While the case was strong for all three counts, both courts have ruled for developers, as they usually do in Montgomery County and Maryland. If there is any way to stretch the law for a developer, the courts historically will do it. Having said that, the attorney representing the residents is one of the few who has beaten developers in court.
It remains a fact that the Planning Board did not measure the greenhouse gas impact of the plan, likely because they knew it would definitely show an increase in such gases in an area with no significant transit or Metro station. It remains a fact, not opinion, that the Council failed to comply with the public hearing requirement that it sit as the District Council to hear such testimony. If such declaration by the Council chair were optional, or to be assumed, then it would not be specifically stated in the law that it must do so. If anything, those were the two slam dunk counts in the case.
Fortunately, the lawsuit did succeed in a reduction in size of Regency Centers' proposal, and a staging plan relatively more beneficial to the residents and businesses in the area (although that could change, and there have been recent signs it might). The neighborhood will be better for the lawsuit having been filed, as a result.
34 comments:
Labels: The Dark Side of Westwood
The "wunnerful, wunnerful, wunnerful" side of replacing a couple of crappy 1960s shops and a sea of empty asphalt with an exciting modern transit-oriented town center.
7:51: If you are "excited" about 6 boxes being constructed along Westbard Avenue, you must not get out very often. I can imagine someone being excited about National Harbor or The Wharf; the Westbard plan...not so much.
By the way, it is in no way a "transit-oriented town center." Not only was the transit center deleted from the plan by the County Council, but there are only 2 buses - neither of which goes to downtown Bethesda - and the nearest Metro station is 2 miles away. Transit-oriented development has to be within one quarter to one-half mile from a rapid transit station.
Westbard is far beyond that universally-accepted standard for TOD. It is an automobile-dependent area - 93% drive to work - and that is why the Planning Board intentionally ignored the law that required them to measure the greenhouse gas impact of the plan. They knew 3000+ new cars would indeed increase greenhouse gas emissions in the area.
Plus there are no buses after 7pm on weekends. Some transit.
Robert Dyer: "The Planning Board did not measure the greenhouse gas impact of the plan."
Also Robert Dyer: <a href='http://robertdyer.blogspot.com/2009/11/global-warming-hoax-one-step-closer-to.html">"Global Warming is a hoax."</a>
So I guess the only wildcard still in play is the Kenwood Place Condominium easement dispute; that's a tough one.
As Westbard grows, more frequent bus lines can easily be expanded to serve the increased density, including shuttles to Bethesda and Chevy Chase., and Metro.
Rapid transit and mass transit are two very different things. Mass transit can simply include conventional regional bus lines and stations or more dedicated bus rapid transit with measures to enhance the speed and convenience of buses. True rapid transit typically refers to light or heavy rail in dedicated rights of way.
Transit oriented design only refers to urban planning around transit, which is not necessarily rapid. It’s not called Mass Transit Oriented Design!
You previously preached that the original Westbard plans were too grandiose, and too large. Now that the project is substantially smaller, you think it should be the scale and character of the National Harbor or the DC Wharf? Not sure why bigger was bad before, but now smaller is also bad. We understand you prefer the status quo of a dated strip center, but why now suggest that a more modest plan is inferior to a much more elaborate destination?
People drive crazy trying to make morning commute traffic lights on Westbard as it is.
I can only imagine what it will be like with 100s of additional cars.
8:41 AM
Please dispense with the notion that disagreement means we must keep the current center. People can want upgrades or new village center and also disagree with the approved insane plan.
I've noticed the "Regency Centers" signs popping up around shopping centers in the region.
They're always an inferior product, I've noticed. Not a good sign.
Now the developers own the Maryland circuit and appellate courts?! Hahahaha! The entertainment value of Robert's blog is priceless! keep em coming man ;-)
If the Westbard residents are fughfigh so hard to keep their decrepit industrial ghetto maybe that's what they deserve
8:41 (top): You're twisting what I said - you previously called the plan "exciting." There is nothing in the Westbard plan that is exciting - no water feature/waterfront, no entertainment venue, no impressive architecture.
The Westbard plan has always been too big, but it was never "grandiose." There has never been any imagination whatsoever to it - just 3 boxes on each side of the same Westbard Avenue, and a barrage of townhomes on two different sites. A creative developer would have relocated the road to add a water feature, and would create a more distinctive design for the buildings, instead of the cookie cutter approach being taken.
"A barrage of townhomes"
LOL
Why no report on Michelle Malkin's hate rally on your Bethesda blog, only on the other three?
I read your site almost daily and I'm thankful for your reporting, but I think you're wrong about this development. What developers have proposed is a BIG improvement and is much better than the dated strip shopping center surrounded by what has got to be one of the largest parking lots in the county that's currently there.
Wonder if the height of these buildings will block the noise of the Purple line on the Crescent Trail for the Springdale neighborhood? :ding ding:
Saith Dyer: "There is nothing in the Westbard plan that is exciting - no water feature/waterfront, no entertainment venue, no impressive architecture..just 3 boxes on each side of the same Westbard Avenue..."
Aren't you the same guy who said that the extremely un-grandiose and extremely boxy Fairmont Plaza building was "based on a resort hotel" just a week ago?
The developer should have just knocked everything down and let it sit and the residents would be crying back to build something anything at all.
10:14 AM
Don't know about "Springdale", but what about "Kendale"? You know, next to "Kendale Country Club"? I'm sure they'll like the train in their backyards.
12:20: nobody can read your Indonesian post so please take it elsewhere!
All the lawyers I spoke with never thought the lawsuit had much merit. Even if it had been successful, it would have likely only caused delays and expense. Meanwhile, local residents and several neighborhood associations were bilked for $150,000+ in legal costs, for a case with little hope of success.
8:33: Did the Planning Board assess greenhouse gas impact of the plan, Yes or No?
Did Nancy Floreen announce the Council was sitting as the "District Council" at the public hearing, Yes or No? (It absolutely is necessary, because the Council had to sit as the Board of Health to ban smoking in restaurants in the past).
So the lawsuit certainly had merit. It's a question of whether the courts will enforce the law, and they chose not to in this case.
It appears there are two sets of laws, one for the MoCo cartel, and a stricter one for the average citizen. That's not an ethical legal system.
8:41: Whoa, whoa, whoa - TOD is "transit-oriented DEVELOPMENT." You just made up a totally fake phrase of "design" - and it has to be no more than half-a-mile from rapid transit. Not just "transit."
You can't have "transit-oriented" anything at Westbard, because there is no viable transit there. Just part time buses that don't even go to downtown Bethesda.
And Bob the Constitutional Law professor weighs in.
If you were a planner you would know that this term is not a fake phrase. Transit Oriented Design is the planning effort, that creates and encourages Transit Oriented Development. Both can be abbreviated as TOD, and both are very commonly used in the urban planning field to describe the process and intended result.
https://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/larc301/lectures/tod.htm
If you were an urban designer or architect, perhaps you would also know that there is nothing in either of the above terms that mandate any form of RAPID transit. They only refer to MASS transit, meaning more occupancy than privately owned cars, car pooling, ride sharing and car sharing can provide. Mass transit means public buses, BRT, intercity trains, streetcars, commuter rail, light rail, and heavy rail, like the Metro.
Yes, you are correct that transit oriented developments and the process of transit orientated design strive to group development within 1/2 mile of reliable forms of transit, but not necessarily RAPID transit. I personally don’t know how frequent or reliable the buses are at Westbard, but the services to make them so are much less onerous that creating fixed rail lines.
6:47: LOL - that story was a knock-off of mine and didn't cite me as the source. Punch yourself.
1:54: This is all a bunch of bosh. The entire urban planning and new urbanism fields would collapse under your idea. TOD has always been about rapid transit, which by nature is fast and has a higher capacity than buses.
If your definition were used, sprawl would explode beyond what it is now, and rural areas could be developed at urban densities. Totally nuts.
What your talking points do reflect are a strategy shift by the MoCo cartel that was simultaneous to the Westbard plan. Casey Anderson used your language to try - and fail - to shift the public perception of TOD from the world-standard rapid transit proximity to a new, vague concept of "there's a Metro station a few miles away, there's a Ride On bus available at certain times at insanely-long headways, and it's close to the D.C. border."
The same Casey Anderson caught shaking hands with the Westbard developer seconds after the Council passed the Westbard sector plan.
Dyer, there is literally no one in the urban planning or "new urbanism" fields who shares your unique definition of "transit-oriented" as referring to "rapid transit" alone. As well as your unique definitions of "sprawl" and "rural area".
Prove me wrong.
Dyer says that the lawsuit succeeded in a reduction in size of Regency Centers' proposal. Not so. The lawsuit failed at both the Circuit Court and Court of Special Appeals. What happened was that Regency acquired Equity One and Regency assessed Equity One's Westbard plans which had a lot of retail. Regency thought that in this era of Amazon and other web based retailers, Regency would be better off with less brick and mortar retail. A reassessment of the market - not the lawsuit - changed the plans.
Dyer says the lawsuit was a slam dunk. Obviously, this is a flawed assessment because two courts rejected the plaintiffs' complaint. The Court of Special Appeals tossed the case on standing. In Maryland (not simply Montgomery County) standing is complicated and difficult for landowners to meet in land use cases. Dyer does not seem to recognize this.
8:17: LOL - sorry, but the new proposal is smaller. There is not only one less building on the shopping center site, but the total number of units was reduced when Regency Centers went with standard development, which slashed the number of MPDUs required and the bonus floors and units that would have come with the higher %.
Original plan had one stage demolition of the existing shopping center, kicking out existing tenants about 2 years earlier than the new staging plan.
Under the court's apparent definition, very few parties would ever meet standing requirements. This is a misreading of the law. As it stands, the current interpretation by the courts prevents the Council and Planning Board from being held accountable for literally breaking the law in two instances with this sector plan approval.
It's not Amazon - Amazon has been around for a couple of decades now, not just since 2017. It's the moribund MoCo economy that is declining by the year. Just since Equity One started in 2014, the County has severely declined, and there isn't the wealth base to support the high-end retail once imagined for this location.
10:41: Totally false. No legitimate smart growth professional defines TOD as locations only "on a city or county bus route." That would allow urban development in farm country. Exactly the opposite of new urbanism and smart growth TOD, which take place only around rapid transit stations.
10:41 here. Prove me wrong by citing a single "smart-growth professional" who defines "TOD" as "limited to rapid transit", Dyer.
You can't, because you are the only one who believes this.
In this article in Citylab, they make the case that the principles of TOD means that the transit component is much less important than the walkability of a given location. And that best practices for urban planning of TOD make sense even without any transit component. Probably a very good case for Westbard. Design and build it properly now, and the buses, BRT, and even rail can come later, like a short single-track reversible two-way extension of the Purple Line in a former railroad right of way. Make Westbard the western terminus station, and not Bethesda.
But in the mean time, create a dense urban village at Westbard, with enhanced housing density nearby, instead of a nasty old strip center.
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2013/06/transit-might-not-be-essential-transit-oriented-development/5851/
Assess greenhouse gas? Are you some kind of hipster loser? You didn’t used to believe this crock.
Climate change is a hoax. I know because Trump said so.
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