towers pulling a rolling suitcase behind them. 

Renderings via Montgomery County Planning Department

New public meeting scheduled for 4824 Edgemoor Lane condo project

A required pre-submittal virtual public meeting will be held for the site plan of a condo building proposed for 4824 Edgemoor Lane in downtown Bethesda. Developer Acumen has proposed a 12-story, 77-unit condo building with a robotic, automated parking garage underneath. The meeting will be held online on June 11, 2020 at 7:00 PM at this URL.

Developer unveils plan for 12-story residential building at 4824 Edgemoor Lane in Bethesda

Architecture firm Bonstra | Haresign promised attendees "a building that will be special and embraced by the community" in revealing its proposal to redevelop 4824 Edgemoor Lane at a public meeting last night. The firm was represented by Managing Partner Bill Bonstra, who was joined by Shawn Weingast of developer Acumen. Under their plan, an existing single-family home on the property would be replaced with a 12-story, 120' tall residential condo building that will stretch to the property lines.

Sketch plan shows anticipated
bike lane on Woodmont with concrete
island in front of the building

Right off the bat, the architecture firm being utilized does slightly raise expectations and confidence. Bonstra | Haresign was the design firm for the impressive Capital One headquarters in Tysons, the surrounding 26-acre Tysons Urban Village project, and the Tapies Condominium with the spiral-bound notebook-style front facade detail in the District. While there is no firm design for this Edgemoor Lane building yet, renderings of three possible designs were displayed at last night's meeting. I would say Option 1 looks best, followed by Option 3, which has a bit of a mid-century German accent to it.

Option 1

The building is planned as a condo tower, equal in height to The Chase, but with fewer units per floor. Acumen is targeting a potential buyer looking for a unit that's "not Cheval big, not D.C. small," referring to already-completed competitor Duball, LLC's The Cheval a few blocks away. The 77 units will be a mix of 1 and 2 bedrooms. Windows will be minimized on the south side of the building, which faces The Chase.

Parking and loading will be accessed from Woodmont Avenue, but there will be no vehicle pull-off for drop-offs and deliveries. The schematic shows a proposed Woodmont Avenue bike lane with island out front.

Acumen believes most residents will use the Metro directly across the street, and will mostly "store" any cars they have. For this reason, they have proposed a robotic automated parking garage beneath the building. "Platters" will pick up cars and insert them into stalls for storage, with an apparent capacity to serve a few residents at once.

Option 2 is the most conventional - you've
seen this building all over the region by now

The garage would be the first of its type in Bethesda. Frankly, I haven't seen one of these in-person anywhere in the region, as far as I can recall. One wonders what happens to this garage in the future once the building is turned over to the unit buyers' condo board. How much does specialized maintenance on a relatively-rare contraption like this cost per year? Who pays if a car is damaged by the machine? There will be only 77 backs to bear the cost of any major repair or other building issue that comes up in the decades to come.

There is expected to be a 24-hour front desk when the building opens, but it will be up to the condo board to decide if they will continue that. The developer is not big on concierge services, noting that most of these tasks are performed on cell phones today. Residents will get the ubiquitous rooftop terrace, and 6 to 7 units per floor. What they won't get is retail. Acumen says there aren't enough pedestrians walking by to make retail viable.

Lack of retail is largely the fault of Montgomery County for not encouraging or requiring it in the newest or past downtown Bethesda sector plans. You can't expect the developer to be the first to pay extra for retail, if there isn't any up and down the rest of the street. The way Woodmont Avenue was mis-planned in the past resulted in a dark and lonely street after business hours. Neither the Planning Board nor the County Council made any effort to fix that in the 2017 plan. The result is that there is less activation of the streetscape today than there was in the pre-Metro days on Woodmont south of Black's Bar + Kitchen, with the exception of the Bethesda Row area.

Option 3

The building materials will be masonry and wood. Bonstra | Haresign architects created thirty sketches of the potential architecture, which were then whittled down to the three you see here.

Groundbreaking for the building, if approved on the anticipated timeline, would be at least 12 months away. Delivery is expected about eighteen months later.

4824 Edgemoor Lane development meeting rescheduled at last minute

What's the deal with the new fad of
developers canceling meetings?!

Moved to new date, location

less convenient for neighbors

of property in question

Last night's scheduled and advertised public meeting regarding a proposed redevelopment of 4824 Edgemoor Lane was abruptly canceled at the very last minute, and rescheduled for September 4, 2019 at 6:30 PM. The rescheduled meeting, strangely, will be held at a location much further away from the property - the cafeteria at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, at 4301 East-West Highway. In addition to being highly unprofessional, the 11th-hour cancellation and site change raise questions about both this gaffe, and an apparent new strategy of canceling these public meetings.

To state the obvious, the new location at BCC HS will be much less convenient for residents of The Chase, The Edgemont, The Christopher, The Metropolitan, and other nearby buildings to attend. Instead of walking down the block or across the street, they'll either have a long walk or slow rush hour drive to BCC. This move particularly seems to target those whom some developers refer to disparagingly as "the grey heads," older residents more invested in their property, who are more likely to turn out for these meetings. Those in The Chase who may be getting a 12-story brick wall outside their window would likely have the biggest concerns.

Second, I've been covering these meetings for many years. This year is the first I can recall a publicly-advertised pre-submission meeting being canceled. In fact, this is now the third such canceled meeting this year. All three were canceled at the last minute, with no public notice. The signs posted at 4824 Edgemoor displaying the time and date of the meeting were not updated Tuesday to announce the cancellation.

Perhaps someone in the industry can suggest how rudely and unprofessionally canceling advertised public meetings at literally the last minute helps a developer. It hasn't been done by any of the biggest names in real estate, like Federal Realty, JBG Smith, or Toll Brothers, for example. But then again, it's never been done before this year. Does it reduce turnout? What is this new trend about?

No one has forced these companies to schedule these meetings. So why in God's name would you advertise a public meeting if you aren't ready to present the project? It makes no sense at all.

The Planning Department should address this issue if it continues to be a new trend. Canceling an officially-advertised public pre-submission meeting should require an approval from the department, at least. This is a serious matter. The public has much more important things to do with their time than travel to the meeting to find it has been canceled. There is a process.

Respect that process. Show some professionalism. As they say, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. If this is how much you respect the neighbors of your property - having them show up to find a paper taped to a door - how do you expect to have a productive relationship with them during the years ahead, as your project goes through the process and is built?

New building proposed for 4824 Edgemoor Lane

A new residential building has been proposed for a single-family home site at 4824 Edgemoor Lane in downtown Bethesda. The precise dimensions of the building have not been made public yet, but the property is 8000 SF in size, and is currently zoned with a 120' maximum height. That is quite low for a property literally across the street from a Metro station. But at the same time, residents of The Chase whose windows and balconies face that way will likely be concerned about the distance between their building and the new one, as well as the height of it.

Google Maps satellite view of the
corner property, which is surrounded
to the south and west by The Chase and
a garage entrance for The Chase

Currently, the home on the site has been leased for business purposes. A home directly across Edgemoor is already slated for redevelopment into the Edgemont II. For that reason, a pedestrian safety concern here would be both sidewalks of Edgemoor being shut down at once, on a primary walking route for both transit commuters and Bethesda Elementary School students.

A public meeting on the proposed 4824 Edgemoor development has been scheduled for Tuesday, August 20, 2019 at 7:00 PM at the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Regional Services Center at 4805 Edgemoor Lane..