So . . . didn't get to go to the first three Purple Line hearings, though Greater Greater Washington has a fairly positive re-cap of the Chevy Chase event, and Maryland Politics Watch has testimony from town councilman David Lublin, state Delegate Alfred Carr and state Senator Rich Madaleno, both from District 18. Hopefully, you'll find me at this Saturday's hearing in Silver Spring. Here's a look at some non-Purple Line related things happening in East County:
Before the hearing, hit up the Montgomery County Thanksgiving Parade in Downtown Silver Spring. With seven floats, ten marching bands and eleven dance troupes, this year's parade promises many excellent photo ops for Chip Py, though it'll be hard to follow up this shot from last year of mounted cops riding horses as they pee on Ellsworth Drive.
- The Dutch Country Farmers' Market is still in Burtonsville, and will remain there through the winter, according to the Gazette. Developer Chris Jones, who plans to redevelop the Burtonsville Shopping Center - containing the so-called Amish Market and other now-closed shops - is still waiting for building permits. Anticipating their eviction last summer, the market already leased space for a new location in Laurel.
- Today, the Planning Board reviews the proposed White Oak Community Recreation Center, which would be built at the corner of April and Stewart lanes in White Oak. With over 33,000 square feet of space, the facility would be one of the County's largest recreation centers, featuring two gyms, a social hall, and a "skate spot." It'll also be going for LEED certification, a rating system which acknowledges the use of environmentally-friendly design and construction techniques.
- And as always, check out my weekly column in the Diamondback, the University of Maryland's independent student newspaper. I'm following up last week's column about the Purple Line with a look at how transportation affects the way we build and design our communities.
Before the hearing, hit up the Montgomery County Thanksgiving Parade in Downtown Silver Spring. With seven floats, ten marching bands and eleven dance troupes, this year's parade promises many excellent photo ops for Chip Py, though it'll be hard to follow up this shot from last year of mounted cops riding horses as they pee on Ellsworth Drive.- The Dutch Country Farmers' Market is still in Burtonsville, and will remain there through the winter, according to the Gazette. Developer Chris Jones, who plans to redevelop the Burtonsville Shopping Center - containing the so-called Amish Market and other now-closed shops - is still waiting for building permits. Anticipating their eviction last summer, the market already leased space for a new location in Laurel.
- Today, the Planning Board reviews the proposed White Oak Community Recreation Center, which would be built at the corner of April and Stewart lanes in White Oak. With over 33,000 square feet of space, the facility would be one of the County's largest recreation centers, featuring two gyms, a social hall, and a "skate spot." It'll also be going for LEED certification, a rating system which acknowledges the use of environmentally-friendly design and construction techniques.
- And as always, check out my weekly column in the Diamondback, the University of Maryland's independent student newspaper. I'm following up last week's column about the Purple Line with a look at how transportation affects the way we build and design our communities.
3 comments:
I hope you can make it to the Purple Line hearings at Takoma College Saturday, so you can provide a more balanced record of the testimony than we are getting from Maryland Politics Watch so far. Five of the seven county and state elected officials who spoke at the Bethesda hearing were for the Purple Line. Of the thirty speakers from the public that spoke before I left, 20 were for the Purple Line. But Maryland Politics Watch has only posted the comments from 3 speakers against the project so far.
Maybe MPW is just being lazy and only posting the comments that have been handed to them, but it creates a very distorted record of that hearing.
The impression I am getting of what will come out of the Purple Line hearings is that enough people will come out in favor of the project for it to go forward in one or another incarnations.
We will also have everyone involved say that no matter how much it should go forward, there just isn't any money for it, and there isn't likely to be any money for it for the forseeable future.
While on the subject of "money", I think I will go back to my own blog and do my best to make the case that this is now, and likely in the future to be, no excuse whatsoever for any new home construction in MoCO, and that the developers will be -- to the best of my ability -- too flat broke by the time the next campaign season comes around, to be able to influence it any more than the realtors are influencing anything right now.
My earlier criticism of the Marylanad Politics Watch coverage of the Purple Line hearing in Bethesda is proving to have been premature. Some of the pro-Purple Line testimony is beginning to appear on MPW, showing some balance.
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