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
