Anonymous wrote:I went to a meeting of Action Committee for Transit. The discussion was mostly about the need for more housing in Rockville to draw people there to support already existing amenities. It wasn't about the need to house more people, but the need to draw people to downtown Rockville from other areas.
Oh, are you talking about the meeting where the speaker was a planner for the City of Rockville, and the Rockville Town Center master plan was the speaker's topic? I was at that meeting too, and yes, unsurprisingly, the discussion at that meeting was about the Rockville Town Center master plan. I'm not sure how that's relevant to the University Boulevard corridor plan, though.
Shocking that a planner would focus on housing and not jobs. I don’t know what happened to college planning programs but they seem to churn out nothing but people who think you can grow an economy without jobs.
MoCo's unemployment rate is like 2.7%. Makes sense to focus on housing, specially on putting housing in places that don't add traffic.
The county cannot sustain itself without creating high wage private sector jobs. There has been a net loss of these jobs over the past decade. Planning is leading a race to the bottom for this county. Fast casual restaurant jobs are not going to sustain the tax base nor provide the economic growth needed for the pay for all of the things that people want to pay for.
And the people who work those jobs will either live in the county or commute to it. Thus housing and transit. If they live in the county, then even better for the tax base.
DP. You are deliberately being obtuse. The PP's point is that these Thrive-type housing development efforts do little or nothing to address the County's need to attract the higher-paying jobs that would tend to enable the county to "thrive," and, presumably, that a relative lessening of the value of existing detached SFH housing stock in the affected areas would tend to result in a a relatively lower population of public-funds-net-positive households.
What thriving unemployment rate are you looking to have in MOCO?
That DP. Again, you appear to be intentionally obtuse. A low unemployment rate with a lower percentage of associated jobs being high-wage does not create the public-funds-net-positive that helps communities thrive nearly as well as a low unemployment rate with a high percentage of such jobs. The county's planning is not particularly conducive to the latter, but aims to create a balance of housing that increasingly edges towards public-funds-net-negative households, likely displacing more of the a-bit-above-middle-for-the-area-but-public-funds-net-positive households in the process, given the locations on which they are concentrating their change efforts.
And, as before, short, doubt-raising questioning rather than substantive discussion is a ploy of political rhetoric, not a good argument.
Without job growth, the county is solely reliant on in-migration of affluent households who work elsewhere. What’s the value proposition that this county offers instead of living closer to your job? High taxes and a horrible commute.
What’s worse is that while Planning is targeting housing growth towards “affordable” or “attainable” housing to low-AMI households which induced more in-migration of low income households, they put up huge obstacles to build housing that would be attractive to wealthy households moving here. The outcome is that the poor population is growing and the rich population is aging out to retirement.
Anyone that thinks a tax base for a county that is growing increasingly poor can be sustained by a static number of about 100k people who either work outside of the county or are retired are fooling themselves.
If Planning was smart, they would get rid of MPDUs and require a 1-to-1 offset of housing new production targeting the top of the market for every regulated affordable or attainable unit approved.
Thrive allows for new housing types, including housing that is not street facing. It’s past time that lot splitting gets approved so that there can be a big rush of new housing production on those massive lots in Bethesda and Potomac.
You seem to think that there's some tradeoff between, say, having density and transit vs. jobs. It's just so bizarre. People want to live in this county, people with jobs. And they want to be able to get to those jobs.
DP / that "that DP" from above. This "tradeoff"/"bizarre" characterization is yet another strawman-type argument. PP is saying that there should be focus on attracting high-paying jobs to the area so that commutes may more often occur within the county at presumably lower impact, similar to that end sought by planners, but with a more economically sustainable result than that likely resulting from that which those planners currently propose.
With regard to the second idea in your post, one could as easily say, "People live in this county, people with jobs. And they want to live with similar expectations related to the neighborhoods in which they settled as there were when they made the significant and heavily-burdensome-to-alter life decisions to settle there." I suggest that Montgomery Planning (and the County Council members who appoint/approve the planning board members) should be more responsible to the current residents of the county than to potential residents of the county where such conflict exists.
The County Council, which is elected by the voters of the county, keeps adopting plans that, according to DCUM, nobody wants - except evidently a majority of the voters of Montgomery County.
If you bought property in the expectation that nothing would change henceforth, I'm sorry, but you're going to be disappointed no matter what.
What kind of awful narcissist decides that they don’t like where people have chosen to live and thinks they they should have the power to change it to their liking?
What kind of awful narcissist thinks everything should be exactly the way it was when they personally arrived, and stay that way until they personally depart? Or possibly even after they personally depart.
Another straw man. No one is arguing this.
No? Then what is the argument?
There are 42 pages of comments talking about detailed concerns regarding traffic, parking, schools, financial cost-benefit, etc. Yet you think their argument is that “everything should be exactly the way it was” when those people arrived and “stay that way until they personally depart.”
So, again, straw man.
The detailed concerns are:
Change would cause car traffic, I'm against it.
Change would cause parking problems, I'm against it.
Change would overcrowd the schools, I'm against it.
Change will not benefit me but I will have to pay for it, I'm against it.
Change will make everything worse, even etc., I'm against it.
Nah. Just that change.
Oh yes. We definitely oppose the actual changes that are currently being proposed. But that doesn't mean we're against changes, in principle. In fact, we might even strongly support some completely hypothetical changes, somewhere else, that somebody might some day have an idea about!
Seriously, y'all. What are you FOR?
Generally speaking, traffic improvements to deal with congestion, solutions for parking where needed, good public schools, good public safety, targeted development of areas that are run down or have outlived their past usefulness (like some office space), pedestrian improvements that actually help with safety and are not just performative while wrecking people’s commutes, local government fiscal policy that isn’t based on unrealistic constant breakneck growth, local politicians that aren’t captured by developers, recognition that cities have great elements to them but not every suburb has to be a 15 minute city, I could go on.
This plan is about land use, housing, and transportation. What changes in housing, land use, and transportation in the University Boulevard corridor are you for?
So that poster answers your question, including some items that address the housing/land use/transportation elements you later insist be addressed exclusively, but, instead of remarking about those items, you pick on the other items (which were part of an answer to your initial question). Just argumentative horse hockey.
What does "pedestrian improvements that actually help with safety and are not just performative while wrecking people’s commutes" mean, specifically? (Where people apparently mean drivers, because people also commute not in cars, and lots of car trips are not for work commutes.) Is this PP for sidewalks? Do sidewalks help safety? Are sidewalks bad for drivers? How about traffic signals? Crossing islands? Slower speed limits?
I don't think that "I'm for things that aren't these things I'm against" is really being for things, it's still being against things. The planners ask what changes you'd like to see in your neighborhood. What do you put on the list? If your list looks like this:
1. not this thing
2. also not that thing
3. in addition, not the other thing
you're just saying, "I don't want change."
Doing nothing is, in fact, the default option. It’s up to the council and the planning board to propose SPECIFIC changes AND provide some evidence that it’s worth the time and money spent, to include benefits to current residents of the area. Instead, the county treats this as a project that has already been decided and they are being SO gracious in allowing the residents to have some tangential input.
+100
There was no groundswell from the community to do anything. Why not start first in places where people are requesting support and services?
Counties and cities have planning departments who employ urban planners with degrees from elite institutions like Harvard’s Graduate School of Design or UCLA’s School of Public Affairs, where all the cutting edge urban planning and design theories are discussed and studied. Elected officials rely on these experts for maintaining and creating welcoming, livable, equitable, and economically viable communities. This is particularly important for a growing region like the “DMV” which is in the middle of a housing crisis, as has been reported in trusted news sources like the Washington Post—I realize not everyone agrees with that assessment.
It all makes sense now.
Yes. Thank you. I tried to be very matter-of-fact / dry in my explanation.
Anonymous wrote:Ruh-ruh! What happened here?
Washington Business Journal(?)— A Dallas company has backed out of a contract to buy a Silver Spring office building less than three months after winning approval to redevelop the site with multifamily.
Anonymous wrote:Ruh-ruh! What happened here?
Washington Business Journal(?)— A Dallas company has backed out of a contract to buy a Silver Spring office building less than three months after winning approval to redevelop the site with multifamily.
Already backing out of contract…
.
The Citizens Association filed lawsuits asking the court to review the decision making process of the planning commission…which sounds like one promising tool in the toolbox for residents along University and in the county in general.
Anonymous wrote:I went to a meeting of Action Committee for Transit. The discussion was mostly about the need for more housing in Rockville to draw people there to support already existing amenities. It wasn't about the need to house more people, but the need to draw people to downtown Rockville from other areas.
Oh, are you talking about the meeting where the speaker was a planner for the City of Rockville, and the Rockville Town Center master plan was the speaker's topic? I was at that meeting too, and yes, unsurprisingly, the discussion at that meeting was about the Rockville Town Center master plan. I'm not sure how that's relevant to the University Boulevard corridor plan, though.
Shocking that a planner would focus on housing and not jobs. I don’t know what happened to college planning programs but they seem to churn out nothing but people who think you can grow an economy without jobs.
MoCo's unemployment rate is like 2.7%. Makes sense to focus on housing, specially on putting housing in places that don't add traffic.
The county cannot sustain itself without creating high wage private sector jobs. There has been a net loss of these jobs over the past decade. Planning is leading a race to the bottom for this county. Fast casual restaurant jobs are not going to sustain the tax base nor provide the economic growth needed for the pay for all of the things that people want to pay for.
And the people who work those jobs will either live in the county or commute to it. Thus housing and transit. If they live in the county, then even better for the tax base.
DP. You are deliberately being obtuse. The PP's point is that these Thrive-type housing development efforts do little or nothing to address the County's need to attract the higher-paying jobs that would tend to enable the county to "thrive," and, presumably, that a relative lessening of the value of existing detached SFH housing stock in the affected areas would tend to result in a a relatively lower population of public-funds-net-positive households.
What thriving unemployment rate are you looking to have in MOCO?
That DP. Again, you appear to be intentionally obtuse. A low unemployment rate with a lower percentage of associated jobs being high-wage does not create the public-funds-net-positive that helps communities thrive nearly as well as a low unemployment rate with a high percentage of such jobs. The county's planning is not particularly conducive to the latter, but aims to create a balance of housing that increasingly edges towards public-funds-net-negative households, likely displacing more of the a-bit-above-middle-for-the-area-but-public-funds-net-positive households in the process, given the locations on which they are concentrating their change efforts.
And, as before, short, doubt-raising questioning rather than substantive discussion is a ploy of political rhetoric, not a good argument.
Without job growth, the county is solely reliant on in-migration of affluent households who work elsewhere. What’s the value proposition that this county offers instead of living closer to your job? High taxes and a horrible commute.
What’s worse is that while Planning is targeting housing growth towards “affordable” or “attainable” housing to low-AMI households which induced more in-migration of low income households, they put up huge obstacles to build housing that would be attractive to wealthy households moving here. The outcome is that the poor population is growing and the rich population is aging out to retirement.
Anyone that thinks a tax base for a county that is growing increasingly poor can be sustained by a static number of about 100k people who either work outside of the county or are retired are fooling themselves.
If Planning was smart, they would get rid of MPDUs and require a 1-to-1 offset of housing new production targeting the top of the market for every regulated affordable or attainable unit approved.
Thrive allows for new housing types, including housing that is not street facing. It’s past time that lot splitting gets approved so that there can be a big rush of new housing production on those massive lots in Bethesda and Potomac.
You seem to think that there's some tradeoff between, say, having density and transit vs. jobs. It's just so bizarre. People want to live in this county, people with jobs. And they want to be able to get to those jobs.
DP / that "that DP" from above. This "tradeoff"/"bizarre" characterization is yet another strawman-type argument. PP is saying that there should be focus on attracting high-paying jobs to the area so that commutes may more often occur within the county at presumably lower impact, similar to that end sought by planners, but with a more economically sustainable result than that likely resulting from that which those planners currently propose.
With regard to the second idea in your post, one could as easily say, "People live in this county, people with jobs. And they want to live with similar expectations related to the neighborhoods in which they settled as there were when they made the significant and heavily-burdensome-to-alter life decisions to settle there." I suggest that Montgomery Planning (and the County Council members who appoint/approve the planning board members) should be more responsible to the current residents of the county than to potential residents of the county where such conflict exists.
The County Council, which is elected by the voters of the county, keeps adopting plans that, according to DCUM, nobody wants - except evidently a majority of the voters of Montgomery County.
If you bought property in the expectation that nothing would change henceforth, I'm sorry, but you're going to be disappointed no matter what.
What kind of awful narcissist decides that they don’t like where people have chosen to live and thinks they they should have the power to change it to their liking?
What kind of awful narcissist thinks everything should be exactly the way it was when they personally arrived, and stay that way until they personally depart? Or possibly even after they personally depart.
Another straw man. No one is arguing this.
No? Then what is the argument?
There are 42 pages of comments talking about detailed concerns regarding traffic, parking, schools, financial cost-benefit, etc. Yet you think their argument is that “everything should be exactly the way it was” when those people arrived and “stay that way until they personally depart.”
So, again, straw man.
The detailed concerns are:
Change would cause car traffic, I'm against it.
Change would cause parking problems, I'm against it.
Change would overcrowd the schools, I'm against it.
Change will not benefit me but I will have to pay for it, I'm against it.
Change will make everything worse, even etc., I'm against it.
Nah. Just that change.
Oh yes. We definitely oppose the actual changes that are currently being proposed. But that doesn't mean we're against changes, in principle. In fact, we might even strongly support some completely hypothetical changes, somewhere else, that somebody might some day have an idea about!
Seriously, y'all. What are you FOR?
Generally speaking, traffic improvements to deal with congestion, solutions for parking where needed, good public schools, good public safety, targeted development of areas that are run down or have outlived their past usefulness (like some office space), pedestrian improvements that actually help with safety and are not just performative while wrecking people’s commutes, local government fiscal policy that isn’t based on unrealistic constant breakneck growth, local politicians that aren’t captured by developers, recognition that cities have great elements to them but not every suburb has to be a 15 minute city, I could go on.
This plan is about land use, housing, and transportation. What changes in housing, land use, and transportation in the University Boulevard corridor are you for?
So that poster answers your question, including some items that address the housing/land use/transportation elements you later insist be addressed exclusively, but, instead of remarking about those items, you pick on the other items (which were part of an answer to your initial question). Just argumentative horse hockey.
What does "pedestrian improvements that actually help with safety and are not just performative while wrecking people’s commutes" mean, specifically? (Where people apparently mean drivers, because people also commute not in cars, and lots of car trips are not for work commutes.) Is this PP for sidewalks? Do sidewalks help safety? Are sidewalks bad for drivers? How about traffic signals? Crossing islands? Slower speed limits?
I don't think that "I'm for things that aren't these things I'm against" is really being for things, it's still being against things. The planners ask what changes you'd like to see in your neighborhood. What do you put on the list? If your list looks like this:
1. not this thing
2. also not that thing
3. in addition, not the other thing
you're just saying, "I don't want change."
Doing nothing is, in fact, the default option. It’s up to the council and the planning board to propose SPECIFIC changes AND provide some evidence that it’s worth the time and money spent, to include benefits to current residents of the area. Instead, the county treats this as a project that has already been decided and they are being SO gracious in allowing the residents to have some tangential input.
+100
There was no groundswell from the community to do anything. Why not start first in places where people are requesting support and services?
Counties and cities have planning departments who employ urban planners with degrees from elite institutions like Harvard’s Graduate School of Design or UCLA’s School of Public Affairs, where all the cutting edge urban planning and design theories are discussed and studied. Elected officials rely on these experts for maintaining and creating welcoming, livable, equitable, and economically viable communities. This is particularly important for a growing region like the “DMV” which is in the middle of a housing crisis, as has been reported in trusted news sources like the Washington Post—I realize not everyone agrees with that assessment.
Their job is to serve the public. You know as a public servant. Not to use their power to test academic theories with the goal of promoting themselves in their professional association. This is public service job, not a self interest job. Not sure how you don’t understand that, but it’s clearly been a problem Planning for a long time.
Anonymous wrote:Ruh-ruh! What happened here?
Washington Business Journal(?)— A Dallas company has backed out of a contract to buy a Silver Spring office building less than three months after winning approval to redevelop the site with multifamily.
Already backing out of contract…
Im going to guess that the moment they tried to restrict parking and told JLB they had to have 25% MPDUs, the company turned around and walked out the door. A couple of months trying to work with Planning and Permitting can cause even the deepest pockets to second guess their investments.
Anonymous wrote:Ruh-ruh! What happened here?
Washington Business Journal(?)— A Dallas company has backed out of a contract to buy a Silver Spring office building less than three months after winning approval to redevelop the site with multifamily.
Already backing out of contract…
Im going to guess that the moment they tried to restrict parking and told JLB they had to have 25% MPDUs, the company turned around and walked out the door. A couple of months trying to work with Planning and Permitting can cause even the deepest pockets to second guess their investments.
They were already done with planning, but generally I agree with you. Everyone thinks planning caters to developers, but that’s wrong. It actually caters to a small but influential group of local land use lawyers who have been big donors to Friedson, GGW, and Montgomery4All, among others. The approval processes seem to be designed to help the lawyers run up big bills. Reforming the planning processes, which deliver no value for the developers or the community, is some of the lowest hanging fruit in reducing development costs and speeding up projects. Yet they only talk about it occasionally and never do it.
In this case, the developer claims the project no longer made sense in today’s market. There were some things about the project that made no sense, especially including more parking spaces than housing units right across from a metro station. But we’re constantly told that we’re in the midst of a housing crisis caused by zoning so how can it be that approved housing across the street from a metro station no longer makes sense in today’s market. Maybe it’s not zoning at all but the weak job market that’s causing weak housing production. Or maybe the heart of the housing crisis isn’t a shortage of mid-rise apartments but instead a shortage of SFH that’s put upward pressure on mid-rise apartment rents, creating a risk of a glut of mid-rise apartments if this county ever decides to stop penalizing SFH production with excessive fees and taxes.
Anonymous wrote:Just posted by the planning board:
Reminder: Help us envision the future of communities along University Blvd. at two upcoming community meetings. It's part of our Univ Blvd Corridor Master Plan.
Anonymous wrote:Ruh-ruh! What happened here?
Washington Business Journal(?)— A Dallas company has backed out of a contract to buy a Silver Spring office building less than three months after winning approval to redevelop the site with multifamily.
Already backing out of contract…
Im going to guess that the moment they tried to restrict parking and told JLB they had to have 25% MPDUs, the company turned around and walked out the door. A couple of months trying to work with Planning and Permitting can cause even the deepest pockets to second guess their investments.
They were already done with planning, but generally I agree with you. Everyone thinks planning caters to developers, but that’s wrong. It actually caters to a small but influential group of local land use lawyers who have been big donors to Friedson, GGW, and Montgomery4All, among others. The approval processes seem to be designed to help the lawyers run up big bills. Reforming the planning processes, which deliver no value for the developers or the community, is some of the lowest hanging fruit in reducing development costs and speeding up projects. Yet they only talk about it occasionally and never do it.
In this case, the developer claims the project no longer made sense in today’s market. There were some things about the project that made no sense, especially including more parking spaces than housing units right across from a metro station. But we’re constantly told that we’re in the midst of a housing crisis caused by zoning so how can it be that approved housing across the street from a metro station no longer makes sense in today’s market. Maybe it’s not zoning at all but the weak job market that’s causing weak housing production. Or maybe the heart of the housing crisis isn’t a shortage of mid-rise apartments but instead a shortage of SFH that’s put upward pressure on mid-rise apartment rents, creating a risk of a glut of mid-rise apartments if this county ever decides to stop penalizing SFH production with excessive fees and taxes.
You have hit the nail on the head.
Entrenched corruption, combined with ideologues and declining economic prospects are a recipe for a doom loop.
It’s funny that the obvious answer for housing production is incrementalism but they just skip straight over the next obvious increment that is driving housing production to meet population growth elsewhere in the country: SFHs on smaller lots.
Anonymous wrote:Ruh-ruh! What happened here?
Washington Business Journal(?)— A Dallas company has backed out of a contract to buy a Silver Spring office building less than three months after winning approval to redevelop the site with multifamily.
Already backing out of contract…
Im going to guess that the moment they tried to restrict parking and told JLB they had to have 25% MPDUs, the company turned around and walked out the door. A couple of months trying to work with Planning and Permitting can cause even the deepest pockets to second guess their investments.
They were already done with planning, but generally I agree with you. Everyone thinks planning caters to developers, but that’s wrong. It actually caters to a small but influential group of local land use lawyers who have been big donors to Friedson, GGW, and Montgomery4All, among others. The approval processes seem to be designed to help the lawyers run up big bills. Reforming the planning processes, which deliver no value for the developers or the community, is some of the lowest hanging fruit in reducing development costs and speeding up projects. Yet they only talk about it occasionally and never do it.
In this case, the developer claims the project no longer made sense in today’s market. There were some things about the project that made no sense, especially including more parking spaces than housing units right across from a metro station. But we’re constantly told that we’re in the midst of a housing crisis caused by zoning so how can it be that approved housing across the street from a metro station no longer makes sense in today’s market. Maybe it’s not zoning at all but the weak job market that’s causing weak housing production. Or maybe the heart of the housing crisis isn’t a shortage of mid-rise apartments but instead a shortage of SFH that’s put upward pressure on mid-rise apartment rents, creating a risk of a glut of mid-rise apartments if this county ever decides to stop penalizing SFH production with excessive fees and taxes.
You have hit the nail on the head.
Entrenched corruption, combined with ideologues and declining economic prospects are a recipe for a doom loop.
It’s funny that the obvious answer for housing production is incrementalism but they just skip straight over the next obvious increment that is driving housing production to meet population growth elsewhere in the country: SFHs on smaller lots.
Before that: mid/high-rise residential/mixed-use in areas that already had been zoned for it before the latest development push, but under-built.
Anonymous wrote:Ruh-ruh! What happened here?
Washington Business Journal(?)— A Dallas company has backed out of a contract to buy a Silver Spring office building less than three months after winning approval to redevelop the site with multifamily.
Already backing out of contract…
Im going to guess that the moment they tried to restrict parking and told JLB they had to have 25% MPDUs, the company turned around and walked out the door. A couple of months trying to work with Planning and Permitting can cause even the deepest pockets to second guess their investments.
They were already done with planning, but generally I agree with you. Everyone thinks planning caters to developers, but that’s wrong. It actually caters to a small but influential group of local land use lawyers who have been big donors to Friedson, GGW, and Montgomery4All, among others. The approval processes seem to be designed to help the lawyers run up big bills. Reforming the planning processes, which deliver no value for the developers or the community, is some of the lowest hanging fruit in reducing development costs and speeding up projects. Yet they only talk about it occasionally and never do it.
In this case, the developer claims the project no longer made sense in today’s market. There were some things about the project that made no sense, especially including more parking spaces than housing units right across from a metro station. But we’re constantly told that we’re in the midst of a housing crisis caused by zoning so how can it be that approved housing across the street from a metro station no longer makes sense in today’s market. Maybe it’s not zoning at all but the weak job market that’s causing weak housing production. Or maybe the heart of the housing crisis isn’t a shortage of mid-rise apartments but instead a shortage of SFH that’s put upward pressure on mid-rise apartment rents, creating a risk of a glut of mid-rise apartments if this county ever decides to stop penalizing SFH production with excessive fees and taxes.
You have hit the nail on the head.
Entrenched corruption, combined with ideologues and declining economic prospects are a recipe for a doom loop.
It’s funny that the obvious answer for housing production is incrementalism but they just skip straight over the next obvious increment that is driving housing production to meet population growth elsewhere in the country: SFHs on smaller lots.
Before that: mid/high-rise residential/mixed-use in areas that already had been zoned for it before the latest development push, but under-built.
They just lurch from fad to fad, instead of focusing on the basics.
15 years ago the fad was building height. Taller buildings were going to solve the housing crisis. Developers needed to build to the moon.
Then the cost of construction shifted in favor of stick built, mid-rise five-over-ones and so Planning turned on a dime to say that this was the ideal, so long as they restricted parking.
Then the fad shifted to “missing middle” and have been trying to sell it as “attainable housing” that will provide entry level housing for sale at lower price points, despite the fact that MD property law does not easily accommodate unless they are rental or condos. And it’s not like they don’t know that.
During the Thrive debate they let slip what their real objectives are, which is to decrease the number of homeowners in the county. And the reason they got mad at Jawando is that his ZTA exposed the real goal, conversion of SFH communities to 4-8 unit apartment buildings. They subsequently backdoored triplex rentals as ADUs and now are trying to use this community along University as their guinea pigs.
A lot of the SFHs there are rented at a very reasonable cost. The only people who will benefit will be the absentee owners of those houses. I’m not so invested to figure out who they are but I’m sure a little research would probably reveal a few ahas.
Anonymous wrote:Ruh-ruh! What happened here?
Washington Business Journal(?)— A Dallas company has backed out of a contract to buy a Silver Spring office building less than three months after winning approval to redevelop the site with multifamily.
Already backing out of contract…
Im going to guess that the moment they tried to restrict parking and told JLB they had to have 25% MPDUs, the company turned around and walked out the door. A couple of months trying to work with Planning and Permitting can cause even the deepest pockets to second guess their investments.
They were already done with planning, but generally I agree with you. Everyone thinks planning caters to developers, but that’s wrong. It actually caters to a small but influential group of local land use lawyers who have been big donors to Friedson, GGW, and Montgomery4All, among others. The approval processes seem to be designed to help the lawyers run up big bills. Reforming the planning processes, which deliver no value for the developers or the community, is some of the lowest hanging fruit in reducing development costs and speeding up projects. Yet they only talk about it occasionally and never do it.
In this case, the developer claims the project no longer made sense in today’s market. There were some things about the project that made no sense, especially including more parking spaces than housing units right across from a metro station. But we’re constantly told that we’re in the midst of a housing crisis caused by zoning so how can it be that approved housing across the street from a metro station no longer makes sense in today’s market. Maybe it’s not zoning at all but the weak job market that’s causing weak housing production. Or maybe the heart of the housing crisis isn’t a shortage of mid-rise apartments but instead a shortage of SFH that’s put upward pressure on mid-rise apartment rents, creating a risk of a glut of mid-rise apartments if this county ever decides to stop penalizing SFH production with excessive fees and taxes.
You have hit the nail on the head.
Entrenched corruption, combined with ideologues and declining economic prospects are a recipe for a doom loop.
It’s funny that the obvious answer for housing production is incrementalism but they just skip straight over the next obvious increment that is driving housing production to meet population growth elsewhere in the country: SFHs on smaller lots.
Before that: mid/high-rise residential/mixed-use in areas that already had been zoned for it before the latest development push, but under-built.
They just lurch from fad to fad, instead of focusing on the basics.
15 years ago the fad was building height. Taller buildings were going to solve the housing crisis. Developers needed to build to the moon.
Then the cost of construction shifted in favor of stick built, mid-rise five-over-ones and so Planning turned on a dime to say that this was the ideal, so long as they restricted parking.
Then the fad shifted to “missing middle” and have been trying to sell it as “attainable housing” that will provide entry level housing for sale at lower price points, despite the fact that MD property law does not easily accommodate unless they are rental or condos. And it’s not like they don’t know that.
During the Thrive debate they let slip what their real objectives are, which is to decrease the number of homeowners in the county. And the reason they got mad at Jawando is that his ZTA exposed the real goal, conversion of SFH communities to 4-8 unit apartment buildings. They subsequently backdoored triplex rentals as ADUs and now are trying to use this community along University as their guinea pigs.
A lot of the SFHs there are rented at a very reasonable cost. The only people who will benefit will be the absentee owners of those houses. I’m not so invested to figure out who they are but I’m sure a little research would probably reveal a few ahas.
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