Silver Spring News 'N Notes

- Latest Transit Center Fiasco news:

Metro: "Don't want it."
County: "Too bad."
Transit Center Inspector: "Not our fault."
MoCo Inspector General: "More inspections/money, please."

- Why don't any of the DC to New York buses depart from Silver Spring? There are two bus lines with pickups in Bethesda and another with one in Rockville. Silver Spring seems like a logical place for an operator to use as a starting point.

- I have seen plenty short and pointless sidewalks in Silver Spring, including many that simply dead end into a tree, but this one near Colesville Road and Highland Drive is my personal favorite:

Apparently no one involved in the planning or construction process ever said, "hmmm, maybe we should save the concrete on this one." Well, at least it's ADA compliant, so the wheelchair-bound can roll into someone's driveway from the side should they really need to do so.

(Recall that Silver Spring was also once home to what was judged to be the "Stupidest Bike Lane in America", though it has since been upgraded.)

- Speaking of concrete, look who's building the Holy Cross Hospital expansion - it's our old pals from Faccina Construction, concrete-pourers extraordinaire!

 If whatever ailment you checked in for doesn't kill you, the collapsing ceiling will!

- Last month Channel 9 News looked into some suspect towing practices in the small parking lot at the top end of DTSS. I'm a little skeptical of all the protestations of innocence regarding having time left on the meter, but still, these towing operations are a total racket. (And if you are going to tow people, PLEASE tow those using the Whole Foods lot for church parking.)



- Anyone have any info as to what business is going in where the 16th Street Blockbuster Video used to be? There's workers doing something in there. Judging from the rest of the strip mall, probably nothing great, but who knows.

UPDATE: It's going to be a Patient First medical center. That is actually a logical use for that space. Thanks to DT for the tip.

- FYI, there's now a Silver Spring Reddit.

- Finally, this is awful: a woman was sexually assaulted in a Four Corners backyard. I would never consider that a dangerous neighborhood, but there does always seem to be a lot of transient folks milling about there - perhaps a lot of people switch buses at that intersection.

Welcome "Ellsworth Place" (or Not)

There have been numerous claims over the years about how City/Shitty Place was on the cusp of a retail renaissance, but all of the grandiose talk has thus far proved hollow. Instead, we have continued to live with our zombie-like POS mall where only a free Rihanna concert can attract more than a couple dozen people through the doors.

Now the current management claims that they have all sorts of new super-double-secret tenants lined up to occupy the much-maligned mall. Could the hundredth time be the charm? The building will be re-christened "Ellsworth Place", though come on, good or bad it will always be City Place. Note that last time we heard this spiel, it was to be the "Galleria".

Of course, the planned changes to the structure now need to be submitted to the county, and we know at what speed that process can progress. Throw The Community in the mix, and we could be looking at another 20 years of Shitty Place.

What the county needs to do is fast-track this process - perhaps a City Place actually worth shopping at might help to distract somewhat from the never-ending Transit Center fiasco unfolding a couple blocks away.

Friday News 'N Notes

- Our POS transit center won't open until next summer (at best?).

- Pedro Matamoros, formerly of 8407 and Nicaro (the original one) has been named executive chef of The Golden Flame. It will be interesting to see if he can re-invigorate this old school Silver Spring restaurant.

- Has anyone heard anything regarding the fate of the Caribou Coffee on East-West Hwy? The parent company has announced that they are closing 88 stores nationwide, and another 88 are being converted to Peet's Coffee and Tea, including stores in Maryland that survive the initial purge.

UPDATE: It's becoming a Peet's, but not for awhile.

- I so want to believe that this review of City Place is actually brilliant satire.

- The Falkland Chase apartment complex has been sold to the JBG Companies. Can we have our Harris Teeter now? That whole Falkland redevelopment has entered the pantheon of Eternal Silver Spring Projects, taking its rightful place alongside the Purple Line, the library and the Transit Center (among others).

- Stellar transit center concrete-pourers Faccina Construction is in the running for work building the Silver Line. Good luck with that, Virginia.

R.I.P. Silverdocs: 2003-2012

Silverdocs as we know it is dead, killed by what I am able to translate from a bunch of corporatespeak as insufficient funding. Henceforth, the festival shall be known as "AFI Docs presented by Audi". Since it's launch in 2003, Discovery had been the Silverdocs' biggest backer, but "shifts in Discovery’s corporate focus" have led to money from that source drying up. Of course, if Silverdocs was about documenting freak shows, they'd still be all over that. Maybe we can blame Oprah.

The organizers are somehow making the festival "more ambitious" by making it two days shorter and showing fewer documentaries. Rather than hosting the entire festival at the AFI Silver (still by far the best theater in the metro area) screenings and other events will now also be held in various venues in the District.

There will still be plenty of events at the Silver, but local businesses will take a bit of a hit from the shortened schedule. Plus, it was our festival before - now we have to share.

Official Report: Transit Center "Severely Compromised"

 

Here is your official report proclaiming the Transit Center a total POS.

More from the Gazette here.

According to Foulger-Pratt, they're just looking out for the people of their community. Why didn't the county just have a beer with F-P's clearly stellar engineers and hash this all out?

In a response to the report, Foulger-Pratt said, “The way in which this report was developed, however, is indicative of the county’s conduct throughout this entire process. Everyone in this community — including us — has been waiting for more than a year for the county to act. During that time, we made numerous requests for meetings between our engineers and the county’s engineers in order to sit down, as professionals, address any concerns and more forward for the benefit of the community.

You're doin' a heckuva job, Folger-Pratt! (Corporate motto: "We Build to Last")

Interestingly, the banner of FP's corporate website features a transit center-free downtown Silver Spring and the banner that once proudly hung from the worksite has been unceremoniously removed. Maybe they are trying to whitewash the whole project out of existence.

Transit Center Construction Actually More F'd Than Originally Thought

And you thought there was a chance that tons of concrete, steel and Metrobus would fall on your head at the transit center before.

Turns out the center's construction issues go well beyond the well-publicized improper concrete pours. The full report has yet to be released, but one of the apparent 'irregularities' involves the structure's pillars. Now, I'm no structural engineer, but I reckon these pillars play a key role in preventing the entire building from crashing down onto itself (and you).

You'd think Foulger-Pratt had never built anything before. Granted, some of the delays up to this point can be squarely blamed on MoCo government bureaucracy/incompetence, but this is getting ridiculous. 2013 opening? Not hardly. Try 2023. Or never.

City Place - Still Crappy After all These Years

Apologies for the delay, but here are the final results of the Silver Spring Hater's Poll. My goal for this was to quantify the complaints of commenter/readers to determine what the real top gripes were about Silver Spring and whether certain complaints have been overrepresented in the comment section.

City Place (aka "Shitty Place") 42%
The Transit Center fiasco 11%
There’s no nightlife 9%
Unruly teenagers on Ellsworth 9%
The Whole Foods parking lot 7%
It’s all chain restaurants 6%
I’m stuck here when I really want to live in Bethesda or Clarendon 4%
Too many Ethiopian restaurants 3%
The downtown McDonald’s 3%
Other 3%
Piratz Tavern 2%
All changes to Silver Spring after 1950 1%
Overzealous DTSS security guards 0%
I will have to cross the street to get to the new library 0%
The skate park is too small 0% 

In the end, it wasn't even close - it's Shitty Place by a mile. City Place has sucked ever since it opened way back when, and it's only gotten worse in the intervening years. At least it used to have a movie theater that for a time was reasonably serviceable (former employee here). Now it has nothing. We keep hearing grand plans about the upcoming revitalization of City Place, but in the end, it's all just vaporware.

Finishing a distant second was the sad joke that is our unfinished Transit Center. Unlike City Place, at least I can envision that issue being resolved in my lifetime.

In a tie for third were the popular "Lack of Nightlife" complaint and the oldie-but-goodie "Unruly Teenagers on Ellsworth". Is the latter even still A Thing? I remember when that there would regular reports of verbal assaults or brawls, but it's been years since I've heard a peep. Maybe I just don't get out at night enough these days and I'm oblivious.

(Also, my apologies for not including "NIMBYs" as an option. Major oversight on my part.)

Lettuce Welcome Sweetgreen

As you may have heard, Silver Spring is set to get its very own salad restaurant in the form of Sweetgreen, opening this summer in the former Georgia Avenue home of Living Ruff. If Silver Spring wasn't fully gentrified before, the arrival of a salad joint would likely make it official. The only salad-focused place I have ever really patronized was the Mixt Greens in the Wildwood Shopping center in sort-of Bethesda, but that closed after less than a year of operation. Hopefully our Sweetgreen will fare better.

Downtown Bethesda has of course been home to a Sweetgreen for some time, and many commenters will be quite pleased that Silver Spring is becoming just a little more like Bethesda. Apparently even Bethesda wants us to become more like Bethesda - this week I received in the mail a complimentary copy of Bethesda Magazine, encouraging me to become a subscriber. It's certainly a good magazine to subscribe to if you like to peruse plastic surgery ads and  $2M+ real estate listings. Seriously, their cover story this month is entitled "Extreme Homes". (The issue did include a Silver Spring Guide, which I imagine is intended for Bethesdans who want to go slumming.)


Also in new developments:

- I haven't seen it myself, but I've received a number of reports that there is ongoing activity in the former Mayorga location in South Silver Spring. Anyone know what the deal is?

- It has just been announced that Busboys and Poets will be opening a new location in Takoma - that's Takoma, D.C. not Takoma Park, Maryland. You may recall that owner Andy Shallal refuses to open a location in Montgomery County because the MoCo government wouldn't ask the feds to spend less on defense. Clearly the government of Arlington (home of the Pentagon) must have bravely made that same request, as he opened a Busboys location there. And that is the reason I will never go to Busboys and Poets. So stupid.

The Blairs to be Brought into the 21st Century

The Washington Business Journal has details today of a planned $625 million revamping of The Blairs apartments that includes demolishing some existing buildings and getting rid of the Giant Food. The project is expected to take two decades (LOL, this is MoCo - actual time: four decades) and include features like a dog grooming station and something called "bioswales". I could regurgitate more information here, but you're better off just reading the article yourself.

The renderings sure do look nice, but don't they always?

Silver Spring: A Hater's Poll

Ok, let's settle this once and for all. What is the worst thing about Silver Spring? Responses are a selection of gripes from commenters over the years. No doubt I forgot some important complaints, so feel free to select "other" and note it in the comments. The poll will remain open through Sunday.

online surveys