Anyone Remember Bethesda and Silver Spring in 2000?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Anyone remember Tysons Corner Mall, Wheaton Mall, Springfield Mall, and Montgomery Mall in 2000? Anyone been to these same places this year? Stunning how VA has literally leapfrogged MD during this time. Wheaton Mall and Springfield Mall used to both be run down and shady in 2000. Now Springfield Mall looks brand new and has a Lego Land and a Magianno’s. Wheaton Mall looks almost worse now than in 2000 if that’s possible.

This. I live in Silver Spring and have lived in MoCo for 25 years. It gets worse and worse. There are armed guards at my local Giant. Wheaton and Montgomery Mall continue to decline. Retail and restaurants struggle. Meanwhile NoVa is booming.

All this and the county council cuts impact taxes for developers and is obsessed with making single family home neighborhoods high density apartment complexes.

As soon as my kids have all headed to college I am moving.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:My grandma settled in bethesda in the 50s… so yes I remember when it was nicer.

I moved to Bethesda in 1964, as a 3 year old. I prefer the Bethesda of today, much more going on, lots of places to eat and shop. When I was a kid we had a Hot Shoppes and auto body shops in downtown Bethesda, plus the Strosniders/Bruce Variety shopping strip. It was pretty basic.

+1. It had the sorts of places that people today would look down on today -- a sitdown Pizza Hut restaurant, Roy Rogers, Burger King, Baskin Robbins, McDonalds. When people say it was nicer at some point in the past, I have no idea what they miss about it.

I disagree. I grew up in Bethesda from the mid-80s to the mid-2000s and thought it was great. I miss Louisiana Express, Rio Grande (Uncle Julio's in the new location, if it's even still there, isn't the same), Il Forno, Matuba. Tons of other great restaurants I'm not thinking of right now. I live in DC but still go to Bethesda frequently or my kids' activities, and I still enjoy it now, but it was great back then too. I am bummed out by the number of car dealerships in the downtown area. what a poor choice. They cause a lot of congestion. (Just last night, Arlington Rd. was down to one lane during rush hour because of a huge trucking delivering new cars.) Those were always on Rockville Pike when I was growing up; not sure why that changed. That downtown Bethesda retail space could be used for so many better things.

The obsession with crime on this post, when talking about any area, is just odd. Bethesda was not unsafe in the 80s/90s/2000s and is not unsafe now.

The only two dealerships in downtown Bethesda that are more than just a storefront are the Mercedes and Honda dealerships, and both have been there forever and have a small footprint (they're not the eyesores you see in Tysons). If you've been around long enough to remember the restaurants you named, then you've been around long enough to know that the Mercedes dealership on Arlington Rd has always been there and sometimes has delivery trucks. I think the only new addition is the Volvo storefront across the street, which maybe has one or two cars on display.

Comparing Tysons to Bethesda is pointless. They’re dissimilar places and Tysons isn’t trying to be Bethesda. A better comparison to Bethesda is the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor in Arlington. Ballston used to be a wasteland 20 years ago and now has a lot of the same kind of retail and eateries that Bethesda has.

The overall point is that NoVA has been getting dramatically more investment in the past 10-20 years compared to MoCo and PG. I don’t think there’s any disputing this.

Agree. I grew up in Bethesda and now live in Arlington. Arlington was not a desirable place to live when I was young. Arlington is MUCH nicer than it used to be and quite expensive. It definitely has better restaurants than Bethesda. It's also a lot bigger and has a lot more commercial business.

This is not true at all. I have been curious about this, and one thing I've noticed is that houses in Bethesda and Arlington have both gone up approximately 10x in value since about the early 1980s. It's actually pretty interesting how it's true for both areas. I personally grew up in Bethesda, and it was not nice in the 1980s. You can look up pictures from then to confirm.

Bethesda boosters keep moving the goalposts. The argument is about the past 20 years and the trajectory of NoVa compared to Silver Spring and Bethesda. Not how nice Bethesda has become since 1980 or 1960. I’m sure there is more to do in Bethesda than there was in 1913.

Unfortunately, it's you NoVa people that move the goalposts. Of course it's relevant that housing appreciation of Bethesda and Arlington have been comparable since the 1980s. It basically shows that the argument that Bethesda was somehow nicer than Arlington in the 80s or 90s is nonsense -- they've always both had the same level of desirability driven by the fact that they relatively nice, inside-the-beltway suburbs.

Silver Spring has never been comparable to Bethesda or Arlington, so that's a total red herring that demonstrates the dishonesty of the NoVa boosters in this thread.

Silver Spring has declined. That’s the point. It was a nice area and saw a bit of a boom with Discovery Channel and other development. Now it’s just decrepit. Same with other areas - look at White Flint / Rockville. Bethesda is nicer but it’s relative. Northern Virginia is just nicer and more vibrant. Many more jobs in that area. Stores are nice. I say this with sadness as I love MoCo and there are many wonderful things about it. But the county government has done a terrible job over the last few decades.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Yeah Silver Spring has been going downhill (still love AFI Silver tho, best repertory movie theater in the country).

Bethesda is still really nice, better than any place in NoVa to me. But other than Bethesda I’d take the Clarendon-Ballston-Arlington Forest region over any place in MoCo

Silver Spring has not gone downhill. Like lots of places, it had some crime issues during covid, but it's a very safe and wonderful place to live. It has great dining options, including two breweries and tons of ethnic restaurants, as well as tons of entertainment options (AFI, Fillmore, Black Box, chain movie theater, ice skating rink), and every single thing you need for daily life (Whole Foods, Safeway, Giant, Mom's Organic). I think lots of the hatred comes from people who need majority-white neighborhoods to feel safe.

It absolutely has gone downhill. I was born in 1975 and had white friends and relatives who lived and grew up in Silver Spring. It was mostly a middle class area. Around 1990 or maybe a bit earlier, people from central and south American started coming in and really brought Wheaton and the surrounding areas to working class/lower class. Crime came along with that. It is much more dangerous than it was when I
was growing up.

100%

[Anonymous]

Every time I'm in northern Virginia, it feels like a maze of highways and monstrous roads, and everywhere feels like a chaotic mess with no organized zoning. Montgomery county isn't perfect, but it feels more livable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Every time I'm in northern Virginia, it feels like a maze of highways and monstrous roads, and everywhere feels like a chaotic mess with no organized zoning. Montgomery county isn't perfect, but it feels more livable.

Those highways and monstrous roads are taxpayer dollars at work, as with the Silver Line and the new Metro Station at Del Ray. Why do Marylanders pay more in income taxes and have clogged one lane roads, a Purple Line that was supposed to open years ago that is still delayed and full of issues, and relatively no big public infrastructure projects to speak of? Where are my tax dollars going?

[Anonymous]

I would never pick a place to live based on shopping malls. My goal with shopping malls is to spend as little time as possible inside of them. I think I had to go to Tysons once a couple of years ago to return something I bought online, and I'm not eager to go back.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would never pick a place to live based on shopping malls. My goal with shopping malls is to spend as little time as possible inside of them. I think I had to go to Tysons once a couple of years ago to return something I bought online, and I'm not eager to go back.

It’s not just malls. It’s everywhere you shop. The roads in MoCo have potholes everywhere compared to Arlington and Fairfax. The level of homelessness in MoCo is much higher. There is a more laissez faire attitude about crime and littering in MoCo.

MoCo residents pay more in taxes for a lower QOL and the state still has a $2 billion deficit, which means even more additional taxes are coming.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would never pick a place to live based on shopping malls. My goal with shopping malls is to spend as little time as possible inside of them. I think I had to go to Tysons once a couple of years ago to return something I bought online, and I'm not eager to go back.

It’s not just malls. It’s everywhere you shop. The roads in MoCo have potholes everywhere compared to Arlington and Fairfax. The level of homelessness in MoCo is much higher. There is a more laissez faire attitude about crime and littering in MoCo.

MoCo residents pay more in taxes for a lower QOL and the state still has a $2 billion deficit, which means even more additional taxes are coming.

I'm not seeing what you're seeing in MoCo, but just move to Virginia if it will make you happier. Life's too short if you feel that your "QOL" is suffering.

But taxes are going up in Virginia. Two years in a row of property tax hikes in Arlington (not just assessments, the actual rate), and Fairfax is doing the same: https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1260050.page. I think it's all the tip of the iceberg with the mass firings of federal employees and contractors.

[Anonymous]

Yeah Bethesda was way better back in the day.