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| A rendering of the proposed grocery store and senior apartments, with East Randolph Road on the right. All images from the Planning Board report. |
This Thursday, the Planning Board will hold a public hearing on and review Conley Square, a proposal to build a small grocery store and 234 homes, including affordable senior apartments, townhomes, and stacked townhomes at the intersection of Old Columbia Pike and East Randolph Road. Today the vacant 11-acre property is zoned for single-family homes on half-acre lots, so the board will recommend whether to rezone the nearly 11-acre property to allow mixed-use development ahead of a hearing at the Board of Appeals on May 2.
If built, Conley Square would be one of the first new developments along Flash, a bus rapid transit line between downtown Silver Spring and Burtonsville that opened in 2020. It’s next to the Tech Road station and a few other projects moving forward, including a shopping center with an Amazon Fresh grocery store and 390 apartments and stacked townhomes.
People are mad
Over the past month, members at the Southern Asian Seventh-Day Adventist Church - which sits next door to the proposed development and would share an entrance with it - have sent form letters to the Planning Board opposing it.
The letters claim that a new grocery store and homes will “will bring in undesirable people into the peaceful surrounding,” adding, “Some of the concerns are drugs, prostitution, vandalism, theft, and crimes.” Some letters implied that, as many members are of East Indian descent, the development would lead to anti-Asian violence.
