Reply to Anyone Remember Bethesda and Silver Spring in 2000?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I remember when Bethesda was MUCH nicer than a boring, run down place like Ballston, which had an old Radison hotel, a decaying mall, and a subpar movie theater and not much else. I remember when Silver Spring had more going on than Crystal City or Pentagon City.

No one would prefer Ballston over Bethesda 25 years ago. Now it’s a toss up, and some might want to live in Ballston instead. You could make comparisons to VA suburbs vs MD suburbs over the course of the past 25 years and in almost every instance VA will come out ahead when you look at how much economic and infrastructure development they’ve had.

What happened to all of MOCO’s momentum? Is it all Elrich’s fault? Who’s to blame for the complete lack of forward momentum compared to Virginia in business and infrastructure development in the past 25 years? [/quote]
Your assessment is wildly off the mark.

Silver Spring in the year 2000 didn’t have much of anything but a dying mall with discount stores where Hecht’s was until the 1990s when it closed. Pentagon City had Pentagon City with the DC region’s second Nordstrom and Macy’s and other upscale shops like the Nature Company and Benetton along with a Ritz Carlton.

Ballston in the year 2000 had a somewhat decent mid range / healthy mall before its death spiral and also a Kramer Books. Nearby Clarendon had that new shopping area with one the first Apple Stores that replaced an old Sears department store. Bethesda at the time had Bethesda Row which was still new. [/quote]

I was going to say— OP clearly didn’t live in Silver Spring in 2000. There was nothing there. The AFI Silver only started restoration in 2001. The “downtown” didn’t open until 2006, maybe? [/quote]

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