Thursday Eclectica
Gird your loins, folks. If you’re to believe the forecasts, we’re in for 20″ of snow. Make sure you have enough milk, bread, and toilet paper IMMEDIATELY. Now onto the show…
First Baptist Church Development
Here are a couple of the high-resolution renderings direct from the source:
Renderings courtesy of Torti Gallas and Partners
One shows a view from the opposite corner of Wayne & Fenton (already seen plenty of places). The other shows the view from a point south of Bonifant near Easley & Fenton. You can see this is the 6-story section (due to the gradation of Fenton) that allows for parking garage access and loading dock door.
Pretty classy, you say? I agree. But, of course, the historical people say it would be too much of a loss:
“The retention of the two historic Silver Spring Baptist Church structures ‘bookended’ with the planned Silver Spring Library directly across Fenton Street would serve as recognizable and symbolic American icons that uniquely provide a gateway into Fenton Village. To lose the prominence and visibility of these important buildings to probably another Starbucks would be a sad commentary on the continued apathy shown by this community to preserving and celebrating its heritage.”
First of all, losing these classy structures *is* a loss. But there will be almost no way around it, and I prefer to have the density in the CBD anyway. Bottom line is First Baptist Church no longer wants the church it’s in. It needs a lot of work, and if the work starts, a lot of additional investment has to be spent to bring it up to code and ADA compliance. So there are some options:
- Option 1: Continue with this development.
- Option 2: First Baptist Church finds someone with millions to spare – and give – to the church to do all the remodeling necessary.
- Option 3: First Baptist Church abandons the entire space, sells the land to whoever will buy it, and the churches still inevitably get torn down for some other type of development.
Take your pick. Option 2 just ain’t gonna happen. Option 3 is a worst-case scenario. Even without those caveats, Option 1 looks pretty damn good.
In other news…
Silver Spring is working with the MDoT’s State Highway Administration to make particular intersections more pedestrian friendly, citing the unfortunate fatalities in November at 16th & Colesville and last month on Georgia between Forest Glen and Dennis. I hope that one of the solutions is jail time for blatant jaywalkers. You know who I’m talking about. The idiots who cross Georgia at Colesville or Ellsworth at Fenton with a blatant disregard for traffic and common civility. I will weep for none of them as they lie bleeding in the street.
Finally: Dog Shit
Yup. I haven’t seen this much single-subject traffic on the listserv since, well, someone throwing Gatorade bottles full of urine over someone else’s fence. Bottom line is some people are afraid of dogs. Others are afraid of stepping in dog shit. Still others think the leash laws should be rewritten one way or another. I’ll compile the best comments in another post soon, as things have gotten kinda heated at times. Also because I know how much the list moderators love it when I publish their “private” conversations only meant for our neighborhood. Priceless, some of them.
7 Comments so far
Leave a reply
Speaking of the “forecast”…where are there some good sledding hills in the SS area? Thanks all!!
There will be lots of people at Bullis Park and the surrounding area. Some of the streets nearby are pretty hilly, too.
The Gazette article reports incorrectly that the intersection improvements are along Colesville Road. The improvements are on Georgia Avenue between Colesville Road and East-West Hwy. The MD SHA identifies the road by it’s Hwy number, which is US 29. Apparently the Gazette reporter didn’t know that Colesville Road South is US 29 only up to GA Ave. At that point the highway is along Georgia. The portion of Colesville between Georgia and the DC line is just plan ‘ole Colesville Rd.
Re: “The retention of the two historic Silver Spring Baptist Church structures “bookended” with the planned Silver Spring Library directly across Fenton Street would serve as recognizable and symbolic American icons that uniquely provide a gateway into Fenton Village.”
Can someone please explain this sentence to me? Can a retention serve as an icon? What does it mean for buildings to bookend one another? Would the churches and the library both serve as icons? What does it mean to uniquely provide a gateway?
Honestly, this sounds like the syntex of Sarah Palin. Historic preservation need not be couched in such sentimental drivel.
My take: bring it on! The Baptist Church site consists mostly of underutilized space in the form of a giant parking lot which is used to capacity only a few times out of the week. Once the library site and purple line is constructed across the street, it makes sense to bring housing and retail near transit and the existing development. That’s what smart growth is all about. That’s why I moved here. That’s why I love it here, and that’s why I want to stay here.
Does that make me apathetic about celebrating and preserving the heritage of Silver Spring? Well, yeah, I guess it does. Maybe it’s because I’ve lived here a mere seven years, or maybe it’s because the Baptist Church is not an institution that has been personally important to me or my family. Or maybe it’s because I see the heritage of Silver Spring–in terms of its built environment–as a decidely mixed bag. It’s filled with charming structures like the Tasty Diner and Wellers but also stuff that’s just not much to write home about like the auto repair stuff. And when it comes to Fenton Village, let’s face it, it may have been a residential neighborhood once upon a time but those days are over and now there is way too much surface parking.
I know how the song goes, “you don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone.” But in this case, maybe we can pave over the parking lot and put up a paradise.
Best local Sledding hill – Takoma Middle School on Piney-Branch near Ritchie Ave – go for it!
At the ESSCA presentation the developer said the new chirch will retain the stone work front, stained glass windows, and other elements. I bet it keeps more of the old church than many other local buildings who purport to be preserving their old facades when they do a make-over.
Anything posted to a yahoo group list (private or not, invite only or not) is Google indexed and will come up in subject searches. They are working their way through the backlogs now.
[...] someone actually invoked the Fillmore at the last ESSCA meeting when we were talking about the First Baptist Church Development, these should get more and more [...]
I agree completely about the jaywalkers, though I can’t say I share your level of anger. I will say that drivers in the DC area are very aggressive and mostly unwilling to stop for pedestrians in crosswalks. So, to be fair, I think drivers take much of the blame. Add that they have tons of metal on their side and we’re talking an uneven fight. The problem is MoCo is car centered and most people who live here have never lived in a densely populated area like San Francisco or New York. Walking is not an option and the car is king. Everyone must get out of their way.