New drawings submitted by Regency Centers and EYA to the Montgomery County Planning Department show some of the details and conditions that will exist during different phases of the Westwood Shopping Center redevelopment. The overall site plan must receive approval from the Planning Board, and the developer has retained the caveat that the staging order and timing can change at their discretion.
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Outer construction road between remaining
surface parking and Kenwood Place parking
lot during Phase 1 for construction vehicles |
Currently, however, the plans show Giant and the tenants left of the Giant remaining in place, while the bank next door and Rite Aid will be demolished. Once demolition is complete, construction of the new Giant store with additional retail units will begin right next to Giant and the customer parking. About half of the 72 planned townhomes will also be constructed on that end of the existing surface parking lot. Surface parking will remain during that phase for patrons of Giant and the other remaining businesses.
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Construction fence separating
Giant customer parking from
new Giant construction site |
A construction fence will separate the surface parking for Giant from the new Giant and townhome construction area. Continuous Jersey barriers along the outer edge of the remaining parking lot will form an outer construction road for construction vehicle ingress and egress from the Anglo-Dutch side of the property.
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Giant store will be demolished in Phase 2,
but businesses to the left like Westwood Pet Center,
Westwood Barber Shop, Fashion Craft Cleaners,
Starbucks and Anglo-Dutch Pools+Toys will remain |
In Phase 2, the new Giant opens, and Giant customers will have to use garage parking. The current Giant store will be demolished, but the tenants to its left will still remain in place. Surface parking for those businesses will also remain. The Manor Care nursing home will be demolished at that time.
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Look how close this townhouse (in grey at
bottom left) is to the vehicle and customer
entries to the new Giant building. Is this
townhouse one of the MPDUs? |
In Phase 3, the remaining retail wing of the original shopping center will be demolished, and the rest of the 72 townhomes will be constructed. There will be 200 apartments in the new building constructed in place of the old shopping center.
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New residents at the shopping center will bring
517 new cars to already-jammed local roads
like River Road |
At completion on the shopping center site, there will be approximately
680 new residents and
517 new cars for those residents, based on the very-conservative Great Recession U.S. Census estimate of 1.9 vehicles per unit.
No road improvements are planned for River Road or Massachusetts Avenue to handle the 517 additional vehicles each rush hour. More new cars and residents will arrive in future phases of the Westbard redevelopment, eventually exceeding 3000 at full build-out, in a space of only one-and-a-half blocks.
10 comments:
"the very-conservative Great Recession U.S. Census estimate"
What does this mean?
5:10: It means that the latest Census data on car ownership was taken during the Great Recession, when driving and car ownership dropped due to lower income and higher gas prices. Which makes it a conservative estimate to use compared to the reality of 2018, when gas is cheaper and car-buying has rebounded.
Gas was not more expensive during the Great Recession, you Birdbrain
5:24: I guess you were in prison at the time, but I'm afraid gas was indeed more costly at the end of the last decade than it is now. As someone who actually bought gas at the time, I know. Real people reading this are again questioning your sanity.
It wouldn't matter anyway, as the economic collapse alone would have caused the drop in car ownership without the gas factor.
Gas was actually more expensive in 2008. We can thank President Obama for bringing prices down.
Meanwhile, 517 new cars on the road is hardly an apocalypse. Not all of those cars will be used for rush hour trips.
7:01: Yes, just as I said, it was more expensive. The 517 new cars are only from the shopping center property; Regency has several more phases after that.
7:06: Yes, I was agreeing with you. ;-)
Thank you Robert for posting this blog. It was extremely informative. I wish that you would delete the useless comments of those obsessed with your remark about gas prices. I think they overlooked the important content of this article, and your blog would be more enjoyable to read without the haters commenting. Or perhaps just get rid of comments altogether.
Keep deleting comments.
I look forward to the new Westbard project. It looks like the developers are spending some money to keep the Giant open, and building new retail that at least some of the current tenants can occupy without closure. Not all developers would do such a staged plan.
I’m not real excited about the architectural character of the proposed buildings. The design of the retail is really bland and the residential seems very repeatitive and unimaginative. These new building will be not nearly as cool as the multiple new mixed use projects in downtown Bethesda, Chevy Chase Lake or Pike & Rose. Too generic to really support the idea of place making. The added density will help create some enhanced energy and buzz, but the quality of the architectural design will not help make this a memorable or iconic neighborhood.
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