Sunday, October 28, 2018

In your face! Cars return to the sidewalk at Ourisman Volvo/VW

Just one day after word leaked out that Montgomery County would forbid Ourisman Volvo/VW at 7001 Arlington Road from displaying their vehicles on the public space in front of their building, the cars returned to that very spot. The cars had been removed for several days, but suddenly reappeared on Saturday.
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Ourisman showed it had tremendous influence over the County government when it built a garage at its nearby Honda dealership into the public right-of-way on the Capital Crescent Trail. Instead of forcing demolition of the encroaching structure, County officials were convinced to accept a deal that allowed it to stay, a deal residents said was very favorable to Ourisman.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Are you sure that's actually "public space"?

Anonymous said...

Because MCDPS inspectors don't work on weekends.

Anonymous said...

It was a good compromise. In exchange for the garage encroaching on a county easement by a few inches, the county got over a million dollars worth of public space improvements.

Anonymous said...

@8:00AM: Ourisman got a great deal because Diane Schwartz Jones wanted to sweep her department's incompetence under the rug. It's fair to point out that Ourisman wasn't treated fairly throughout the garage project (it received conflicting orders from different parts of the county government during the project), but it got a very good deal all things considered. Ultimately, though, both the community and Ourisman lost. And Diane Schwartz Jones thinks that means she did a good job.

Robert Dyer said...

6:47: Yes, it was designated as such in the development plan approved for this site. I'm personally not bothered by the cars - whoever thought it wasn't tacky to have apartments on top of a car dealership was the one who made the original big mistake. It's too bad our amateur-hour Planning Board didn't think this through, as usual. $$$ talks.

Anonymous said...

"whoever thought it wasn't tacky to have apartments on top of a car dealership was the one who made the original big mistake."

That's odd - this is the first time I recall that you have complained about that.

Also, I note that you ran an article which featured the dealer's cars being displayed on that sidewalk - and not only did you not criticize that, but you appeared to endorse it.

https://robertdyer.blogspot.com/2018/04/volvo-xc40-arrives-in-bethesda-photos.html