Marriott International HQ plaza in Bethesda is closed for repairs in Bethesda

Marriott International's downtown headquarters has only been open a few years, and its plaza is already in need of repairs. The promenade between the Marriott HQ and the Marriott Bethesda Downtown hotel at 7707 Woodmont Avenue was closed to the public last night. "Plaza closed for repairs," read a sandwich board sign. It was not immediately clear which aspects of the gathering space were in need of repair. But we know the menus in these buildings are. Bring back the original recipe Mighty Mo Burger, Teen Twist, Orange Freeze, and chicken noodle soup with the round noodles!

Samsung chooses Texas over Maryland for new U.S. corporate headquarters

Maryland dropped the ball - and dropped the call - on one of the biggest corporate headquarters relocation sweepstakes of 2026. South Korean technology giant Samsung is fleeing New Jersey after locating its U.S. headquarters there nearly 40 years ago. Up for grabs were not only the prestige of having the HQ of a conglomerate with fifth-highest brand value of any company in the world, but also 1000 high-wage jobs. You would expect Maryland, which hasn't attracted a single new major corporate headquarters in over a quarter century, to pull out all the stops to lure Samsung to the state. But you would be wrong: Samsung is instead moving its HQ to Plano, Texas.

How hard did Montgomery County and Maryland try to win the game? We don't know, because neither discussed their desire or strategy to win over Samsung publicly. We know Maryland Governor Wes Moore was in touch with executives of a Samsung biotech division when he traveled to South Korea on a trade mission in 2025. Those conversations played a role in Samsung Biologics agreeing to take over a Montgomery County manufacturing facility that was likely to close otherwise. Was Moore able to tap into those contacts during this year's HQ competition? We don't know.

What we do know, is that Montgomery County and Maryland again reaped the whirlwind of failing to get themselves into fighting shape for economic development. While the Maryland tax burden is less than New Jersey's, it cannot remotely compete with Samsung's choice of Texas. The Lone Star State has no individual or corporate income tax. Maryland, whose leaders chose to close 8 power plants and implement "clean" power mandates and a Communist EmPOWER surcharge on electric bills, can no longer generate enough power and is forced to import electricity at higher "boardwalk prices." As a result, energy costs in Texas are literally half of those in Maryland. 

Those two factors alone were likely enough to convince any intelligent executive to choose Texas over Maryland. But wait - there's more.

Texas has superior highway and air travel infrastructure. Dallas Fort Worth International Airport is closer by car to Plano than Montgomery County is to Dulles International Airport, thanks to Montgomery County and Maryland officials actively blocking construction of a long-planned Potomac River crossing to the Dulles area. 

There's also no contest when it comes to private jet travel. Business executives can travel to international destinations like London and Mexico City from Addison Airport, located only 12-17 minutes from Plano. Such jaunts are not possible from the Montgomery County Airpark, which cannot accommodate larger business jets. Addison has customs facilities; Montgomery County Airpark does not. Addison boasts 3 Fixed-Base Operators providing fueling, minor maintenance, deicing, and baggage handling; flight crew resources and facilities such as flight plan and weather rooms and crew lounges; and luxury VIP passenger lounges, secure parking, and corporate sedan/limousine ground transportation coordination. MCA has one FBO, which is limited to fueling and hangar storage, and does not offer luxury facilities or amenities.

Finally, Texas is a Right to Work state and has a far-cheaper cost of living than Maryland. This means lower overall labor costs, and the lower cost of housing and everything else helps to attract the best and brightest to Texas.

Texas has a whopping 57 Fortune 500 corporate headquarters. Maryland has...3. Womp womp.

"Texas is the undisputed headquarters of headquarters," Texas Governor Greg Abbott said in a (under)statement earlier this week. 

Teas Me bubble tea shop space marketed for lease in Bethesda

The space currently occupied by Teas Me at 5017 Wilson Lane in downtown Bethesda is now being marketed for lease. Teas Me, a bubble tea shop, opened here in July 2023. According to the online listing, the space is available "now." Teas Me remains open for business at this time.

Image courtesy AMR Commercial, LLC via LoopNet

Woodmont Ave. to close between Strathmore St. & Wisconsin Ave. June 8 - August 31 in Bethesda

There's finally an explanation for those cryptic "Woodmont to close" signs placed at Bethesda Row recently. Several commenters had suggested it might be for an upcoming WSSC water utility project, and it turns out that this is indeed the case. It's a major project to replace a 54" large-valve vault under Leland Street, a project so big it will take from June until October 2026 to complete. The work will require Woodmont Avenue to close between Strathmore Street and Wisconsin Avenue from June 8 to August 31.

Street access will be for residents and affected businesses only during that period. WSSC expects all work to be completed during business hours on weekdays, and between 9:00 AM and 3:00 PM on weekends. Nighttime work will be performed only if determined to be necessary, and, of course, dates could move if there are extended periods of bad weather between now and October. WSSC promises to restore pavement conditions to what they were or better, after the project is completed. Needless to say, along with the loss of two lanes of Wisconsin Avenue in downtown Bethesda through the end of August, our traffic nightmares will soon be reaching Freddy Krueger proportions.

Another corporate headquarters leaving Bethesda for Virginia

Just weeks before the primary election, Montgomery County has lost yet another corporate headquarters to Northern Virginia. Spatial Front, a defense contracting firm, has announced it will be relocating from Bethesda to Crystal City. It will take 450 high-wage jobs with it. Spatial Front is a privately held firm founded in 2008 that specializes in artificial intelligence, machine learning, geospatial technologies, cloud services, and digital modernization for U.S. federal agencies.

Beyond the incredible tax advantages and superior infrastructure of Virginia, and the moribund economies of Montgomery County and Maryland, a person in the defense contracting field tells me that the new Maryland IT services tax may have been the last straw for Spatial Front. Beginning last July, Maryland’s Budget Reconciliation and Financing Act of 2025 instituted a 3% sales and use tax on data processing, computer systems design, and software publishing. As the Fort Meade Alliance warned Maryland elected officials, the IT tax could have the result of driving what's left of the defense contracting business out of the state to Northern Virginia. That's partly because the tax wallops companies operating under the NAICS 5415 code (Computer Systems Design), the industry group said, and could wipe out profit margins.

The Spatial Front departure again confirms all that I've been saying for years. Montgomery County and Maryland do not have competitive tax policies. In fact, Montgomery County has the largest total tax and fee burden in the Washington D.C. Metro area. All Northern Virginia counties enjoy direct access to Dulles International Airport, the only airport in the region that offers the frequency of flights to the largest variety of destinations that international businesspeople demand. Montgomery County, by contrast, has steadfastly refused to build the new Potomac River crossing that would extend I-370 to the Dulles area, an own-goal of increasingly-catastrophic proportions. And we also see the magnetism of winning these corporate headquarters. Crystal City has the Amazon HQ2, and companies want to be where the energy is.

To top off the irony of the loss, Spatial Front is moving into 2231 Crystal Drive, a building owned by Bethesda-based JBG Smith! "As Governor, I am proud that Spatial Front is moving its headquarters to Arlington," Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger said in a celebratory press release announcing the victory. "The decision to relocate and bring hundreds of high-quality jobs to the Commonwealth reaffirms Virginia’s status as the nation’s premier location for defense and technology innovation. I remain focused on working with state and local partners to bolster that reputation, strengthen our business climate, and cement Virginia as the top state for talent so we can continue to openly welcome growing and expanding companies in every industry."

While Spanberger was closing the deal with Spatial Front, the Montgomery County Council was raising multiple taxes on its residential and business constituents, attending conferences at Hawaiian resorts, advancing a moratorium on data centers and an unconstitutional gun control bill, and passing a bill on the use of masks by law enforcement that violates the U.S. Constitution's Supremacy Clause. Doh!

Remember when Tennessee was sealing the deal after wooing Discovery away from Silver Spring, and the Montgomery County Council was simultaneously debating a ban on circus animals? Wow. Heckuva job, Brownie!

Vehicle capacity reduced by 33% overnight on Wisconsin Ave. in Bethesda with bus lanes

Hiding behind Maryland and WMATA transit agency officials, the Montgomery County Council implemented a 33% reduction in vehicle capacity on Wisconsin Avenue (MD 355) in downtown Bethesda overnight. Trucks loudly roared up and down Wisconsin all night long, applying striping and lettering for bus-only lanes in both directions. The Trojan horse plan mimics the one utilized to get similar bus lanes long-sought by the Council on Georgia Avenue a few years ago. Using the identical gimmick of an insane, long-term closure of multiple Red Line subway stations between Glenmont and downtown Silver Spring in 2024, the Council stiff-armed Maryland Department of Transportation officials into suddenly declaring the bus lanes permanent. The Trojan horse is rolling down the west side of the Red Line this summer, as the Bethesda, Medical Center, and Grosvenor Metro stations will be closed from July 6 to September 6, 2026.

You can be sure that a similar announcement will be made by County, Maryland, and WMATA officials as the station reopening date approaches. The bus lanes plan is publicly sold - minus any public input - as a way to speed shuttle buses between the White Flint and Friendship Heights stations during the closure. In reality, it is a devious scheme to implement by fiat the Council's radical War-on-Cars agenda. Once again, our Marxist totalitarian-left Council is incapable of controlling its dictatorial impulses - but it is very capable of controlling your commute to work. And once again, we see the politicization of MDOT that began during the Larry Hogan administration. Twenty years ago, MDOT would have laughed about the idea of reducing Wisconsin Avenue - the most heavily traveled commuter route in the state - to two lanes in each direction, and dismissed such a proposal outright as total insanity. Post-Martin O'Malley administration, MDOT is amenable to any wacky scheme to advance a local political agenda or developer profit, no matter how contrary to engineering best practices it may be. Heckuva job, Brownie!

Ideal Image closes at Bethesda Row

Ideal Image has closed at 4930 Elm Street at Bethesda Row. The medspa is the first of a wave of similar businesses along Elm Street to fail. Heyday, OVME Medical Spa, and Prime IV Hydration Wellness are still going strong. Ideal Image started the trend when it signed a lease for the former Boloco space in December 2019, and Heyday and OVME followed in early 2020. All four businesses remained surprisingly resilient in opening and thriving amid the pandemic. Ideal Image has ceased to exist as a corporation, but it has tried to sell its individual clinics to new operators where possible, and that apparently wasn't in the cards here.

Sense of Thai opens in Bethesda

Sense of Thai has opened at 5314 Zenith Overlook at Westbard Square in Bethesda. The restaurant is holding a soft opening all this week. Of the restaurants to open so far at the new Regency Centers development, Sense of Thai has arguably the most elaborate interior design and ambiance. The menu is dominated by spicy entrees, but there are a number of milder dishes for the heat-averse. Operating hours are 11:00 AM to 10:00 PM Sunday through Thursday, and 11:00 AM to 11:00 PM on Fridays and Saturdays.

The restaurant held a blessing ceremony with Buddhist monks earlier this week. Early diners have given the menu and service rave reviews. Although the local chain has existing locations in Virginia, it's possible we could see a review by the Washington Post restaurant critic, as he is relatively new in the position and hasn't had a chance to write about the older Sense of Thai locations. So why not start with Westbard?

Former Bethesda movie theater available for lease

A former Bethesda movie theater space-turned-gym is now on the market for lease. The K-B Theatres Georgetown Square Twin building at 10400 Old Georgetown Road has sat vacant for over two years, after New York Sports Club moved out. According to the Cinema Treasures website, some structural or architectural remnants of the theater remain inside the 14000-square-foot building, but not having been a member of the gym, I cannot confirm this. The KB chain opened this two-screen cinema on December 21, 1973. Another reminder of the golden age of neighborhood movie theaters, which crumbled to dust by the end of the 1980s. 

I used to think their demise was a real estate developer scheme, but it turned out that the biggest theater chains colluded with the major studios to make the profit splits so high for blockbusters, and the commitment of weeks to show them so long, that 1-and 2-screen cinemas like Georgetown Square couldn't remain financially viable and still obtain first-run movies. You had to have enough screens to A) show the movie a sufficient number of times per day to recoup enough money from ticket sales and snack bar concessions, and B) move the blockbuster into a smaller auditorium, if moviegoer interest in that flick began to wane prior to the 4-to-6 week commitment the studios demanded, and thereby have room for the next major release simultaneously.

GEICO campus, Brookdale Park trees facing the clearcut chainsaw in Friendship Heights

What would Warren Buffett do? Well, we know what the Montgomery County Council and Planning Board will do. The recent mega-downsizing of GEICO from its lush, longtime campus in the Friendship Heights area of Chevy Chase to a modest office in Bethesda is quickly leading to a massive redevelopment of that land long feared by neighbors. Central to the plans to building luxury apartments and townhomes on the site is the removal of almost all of the large trees from the 29-acre campus.

"This includes trees that are over 50 inches in diameter; some have been there for more than 100 years," the Little Falls Watershed Alliance warned in a email. "LFWA opposes this large scale destruction of the trees as well as many other elements of the plan that will have a negative impact on the environment." Developer EYA is also seeking permission to remove trees from Brookdale Park, the organization said. LFWA is encouraging residents to email the Planning Department and County Council, and ask them to preserve the trees.

Nazlymov Fencing relocates to church in Bethesda

Nazlymov Fencing has relocated in Bethesda. Its former location at 7747 Old Georgetown Road in downtown Bethesda has closed. That former Jewelry Exchange building is slated for demolition to make way for a new apartment tower. Classes have moved to Westmoreland Congregational United Church of Christ at 1 Westmoreland Circle NW at the Maryland/Washington, D.C. line. One twist caused by the move is that fencing classes will no longer be available on Sundays. Nazlymov is offering to cancel memberships for students who cannot reschedule from Sundays to an alternate day. En garde!