happy new year! (but first, a look back)

It's been a busy year for East County. A lot of good, or at least generally positive, things happened:

- Results from the 2010 Census showed that Montgomery County is now majority-minority, with whites making up just 49% of the population. Though we aren't a fully-integrated community, our diversity is something to be proud of.

- After decades of controversy, we finally saw the opening of the InterCounty Connector, which is already leaving its mark on the east side.

- The revitalization of downtown Wheaton came a step closer to reality now that developer B.F. Saul's been chosen to redevelop several county-owned properties in the area, though questions remain about how it'll work.

- The Fillmore finally opened and seems to have made downtown Silver Spring a more happening place, nevermind what the cool kids at the City Paper say. I was amazed to see a line of people going down Colesville Road and around the corner waiting to get in to see The Roots play earlier this week.

- And in Burtonsville, the beleaguered village center is starting to see small improvements, though it's anybody's guess if things will improve anytime soon.

However, there have been some disappointing moments:

- An attempt to legalize same-sex marriage in Maryland stalled at the last minute due to the cowardice of a few elected officials, notably State Del. Tiffany Alston, who took campaign money to pay for her own wedding.

- County Executive Leggett spent five months trying to pass a teen curfew, willfully ignoring the lack of evidence supporting their effectiveness and despite a substantial drop in crime following the incident due to a greater police presence in the area. Thankfully, the County Council chose to table the measure, though judging from this page on the county goverment's website, Leggett isn't ready to back down.

- And near downtown Silver Spring, neighbors continue to fight a proposed townhouse development on the site of the former Chelsea School. Though their concerns about traffic and noise have some merit, there's a lot of demand for new housing in Silver Spring, which explains why rents in some downtown apartment buildings have more than doubled in recent years. Even though I may not be in the market for a $600,000 townhouse like the ones proposed at Chelsea Court, restricting the supply of new housing drives up prices for everyone.

Overall, I think 2011 was a good year, though certainly the mood in East County is influenced by things will beyond our control, whether it's Wall Street, the Iowa caucuses or turmoil in the European Union. I wish everyone a happy new year, and I'll see you in 2012.

(There's a 95% chance I'll be returning to the D.C. area after graduation this May, so hopefully I'll see y'all even more very soon.)

the suburban bicyclist: an endangered species

I've been home in Silver Spring for a week now, most of which has been spent Christmas shopping and doing a lot of driving. While I expected a lot of car traffic, I've been pleasantly surprised to see bicyclists everywhere I go, even on big, fast suburban highways.

I've biked regularly for a year and a half now, happily pedaling around Philadelphia and the District, but I haven't enjoyed my forays outside the city. Arlington, for all of its bike lanes, is quite hilly and has some really confusing intersections. The Capital Crescent Trail in Bethesda is pretty, but frequented by super-serious, capital-B Bicyclists who thought nothing of shoving me or my 12-year-old brother out of their way when we biked it last summer. Nor have I had a pleasant time biking in downtown Silver Spring, where the bike network is so lacking that a route on Cedar Street was once declared the "Stupidest Bike Lane in America."

Yet these inside-the-Beltway locales, with their relatively narrow streets and short distances between things, are a bicyclists' paradise compared to farther suburban areas whose planners and designers assumed that everyone would have a car. These are places I would never think to bike, which is why I have nothing but respect for these hardy individuals I found over the past week:


A couple in matching coats tries to cross Route 50 at Pickett Road in Fairfax City. It took me three light cycles to make a left turn here, but they had to wait much longer for a right-turning driver who'd stop for them.


A bicyclist waits between trucks and SUVs to cross Route 175 at Dobbin Road in Columbia, a massive intersection bordered by the even bigger Columbia Crossing shopping center. This is probably the most inconvenient bicycling environment you could create: fast roads, no sidewalks, and nearly every building is on a hill and facing away from the street, making each trip a long, time-consuming and tiresome trek.


I found this bicyclist at the intersection of Rhode Island Avenue and Route 1 in Beltsville. Unlike the last two examples, the streets here aren't that large. But since it's a mile north of the Beltway, this intersection can get very congested, making it a difficult place to bike. Rhode Island Avenue also doesn't have sidewalks for much of its length, meaning bicyclists don't have a choice but to "share the road."

When the District can't build its planned bike lanes, it's hard to believe that surrounding suburban communities will do much better. While I'm excited that Montgomery County, Alexandria, College Park and even Columbia are trying to join Capital Bikeshare are start bikesharing programs of their own, they're not always hospitable places to ride a bike, which will discourage people from using them.

Despite unsympathetic drivers, spread-out communities and a lack of infrastructure, there are a few people in the D.C. suburbs who get around by bike. If we want to get anyone else on two wheels, however, we need to make the suburban bicycling experience safer and a lot more enjoyable.

sorry about that . . .

For the past two weeks, I've been in the basement of Penn's Fine Arts Library, working on my final project for my Urban Design Studio, eating takeout food two meals a day and sleeping an average of five hours a night. For the past two days, I've been scooting around Greater Washington hastily completing my Christmas shopping, eagerly cutting off drivers from Rockville Pike to Tysons Corner in search of gifts.

You can imagine why I haven't posted in a while. I'm working on a couple of posts I'm really excited about and I look forward to getting them out to you by next Monday.

In the meantime: where are you doing your Christmas shopping? I notice that Wheaton Plaza doesn't have as it seemed to two years ago, but it still wasn't that busy. A number of stores at Rockville Town Square have closed since I was last there in the summer, which surprises me. But Tysons Corner Center is as strong as ever.

lifesci village still far from being a reality

A new rendering of LifeSci Village.

Last week, Montgomery County selected local developer Percontee to turn Site 2, a former sludge treatment plant in White Oak, into LifeSci Village, a $3 billion mini-city designed to compliment the Food and Drug Administration's new campus and a new Washington Adventist Hospital. Despite a series of sexy new project renderings released by Percontee, East County's answer to Cambridge isn't a guarantee yet.

LifeSci Village, which we first wrote about in 2009, would occupy 290 acres on Cherry Hill Road east of Route 29. In addition to the sludge plant, which closed in 1999, the site would include a concrete recycling plant owned by Percontee. Genn has previously said that the project would include roughly two million square feet of offices and research labs, two million additional square feet of shops, hotels and possibly a conference center, and between three and four thousand apartments and townhomes.

2009 site plan of LifeSci Village.

Genn has been talking to the county about LifeSci Village and Site 2 since 2004, so it's not surprising that they picked Percontee over two out-of-area developers less familiar with the project. But in 2009, he told me that a groundbreaking was "not anytime soon." The Post, meanwhile, says that construction could start within the next two years.

What's changed? Last year, the MoCo Planning Department started work on the White Oak Science Gateway Master Plan, which will reinforce LifeSci Village's goal of creating a research hub around the FDA. In addition, the county is studying a Bus Rapid Transit network which could have several lines serving the development.

BRT lines under study in and around White Oak.

Though LifeSci Village has the blessing of both the county and local residents, the White Oak Science Gateway concept has its critics. A study from economic consultants hired by the MoCo Planning Department says that it won't work unless it can get a major research institution, though Genn says he's talked to "very prominent" D.C.-area universities about locating there. Even then, the consultants say, biotech companies might just continue going to the county's other research and development district, the Great Seneca Science Corridor in Gaithersburg, which Percontee helped develop in the 1980's and where Johns Hopkins University plans their own, similarly-minded "Science City" project.

As exciting as the LifeSci Village proposal is, there remain a lot of questions. Who will provide $3 billion in financing for a research campus without a research institution? Is it practical to build 4 million square feet of commercial space and 4,000 homes in an area with no fixed-rail transit? And will Montgomery County be able to lure biotech companies away from the vaunted "Technology Corridor" along I-270?

East County needs a project like this. But it's not yet clear if LifeSci Village will ever go from being a pretty picture to a reality.