Friday, May 4, 2012

what's up the pike: highway removal edition

It should be no surprise to longtime readers that with the end of each semester comes period with little to no new posts, followed by a humbled mea culpa by yours truly. What's my excuse this time? I was busy taking down the Southeast Freeway in the District. I'll explain more later, but in the meantime, here's a look at what's happening in East County:

- Metro is selling nearly four acres they own in downtown Wheaton. The site, located near the corner of Georgia and Blueridge avenues, is zoned for multi-family housing and retail. I'm glad WMATA is trying to find someone who actually knows what to do with this valuable property, rather than squandering it like they recently did in Glenmont.

- A club that hosts weekend and evening events for East County youth could be expanded to other parts of the county, says Colesville Patch. The County Council's Planning, Housing & Economic Development Committee voted to provide funding for Teen Escape Club offshoots in Bethesda and Germantown, along with another one in Silver Spring. With summer fast approaching, it's good to find actual solutions to teen boredom as opposed to, well, you know.

- Things are happening in downtown Silver Spring this weekend: of course, Fenton Street Market is back on Saturday, but so is the DTSS Fine Art Festival, along with the second-annual Taste the World in Fenton Village on Sunday.
 

- Downtown Wheaton may not have a market for high-end offices, but it's still a great place to eat. In fact, I ate at Nava Thai, one of my favorite restaurants in Wheaton in Greater Washington ever, while I was home last month. That's why I'm looking forward to the 17th-annual Taste of Wheaton festival on Saturday, May 20 at the corner of Reedie Drive and Grandview Avenue. I'm not sure which of Wheaton's great restaurants will be participating (or I'm not paying enough attention to their website), but I am intrigued by food, wine and cocktail pairings.

- And at Planning Place: There are a lot of neat historic things in MoCo, and planners have released their draft recommendations for Burtonsville's village center. I'm generally hopeful about what they've proposed, but we'll talk more about that soon. Have a good weekend and JUTP will be back in full force next week!

2 comments:

Critically Urban said...

It's the Southeast-Southwest Freeway ;)

Curious to see what you came up with.

Joe said...

For the first time since I moved here in 2003, Taste of Wheaton was a bit of a disappointment to me last year. I talked to one vendor who had always been there, but was not in 2011, and he said the county was stingy because they missed some unspecified deadline to participate. I can't say I was surprised, but one would think that they would have been dying to get more participation, since there were only a dozen or so restaurants last year. The Food & Wine pairings were there last year, they were in a separate tent, with tickets purchased mostly ahead of time and a *very* crowded tent.