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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I wrote on a previous thread that I was disappointed in how Bethesda has turned out vs. when I moved away in 1998.

I was there for the days leading up to NYE 2023 and the NYE itself.  With my family staying in a hotel near the Metro.

The metro complex and streetscape at night feels closed down, dark, uninviting. As do the office buildings.  There was a person panhandling outside the Trader Joe's.  Wouldn't surprise me in Chicago, but not what I'd expect to see in Bethesda.

The highlight was seeing a play at the local theater.  The Tastee Diner was an oasis of cheer and a good dinner at a cheap price.  The Chinese restaurant we ate at was very mediocre.  I like bargain ethnic food but couldn't find believable good reviews of anywhere close by. It was the best we could do.  The hotel we stayed at had a couple weddings but otherwise seemed pretty empty/not cheerfully bustling.  There wasn't a First Night celebration as far as I could tell.

The streetscape along Rockville Pike is kind of a jumble of establishments - it just looks asymmetrical somehow.  I also noticed that you could still see the remains of the Claire Dratch sign on the old store - I think it looks bad when old signage lingers.  It suggests the buildings aren't rentable/aren't being maintained. In my little town, they've managed to keep buildings pretty low along the main 2 streets.  And many have been fully renovated.  I think that helps aesthetically.  Bethesda is much richer and has more costly real estate so I don't know why it should look worse.

Basically, the town seemed a bit more overgrown without positive benefits.  I saw on this site the slogan "communities not canyons" and that actually resonated with me.

I'm not a night owl, a drinker, or a young person.  It just seemed to me that things weren't quite right.  Maybe it was still the aftereffect of Covid.[/quote]

Where do you live now? It would help understand the context of your observations.[/quote]

I live in a small Midwestern city of 60K people with walkable streets, a low-rise civic center, and an entertainment district consisting of mid-priced (not designer or truly costly) specialty boutiques and restaurants.  It's somewhat of a bar town for young people but not full of drunks.  We had a Barnes & Noble and lost it also. It has a stage theater like Bethesda and a music theater where famous people sometimes play small venue concerts. The town has recently added several large office buildings, 3 tall parking garages, a chain hotel, and tall condo apartment buildings. Also built a new town hall, police station, and courthouse.  (We hit a replacement cycle for 1950s infrastructure during a low interest rate time.) We don't have Metro but we have passenger rail and bus.  When trolleys were a thing, it was a trolley suburb.  It is not a wealthy town...most houses are old and smallish...below $300K.

I used to dream of buying a home in Bethesda.  When I left the houses I wished for were small, old brick houses that "only" cost about $500K.  I suppose now those are $1.3M.  I was a fed and couldn't afford it. I still couldn't afford it today.

Where I live now is getting bigfooted also (losing the small town scale) BUT without a delivery mechanism like Metro, and height restrictions, it probably won't get built up like Bethesda.  There's no large employer parallel to NIH, etc.  So each big building needs to fill up and stabilize before there's an opportunity for a new one to make money.

I think the people above are right about dead zones and separated clusters of activity.  My experience of Bethesda is very Metro and Rockville Pike centric.  I understand the point about two big clusters of businesses.  Also agree that construction zones can make things temporarily bad/sketchy for women to walk around at night.

A lot of this is subjective.  It's just my feeling that things are not as nice as when I left.  I read bad things about the direction of Friendship Heights too but haven't been back to experience it.[/quote]

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