Monday, April 29, 2019

Delay requested for Bethesda townhome development

The developer of 8 townhomes on a site at 4702 West Virginia Avenue in East Bethesda is requesting an extension for its sketch plan from the Montgomery County Planning Board. An attorney representing the applicant says the delay is necessary to address issues raised during review of the project by the Development Review Committee. Planning staff are recommending approval of the extension, which would push back review of the plan until June 6, 2019.



31 comments:

Baloney Concrete said...

Looks nice! Not sure I’d want my house to overlook a huge parking lot, though.

Anonymous said...

How do we find out what issues were raised by the development review committee?

Anonymous said...

4 stories seems a lot for "townhomes". Seems like they are trying to sneak in an apartment building there. Grifters.

Roald said...

Those townhomes are massive!

Skippy said...

I would have liked to have seen the parking lot merged with this and a proper apartment complex.

Anonymous said...

Thank’s for the update, but you have posted older plans and renderings that were revised before the Design Advisory Panel meeting that was held last week. The revised plans can be reviewed here:

https://montgomeryplanning.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/4702-West-Virginia-Avenue-DAP-Submission-Sketch-Plan.pdf

It looks like they have flipped the layout to place building entrances on the east side, facing a future greenspace, instead of on the west side facing a large parking lot. I’m not sure how the small green space on the east side is supposed to happen, as I believe it is currently a private home.

I also noted that the audio recording of the DAP meeting does not seem to work, so we can’t hear the comments. We’ll have to wait until the minutes are posted.

This seems like a very high density project awkwardly squeezed on a tiny lot, with only a very modest amount of street frontage. This type of rowhouse development in normally seen parallel to a street, with lots of private stoops for each unit, not perpendicular as shown. Not sure how comfortable I would be with 7 other residents walking right past my main living space to access their unit entrances. This plan clearly assumes everyone arrives and leaves by car and enters their unit by a tiny private evaluator, s shown on the plans. Really not an ideal pedestrian focused building me thinks.

Baloney Concrete said...

7:11 — I hear what you’re saying, but if the townhomes were perpendicular to the street, wouldn’t you have the whole town walking/driving past your living space?

Anonymous said...

I’m just saying that townhouses are usually parallel to the street, with lots of direct access via steps up to a stoop, as a private entry porch and a front door for each townhouse. This plan proposes townhouses with only a narrow frontage on the street, so residents have to enter on the end, and pass each adjacent townhouse entry to access their front door. Not a very private experience.

Eventually, if a park is built east of the project, each unit could be entered directly. I just don’t know how realistic the park will be, and wonder if this is just a ploy to jam 8 townhouses on a single family lot with poor street frontage. A corner lot with two street frontages would make more sense for this architectural typology.

Anonymous said...

@6:34AM: More like trying to dress an apartment building like townhouses. The developer will save tens of thousands of dollars in impact fees because these are technically apartments.

Did the attorney change? Lerch Early is still listed as the attorney of record but a different firm filed for the extension. I wonder if the law firm changed after Lerch Early was widely ridiculed for suggesting that these $1 million+ giant townhouses would serve the missing middle.

Anonymous said...

Why allow these ridiculously tall townhomes instead of an apartment building? It's the equivalent of one occupant driving an Escalade to work everyday.

Anonymous said...

I don’t think a three story town home or row house above underground parking is all that unusual, especially since each unit has a private elevator. The useable roof terraces and small penthouse level are nice in a location like this. It just seems like a bad site for row houses or town houses.

The creation of flats on multiple levels would be really hard on a narrow site like this, and would require inefficient single loaded corridors, two fire stairs and an elevator.

Anonymous said...

2:42 PM - Sad, in a way. All that time, effort and expense spent on Prima, is wasted now.

Robert Dyer said...

3:51: Fake news. Prima is on-schedule for opening next month. Stick to this site for factual reporting.

7:11: The Planning Department did not attach updated plans to the agenda yet. Due to that, I posted the latest images available, as the point of this story is the delay. The images shown here are where we're at today in terms of the official process.

I'm not surprised the developer would be changing the design, given the poor reception some aspects received. Whatever alternative source images are available today will likely change before June (unless the applicant is lying about not being ready before then, which I have no indication is the case).

Anonymous said...

I am curious why you choose not to show plans submitted to the DAP for review. They do a nice job of showing each project in a single PDF, and always include a detailed narrative. The DAP is indeed part of the official review process, and in most cases, is the most detailed and critical part of Sketch Plan, Preliminary Plan and Site Plan review process. The Montgomery County Planning Commission is now really relying on the DAP to carefully review all projects in the Bethesda CBD, and most project review by the planning commission is now largely perfunctory. If the DAP approves the requested number of points, the planning commission usually follows through with an approval. If the DAP is not on board with the design, projects are revised and resubmitted to the DAP until they meet their concerns.

Robert Dyer said...

7:56: I have shown them in the past. I was not aware they had new plans uploaded there for this project. They should really have an email list that could alert when new items are uploaded.

In this case, I was just posting a short item about the extension, as opposed to an in-depth report on the plans themselves, which I assumed were changing anyway. It seem ridiculous that finished plans would be available on the DAP site if the developer is claiming they need more than a month to complete those plans(!!). Someone is out of sync somewhere on this, and if what you say is true, potentially illegally filing for an extension that is not warranted.

I'm not paid by the MoCo cartel for a set 8 hours of work every day like most media, so I'm not just sitting at a desk twiddling my thumbs all day and refreshing all the Montgomery County government sites every 5 minutes. I'm out getting stories, breaking news, and covering almost the entire county as a one-man operation.

Given the total developer control of our current Planning Board, I wholeheartedly agree that "most project review by the planning [board] is now largely perfunctory." Some of the designs approved in the last year are pretty bad from an architectural and public space/use standpoint, so the criteria for the points is clearly not that stringent or ambitious. But I knew that when I blasted the Bethesda Downtown Plan when the Council approved it.

Anna said...

"I'm not paid by the MoCo cartel for a set 8 hours of work every day like most media"

Such a lie. A complete fabrication on your part. Remember, the truth doesn't cost anything, but lies can cost you everything.

Anonymous said...

fake news. dyer didn't even get the most recent plans for this building. sad.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the update for you thoughts on the DAP meeting. For future reference, PDF’s and a meeting agenda are posted 2 weeks before each scheduled DAP meeting. So once a month I just put a calendar reminder to check to see what has been posted for review by the DAP. It’s easy to download the PDF for review.They post an audio recording of the meeting a few days later, and eventually meeting minutes. The public is welcome to attend if you are ever inclined to attend. They open the meeting to the public after review and comments by the DAP.

Of course projects in other areas than the Downtown Bethesda Sector Plan are reviewed in more detail by the planning staff and commission, but they seem to zip through if they have been vetted and blessed by the DAP. Of course the Design Advisory Panel is “advisory”, so they are not an approving body, they just make recommendations. They do go into some great detail at these meetings, but usually focusing on planning and architectural issues, as opposed to any discussion of the overall appropriateness of a project or community impact issues.

Anonymous said...

"I have shown them in the past."

I can't find any previous report on this project in your archives, just a proposal to re-zone a property across the street as commercial, 6 years ago.

http://robertdyer.blogspot.com/2013/04/bethesda-mcmansion-owner-wants-to.html

Robert Dyer said...

5:56: I said I have shown DAP submission renderings in the past.

5:19: Whoa - are you accusing the developer of illegally requesting an extension when one is not needed? You're saying the plans they need the extension to June in order to produce are ready and online now? That's a mighty big charge. You might get sued by the developer.

5:08: It's a fact that all of my competitors are actually partially or entirely funded by angel investors from the MoCo cartel. In an age where high-traffic, popular sites like Buzzfeed are in financial trouble, there's no way a tiny local website could afford the massive social media spending and multiple full-time salaries for reporters without outside investors.

I have intelligence on how a lot of these media outlets came together behind the scenes, to try and knock me off. Instead, I knock them off - with no money! - and keep publishing. I'm currently up against the most well-funded media outlets yet. It will be exciting to see who prevails.

I'm the only local news publisher/blogger who hasn't been profiled by local media outlets, despite pioneering hyperlocal daily news when no one else was doing it in Montgomery County, breaking multiple huge scoops and investigative reports, and publishing for over a decade now. You can thank the MoCo cartel for that bizarre fact.

Anonymous said...

Under what possible circumstance would it be "illegal" to file for an extension?

Anonymous said...

Robert Dyer said: "5:56: I said I have shown DAP submission renderings in the past."

I can't find any. Perhaps you could link to the previous article(s)?

Anonymous said...

6:56am Christ, get a hobby

Robert Dyer said...

6:50: If you were lying about the reason for requesting the extension.

Anonymous said...

"4 stories seems a lot for "townhomes"."

Most new townhome developments from Bethesda to Clarksburg are four-stories. It allows the builders to increase density by building narrower units while retaining the same floor-area. They're still not remotely comparable to apartments.

Anonymous said...

I'd hate to climb a flight of steps every time I wanted to go from one room to another.

And I shudder at the expense of having individual elevators - both initial construction as well as maintenance over the long term.

Seems like a condo would be a much more efficient use of that space.

Anna said...

There is no cartel. In reality, those people are duly elected officials trying to do their best for the people of the county. Can they make everyone happy? Of course not, no one can. Remember, these people are citizens of Montgomery County just like you. They have a vested interest, like you.

We should want our council members to succeed -- whether we voted for them or not.

Marriott Spox said...

"I'm currently up against the most well-funded media outlets yet. It will be exciting to see who prevails."

That ship has sailed already.

Robert Dyer said...

2:53: LOL - There most definitely is a cartel, and we have the financial and controlled-media "paper trail" to prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt. And if you "win" an illegitimate election with voter fraud and media collusion, you are most definitely not "duly elected."

3:48: It did, and crashed right into your ugly face like the Titanic, old sport.

Suze said...

"4 stories seems a lot for "townhomes"."

To expand on what 9:02 said - take a look at some of the townhomes that have been built in the last decade. Symphony Park has four story homes, as does the new development off the Capital Crescent Trail. There are currently townhomes being built next to Loehmans Plaza (on Randolph) and those look to be 3 stories plus the rooftop.

But you don't even need to just look at new development. Head down to DC and the neighborhoods off North Capitol - a lot of those old townhouses are 4 stories; English basement plus three fully above ground. When you don't have the space to build out, you build up.

Anna said...

There is no cartel.