Work begins on Brooke Park apartments conversion

Construction fencing has gone up around the Brooke Park apartments at 6301 MacArthur Boulevard in Bethesda. The parking lot is also closed off. Montgomery County's Housing Opportunities Commission is converting the naturally-occurring 17 units of affordable housing at Brooke Park into 17 HOC-controlled MPDUs.

HOC proposes making Brooke Park apartments all-affordable housing in Bethesda

The Montgomery County Housing Opportunities Commission has submitted a Preliminary Plan Amendment to the already-approved 2011 redevelopment plan for the Brooke Park apartments at 6301 MacArthur Boulevard in Bethesda. Instead of the original plan's proposal to redevelop the property by adding two floors and converting it to a 10-unit condo building, the HOC plans to simply renovate the existing 17 units as affordable MPDUs.

Two mature trees that have been evaluated to be in poor condition will be removed from the site, the parking lot behind the building off Sangamore Road will be reconstructed, and a 5' to 8.5' retaining wall will be added along the parking lot's northern edge. The new parking lot will contain only 13 parking spaces for the 17 units, a plan that may be of concern to nearby residents. Under the existing zoning ordinance, the building should have 24 spaces, but MPDUs have lower parking requirements. MPDUs will almost certainly generate a few more students than currently live in the building for the Walt Whitman cluster.

On the positive side, the existing appropriate height and density of the property will now be preserved, and the naturally-occurring affordability of Brooke Park will be retained. Under the previous plan, there would have been a total net loss of affordable units here. The Planning Board is scheduled to take up the HOC plan at its July 19, 2018 meeting. Planning staff is recommending approval of the plan, with conditions.