discovery's "secret garden" should be reopened to public

While we're deciding whether a developer should own a new town square in Wheaton, we should remember that the danger of public spaces in private hands is that they can cease to be public spaces entirely, especially when fears about crime or safety arise.

Yesterday, I was hassled by a security guard at Discovery Communications' headquarters in downtown Silver Spring for taking this photo (above) of their Sensory Garden. The garden, dedicated to TV host Steve Irwin, is one of two spaces Discovery must make available to the public in an agreement they made with Montgomery County when the complex opened ten years ago. Though I was standing outside the garden on the sidewalk, the guard repeatedly told me to stop taking photos.

In the agreement (PDF), Discovery would keep the garden open seven days a week from 7am to 10pm during Daylight Savings Time and from 7am to dusk the rest of the year. They also agreed to create an "enclosure" to the Sensory Garden that would "minimize the visual presence of the fence" while "[reducing] the screening effect of the landscaping" in order to "[increase] the public sense that they were welcome and safe in the garden."

Yet for most of the past decade, the garden has been inaccessible, surrounded by a tall iron fence whose gates were open intermittently. Both the garden and a public plaza Discovery provided at the corner of Georgia and Wayne avenues have been aggressively patrolled by security, which is unusual compared to most "pocket parks" in downtown Silver Spring.

After a gunman entered Discovery Communications' offices and took hostages last September, the company shut the garden completely. It reopened "during daylight hours on weekends only" in November, but a month later, Discovery announced that independently-conducted security assessment recommended they build an eight-foot-tall fence around a playground within the garden.

The Sensory Garden remains closed to the public. A new, eight-foot-tall fence will be erected inside.

Four weeks ago, the Planning Board approved the taller fence, which would require reducing the garden's area by 1,400 square feet. To compensate, Discovery offered to "provide an artistic, interactive design" for the fence that would "engage the public."

Though Discovery's actions completely violate their agreement to provide public space, county planners have been unusually lenient, calling security a "sensitive issue" for the company. Police say that the gunman, James Lee, was carrying a bomb that could have injured several people nearby.

Last year's hostage situation was a tragedy, and it's understandable that Discovery wants to keep their employees safe. That does not, however, allow Discovery to turn their offices into a fortress. They're located in a busy urban area, with thousands of people walking through or around their complex each day. To say that most of them are not a security threat would be an understatement. In fact, having so many "eyes on the street" makes Discovery's complex safer.

To bring Discovery to Silver Spring, Montgomery County cleared four city blocks and abandoned several streets to assemble a parcel of land big enough to build a corporate headquarters. The public space they agreed to provide already belonged to the public. Would the county let Discovery close a street for security purposes? Of course not. And they shouldn't give up the Sensory Garden, either.

ceci n'est pas une parcomètre . . .

Is what Magritte would have said: "This is not a parking meter."

Shepherd's Table, a a local non-profit catering to the homeless, uses these dummy meters to raise money. A similar organization does the same thing in Bethesda. While these are certainly good causes, you wonder if the fake parking meter is the best solution when people are stupid enough to park next to one located on a sidewalk.

Nonetheless, I saw no fewer than six cars park illegally on Ellsworth Drive, both at the dummy meter and elsewhere, in a fifteen-minute span yesterday evening. I understand that the people who do this are probably running into a restaurant to grab some take-out, and I could actually see a use for additional on-street parking throughout downtown Silver Spring. (There are lots of times when parking in a garage is not convenient, and parked cars do provide a nice buffer for pedestrians on really busy streets.) But I don't have a lot of sympathy for people unwilling to find and use the metered, on-street spaces currently available elsewhere on Ellsworth and on surrounding streets.

Clearly this area of Ellsworth is for pedestrians, not cars. That's why the curbs are dropped and the brick pavers go across the entire street. It's a shame that some drivers are too lazy and too inconsiderate (and, in this case, too stupid) to take notice.

(For more about Rene Magritte and surrealism in East County, visit the White Oak Sears for his work "This is not a door.")

wheaton town square should belong to the public

It looks like Wheaton's getting a town square after all. Last week, the Gazette wrote about developer B.F. Saul and their plans to turn Parking Lot 13 (above), located at the corner of Reedie Drive and Grandview Avenue, into a town square:

A town square will feature community events, much like Ellsworth Drive in downtown Silver Spring. B.F. Saul prefers to own and program the space, but the task will likely end up in the hands of the county, [representative Robert] Wulff said.

Great urban places need great public spaces, but they can be expensive to build and maintain. Montgomery County can't afford to give every community a space like Veterans Plaza in downtown Silver Spring. As a result, the task will have to fall on developers for whom a plaza or square can be an amenity, drawing tenants, shoppers and residents to their projects. One example of a successful privately-owned public space is the Piazza at Schmidt's in Philadelphia, which draws people from all over the region for shows, markets, and just hanging out.

Yet it's important to ensure that the public has a right to these spaces other than as customers. Saying that Montgomery County will "likely" own and program the town square in Wheaton is not an option. Didn't we learn a lesson from Ellsworth Drive, which Montgomery County leased to a private developer who banned photography on the street until the ensuing outcry required the county to defend the people's right to free speech? I find fears that redevelopment will turn Wheaton into Silver Spring complaints irritating, but this is one mistake from Silver Spring we shouldn't repeat.

Montgomery County has essentially handed the keys to downtown Wheaton to B.F. Saul by giving them the right to build on several properties in the area. Nonetheless, the community should be assured that the most significant public space in this revitalized neighborhood will belong to them, even if they don't hold the title. It should be made clear what B.F. Saul's and the county's roles in the town square will be as soon as possible.

will the ICC keep the status quo in east county?

The State Highway Administration is running radio ads for the InterCounty Connector, presumably because a half-century of debating whether to build the highway had most people convinced it would never open. In the ad, a woman says the ICC will allow her to sleep in later and spend more time at home with her family because she'll spend less time in traffic.

Going east on the ICC towards Georgia Avenue. Photo courtesy of Dan Malouff at BeyondDC.

I was thinking about this when one of my old friends from high school who currently lives in Olney, sent me this tweet: "Do you think Olney will become more popular because of the ICC?" she asked.

Before the ICC, Olney was a relatively isolated part of Montgomery County. It was seven miles from the nearest Metro station and nine miles from the nearest highway exit. Back in 2009, I wrote that the ICC would drag Olney "kicking and screaming" into the rest of the county and the D.C. area.

That doesn't mean people will start flocking to Olney now that they can get there from Gaithersburg in eight seven minutes. Really, it's the other way around: people in Olney, or Colesville, or Burtonsville will leave (or continue leaving) East County for the things they want or need: jobs in Gaithersburg, shopping in Rockville, restaurants in Bethesda.

If you follow the ICC to I-370 (as far as I'm concerned, they're the same highway), you'll end up at Washingtonian Center in Gaithersburg, where big-box stores and white-tablecloth eateries alike huddle around a little Main Street and an artificial lake. Developed by the Peterson Companies, the same folks who brought us Downtown Silver Spring, Washingtonian taught Montgomery County how to walk around outside after decades cooped up in shopping malls. I remember going there when I was thirteen and being mesmerized by it.

Washingtonian Center used to be an hour's drive from my parents' house in Calverton. Last Friday, I got there in twenty-five minutes. Will East County still be interested in fixing up Burtonsville when it's just as easy to spend your time and money elsewhere? I mean, it's not like the last highway we built here did anything for local businesses.

The ICC has opened up a lot of opportunities for Montgomery County, as I wrote last week. Yet there's a potential danger. Highways make it easier to go from one place to another, but they don't automatically make those places better. The woman in the ad wants more time with her family, but couldn't she also save time if her daily needs didn't require a trip by highway?