Silver & Sons BBQ trailer opens at Bethesda Community Store

Silver & Sons BBQ started as a food truck, expanded into a bricks-and-mortar restaurant at Westbard Square in Bethesda, and now has another spot in Bethesda where you can find their unique Mediterranean-Jewish spin on barbecue. Look for their trailer parked outside the historic Bethesda Community Store at 8804 Old Georgetown Road, just north of Suburban Hospital. Initial operating hours will be Tuesday through Thursday 8:00 AM to 3:00 PM, Friday 8:00 AM to 7:30 PM, Saturday 11:00 AM to 7:30 PM, and Sunday 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM. If you're wondering why a BBQ operation is open at 8:00 AM, that's because their menu includes breakfast sandwiches. 

There are picnic tables for outdoor dining on-site. As for the Bethesda Community Store, it is still vacant. The current owners have renovated the structure in the hopes of attracting a tenant or buyer for the building.

Renovations at historic Bethesda Community Store (Photos)

The Bethesda Community Store and Deli at 8804 Old Georgetown Road has been closed for nearly a decade. Plans to renovate the historic structure have been floating around nearly as long, but are finally moving forward. Those plans included a rear addition to the building, which was in poor condition. You can see the building now extends much further back than the original store. The parking lot had hosted food truck tenants in recent years - most recently Call Your Mother Deli, which is now opening a bricks-and-mortar location in downtown Bethesda. As had been the idea all along, the building renovations and addition are designed to make the property more appealing to a prospective future tenant. 

The original, one-room store was built in 1921, when a trolley line ran along today's Old Georgetown Road to Rockville. That line originally terminated at Bethesda Park, a 50-acre amusement park on the west side of Old Georgetown Road, between today's streets Greentree Road and Cedar Lane. By the time the store was built, Bethesda Park had long ago burned down, and streetcars were running all the way to Rockville. You can travel a large segment of the old trolley route today, on foot or via bicycle, using the Bethesda Trolley Trail.

Historic Bethesda Community Store for sale again

Efforts to modify the historic Bethesda Community Store to attract a rental tenant appear to have failed. The venerable landmark at 8804 Old Georgetown Road is now back on the market. According to an online real estate listing, the asking price is $1.1 million.

For that price, the buyer gets high visibility and high automobile traffic volume. He or she will also get the limitations that come with ownership of an historic property, but with the potential to make the less-visible modifications outlined in the recent plans. Were this a "teardown," the land alone would go for several times the current asking price.