next week on just up the pike . . .

Outside the Newport School in Calverton, where rising rents may force them to close up shop for good.

You've heard about it, read about it, even charretted about it, but you've probably never seen pictures of the Burtonsville Town Square. Next week, we'll be taking a look at the proposed shopping center - what could have been, what we're getting instead, and what's being built in similar communities across MoCo.

Come back next week and check it out!

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what's up the pike: i hit somebody's car today

A reader asked me, "what's new with the Fillmore (pictured above)?" I didn't know. I'd kind of forgotten it was there. But now I know.

- The Fillmore hits a major snag as the Planning Board rejects zoning amendments County Executive Ike Leggett proposed for the proposed music hall on Colesville Road. Lee Development Group, which wants to build a mixed-use development behind the new venue, would be allowed to count it as a public space required under the current zoning code. In addition, they'd be allowed up to fifteen years to build the project, whereas most approved development plans have a five-year deadline for construction.

Most of the controversy over the Fillmore has come from its operator, Live Nation - an international concert promoter who has rebranded several existing music halls around the country as "Fillmores." In February, local writer Carol Bengle Gilbert attempted to draw attention to the County's deal with Lee Development, suggesting that the use of a privately-run (but publicly owned) venue as a public amenity was unethical. In two weeks, the County Council will consider the same legal changes.

- Richard Layman of Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space discusses last week's pair of posts, "sick of emo kids on ellsworth" and "how to grow an old town in no time," about Downtown Silver Spring. Definitely check it out.

so much more AFTER THE JUMP . . .

Rendering of how the Purple Line could look if built along Wayne Avenue east of Downtown Silver Spring.

- Local builder Winchester Homes is demanding the right to buy back 118 acres in Burtonsville seized by the state for construction of an InterCounty Connector route that was eventually eliminated. The property, at Route 198 and Peach Orchard Road, was being cleared and graded for the construction of 130 homes before being bought for the proposed highway's Northern Alignment, which would have paralleled Route 198. When the southern Master Plan Alignment was selected instead, the land was retained to fulfill EPA requirements that the ICC's environmental damage is mitigated.

The Montgomery County Circuit Court ruled that Winchester has the right to re-purchase the property, though the state is appealing that decision. Another Winchester project, Fairland View at Fairland Road and Route 29, was halved in size in order to accomodate a future interchange with the ICC's current routing.

- A week after one Purple Line opposition group was outed as a front for a country club, another organization has appeared, this time in East Silver Spring. This week's Gazette features the people behind the "No Train On Wayne" signs that have appeared along Wayne Avenue. Along with a route between Silver Spring and Thayer avenues, Wayne is one of a few alignments still on the table for the proposed transitway - which will eventually connect Bethesda and New Carrollton - east of Downtown Silver Spring Regardless of which side of the issue you're on, it's hard to deny: that's a catchy slogan.

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essay time: the francis s. filbey building

An occasional look at the overlooked artifacts of East County's past and present.

Meadow slowly takes over the parking lot of the abandoned Filbey Building on Columbia Pike.

It all started with a trip to the bank last week. In the drive-through, I saw something I'd never seen before at the edge of the parking lot. There was a building, a one-story box not unlike many other one-story boxes that dot the office parks of East County. It was unremarkable, except that the parking lot was turning to meadow before my eyes. An abandoned building? Here? I didn't believe it. The building looked like a mirage in the midday sun.

I began to explore. Around the front of the building, there were piles of rubble lined up in neat rows over spaces marked "DIRECTOR" or "SECRETARY." Definitely an office building. The sign over the front door said "THE FRANCIS S. FILBEY BUILDING." Next to it, an address: 12345 NE COLUMB A PIKE.

I couldn't find anything about New Columbia Pike, except that the road we call Columbia Pike was completed in 1964 - nearly twenty years before the building was completed - and that no other building along Route 29 uses the "New" designation. Francis Filbey, meanwhile, was a more interesting find.

so much more AFTER THE JUMP . . .

Despite its prominent location at Route 29 and Industrial Parkway, few notice the Francis S. Filbey Building - or that it's been abandoned for years.

A Silver Spring resident, Filbey was a controversial figure, a veteran of the postal union mergers and a victim, it seems, of larger tensions within the new organization. Born in 1917, Francis Stuart Filbey grew up in Baltimore, becoming a postal clerk and quickly rising through the ranks of the National Federation of Post Office Clerks. In 1969, he was appointed president and immediately had to contend with a strike. By publicizing the federal government's role in the "low wages and intolerable conditions" postal clerks had to deal with, Filbey was able to reach a settlement with the Nixon administration that eventually yielded the U.S. Postal Service.

A series of mergers throughout the 1960's and 70's combined five national postal unions into one, the American Postal Workers Union, with over 285,000 members. Politics forbid them from kicking anyone out of a job, so the executive boards of each union were combined into one forty-nine-member mega-board. In a 1977 memo, Filbey - now president of the APWU - compared it to that of a "banana republic," complaining that the leadership was too top-heavy to be effective.

Newer development surrounds the Filbey Building on two sides, making it less conspicuous.

Filbey wasn't popular for his calls of attrition, especially at a time when postal workers' jobs were being threatened. By the time he died of cancer in May 1977, he was considered a "lame-duck president," and the union was in turmoil once again. His successor Emmet Andrews would face potential pay reductions and the possibility of cutting mail service to four days a week. Complaints - or "grievances" from union members were rising, and those in charge would be ill-equipped to address them.

The Francis S. Filbey Building was completed in 1981 as an office for the APWU's Health Plan division, though not long ago it was abandoned in favor of new offices in Glen Burnie. Much like Filbey's career, the building named for him has come to a quiet and ineffective end, less than thirty years old but already abandoned.

Other derelict buildings along Route 29 have already been bulldozed into oblivion; a warehouse directly across Industrial Parkway was razed several years ago with no plans for redevelopment, though the former printing press at Tech Road has been replaced with the WesTech Village Corner shopping center.

But the Filbey Building remains, almost invisible despite its prominent location on the Pike. Assessed at $8.7 million in 2006, it - and the six acres it sits on - would make great candidates for redevelopment, though so long as the APWU still owns it, that seems unlikely. I doubt anyone waiting for the Ride-On bus at 29 and Industrial Parkway even realizes it's abandoned. Perhaps that's the best way; a fake occupied building is better than an real empty one.

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maple lawn threatens burtonsville's "small-town" cred

Clean, sleek and master-planned: Howard County's Maple Lawn wants to give Burtonsville a run for its small-town status.

Ask anyone doing business in Burtonsville what their biggest threat is, and they'll probably name Maple Lawn, the sprawling mixed-use community rising just one exit north at routes 29 and 216 in Fulton. Saturday's Post Real Estate section covers the sprawling development, where the biggest selling point seems to be its so-called "urban" features - like homes named for established D.C. neighborhoods like Adams Morgan and Capitol Hill - among what one resident called "all this rural paradise" of Howard County.

It's ironic that Maple Lawn compares itself to a "small town" on its website, because there's a real small town just two miles south. With its porches, small yards and village green, it looks the part, but it doesn't play it very well. If you're looking for a taste of small-town life, Burtonsville comes a lot closer than anything a new neighborhood can contrive.

At only two homes an acre, Maple Lawn isn't much denser than many of Burtonsville's big-lawn single-family neighborhoods. An interactive map reveals that most homes are on very small lots - roughly an eighth of an acre - but the swaths of open space that are supposed to compensate for it aren't usable. They're pushed to the edges of the development or along the power line that divides Maple Lawn in half - a poor substitute for the Agricultural Reserve that skirts Burtonsville's northern boundary.

People in the article boast of being able to run into their neighbors while "walk[ing] their dogs at 1 o'clock in the morning," but you can't walk to school. Four schools literally sit in the middle of the development, but there are no pedestrian connections to them.

so much more AFTER THE JUMP . . .

Messy, cluttered and unplanned: Route 198 in Burtonsville is a triumph of the small-town business district.

And that might be okay, because you can drop the kids off on your way to running errands, most of which will still require getting in the car. There just isn't enough density to support "convenience retail" within walking distance, even before community backlash over the project's original size forced the developer to lop off over five hundred homes.

As a result, Maple Lawn's "Business District" has such upscale goodies as a tapas bar, lingerie store and a clothing store called Urban Chic that are geared less to locals and more to people scooting up 29 towards the Mall in Columbia. Residents admitted that they still head down to Burtonsville to shop for groceries at Giant, not to mention other "useful stores" like Zimmerman's hardware store or, of course, the Bedding Barn.

Those five hundred lost homes also means that Maple Lawn had to jack up its prices in order to remain economically feasible. Houses here are big - townhouses range up to 4,200 square feet - and expensive, running from the $300's for a condo to $1.7 million for an "estate home." When asked about the community's variety, one resident said "there are retired people whose children are gone, and there are married couples with no kids." The new homeowners are ethnically diverse, the article explains, but the economic mix is scant.

That isn't the case in Burtonsville; in its older sections, lots were developed individually, meaning that families could build as big or small as they had to; as houses turn over, they sell at a variety of prices. Newer developments - subdivisions like Briarcliff Manor or the apartments and townhouses on Blackburn Road - are segregated by income, but still they contribute to a more diverse whole. Almost anyone can afford to live in Burtonsville, meaning that you can and will be exposed to a variety of people. That will not happen in Maple Lawn.

At its best, a small town provides the best of urban and rural - everything you need to live, but with lots of wide-open spaces. Burtonsville can out-do Maple Lawn in both regards. In order to thrive alongside it, we need to start making a point of our "small town credibility," if you will. We may not lure any families or businesses away from Maple Lawn, but we can rub it in their faces when they come down to Giant.

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rapid bus routes could blanket east county by 2012

A map detailing the twenty-four new rapid bus routes proposed by WMATA. The first route in East County, along University Boulevard, could open within a few months.

Within four years, East County could be served by a number of rapid bus routes, part of a 100-mile network proposed by WMATA. The transit agency unveiled their plans to roll out the system, dubbed "MetroExtra," to the Action Committee for Transit earlier this week.

A handful of the new lines are already operating throughout the region, including Route 79, which runs along Georgia Avenue between the Silver Spring and Archives Metro stations. WMATA Board Chairman John Catoe derived the concept from the popular Metro Rapid routes he pioneered while heading the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority. Metro Rapid buses have seven "key attributes," among them easy-to-understand route layouts, fewer stops, more frequent service, and a system that gives buses priority at stoplights. Unlike Bus Rapid Transit (like what is proposed for the Purple Line), it doesn't use dedicated lanes or enclosed stations.

According to the WMATA proposal, routes along University Boulevard, Veirs Mill Road and East-West Highway could appear within the next several months; on New Hampshire Avenue between Fort Totten and White Oak in 2009; between Greenbelt and Twinbrook via University Boulevard and Randolph Road in 2010; on Georgia Avenue between Silver Spring and Olney in 2011; and along Route 29 between Silver Spring and Burtonsville in 2012.

so much more AFTER THE JUMP . . .

Boarding a Metrobus at Old Columbia Pike and Briggs Chaney Road.

While the Georgia Avenue and Route 29 corridors already have more daily ridership than University and New Hampshire, WMATA's chosen to given them a lower priority. (The Q2 bus on Veirs Mill Road, with 11,000 daily riders, is one of the heaviest-used routes in the entire system.) I was originally disappointed by that decision, but I soon realized it says a lot about the intentions of MetroExtra - who it's meant to serve and where it's best suited.

University, lower New Hampshire and Veirs Mill were largely built out during the 1950's, when it was still desirable to line a major street with houses. As a result, surrounding neighborhoods embrace all three roads with driveways and sidewalks. The speed limits are lower and there are frequent stoplights. Buses can get caught up very easily, and the potential MetroExtra improvements could make a big difference in travel time.

This isn't the case along Georgia and 29, where there are fewer stoplights, fewer cross-streets and no driveways. They were developed later, and the neighborhoods along them shy away from the road. The feel is like that of a freeway, and unsurprisingly so, given that's what Route 29 is eventually to become. As a result, average speeds are higher, and faster buses aren't as much of an issue. Several express routes already run along Route 29.

If the intention were simply to run faster buses, all of the new routes would run along the Beltway. But you'll only get so many riders from park-and-ride lots. People are more likely to walk along University Boulevard, whether or not it's actually safe to do so currently, because their neighborhoods are built around it. They may even be denser than their counterparts along Georgia or 29, making walking more practical and bus transit more efficient. Ridership may not be as high along University, but that only means more room to grow for MetroExtra.

East County's been waiting for rapid transit since planners first suggested running light-rail down the median of Route 29 in 1981. MetroExtra isn't as flashy, but it promises to improve the speed, reach and reliability of bus transit in East County, making it more attractive to users who'd rather drive or take Metro. After all, if it worked in Los Angeles, it can work anywhere.

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what's up the pike: two bike paths diverged . . .

Simple and inexpensive, bike trails like the Capital Crescent Trail (pictured in Bethesda) offer an alternative to driving in an era of increasing gas prices and traffic. In actuality, bike paths get the short end of the stick. Here's a look at what's happening this week in trails:

For joggers and bikers in Silver Spring, the Purple Line may be the only way that the popular Capital Crescent Trail gets completed east of Rock Creek Park. As the MTA nears its decision on how and where to build the proposed transitway between Bethesda and New Carrollton, those on both sides have stepped up their game recently, from reaching high school students to launching a "grass-roots coalition" bankrolled by the exclusive Columbia Country Club.

While the contact page of new anti-Purple Line group Alliance For Smart Transportation lists an address in Silver Spring, suggesting a connection with the east side, their list of talking points focus on the Purple Line's effects on the trail in Bethesda, or a Town of Chevy Chase-funded study that was largely debunked by state Secretary of Transportation John Porcari.

You'd think that a so-called "Alliance" would move away from Bethesda and ally themselves with their anti-Purple Line counterparts in Silver Spring - SSTOP and the nascent "No Train on Wayne" group, some of whose members do support the project, if not in their backyards. It reminds me of my meetings last summer with activist Pam Browning, who admitted she didn't know about anything east of Silver Spring, or former Chevy Chase mayor Mier Wolf, who'd never really driven on congested East-West Highway (which parallels the proposed Purple Line route) before.

Not that I personally support the forming of a cross-county anti-Purple Line coalition, though it would be nice to see Silver Spring and Bethesda come together on something. I mean, think of all the lemonade that could come from it!

so much more AFTER THE JUMP . . .

A redevelopment of the Burtonsville Shopping Center could include a bike path along Route 29 between Route 198 and Dustin Road.

IN ADDITION:On Thursday, the Planning Board holds a hearing for the ICC Limited Functional Master Plan, which lays out how the InterCounty Connector, currently under construction, will accomodate bike paths and interchanges. Dismayed by the highway's potential effects on the environment, many anti-ICC groups - or groups seeking more alternatives to driving - saw the State Highway Administration's plan to include a bike path parallel to the ICC as a compromise. As The WashCycle explained in a two-part series last month, the state wasn't willing to meet bikers halfway.

In 2004, SHA deleted the trail, saying it would do even further harm to local parkland and streams by increasing the paved area. And while seven miles of the path were added back to the ICC in 2007, the new route follows local roads, like New Hampshire Avenue and Fairland Road, that add extra travel time. Not only that, says the Washington Area Bicyclist Association, but they may also be more unsafe for bikers than a path next to the highway.

FINALLY: Up The Pike, a bike path makes a minor hurdle for the long-awaited Burtonsville Shopping Center redevelopment. Also on Thursday, the Planning Board will decide whether Bethesda developer Chris Jones, whose BMC Property Group will be knocking down the forty-year-old strip mall later this summer, will be required to install a trail and landscaping along old Route 29 between Route 198 and Dustin Road. The project would require cooperation with other properties north of the shopping center, including a church, a garden center and several houses, and planning staff isn't entirely sure that it's feasible to do so.

While it does concern a bike trail, the report from Park and Planning has no images what the project make look like. After years of controversy over potential "big-box" stores in the new center, Jones has returned with a plan for what he calls one the most "environmentally friendly plaza" in the country. But for all the press the Burtonsville Shopping Center over the past year, few people - outside of an East County Citizens Advisory Board meeting last month - have actually seen it.

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sick of emo kids on ellsworth: how to walk without driving downtown

UPDATE: Greater Greater Washington, as always, explains what I was getting at below in far fewer words.

Downtown Silver Spring: Why does "pedestrian-friendly" have to mean "shopping mall"?

Downtown Silver Spring is a nice place to be, and even nicer if you can walk there. And while the definition of "walkable" seems to be getting bigger (County Councilmember George Leventhal says he walks downtown from his home a mile away), Downtown still isn't walking distance for a lot of people. How can we create these kinds of pedestrian-friendly places outside of Montgomery County's major "downtowns"?

Thomas Hardman talks extensively about this in a string of comments following yesterday's post about Wheaton that could merit their own guest blog post - hell, its own blog. He makes several major points, among them: 1) that the County's "Downtowns" are only for those who can afford to live there, and everyone else just dreams they could too and 2) that a lot of people would gladly walk to their own neighborhood business district if they could, or if there was anything there.

At every single community event I've been to in the past two years, I've heard someone talk about "neighborhood scale," about the hardware shop and the corner grocery store. It seems like a nice idea to take those things and put them in a place you can walk to, so you can leave your car at home, if only once in a while. Say you don't always want to visit Wheaton or Silver Spring or Rockville when you want to walk, because you'll be bombarded by crowds and strangers and, of course, emo kids, if there are still any around in 2008.

So why do our "Downtowns" end up becoming malls? And how could we get the corner grocery store in our own neighborhood, within walking distance? I think I have an answer, though it's a lot more complicated than many people would like it to be.

so much more AFTER THE JUMP . . .

Rockville Town Square: a lack of foot traffic in the immediate neighborhood means high-end shops and big events (like Hometown Holidays, pictured) to attract customers from a wider area.

I work at a store in Rockville that sells four-dollar-a-scoop ice cream, across from a store that sells forty-dollar laundry hampers, and down the street from a store that sells four-hundred-dollar clothes. Rents in the apartments above push $1,800 for a one-bedroom; there are cheaper apartments, but they're heavily subsidized. The Rockville Town Square is a pretty, high-end shopping center, and it's tenanted the way it is to draw customers from a wide area - the standard for most malls is about 250,000 people within a fifteen-minute drive.

Densities push forty homes an acre in the complex, but the surrounding neighborhood is all single-family homes, and they won't be enough to sustain the shops here. So you have to make it like a mall, because people aren't going to drive fifteen minutes for a hardware store, and that means one thing: The Mall People.

The county in its "wisdom" has decided that it only supports The Mall People and their kin. Thus, you can't have walkability as they have it in almost every comparable jurisdiction; you're stuck with "centers". I do occasionally go to Wheaton to do some shopping and that's out of necessity alone. It takes me literally days or weeks to get over it. - Thomas Hardman

The "mall mentality" happens in neighborhood shopping centers as well, because miles and miles of single-family homes won't be enough to sustain them. The developer's still working on a smaller variation of the "250,000 people within fifteen minutes" rule, which means Super Fresh and Home Depot and Starbucks, and even they are barely hanging on in some areas. It happens in Aspen Hill, in Burtonsville, in Montgomery Hills, everywhere. You can make these places easier to walk to; you can build sidewalks and slow cars down, but you won't get that corner grocery or hardware store to move in.

The White Oak Shopping Center: a dense neighborhood means lots of people to walk around and support local retail.

Neither of those things exist at the White Oak Shopping Center, but there are a slew of locally-owned shops, including a clothing store, a bowling alley, and an ice cream store selling two-dollar-a-scoop ice cream. White Oak is surrounded by thousands of apartments, creating a base of shoppers who can all reach it by foot. It's an imperfect example - there's a Sears, which is both big and a chain; the demographics skew lower-income; and there are issues with crime - but it points us in the right direction.

If we're going to be at least partially reliant on pedestrian traffic, we need to increase the density at our neighborhood shopping centers. That means throwing in civic buildings, offices, and housing - ten, twenty, even forty homes an acre - that can sustain little shops pushed up against the sidewalk. Instead of talking about people within a fifteen-minute drive, you have people within a fifteen-minute walk. There are also people here at all times - office workers during the day, residents in the mornings and evenings - giving businesses a steady stream of customers.

Burtonsville: Practically invisible from Route 198, this Indian/Pakistani grocery is dependent on the Indian/Pakistani community for business. In a pedestrian-oriented center, sidewalk traffic would provide another source of customers.

There will be traffic, but also more alternatives to driving for those who wish to take advantage. At these densities, walking becomes viable, along with transit - real, usable transit, not just one bus every half-an-hour that goes twenty places you don't want to go before reaching your destination. A lot of people will drive here to walk, as these kinds of places are still a novelty in MoCo, or if you're disabled, for whom accessible parking suddenly becomes a serious issue.

From the looks of last month's charrette, it seems like Burtonsville has already answered this proposition with a resounding "hell, no. " It's clear that there are a lot of issues to deal with, like how to make sure that the complex isn't reliant on chains like Downtown Silver Spring, or how to prevent development from encroaching on surrounding residential neighborhoods. But the benefits are clear: stronger communities reinforced by local business; smaller-scale alternatives to so-called "town centers," and, of course, avoiding the Mall People.

Nobody likes the Mall People, but nobody said that sidewalks are only for the hip, either. But in many of our neighborhoods, it seems like we've already given them up.

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b'ville charrette: stuart rochester responds

Part THREE in a series about last week's Burtonsville Community Legacy Plan Charrette. Check out parts ONE and TWO, where we discussed the charrette and plans to revitalize Route 198.


Wednesday's Gazette says there "seemed to be a consensus" for keeping Burtonsville more or less the same among residents at last week's charrette, but I don't think it was so cut-and-dry. I was disappointed that writer Amber Parcher couldn't find anyone - and there were quite a few - that endorsed more dramatic changes to Burtonsville's struggling village center.

That being said, I wanted to offer a different take on the revitalization of Burtonsville and the greater debate over how East County should grow. Local activist Stuart Rochester, who helped guide the 1997 Fairland Master Plan, was concerned about how he was portrayed in Part Two of our series on the charrette. He asked me to post the following responses, which I have not edited.

Dan: I have had a lot of respect for you until your recent characterization of my remarks at the Burtonsville charrette, which were inaccurate to the point of caricature. First of all, I was speaking at the charrette on behalf of my table; you may have offered your own opinions, but we were instructed to convey the consensus of our table, not our own individual views.

so much more AFTER THE JUMP . . .

Secondly, neither I nor anyone at my table used the word "undesirables," nor did was this even implied except in terms of an undesirable housing mix or jobs-housing ratio from the standpoint of PRECISELY a healthy, DIVERSIFIED community. (Nancy Navarro's reference in her blog comment to alleged use of code-words when she was not even present to hear the exchange was irresponsible, and I will let my disappointment with someone who aspires to be our councilmember taking a cheap shot in absentia go at that.)

Third, your characterization of me being "worried" as I approached you in the parking lot when in fact all I wanted to do was clear the air was the worst kind of racial profiling that you yourself rightfully find so offensive.

Finally, I stand by my position that communities and schools that work are ones that are balanced socio-economically and demographically; if you feel otherwise or want to argue, we could have a fair debate but if you feel otherwise or want to argue semantics, we could have a reasonable debate, but don't demonize or caricature views you do not agree with. I would appreciate your posting this as a response item on your blog, which I was not able to access to post. Thank you, and I hope we can continue a mutually respectful conversation on this important subject in the future.

Later, Stuart Rochester e-mailed me again with another response which elaborates on what we first talked about after the charrette ended Thursday night.

I appreciate your response to my concerns. To continue to have influence and credibility, you have an obligation to report accurately. I am not denying there is racism in our society, among some residents of Burtonsville as well.

But the argument I was making goes beyond race and even beyond references to "affordable housing." The thrust of my conversation was that too many RENTAL units, as has occurred on the east side of US 29, adversely affects the community and its schools, and not because people who live in apartments are somehow inherently bad or undesirable but because proportionately they are not as vested in the community and because they create a turnover/mobility problem that affects PTAs, the continuity and quality of instruction in the classroom, teacher load and morale, etc. And they are not as likely to improve and maintain the properties they inhabit, for understandable reasons (I mentioned Tom Friedman's point, that "no one ever washes a rental car").

Moreover, this is not to say we should not have rental housing in the area but that we should not have disproportionate concentrations, which result in exactly the kind of segregation that rightfully upsets you. So the situation, and my views, are much more complicated than you portrayed them.

What really disappointed me, angered me, was your gratuitous comments about getting into a "white Lexus" and approaching you "after dark" and "looking worried". That kind of racial profiling I find every bit as offensive as you would, and has no place in civilized discussion; I still do not even understand what you meant by that crap. So let's both try to do better to explain what are earnest, legitimate concerns on both sides.

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what's up the pike: giving and taking

The reconstruction of the Silver Spring Metro may not get as much funding as it needs according to a new proposal from County Executive Ike Leggett.

Two years have passed since the fateful flood that gave rise to Just Up The Pike, and I'm proud that I've been able to keep it up, unlike so many of my other grand projects that flame out shortly after getting started. The past two years have been a wild ride, meeting people, traveling the county, making friends and losing a few as well. Here's to another year of writing about the place that I love most - and, to kick it off, here's a look at what's happening around East County:

- It's become clear this week: so shall Ike Leggett giveth, so shall he taketh away. Right after throwing more money at the promoters who'll run the Fillmore music hall in Downtown Silver Spring, County Executive Leggett proposes cutting funds from the Paul Sarbanes Transit Center, a $50 million reconstruction of the existing Silver Spring Metro station. The transit center would expand the capacity of what is currently the state's second-largest transportation hub, bringing local and regional bus service together along with the Purple Line.

Like the Fillmore, the Sarbanes Transit Center is the centerpiece of a large mixed-use development with offices, hotels and possibly residential units. Planning Board Chairman Royce Hanson says the cost-cutting threatens "important design elements" of the project, including the location of a police station and transit store.

- As one East County private school embarks on an ambitious expansion, another struggles to pay its monthly rent. The Chelsea School, a facility for learning-disabled students just outside of Downtown, just embarked on a fundraising campaign to build a Daniel Libeskind-designed addition to their campus. Meanwhile, the Newport School, currently located on Tech Road in Calverton, can't even keep their doors open for next year if their landlord doesn't cut rents.

Both schools have a long history in the area, and in recent years, both have also had to change locations frequently. The Newport School lost three-fourths of their enrollment when they moved to their current space in an office park, administrators said, crippling their ability to raise funds.

Dear reader: thanks for reading! We hope you'll keep coming back again and again. You are why Just Up The Pike has kept going strong. Read more!

roundabouts, or how to make a big traffic impact for little cost

A car gingerly navigates the new roundabout at Fairland Road, Musgrove Road and Marlow Farm Terrace in Deer Park.

A story in this month's Atlantic Monthly talks about the unexpected peril of excessive road signs, which the author argues is a distraction to drivers who could otherwise be paying attention to the road and things in the road instead of next to it. While his suggestion that we should do away with highway signs together - as they've been trying to throughout Europe - kind of scares me, I can agree that our roads could use less visual clutter.

While Montgomery County's been pretty gung-ho about speed cameras - which force drivers to slow down because of a machine by the side of the road, not because of actual people that might be hurt - they are looking at other ways to help motorists and pedestrians deal with one another. Last year, they built a roundabout, or smaller traffic circle, at Old Columbia Pike and Perrywood Drive outside of Banneker Middle School, and it's been the talk-of-the-town in Burtonsville ever since. (Whether or not to build roundabouts on Route 198 was a minor controversy at last week's Burtonsville charrette.)

In my neighborhood of Deer Park, just north of Calverton, the county's building three roundabouts along Fairland Road east of Route 29. It's a guarantee that soon they'll be festooned with signs and warnings in obnoxious colors. For the time being, the roundabouts - still under construction at Brahms Avenue and Musgrove Road; a third is underway at Galway Drive near Galway Elementary School - are a simple and elegant solution to pedestrian-motorist conflicts.

so much more AFTER THE JUMP . . .

This new roundabout is one of three Montgomery County is building along Fairland Road at Brahms Avenue, Musgrove Road/Marlow Farm Terrace, and Galway Drive. Below: the project also includes new sidewalks and jogging paths along Fairland Road.

Why? Because everybody has to pay attention and everybody wins. Traffic on Fairland Road isn't impeded by another stoplight, but the roundabouts force drivers to slow down and become more aware of their surroundings. Motorists have to communicate constantly with pedestrians and other motorists in order to enter or exist the roundabout. No sign can tell you if you can or can't go, and that's the clincher.

Because of the roundabout, the intersection of Fairland and Musgrove which, growing up, had been a site of many near-death experiences running from my house to a friend's house on the other side of the road, is suddenly a place of order and - dare I say it - repose. And we haven't even gotten pretty flowers planted in the middle of the roundabout yet!

East County's never been good to its pedestrians, which is unfortunate for a community with a lot of young people and a lot of buses to catch. The Cherry Hill, Briggs Chaney and Route 198 interchanges were proposed with the intention of giving pedestrians an easier time, and perhaps they have, because anything's easier than running across six lanes of Route 29. But the cars don't have to slow down or even stop anymore, and that doesn't help you when all you've got are your own two feet and luck.

If we're going to be serious about pedestrian safety, we have to give drivers a reason to pay attention to them. Signs and cameras may help increase the scare potential for motorists, but they won't make it any safer to cross a busy road.

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what's up the pike: money money money charrette

County Executive Ike Leggett throws a little more money at the Fillmore. Is Live Nation threatening to jump ship? Let's not jump (ha!) to conclusions.

- Greater Greater Washington, one of the region's best blogs on what's happening inside-the-Beltway, gave a nice long mention to our mini-series on last week's Burtonsville charrette. It's not all too often that a JUTP post gets this much attention - you'll want to get on the commenting bandwagon before the cool kids move on to the next big local blog story.

- County Executive Ike Leggett's working hard to make sure that Live Nation, whose proposed Fillmore music hall will take over the former J.C. Penney building on Colesville Road, stays in the game. In addition to $2 million in State funds, Live Nation will also get $800,000 in tax breaks from Montgomery County over the next ten years. Lee Development Group, who owns the land and a good chunk of the block bordered by Colesville, Georgia, Cameron and Fenton, will get up to fifteen years to develop a hotel-and-office complex behind the venue. That's triple the five-year deadline made by Park and Planning for submitted plans to be built.

I'm surprised by that, because I'd assume a developer would want to get his building up as quickly as possible. Then again, it's been long enough since we last heard about the Fillmore that I assumed it'd already opened. Perhaps I'm just impatient.

- Rising gas prices have forced Montgomery County Public Schools to cut bus service to a wider net of students living near a school. Currently, students within a mile of an elementary school, a mile and a half of a middle school, and two miles of a high school cannot ride the school bus. While the School Board hasn't decided what the new distances will be, I can't help but wonder: seriously? Back when I went to Eubie High, I had a friend who lived just a mile away and rode the bus. There are no sidewalks between his house and the school, and he'd have to cross busy Route 28 to get there.

Could MCPS really take away bus service from neighborhoods where walking to school would actually be dangerous? (More importantly, would The Parents ever let that happen? Seriously? No.)

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b'ville charrette: defining "undesirable" (updated)

part TWO of a series on last week's Burtonsville Community Legacy Plan Charrette. Check out part ONE, where myself and a few local residents try to chart a new path for Burtonsville's village center.

Table 6 tries to reconcile the "old" Burtonsville with plans to redevelop its village center at last week's charrette.

After the discussion period, each of the six tables appointed a speaker who told the entire charrette what their group had come up with for Burtonsville's village center. While our table had tentatively embraced mixed-uses and increased density on a strip of Route 198 between Old Columbia Pike and Route 29, others were decidedly against it. One table advocated implementing "green design" in new construction, but insisted on keeping parking out front of the stores, even if they had to face away from Route 198.

"We don't want to attract undesirables," says a speaker from another table, suggesting that the village green proposed in every option we'd been given for the site would be a draw for crime. The "village green," currently three acres of unkempt County-owned land behind Tony's Garage, was first discussed in the Fairland Master Plan eleven years ago. while local activist Stuart Rochester - who served on a citizens advisory board for the Master Plan - argued that the inclusion of affordable housing would be "contrary" to the plan's goal of increasing diversity.

I gritted my teeth as I got up to speak for my table. People can be NIMBYs all they want . . . but "undesirable"? Did someone really say that? No matter what they meant by it, their words pointed straight to the predominantly-black apartments on Castle Boulevard, the townhouses of Greencastle, the kids hanging out on corners and parking lots or riding the Z9 bus into Downtown Silver Spring. I have friends in Greencastle. I had family not too far away.

I hoped this was a misunderstanding.

so much more AFTER THE JUMP . . .

All-residential and mixed-use concepts for redeveloping a portion of Route 198 between Old Columbia Pike and Route 29.

Calmly, I explained the conclusions my group had come to and when I was done, I turned to Stuart Rochester. "I wanted to address those speakers who referred to the 'undesirables' in East County," I added. "I do not believe there are any 'undesirable' people in my community, especially not in this gathering place we are trying to create. We need to make it welcoming, and we need to make it safe. But we are not going to keep people out. That is not the community I want to live in."

The room roared in applause. Don Hauprich, speaking for Table 5, jumped to the village green's defense, saying that it makes Burtonsville a destination. "There are people who like to go out at night with the family or with other people," says Hauprich, youth pastor at Liberty Grove United Methodist Church. "And it isn't always unseemly behavior."

Table 6 seemed to agree, saying they liked the idea of "bringing back a sense of what the town is," in the words of one speaker who recalled when Burtonsville Day parades were held in the village center as opposed to down Old Columbia Pike by the Praisner Library. "We liked Kentlands, we liked Seaside, but not as homogenized," she continues, referring to the products of more famous charrettes, "but we liked the idea of making some order in the space."

After the meeting, Hauprich says it's important to help older residents understand that development can be an asset. As a father, youth pastor and former president of the Paint Branch High School PTSA, he's interested in creating spaces for younger people to call their own, even if some people he knows would "rather poke their eyes out than go to Downtown Silver Spring," he says. "Your best bet is to get the seventy-year-old people to understand we're not bringing crime," adds Hauprich. "you may fight change, but the world is gonna change around you."

He points out that many businesses in the village center don't last long. "I don't want people to panic about 'oh, old Joe's Lawnmower Shop,'" he says. "Businesses have turned over in the past ten years, and it's not because they jacked the rents. The place is a dump."

The Bedding Barn at Route 198 and Route 29 is a local mainstay and, to many, a symbol of Burtonsville's past.

By the time I've finished talking to Hauprich, it's 9:30 and the school parking lot is empty. Chuck Crisostomo from the East County Regional Services Center is carrying display boards out to a little Chevy with the county seal on it. Stuart Rochester is leaning against his car, talking to another gentleman. "I want to have a word with you," he says the other man walks away.

I approach cautiously. It's dark, and we're more or less alone. We've known each other for roughly a year now, and Stuart Rochester has since been a good source for quotes at events throughout East County. (In fact, I last interviewed him little more than a week earlier.) He begins speaking quietly without stopping to take a breath. I put my notebook away, assuming he wants this to be off-the-record, but take it out again and start writing, and he doesn't object.

"I have seen this community brought down by transients," Stuart Rochester begins. "Too many rentals. I am not opposed to affordable housing, as long as it's not the type exploited by absentee landlords . . . too many townhouses, too many Section 8. And it's the poorest communities, Avonshire [a townhouse development at Briggs Chaney and 29], the Boulevard, that will be affected the most."

I bite my lip. I think of my cousin, who raised a daughter in an apartment in Aston Woods before moving to Calverton; my mother, who jumped back into real estate after a long hiatus by working neighborhoods like Avenshire and the Boulevard; a white friend from high school who, growing up in Greencastle, was forbidden to leave her house for fear of crime. "Then who are the 'undesirables'?" I ask.

Boarding the Z9 bus to Silver Spring at Old Columbia Pike and Briggs Chaney Road, south of Burtonsville.

"I do not believe any human being is 'undesirable,'" Rochester replies. "Healthy communities require a proportionate share of home ownership and a healthy socioeconomic balance. Our area in the 1980's took on so many MPDUs that we fell into imbalance in terms of our turnover rate in our housing. And what they call the "mobility rate" in our schools. Greencastle Elementary has one of the highest turnover rates in the County! I think diversity is important, but you want it to be a healthy diversity in terms of demographics."

"But you're not going to fix Greencastle Elementary by building a bunch of single-family houses," I reply. "This goes to the deeper root of the issue, within those neighborhoods, those households."

"Listen," Rochester implores. "The Dutch Market was important because it brought people together, across generations, across races . . . that was what was special about the Dutch Market, and that's what we need. Places that transcend race and class and bring us together as a community."

As a student of planning, can I disagree with Stuart Rochester that building thousands of apartments within the span of a couple of years is a horrible idea? But can I accuse all of their tenants of "bringing down" my community? And what exactly is this "healthy diversity"? How would you set these quotas?

And that's when it hits me. For twenty years Burtonsville had its "gathering place," at least three days a week, where all sorts of people from all over the region could come and shop and eat and mingle. You could get a whole roomful of consultants together and not come up with something as wonderful, and now it's gone. Sure, it's only moved to Laurel, you say, but it's not really the same. How much harder will it be for us to come together - on this charrette, on the revitalization as a whole - when the one thing that brought us together is gone?