just up the pike

percontee: seats at the table

2009-11-12T12:24:00.000-05:00

part FOUR of a series about new development proposals in Calverton and Hyattsville by Percontee.

Over the past five years, Percontee has been reaching out to the FDA and to the surrounding neighborhoods for input on the project. Response from the FDA has been positive. "We like to shop," Genn recalls them saying. "We like to visit nice restaurants, and we like to take our colleagues out."

Percontee has been meeting regularly with the Hillandale and Calverton civic associations and the advisory committees for the Fairland and White Oak master plans. "For years we've been meeting with the outside communities and doing surveys about what they think of our concept compared to what could be here." Percontee gave the neighbors disposable cameras, asking them to take photos of the kinds of buildings or amenities they'd like to see here.

The community has "literally had a seat at the table," says Lambert. "Stuart Rochester was here," says Genn, referring to the civic activist who passed away in July. He points where I'm sitting. "He sat right in that chair. He said traffic and congestion will happen no matter what is developed, and can we have the best thing possible. He thought this was a responsible vision for the area."

"That's not to say we can ignore the traffic issues," Genn adds. "That's part and parcel with what we're trying to do."

Former Councilmember Marilyn Praisner was concerned about the traffic LifeSci Village would add along with other proposed developments like the new Washington Adventist Hospital.

Traffic was the main reason former County Councilmember Marilyn Praisner, who lived in Calverton for forty years, expressed skepticism about LifeSci Village. "Although at first glance the artist’s renderings of this proposal may seem appealing, a closer look raises a number of concerns," she wrote in a newsletter sent to her constituents in November 2007. "The amount of development proposed for the site would have a tremendous impact on traffic."

Councilmember Don Praisner, who succeeded his wife after her passing in 2008, complained that it wasn't "ideal for East County" and that mixed-use development was a fad. "A developer isn't going to build an office building if he can't fill it," he told JUTP in 2008. "You can't ignore the marketplace."

Despite its low profile, LifeSci Village has come up in countywide discussion lately due to its similarity to "Science City," a mixed-use community proposed by Johns Hopkins University west of Gaithersburg also aimed at encouraging scientific research. Skeptics of that project, from Greater Greater Washington to Councilmember Phil Andrews, have suggested that it will draw much-needed investment away from East County, though Percontee doesn't view it as competition.

"I see it as collaboration," Genn says. "We've already collaborated with Johns Hopkins University in trying to attract businesses and institutes to come and locate in Maryland and Montgomery County. We see that Montgomery County can become a real epicenter for life sciences." He notes that the Gudelskys owned the land that became the Shady Grove Life Sciences Center.

Site plan of LifeSci Village.

Already five years in the making, LifeSci Village will have a while longer before it comes to fruition. Percontee and architects Torti Gallas and Partners won't even start work on the final design until next summer and after that, they'll be waiting for the Planning Department to draft a new sector plan for White Oak and the Route 29 corridor, scheduled to take place in 2013.

A groundbreaking is "regrettably not anytime soon," says Genn. "Five years ago, we were trying to get this moving, if not for forces beyond our control. The FDA employees are coming here now. It would've been great to have something for them."

The biggest delay for LifeSci Village, Genn laments, has been a de facto moratorium on new development in East County due to road improvements that haven't been completed or even funded. "They said we'll put in infrastructure," he says. "We put in overpasses, but we've had little to no investment in the 29 corridor. We made it very easy for Howard County development to come down 29, and they got the tax base increase at Maple Lawn, but congestion isn't better. We've devastated Burtonsville and now we have to figure out how to revitalize it."

Rather than push people away, Genn continues, we should give them more reasons to come here. "Unless we close off our borders," he says, "we can't stop people from coming through."

Check out this slideshow of LifeSci Village and Belcrest Plaza. All images courtesy of Percontee unless otherwise noted.

daily snapshot: don't get mad . . .

2009-11-12T09:50:00.000-05:00

. . . put a sign defaming your ex-love on top of your car and drive around for all to see and judge him/her accordingly. This sign, spotted waiting at the light at Flower Avenue and Piney Branch Road, reads "STEPHANIE DORAN APPROPRIATES OTHER PEOPLE'S PROPERTY & DESTROYS OTHER PEOPLE'S BELONGINGS." The fellow inside looked happy as a clam because, indeed, revenge is best served on four wheels.

movies return to former cinema 'n' drafthouse, but not booze

2009-11-11T12:45:00.000-05:00

JUTP reader and Wheaton resident Melanie alerted us to a sign advertising a new theatre opening at the former Cinema 'n' Drafthouse in ~~Westfield Shoppingtown~~ ~~Westfield Wheaton~~ Wheaton Plaza, which closed last December, less than two months after its much-heralded opening. "Montgomery Royal Theater Coming Soon" reads the sign, hanging from this very marquee (this picture, of course, was taken last year) that has been so integral to the movie-going existence in Wheaton that it was immortalized in young-adult fiction.

At first, all I could find about the new cinema was this vague entry on the mall's website, which of course simply says it's "coming soon." But a representative of Westfield informed us that the theatre will have a soft opening "on Black Friday" - that's November 27 - followed by a full grand opening in December.

The Montgomery Royal will be operated by a local company (details on which we don't know, seeing as they don't even come up in a Google search), giving them major Local First Wheaton cred. They intend to show a "mix of first-run and indie films," making it sound like a less-pretentious Bethesda Row Cinema. The 'Royal will not, unfortunately, have a full-service restaurant and bar like the Drafthouse - which, sad as it may sound, will probably reduce their overhead costs by a lot, hopefully keeping them in business for much longer than two months.

what's up the pike: reverence for life

2009-11-11T09:24:00.004-05:00

- Happy Veterans' Day, East County. Today's a day to commemorate the sacrifices of those who serve our country. This year, we also note the execution of John Allen Muhammad - better known as the mastermind behind the Beltway sniper attacks seven years ago this fall - though it may provide little solace to those here and across the region whose lives were forever changed by his actions.

- Professional photographer/friend of JUTP Chip Py sent us these photos of the memorial to Beltway sniper victims in Brookside Gardens to victims of the sniper attacks. Engraved in the stone is the following unattributed statement: "Linger here and reflect on those lost to violence, hope for a more peaceful world, seek a reverence for life among all people."

- Slate magazine has a photo slideshow of each of the fourteen locations where the snipers struck, eight of which were in Montgomery County. Ordinarily, I'd make fun of the inaccurate locations (White Flint, Md.? Aspen Hill, Va.?), but that would be insensitive today.

- If you haven't already, check out our three brief posts on the new Silver Spring Library, which after years of discussion and frustration has finally yielded a finished product - or, at least, a bunch of pretty drawings.

- The Good Eatin' in Wheaton blog discovers that Nava Thai's recent nod from food critic Tom Sietsema has made the restaurant very popular. "Despite having lots of tables these days, it was packed, we had to wait a half hour before sitting down," the blogger writes. "Apparently Nava has become better known than I had realized."

- The county's Department of Transportation has some new photos (or, at least, what I think is a photo) of the White Oak ~~covered bus shelter~~ Transit Center, also under construction. Kinda bummed at how blah the new bus shelters look, especially compared to the recently-completed transit center in Germantown, where lowly bus riders get to wait at a place that looks not unlike the veranda at a Southern bed-and-breakfast. Sigh . . .

three brief posts on the silver spring library (part three)

2009-11-10T14:04:00.000-05:00

Supporters of a pedestrian bridge between the Silver Spring Library and the Wayne Avenue Garage are holding out hope that it'll still get built.

Not surprisingly, parking and access were the biggest concerns local residents had about the new library. County Executive Ike Leggett insisted two weeks ago that a pedestrian bridge connecting the library to the adjacent Wayne Avenue Garage, heavily supported by the disabled community, would be built. But on Saturday, Scheuerman made it very clear that the connection across Wayne Avenue - already rejected by the County Council in July - wouldn't happen any time soon.

"There is no ability to build a bridge from the public garage to the public building," he says, because doing so would violate the Silver Spring Urban Renewal Plan, which forbids skybridges. Instead, additional handicapped parking spaces would be created in the garage. The library, meanwhile, would be built to accomodate a bridge if the restriction was lifted.

Those living south of the library in and near Fenton Village said the design was just another example of their neighborhood being ignored. "The whole point of this library was that it was supposed to bring the development down to Fenton Village," says Debbie Linn, member of the Silver Spring Citizens Advisory Board and an architect. "The whole point of urban development is defeated by putting in a bridge."

A grand staircase will carry visitors from Fenton Street to the library on the third floor.

"I think they have ignored Fenton Village and given us a backdoor and a loading dock. This is facing Downtown, as usual," says East Silver Spring activist Karen Roper, who then walked out of the meeting.

But Marilyn Wisoff, vice president of the Friends of the Silver Spring Library, says easy access to parking is a necessity. "Truthfully, without the bridge I'm afraid that people will go elsewhere," she says. "We must pay attention to our present users."

Scheuerman noted that there will be ample parking in the Wayne Avenue Garage, whose nearly 1700 spaces are only about 70% used. "There will be weekends when you come to Silver Spring and find there are cars parked in the garage," he says. "Isn't it great? I remember being here when you didn't have that."

He did, however, encourage supporters of the bridge to make themselves heard by the County Council. "On the bridge . . . that's something y'all have to do," he says. "It's up to the citizenry."

Check out this slideshow of images from the Silver Spring Library, including exterior renderings, interior renderings and selected floor plans. For more images and information, visit the Department of General Services' web page for the project.

three brief posts on the silver spring library (part two)

2009-11-10T12:02:00.001-05:00

Seven stories high, the library complex throws together retail, offices, an art gallery, a coffee bar, a park and a Purple Line stop, with some books thrown in for good measure.

With 65,000 square feet of space used by the public, the new library at Wayne Avenue and Fenton Street would be the largest in the county and have an expected 1,125,000 users, based on the number of visitors to the smaller Rockville and Germantown libraries. It'll also include 10,000 square feet of offices for the county's Department of Health and Human Services and 22,000 square feet of retail. A second building, to be completed by private developers later, will contain 120,000 square feet of apartments and an additional 15,000 square feet of retail.

The library's layout, as described by Evans, Lukmire and Scheuerman, will look like this:

The ground floor will contain a public park between Fenton Street and the future Purple Line station, which will be built and programmed as a plaza before the transitway is completed. A drop-off point will be located on an alley just off Wayne Avenue. Inside, there are lobbies on Wayne Avenue and Fenton Street, an art gallery, and a coffee bar, dubbed "The Book Stops Here" on plans.

Specific details for the second floor have yet to be finalized, but there's been previous discussion that it will contain studios for local artists.

The library itself begins on the third floor, with a grand staircase leading up from Fenton Street. This floor will have a circulation desk and young adult books, though there have been hints of a teen area as well.

On the fourth floor, there will be adult books, group and quiet study areas, and a computer lab.

The fifth floor will be devoted primarily to children's books, with a reading area and a roof garden facing Fenton Street.

The Department of Health and Human Services will have offices on the sixth floor, with space for health initiatives targeted at the black, Latino, and Asian American communities. There will also be common conference and copy rooms shared with library staff.

Finally, the seventh floor will contain meeting rooms available to the public, opening onto a terrace wrapping three sides of the building with views of Wayne Avenue, Fenton Street and Bonifant Street.

Check out this slideshow of images from the Silver Spring Library, including exterior renderings, interior renderings and selected floor plans. For more images and information, visit the Department of General Services' web page for the project.

three brief posts on the silver spring library (part one)

2009-11-10T09:52:00.000-05:00

After years of design charrettes and lengthy discussion about how the new Silver Spring Library should look and function, the County's Department of General Services presented final drawings at a meeting last Saturday. Today, we'll present three brief posts summarizing what happened, what the new library will look like, and how the community responded.

About thirty people came to the basement of the current library on Colesville Road to see the design process come to fruition. Chief engineer Don Scheuerman was on hand to talk about the seven-story facility, as were architects Greg Lukmire and Bill Evans of the Arlington-based Lukmire Partnership, best known for designing libraries in Germantown and Shirlington, in addition to the new Francis Scott Key Middle School in White Oak.

While earlier iterations of the library (warning! PDF file.) showed a monolithic building with small windows, the final design features lots of glass. "We wanted people inside to be able to watch the world go by," says Lukmire. ""Natural light and natural views are very important to healthy people, so we wanted to make the building very open."

The architects say they want the library to "glow like a lantern" at night.

Pictures released two weeks ago showing the library covered in bright orange have earned it comparisons to a Howard Johnson, but the architects say exterior materials and colors haven't been finalized yet. "There are certain aspects of [the existing] library that everybody likes," says Evans, noting the liberal use of wood and stone and the intimacy of the reading room. "We're gonna do what we can to recapture the warmth of the current library."

"There's been no consensus about what it should look like," Lukmire says of the library's protracted design process, "other than it looking like a civic building and a library."

Scheuerman says that work at the library site will begin soon, but that you shouldn't expect to see actual building start for at least a year. Demolition of existing buildings on Wayne Avenue and Fenton Street will begin in "45 to 60 days," he says, followed by site surveying through the winter. Relocating utility lines will begin next July and take between six to nine months, meaning construction, which could take anywhere from 26 to 30 months, will start in the winter of 2011. As a result, the library should open some time in 2013.

Check out this slideshow of images from the Silver Spring Library, including exterior renderings, interior renderings and selected floor plans. For more images and information, visit the Department of General Services' web page for the project.

percontee: not just sticks and bricks

2009-11-09T12:22:00.004-05:00

part THREE of a series about new development proposals in Calverton and Hyattsville by Percontee.

Percontee is one of several companies owned by the Gudelsky family, once one of the region's largest developers. Husband and wife Homer and Martha Gudelsky are also well known for their philanthropy, with the foundation that bears their name contributing to everything from a nature center in Howard County to school of technology at Montgomery College to the Music Center at Strathmore Hall. Homer and Martha "grew up nearby on Colesville Road," Genn explains, and the family sees LifeSci Village as their "legacy project."

"This is probably the last of the large tracts the Gudelskys own in East Montgomery County," he says. "For them as for us, this is what we hope people will look at in twenty-five or fifty years and way 'What a great thing they've done.' Create a place for people to live and work and have a great time in the eastern part of the county."

The LifeSci Village concept began in 2004, soon after the Food and Drug Administration began building their new campus at the Federal Research Center in White Oak. David Edgerley, then director of economic development for Montgomery County, approached Percontee with the proposal for the East County Center for Science and Technology, a small business incubator to be located north of the site.

2005 sketch plan of the East County Center for Science and Technology.

A sketch plan for the ECCST - which was never funded - shows an office park not unlike those already built along Tech Road, with low-slung buildings surrounded by a small lake and acres of parking lots. Almost all of the project's 800,000 square feet was devoted to office, educational and research space, though 15,000 square feet was given over to retail - enough room for a couple of fast-food restaurants.

"He said, 'Percontee, you're in the middle of it,'" Genn recalls Edgerley saying. "Instead of doing something piecemeal and detached, we decided to do something comprehensive. During those years we've been talking with all the stakeholders."

LifeSci Village would incorporate the East County Center for Science and Technology, remaking the combined 290-acre site as a series of "neighborhoods," each with a different mix of uses. A "north neighborhood," closer to existing office parks along Tech Road, would house predominantly commercial and light industrial activities. An "east neighborhood," across from the Riderwood Village retirement community along Cherry Hill Road, would mostly contain housing. Between them would be a "village center" (pictured above) with housing, offices and retail.

Site plan of LifeSci Village.

Green space will come in the form of several small parks and plazas, including one in the village center, and a greenbelt preserving the only remaining wooded portion of the site. The entire complex will have a street grid with multiple connections to the FDA campus and the new Adventist Hospital. "We've been working with them to integrate our site plans," says Genn.

Current plans for LifeSci Village outline roughly two million square feet of "life science and tech uses," including educational and clinical facilities, research labs, and regular office space; two million square feet of retail space, hotel rooms and possibly a conference center; and three to four thousand residences - "mostly townhomes, mid-rise and maybe apartments and condos," according to Genn. We didn't discuss building height, but the renderings show buildings no taller than six stories.

"Quality of construction is important to us and the Gudelskys," says Genn. "It's not just sticks and bricks, it's built to last." That being said, Genn isn't worried about the environmental effects of building on a soon-to-be former industrial site. "I don't think there needs to be any remediation," he says. "We've done environmental studies. Typical brownfield reuse of a property. We want to get it certified as environmentally sound fo environmental uses."

Check out this slideshow of LifeSci Village and Belcrest Plaza. All images courtesy of Percontee unless otherwise noted.

what's up the pike: purple potamus was like the best name ever

2009-11-09T09:37:00.001-05:00

Come by tomorrow for an update on the new Silver Spring Library. In the meantime, if you missed it last week, check out these photos of the shuttered City Place 10 theatre. Anyway:

- The Blockbuster in the Burtonsville Crossing shopping center will close in January, says the Gazette. Developer Chris Jones, who's already snatched another business there for his Burtonsville Town Square project across the street, correctly says Burtonsville's dying village center isn't to blame. Instead, it's the rise of Netflix and other online video services that have forced other local video stores, like Purple Potamus in Colesville (right, photo by bradlby), to shut their doors.

- And in Olney, popular restaurant B.J. Pumpernickel's will also shut down after twenty years when owner Barry Schwartz retires. It doesn't help that the New York-style eatery would have to move anyway to make room for a new Harris Teeter set to open at that shopping center in 2011.

- Tomorrow, Silver Spring Town Center, Inc., hosts a concert in honor of Veterans' Day. "A Tribute To America's Veterans" will include performances by local singer Jonny Grave and blues artists Memphis Gold and Jay Summerour. Tickets for the concert, which is set for 7:30pm at the Round House Theatre on Colesville Road, are $20 and can be purchased by shooting an e-mail to silverspringtowncenter at gmail dot com.

- Wayne at Finish the Trail figures out how the completed Capital Crescent Trail will join up with the new Silver Spring Transit Center, under construction as we speak. "You may find this post tedious if maps and plans are not your thing, or if you understood the concept plan all along," he warns.

- Local officials are talking about tossing out the Fairland Master Plan, a document that guides zoning and land use along the Route 29 corridor. At their last monthly meeting, members of the East County Citizens Advisory Board complained the plan's mandates to build more expensive single-family homes and ignore improvements to local transit are no longer relevant today.

percontee: trying to feed the FDA

2009-11-06T13:26:00.003-05:00

East County doesn't have a boulevard of broken dreams, but it's seen more than a few big ideas fall flat on their faces. The latest and perhaps most elusive big idea has been LifeSci Village, a new community of offices and research facilities, homes and shops in Calverton.

Here, it was said, East County would eat in fancy restaurants and shop in expensive boutiques not seen this side of Montgomery Mall. If you worked at the new Food and Drug Administration campus, you could even walk to work. But in five years of talk about LifeSci Village, very little has surfaced about the project aside from a handful of stories in the Washington Post.

And that's why a month ago I came to Percontee's conference room, located deep within an office park on Tech Road, to find out more about this project that could change the face of East County. In the corner sits a pile of display boards bearing watercolor paintings. They're the only renderings that exist of LifeSci Village, a proposed research park-turned-downtown just a few minutes away. But despite broad community support, the project's still years from being a reality.

You might not have even noticed the empty stretch of Cherry Hill Road across from the Riderwood Village retirement community where LifeSci Village will eventually rise, the name of its developer spelled out in rocks. "It's an old sand and gravel property," says Jonathan Genn, executive vice president of Percontee. He's here with deputy general counsel Ayana Lambert to tell me about the biggest undertaking in the company's history which, for now, is a concrete recycling plant.

The Food and Drug Administration campus in White Oak under construction. Photo courtesy of Evan Glass.

"This is part of the business Percontee has been doing for several decades," he explains. Old concrete, say from a building about to be knocked down, is ground up and re-used. And soon, he hopes, the entire property will get recycled into something new.

"Where we see development in the 21st century going," Genn says, "is for people to work in this life sciences cluster and walk or bike or take the electric car to work." There are 9,000 people coming to work at the Food and Drug Administration, an additional 3,000 employees at the future Washington Adventist Hospital on Plum Orchard Drive, and 2,000 more at the East County Center for Science and Technology, a proposed business incubator at the end of Industrial Parkway.

Potentially, that means a lot of cars. "The more mix of uses - including residences - on here, the fewer trips people have to take to work," says Genn. "When gas gets up to four, five dollars a gallon, all that will be driving people to walk to work."

"It's an asset to get skilled medical professionals coming here," he says. "We see this as the most ideal win-win-win-win-win opportunity because each of the major institutions that would be served. The FDA sees this as a tool to recruit the best scientists to come here. Here are the amenities you have for when you're not at work."

Next week, we'll talk more about the project's specifics - and what the community thinks about it - along with have a detailed look at Belcrest Plaza, an ambitious new proposal for Hyattsville.

what's up the pike: something for the kids

2009-11-06T09:44:00.003-05:00

- Join Jerry McCoy of the Silver Spring Historical Society for their monthly tour of historic Georgia Avenue. The two-hour tour begins at 10am in front of the B&O Railroad station, on Georgia at Sligo Avenue and costs $10 for admission if you're over 13 or not a member of the society.

- After that, MoCo's Department of General Services hosts the follow-up to last week's sneak peek of the new Silver Spring Library (above) tomorrow. You can check out final drawings of the soon-to-be-built complex at Wayne and Fenton, which will include County offices, an art gallery, and a future Purple Line stop in addition to a new library. That meeting will be at 1pm Saturday in the current library, 8901 Colesville Road.

- And Tonight, everyone's favorite youth media collective, the Gandhi Brigade, premieres their latest documentaries. Crossing Borders is a series of four short films produced alongside kids in El Salvador while on a ten-day trip there last summer. The screening is from 6:30pm to 8:30pm in the Cafritz Arts Building at Georgia Avenue and King Street on Montgomery College's Takoma Park-Silver Spring campus.

- After that, the Art n Soul open mike for teens returns to Moorenko's Ice Cream for its second month. Writers and musicians (in middle and high school) are invited to come out and perform starting at 7:30pm, with a sign-up beginning at 7. If you don't know, Moorenko's is located at Georgia Avenue and East-West Highway, next to Mayorga Coffee.

- Speaking of The Kids, commenter Skateboard Mom went to Wednesday night's meeting about the proposed skate spot in Woodside Park and had this to say:". . . 30 skateboarders (most of them teens) showed up to speak up for the need for a legitimate skating facility in Silver Spring. They were so polite and so well-behaved, that at the end Mike Riley, Department of Parks Deputy Director, complimented them on that, and said their behavior was much better than a lot of the behavior he's seen when that room has been filled with adults."

return to the city place 10 theatres

2009-11-05T12:54:00.000-05:00

The last time I visited the AMC City Place 10 was in 1999, on a sixth-grade field trip to see Baby Geniuses (educational, right?). For members of White Oak Middle School's Teen Club, trips to the AMC represented a first taste of freedom, an opportunity to see the latest PG-13 rated flicks with parents far, far away. (There were rumors that the more mature students were engaging in sexual activity during these movie outings, but in ten years I have never heard anything to confirm this.)

When the Majestic and the Silver Theatre opened in 2004, there were ten glorious months in which a filmgoer in Silver Spring had a choice of thirty-three screens within a single city block, but of course this could not be sustained. And it was the City Place 10, already out-of-date barely a decade after it opened, that would bite the dust.

A (work-related) tour of City Place Mall yesterday culminated in a visit to the AMC City Place 10, looking much like it did when it unceremoniously closed five years ago. Silver Spring's lost a fair amount of its history (miss you, Armory) through redevelopment, but this is one piece of its recent past that's been basically preserved in amber.

Everything is there: the awful pink-and-green color scheme, the chairs in the auditoriums (intact, and still usable, as I can attest from sitting in one), even the popcorn machines at the concession stand. What most people who visit City Place haven't seen is that the place has basically become a greenhouse for the rest of the mall, with all of its potted plants stored in the theatre lobby. Aside from that, the theatre's in such good shape that you could screen The Matrix tomorrow and no one would think anything of it.

So check out these fuzzy, camera-phone photos of the City Place 10 That Was. Do you have any fond memories of this place? Can you make some up just to feel the sweet embrace of nostalgia?

percontee: giving new life to the county line

2009-11-05T09:56:00.003-05:00

part ONE of a series about new development proposals in Calverton and Hyattsville by Percontee.

Percontee's conference room, located deep within an office park off Tech Road, doesn't inspire at first. Its walls are covered in the yellowing photos of buildings finished years ago. A 1960's-era ad for a Laurel apartment complex advertises rents of $100 a month. There's a plaque celebrating the renovation of Wheaton Plaza - in 1987.

You wouldn't expect this to be the birthplace of thirty-story apartment towers . . . in Hyattsville. Or a research-park-turned-downtown in Calverton. For decades, eastern Montgomery and Prince George's counties have clamored for the kind of amenities - corporate headquarters, white-tablecloth restaurants - that Rockville and Bethesda have taken for granted. And Percontee wants to make it happen soon, sort of.

Over the next week, Just Up The Pike explores the latest proposals from a company that played a big part in building suburban Maryland. Can their sexy renderings and promises of the good life become a reality? Or will they go back on a shelf with the Last Big Thing to hit the county line? You're about to find out starting tomorrow.

daily snapshot: houseboat

2009-11-04T13:43:00.000-05:00

The first thing you do when you buy a house is see if it will fit on your boat. (This is if you have made the correct choice to buy a boat first.) The second thing is to make sure your house is seaworthy.

This is on Veirs Mill Road near Randolph Road.

three big things that just happened (breaking news!!!)

2009-11-04T10:30:00.000-05:00

1) Unofficial "mayor of Silver Spring" Susan Hoffmann (above) lost her bid for re-election as official Mayor of Rockville to seventy-four-year-old Phyllis Marcuccio by just four hundred votes. Hoffmann won her first term in the 2007 Rockville mayoral race, which Just Up The Pike covered (despite our motto being "Columbia Pike, not the one in Rockville") if only so I could search the bowels of Rockville Town Square looking for a security guard.

2) MoCo's political class is mourning the deaths of Planning Board commissioner and former state delegate from Potomac Jean Cryor, who passed away last night after a long battle with cancer, and Col. Todd Hixson, son of current State Del. Sheila Hixson, who "died unexpectedly" Sunday afternoon. Del. Hixson represents District 20, roughly defined as all of Silver Spring below Randolph Road. Our condolences go out to both families.

3) And of course ~~Robert McDonnell is the new governor of Virginia~~ the massive computer that controls stoplights in Montgomery County went down last night, which explains why your commute (if your commute is like mine) involved a fifteen-minute slog passing Wheaton High School on Randolph Road. If you don't have a job, pat yourself on the back for not being caught in the melee and go back to sleep.

what's up the pike: hump hump hump day

2009-11-04T09:25:00.001-05:00

- The Department of Parks is holding a community meeting to discuss a temporary skate spot that'll be built in Woodside Park this winter. That meeting's at 7pm tonight at the Park and Planning Commission, located across from the park at Spring and Georgia.

- Samuel Myers, better known as Bonifant Street dry-cleaner Jim Dandy, will receive the 2009 Neal Potter Path of Achievement Award this year. Named for the former County Executive, the prize honors Montgomery County residents over 60 who have contributed to their community.

Ninety-four years old, Myers has owned the cleaners since 1972 but will have to leave soon as his and several other businesses along Bonifant are cleared to make way for a new apartment building. He'll be recognized in a ceremony at 4pm tomorrow in the Music Center at Strathmore at Rockville Pike and Tuckerman Lane in North Bethesda.

- On Friday, everyone's favorite youth media collective, the Gandhi Brigade, premieres their latest documentaries. Crossing Borders is a series of four short films produced alongside kids in El Salvador while on a ten-day trip there last summer. The screening is from 6:30pm to 8:30pm in the Cafritz Arts Building at Georgia Avenue and King Street on Montgomery College's Takoma Park-Silver Spring campus.

- MoCo's Department of General Services hosts the follow-up to last week's sneak peek of the new Silver Spring Library this Saturday. You can check out final drawings of the soon-to-be-built complex at Wayne and Fenton, which will include County offices, an art gallery, and a future Purple Line stop in addition to a new library. That meeting will be at 1pm Saturday in the current library, 8901 Colesville Road.

flyover country

2009-11-03T13:06:00.004-05:00

Staring out from the top of any tall building in MoCo, like ~~Georgian Towers~~ The Georgian, the most compelling part of the view is the trees, forming an almost-uninterrupted carpet of green across the landscape. It's comforting to know that, no matter how busy the ground looks, there's still a tree canopy here.

I was reminded of this when Evan Glass (pictured above), president of the South Silver Spring Neighborhood Association and friend of JUTP, sent me sixty-eight photos he'd taken while flying over the county with the Leadership Montgomery program a few weeks ago. Slower than a jumbo jet and far closer to the ground, flying in a twin-engine plane gives you a far more intimate look at what's happening below. And if you wave at your apartment building from the window of a Cessna 337, chances are someone will wave back.

Check out this selection of Evan's photos from East County, though there are plenty more from across MoCo that I love, including the Travilah Quarry in Rockville, Northwest High School in Germantown, and the Lakelands in Gaithersburg.

Construction at the Silver Spring Transit Center.	Summit Hills apartments at East-West Highway and 16th Street.
The Red Line tracks cross Georgia Avenue in Downtown Silver Spring.	South Silver Spring with Northwest D.C. in the background.
The Mormon Temple (left) and Capital Beltway (right) in Kensington.	Montgomery Blair High School in Four Corners.
The interchange at Cherry Hill Road and Columbia Pike.	Work continues on the Food and Drug Administration's campus in White Oak.
Construction of the InterCounty Connector at Route 29, looking west.	Construction of the InterCounty Connector through Longmead Crossing in Layhill.

man shot outside AFI silver theatre tonight

2009-11-02T22:03:00.002-05:00

From the Post:

"A 25-year-old man was shot Monday evening in downtown Silver Spring, Montgomery County police said.

The shooting was reported about 6 p.m. in the 8600 block of Colesville Road, near the AFI Silver Theatre and the City Place Mall.

Police said the man told them that he had just left a Gold's Gym in the area when two men tried to rob him on a sidewalk. They said he was shot in a leg, and taken to a hospital."

For all the grief that Ellsworth gets, it's Colesville Road in front of City Place where I've seen the worst of Downtown Silver Spring - getting circled by a bunch of kids hustling for change, watching a mentally disturbed woman break the windows of the mall with a baseball bat. Not sure what it'll take to clean up this particular block - and please, don't tell me the shooting had something to do with people waiting at the bus stop there.

Hopefully this is the last shooting we'll hear about in Downtown Silver Spring, though that seems kind of naïve. Last spring's "riots" on Ellsworth had everyone on edge for a while, but hopefully this won't be enough to keep people from returning to the area. If you're thinking about staying home next weekend, remember: the streets are safest when lots of people are around, no matter how intimidated a few thugs want you to feel.

what's keeping more of this from being built here?

2009-11-02T12:17:00.000-05:00

I've always loved the "Telluride-Inspired Townhomes" Ruppert O'Brien built in the Aspen Ridge and Albany Grove developments off Briggs Chaney Road, which are nearing completion three years after construction started. Natural materials (is that a real wooden beam over the garage door?), articulated façades, and big windows give these homes a traditional, established feel, like an updated version of the Craftsman bungalows you might find in Takoma Park or the Woodsides.

Not only that, but they stand out from the brick-and-vinyl homes put up by larger builders like Ryan and NVHomes, who've built at least half-a-dozen subdivisions in East County over the past ten years. Don't get me wrong: I think neighborhoods like Ryan and NV's Cross Creek Club are fine, and I know people like them. But I wonder how well they'll retain value, and how well they'll reflect on this area. (It doesn't help my impression of them that one of their sales agents referred to this area as "Silver Springs.")

But Sean Ruppert of Ruppert O'Brien told JUTP two years ago that the planning and permitting process is so time- and cost-consuming that he'll never build in Montgomery County again:

"I understand there's more traffic congestion" in Northern Virginia, Ruppert laments, "but they're so much more business-friendly." A sales contract in Virginia or the District of Columbia, he points out, is only six pages long. In Montgomery County, it's an inch thick.

"It's such a shame because it's such a great market, and there's people who want our product," says Ruppert. "You should stay here on Sunday and see what people have been saying about the model. 'We've never seen something like this,' or 'Montgomery County deserves this.'"

It's a shame. Unique, well-built, well-designed homes like this encourage stronger communities as people stick around, confident that the built environment, at least, couldn't be found somewhere else. The same homes that Ryan and NV built at Cross Creek Club are available at subdivisions across the country, including just a few miles away in Laurel. Not to mention, of course, that the Aspen Ridge/Albany Grove homes are townhouses, which should be a rebuke to anyone who thinks large-lot single-family homes are the only way to provide more upscale housing in East County despite the high cost of land.

what's up the pike: not the one in ohio

2009-11-02T09:41:00.000-05:00

- Colesville and a town in Ohio have switched names, according to Google Maps. The Canton Repository reported last week that their town was appearing as "Colesville" on the map website, which updated their symbols and place designations last week. Meanwhile, if you type in "Colesville, MD," it'll take you to the right place - the crossroads at New Hampshire Avenue and Randolph Road that usually takes a Silver Spring address - but it'll say Canton. While a slew of complaints from Ohio got their label fixed, Canton, Maryland remains.

- Greater Greater writes about a church in McLean that's exploring ways to turn its suburban campus into a small, mixed-use neighborhood. That might be useful for the large houses of worship along New Hampshire Avenue, the so-called "highway to heaven." Giving their congregants more opportunities to live nearby (other than large single-family homes) could reduce local traffic AND build stronger religious communities. The First Baptist Church's 2005 proposal to build apartments on their property at Wayne and Fenton failed, though a church in Clarendon broke ground on a similar project last month.

- The Department of Parks is holding a community meeting to discuss a temporary skate spot that'll be built in Woodside Park this winter. That meeting's at 7pm Wednesday at the Park and Planning Commission, located across from the park at Spring and Georgia.

- Samuel Myers, better known as Bonifant Street dry-cleaner Jim Dandy, will receive the 2009 Neal Potter Path of Achievement Award this year. Named for the former County Executive, the prize honors Montgomery County residents over 60 who have contributed to their community.

Ninety-four years old, Myers has owned the cleaners since 1972 but will have to leave soon as his and several other businesses along Bonifant are cleared to make way for a new apartment building. He'll be recognized in a ceremony at 4pm Thursday in the Music Center at Strathmore at Rockville Pike and Tuckerman Lane in North Bethesda.

the videomakers: reach out and shine

2009-10-30T13:26:00.004-04:00

Part FOUR of our exclusive interview with Walter Gottlieb, creator of The Videomakers, a new web series set in Silver Spring. (see part ONE | part TWO | part THREE | part FOUR) Above: the fourth episode. You can see the rest of the series, including newer episodes, at www.thevideomakers.tv.

"The Internet was an opportunity for me to try something narrative and do an experiment in the new media," says Gottlieb. "A lot of my previous work was for an older demographic and I wanted to do something aimed at younger people in their twenties, thirties and forties."

The Videomakers is quickly establishing an online presence, with episodes appearing on the video-sharing sites YouTube, Vimeo and Blip and frequent updates on their Facebook and Twitter pages. The show is featured regularly on the Silver Spring Penguin and even has its own blog. As of earlier this month, the first episode had already received 2,300 views from across the country, Gottlieb says, but he hopes that locals will take to it as well.

"This area could be a fan base for the obvious reasons," says Gottlieb. "It's a wild world out there. And you're competing with forty thousand other web series. I'd like to see it develop as large an audience as possible and earn some revenue and I'd like to see people get a kick out of it. If we get noticed by someone in New York or Los Angeles that wouldn't be so bad either."

"We really want to make this a TV-quality production," Gottlieb says, despite the project's low budget. "When I look at web series on the Internet, if the sound is bad or the lighting is bad or there isn't enough pacing, if the dialogue is stilted, I can't watch it. I want something that would look good enough to go on TV. And I think we've accomplished it."

Gottlieb says that The Videomakers won't stop his Final Cut Productions from making more documentaries in the future. "I wanted to take some of the success we had in celebrating Silver Spring in the nonprofit arena and see if we could translate it into the narrative world," he says. "To still celebrate our sense of place and the fact that Silver Spring is this sort of under-appreciated place."

"It's a big experiment," he adds. "You don't know where it's gonna go, but it's worth a shot."

what's up the pike: big birds, little birds

2009-10-30T09:35:00.003-04:00

- Just twelve people showed up at a public hearing for the InterCounty Connector tolling plan in Calverton Wednesday night. But Prince George's lawmakers say the charges to use the 16-mile highway - up to 35 cents a mile, or $6 to drive it from end to end - disproportionately hurt their residents, who according to them are uniformly poor. Meanwhile, the Columbia Talk blog calls B.S. on the suggestion that the ICC's users will be people from "Howard County and Anne Arundel County in their Lexuses." What, don't people in MoCo have nice cars too?

- Over on The Other Pike, Cindy from Rockville Central and others are hosting a Zombie Walk of their own. That'll be this Friday at 7:30pm outside the Apollo Bar at 12 N. Washington Street before lurching through Rockville Town Square.

- And the Rocky Horror Show - a theatrical version of the 1976 cult-film Rocky Horror Picture Show has its second local run this month with the Kensington Arts Theatre. There'll be performances tonight and tomorrow and continuing well into November at the Kensington Town Hall, 3710 Mitchell Street. Check out KAT's website for more info.

- The Wheaton Urban District's starting a weekly flea market. Like the successful Fenton Street Market in Downtown Silver Spring, the Wheaton flea will offer a mix of used goods and locally-made crafts. The first one is this Sunday from 9am to 3pm at Grandview Avenue and Reedie Drive in Downtown Wheaton.

- Cyndy at Photo-Cyn-Thesis reviews Pho Real, the cleverly-named Vietnamese soup joint at Briggs Chaney Road and Old Columbia Pike. "It is very attractively decorated and very clean, and the broth is always fresh and delicious, and never greasy," she writes. Be warned: the post has some terrible, terrible puns.

daily snapshot: perrywood drive

2009-10-29T12:13:00.000-04:00

The roundabout at Old Columbia Pike and Perrywood Drive in Burtonsville, outside Banneker Middle School, was completed about four years ago, but the hand-made street sign remains. I'm not sure who put it up - if it was a temporary measure from the county Department of Transportation, or if some enterprising resident did it themselves.

the videomakers: stranger than fiction

2009-10-29T09:21:00.003-04:00

Part THREE of our exclusive interview with Walter Gottlieb, creator of The Videomakers, a new web series set in Silver Spring. (see part ONE part TWO part THREE part FOUR) Above: the third episode.

The Videomakers is the first time Walter Gottlieb had done fiction since studying film at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. The intervening years had been spent working on documentaries. Anyone who's been here for more than a couple years knows his documentaries of local history, Silver Spring: Story of an American Suburb and Next Stop: Silver Spring, which premiered on PBS in 2002 and 2007, respectively. Even works that weren't about Silver Spring ended up getting filmed here. Heart and Soul, a biography of Broadway composer Frank Loesser, was partially shot at the Tastee Diner. "That was good preparation for totally fictional works," Gottlieb says. "We'd had experience with directing actors, costumes, props."

By last spring, Gottlieb had cast an ensemble of all local "theatre or film commmunity people," he says, hailing from the Baltimore-Washington area - though Jake Koenig, who plays production assistant Joel, would take the bus down from New York to shoot. The first season's ten episodes were filmed over a series of weekends between April and June to accommodate the cast's busy schedules. To meet their time constraints, they had to work fast.

"We shot several episodes at a time. Lots of economies of scale," Gottlieb says. "In Hollywood, to shoot seven pages of script in a day would be a lot. We've shot twenty." He estimates that he spends about a week writing and two weeks with the crew editing each episode, which have been released once every three weeks since August.

The castmembers have "lives, children, other projects," says Gottlieb. Four have had major film roles. Co-star Lee Ordeman, who plays Kevin, will play Gregor Samsa in a D.C. production of Metamorphosis this fall. Even Gottlieb's daughter Arielle, who plays pint-sized intern Jessica, has done TV work. All of the cast and crew members either donated or took discounted rates for their work on the project, keeping costs down on an already low-budget production in the hopes that the series will eventually turn a profit.

The shooting locations, most of which are in or near Downtown Silver Spring, came through friends and connections. Much of the show was filmed at Silver Spring Studios on Wayne Avenue, where Gottlieb used to work. His former trainer offered space at Tactical Airsoft Arena in Rockville as a stand-in for Lowball's production facilities. Some castmembers offered up their apartments for bedroom scenes. And the entire cast and crew spent a weekend in Jessup shooting at the Maryland Correctional Center. "The Maryland Film Office steered us there," says Gottlieb. "They have an entire building they shut down a few years ago after some guards were killed. We camped out there for two full days."

Businesses were surprisingly nice" about letting them shoot there, Gottlieb says. "We'd come in with actors, crew, catering, equipment. But we'd always clean up our toys and leave the place the way we found it."

skate debate continues in silver spring and beyond

2009-10-28T14:03:00.000-04:00

It's all about skateboarding in this week's Gazette. While Germantown's celebrating the opening of a new skate spot right in their Town Center (despite attempts to go all Giuliani on the little delinquents), one beleaguered office-worker in Bethesda wants one to make her lunch breaks on Bethesda Row more civil.

Meanwhile, Wheaton's formerly untouchable downtown seems to have finally arrived. Local shopkeepers are complaining that the new walkway on Georgia Avenue (where Barry's Magic Shop used to be) has already been "taken over" by skater kids just two weeks after it opened.

And this is a problem because . . .? These kids may not be Ray Picture Framing's target consumers, but I certainly doubt they or the walkway are hurting their business. Downtown Wheaton needs more activity. People need to see that other people are here before they're willing to spend their time or money in the area - and, it seems, the new walkway's already gotten some attention.

That being said, those curmudgeonly residents who complain that it's "a waste of money" are a little right. Unless the path is connected to other pedestrian improvements in downtown, you won't see much more foot traffic because it'll continue to be an unsafe and undesirable place to walk. In the meantime, though, there are far bigger things keeping people from going to Wheaton than a few kids on skateboards.

Skaters are regularly chased out of Downtown plazas by security.

And in Woodside, some residents of Woodside are nervous about the proposed skate spot in Woodside Park (the park) at Spring and Georgia - because the Department of Parks says it'll clear them out of Downtown's unused plazas and courtyards. I can appreciate their concern that the skater mob will march up their quiet streets as well.

It seems unlikely that everyone's going to give up their Downtown haunts because, after all, skating's as much about sport as it is about spectacle. You want to see and be seen, and a park several blocks away from the hustle and bustle of Downtown's main streets will not only seem unnecessarily secluded (not to mention too restrictive - how many kids do you see wearing the helmets and kneepads that'll be required here?) but a hassle to get to.

Skaters congregating by the bus stop at Second Avenue and Colesville Road.

I could be wrong, of course. Many of the kids interviewed, sick of being hassled by security guards, feel having a place to go where they can skate and not be bothered is worth going to Woodside Park. You'll probably find that the kids who do go to Woodside Park will be more respectful of the neighborhood than those who will remain Downtown. After all, many of the kids who'll skate in Woodside Park already live nearby, and they aren't going to cut up if adults they know are watching.

The fight between Ruthless Skater Kids and Everyone Else seems to be shifting, as the county finally agrees to make accomodations for them. Police are aware that giving these kids a place to go will keep them out of trouble. And those in neighborhoods that will receive skate spots - one is planned to be built at the new White Oak Recreation Center - should feel comfortable that the right precautions will be taken to make these spaces as unintrusive as possible. I still don't skate (don't like things underneath me that move), but I'm really happy to see new skate spots opening across Montgomery County.

(Before we go, let's take a second to admire the glaring errors in just one of the Gazette stories mentioned here: referring to Woodside as the "downtown Silver Spring neighborhood of Woodside Urban Park," a County official who says skaters like to go to the "first level of an office building on the corner of Georgia and Wayne avenues" - are they inside the building? - and of course the photo, which is supposed to be of ~~the Kensington Skate Park~~ K-Town (pictured above) but is actually a plaza in Downtown Bethesda. Seriously, do Gazette reporters all live in North Dakota, or are they just underpaid and overworked?)