There will soon be a meeting to outline the latest plans to redevelop Bethesda Metro Center:
The Western Montgomery County Citizens Advisory Board – Land Use Committee will meet on Monday, September 10 at 7:00pm. The meeting will be held at the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Regional Services Center, 4805 Edgemoor Lane, Bethesda.
The Meridian Group will present a project plan amendment to redevelop the food court portion of the Bethesda Metro Center property (the 3-story portion of the office building) with an office building including ground-floor retail/restaurant uses. The proposed project also includes improvements to the outdoor plaza and to the bus station area below the plaza.
This Land Use Committee meeting is an informational session that is open to the public. The purpose of the meeting is to inform the committee members and any public attendee about prospective development projects. The Western Montgomery County Citizens Advisory Board, as an advisory board to the County Executive and County Council, does not take a position on any particular development project.
If you have questions or need additional information, please call or email Karen Thon.
Her phone number is 240-777-8210.
Her email address is Karen.Thon@montgomerycountymd
.gov .
The Citizens Advisory Board may not take a position but the notice is interesting as much for what it doesn't mention as what it does. The notice talks about "improvements" but doesn't state that the project would take up quite a bit of the existing public-use space to put in this massive building. The proposed office building would have 16 stories above ground (plus about two more for the roof) and 5 stories below the plaza for parking in addition to the bus terminal.
The existing plaza is less than ideal. At the same time, I can't quite see how the addition of a new glass tower is somehow going to make the space more inviting. It certainly lacks any aspect of the human scale which has made Bethesda Row work. I can't attend this meeting but I am hoping that people ask some good, hard questions about the exterior plan for this project.
Another area to explore is the nature of the public amenity. In order to qualify for optional-method development, developers have to provide an appropriate public amenity. In this case, the developers are taking away the plaza--the existing public amenity. One wonders if the proposal really compensates for this loss and provides a new amenity on top of it to justify allowing construction of this new building.
The notice mentions that they will improve the bus terminal and the plaza. However, they are taking a huge bite out of the plaza to put in the building. Moreover, construction will tear it up so much that they would need to rework it anyway. Presumably, it is to the builder's advantage to make the exterior around their building nice. The Planning Board will need to see if the proposal even comes close to compensating for the loss of open space let alone meeting the requirements for optional-method development.More questions for the developers:
Where will all the buses and metro passengers go during construction? Or are they leaving this until the project has been approved even though the inconvenience may last for years during the construction of the building? Will the project overlap with other nearby projects (Lot 31, Woodmont East, Hampden La.)? Remember that no public plan has yet to be released for how to deal with the proposed two-year closure of Woodmont Ave. on the Lot 31 project which is far more advanced in the approval process.
What will the impact on traffic be of creating a new office tower in the center of Bethesda. It would be nice to think that everyone will ride Metro but clearly that is not realistic or even part of the plan since they are building a five-story parking garage. Wisconsin Ave. is already jam packed during rush hour. Is the parking garage sufficient to meet the demand of the building? Or will the workers spill over into nearby already overcrowded public lots?
I'm not an expert on these and other question. However, apparently neither are the developers. Their previous proposal for a condo building was already shot down. Will their proposal for a new office tower fare any better? Should it?
You can take a peek at what the developer has submitted to the Planning Board yourself by navigating through their website:
Go to http://mncppc.org/
Click on planning department under Montgomery (not Prince George's) on the left side
Click on development in the reddish "What's going on" box
A new browser window will open, click on next in that window
Enter project number of 91992004B
Click on search for related plans and reports
Click on "select all" and then click on "search"
