Starr just recommended a total do-over for the site selection process - stay tuned...

Anonymous wrote:Choosing parks as the top picks by BOE was very short sighted in urban down county. Simply put kids need both parks and schools.

BOE did a terrible job on process of site selection. It is almost a case study on "what not to do." Or how to lose trust with certain parts of the BCC cluster. At this point, haven't they been cited for at least 2 failures by the maryland board that covers "open meetings' legal issue? Perhaps BOE is out of their league - in taking parks they came up against the planning board (which is an entity that KNOWS process and how to work with the public). In essence, they failed to understand the political significance of taking parks. A blunder wholly of BOE's own making.

I would not be at all surprised to see the new middle school delayed by years and years because of BOE's own short sighted strategy. If that happens - don't blame the rock creek hills folks (I do not live there but applaud their fight) - blame BOE flat footed behavior.

BOE buys land in other parts of the county - to say they have to take parks in down county is silly. If they hit sufficient road blocks in their ill conceived "lets just use parks because it is cheap" plan - guess what - they will find a way to buy land. With sufficient political opposition, suddenly the money will appear. I have no doubt if they had selected norwood park, money would have been found to buy land at an alternative site.

For example, what about the Chevy Chase Lake company land? If the purple line ever gets built (HUGE IF) that would be a great use.

What CC Lake company land are you referring to? They want light rail and retail development near the Purple Line and they'll get it for sure since development companies fund politicians here just like most places.

Choosing parks as the top picks by BOE was very short sighted in urban down county. Simply put kids need both parks and schools.

BOE did a terrible job on process of site selection. It is almost a case study on "what not to do." Or how to lose trust with certain parts of the BCC cluster. At this point, haven't they been cited for at least 2 failures by the maryland board that covers "open meetings' legal issue? Perhaps BOE is out of their league - in taking parks they came up against the planning board (which is an entity that KNOWS process and how to work with the public). In essence, they failed to understand the political significance of taking parks. A blunder wholly of BOE's own making.

I would not be at all surprised to see the new middle school delayed by years and years because of BOE's own short sighted strategy. If that happens - don't blame the rock creek hills folks (I do not live there but applaud their fight) - blame BOE flat footed behavior.

BOE buys land in other parts of the county - to say they have to take parks in down county is silly. If they hit sufficient road blocks in their ill conceived "lets just use parks because it is cheap" plan - guess what - they will find a way to buy land. With sufficient political opposition, suddenly the money will appear. I have no doubt if they had selected norwood park, money would have been found to buy land at an alternative site.

For example, what about the Chevy Chase Lake company land? If the purple line ever gets built (HUGE IF) that would be a great use.

Anonymous wrote:I think another reason they are looking at places like Coffield and RCHP is that they want to have a Middle School in the Eastern part of the cluster. While Norwood is a good spot, it's still West of almost all of the feeder school neighborhoods.

Except that RCHP is in the extreme North of the cluster, and RHLP is in the extreme East of the cluster. The SSAC Report explicitly states that:

“The location of each school site should be centrally located within the target area with adjacent residential use. If possible, a school site should be located to allow students to walk to school or use public transportation. The availability of public transportation is a criterion for LEED™ certification. …

Due to the location of Westland Middle School, at the extreme western side of the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Cluster, a site for the new middle school that is centrally located or closer to the eastern side of the cluster is desirable. Six of the candidates are situated in the central or eastern portion of the cluster.”

Norwood offers a lot more flexibility to the county than the recommended site or the alternative. I suspect, however, that the communities sitting on the SSAC, which surrounded Norwood, didn’t see it that way.

I think another reason they are looking at places like Coffield and RCHP is that they want to have a Middle School in the Eastern part of the cluster. While Norwood is a good spot, it's still West of almost all of the feeder school neighborhoods.

To the poster who supported the selection of the "gwendolyn coffield community center" as the site of the new school: too bad MCPS and the SSAC didn't bother to find out that neither the Center, nor the surrounding park, were theirs for the taking before they selected it. So funny that you are still voicing support for that shoddy SSAC/MCPS work. I find it hysterical that these committee members sat in two meetings and systematically excluded all the parks in their neighborhoods for all these dubious (read: ridiculous) reasons. Yet, their top pick wasn't ever a realistic option. They may have excluded us from the SSAC process, but they grossly underestimated this community.

To anyone wondering why we wouldn't want a middle school in our neighborhood: make it beneficial to the community. Turn WSSC into a middle school, but don't take our children's park and community center away. Children need both parks and schools!

Anonymous wrote:So PP, which alternative to RCH do you support?

I just went back read the original report (which recommended the Coffield center location and RCH as a backup.) There aren't a lot of good ones, at least not as portrayed in the report. But it does seem that they yanked a few interesting possibilities, such as Norwood Park, from consideration on pretty dubious grounds (Norwood, because of some random historical building that would have to be incorporated and the issue of limited access, which is true for just about every site). But I imagine that neighborhood would be even more heavily lawyered-up than the RCH crowd. Which gets me back to the feeling that it's just plain sad and pathetic that so many of the families whose children would go to any new middle school don't want it in their midst.

I don’t know who you are, but thank you. You strike me as one of the few people on this string that has tried to dialog on this issue. This difficult situation was turned into a nightmare for one major reason: Lack of honest communication. MCPS compiled a bogus list of sites to be evaluated. The SSAC was stacked against RCH and RHLP and in favor of Somerset, Friendship Heights, and Chevy Chase, yielding an inaccurate site evaluation (your Norwood Park comment is spot on; they ignored 4 roads into the site, but, again, I don’t support whacking parks). So far, we haven’t had a credible assessment whether RCHP is even available. The BOE was dishonest with its bait-and-switch vote, and with its mischaracterization of the RCHP site (neglecting to recognize that over 1/3 the site (and separate road access) don’t exist).

Part of the problem is that the BOE mandates that they shouldn’t have to spend money on a site. That's just not realistic in a congested area, especially after you give away your land.

As I said, if we were talking about the original KJH site, I’d be out there giving the construction team coffee every day. Unfortunately (and I hope you’re sitting down for this) the elder care facility has something like a 90-year (!?!) on the site. So, unless we’re willing to toss grandma out the window, we can’t get the old site back. What were these people thinking when they closed KJH and divided the site. They destroyed it for use as a school.

Here are some alternatives:

Westland has 25 acres. Instead of turning Westland into a mega-school, build a second contained academy on the site. You don’t have to adjust the building core; you don’t have to obliterate trees; construction costs are low; and you can accommodate advanced students by allowing them to walk between schools.

Tell DNR they screwed up. They encumbered the reclaim right on RCHP by spending either LWCF or POS (why do you think they’re hiding and not producing records showing the money they spent?). Tell them to pay up with by buying 13.4 acres in CC Lake, and add to that purchase. CC Lake abuts a six-lane road, is more centralized in the cluster, and thus, allows more boundary options to allow for diversity, and it minimizes BRAC fears (though I think they’re overblown).

If we have to whack a park (I hate even suggesting this), the two parks in the SSAC report were described and eliminated for false reasons. Look there.

That’s three. Imagine what we could do with an honest conversation.

So PP, which alternative to RCH do you support?

I just went back read the original report (which recommended the Coffield center location and RCH as a backup.) There aren't a lot of good ones, at least not as portrayed in the report. But it does seem that they yanked a few interesting possibilities, such as Norwood Park, from consideration on pretty dubious grounds (Norwood, because of some random historical building that would have to be incorporated and the issue of limited access, which is true for just about every site). But I imagine that neighborhood would be even more heavily lawyered-up than the RCH crowd. Which gets me back to the feeling that it's just plain sad and pathetic that so many of the families whose children would go to any new middle school don't want it in their midst.

Anonymous wrote:Okay, PP, if it's the size of the site itself that is your major concern, then do you also advocate moving BCC? Because BCC doesn't meet the 20 acre minimum either; and yet it seems to function pretty well as a high school with much larger capacity than is planned for the new middle school.

Besides, when I see RCH parents demanding the North Chevy Chase park site be reconsidered - despite the fact that it sits smack dab in the midst of traffic hell thanks to the expansion of NIH and BRAC with no traffic mitigation -it's hard to avoid the sense that the neighborhood just doesn't want a school under any circumstances. Still baffled by that attitude (and for that matter by the people near the original site over near RHPS who opposed it as well.)

Well, for one thing, BCC has been there since 1935, and it is in the middle of an urbanized area. So, no one is going to assert that it is changing the community.

BCC is 17 (?) flat acres. RCHP is 13.4 acres, over half of which slopes 50 feet to a tributary of Rock Creek. BCC also is bounded by a four lane road, and access to the site is from that road (there are turning restrictions from the west, and you can’t access the neighborhood to the east. RCHP is bounded by a simple road with no divided lanes, part of which, has parking restricted on one side (yes, the naming convention changes from Saul to Haverhill to Littledale, but physically, we are talking about one curved road). BCC also doesn’t have enough field space; its teams use Bethesda-Lynbrook, which is why that site was eliminated by the SSAC (I never understood that argument), and RCHP, which is being eliminated.

As for NCC Park, you are incorrect. That site is receiving substantial funding for BRAC remediation, including alteration of the intersection and the streets along all four compass points. Further, a road extension is being discussed that will carry traffic around that intersection.

For the record, I don’t think you should remove parks from areas that are congested, like the down-county area. We still have alternatives, some of which have been raised on this board, and which the SSAC never explored because the members sat there like lemmings and took what was fed them by MCPS in two meetings. It was a joke and, as found by the Open Meetings Compliance Board, a violation of the law.

Look, I have done the Westland and BCC drives, and all I can say is be careful what you ask for. If this school is built, unless you live in that neighborhood, driving to that school will be a nightmare, no matter how they configure it.

PP, I'm the one who hates Jones Bridge Road, and you're right in the sense that this is a red herring since the NCC park site was not selected. Right now the real question is whether the County / MCPS move forward with the Rock Creek Hills site. I still can't see any reason why they shouldn't (even after reading all the stuff on the "save the park" website, it looks like what is planned for the site would be pretty equivalent to Westland.) I can't tell how meaningful the opposition to RCH is, though - the first site selected got dumped pretty quickly. Does that make the Board/County more likely to stick with this one, or more likely to start the whole process over again?

I swear I am in those same intersections every day and do not notice any traffic hell. Yes, occasionally I wait through 2 cycles of a light but that in my mind does not qualify as traffic hell. I have never (other than the ice storm last January) seen stopped traffic as far back as NIH. But I don't have any particular desire to see a middle school at NCC park--I just don't think it would be the apocalypse you seem to think it would be.

14:03: You must be driving on a different Jones Bridge Road than the rest of us. Traffic eastbound from NIH starts backing up in mid-afternoon and remains a nightmare until around 6pm most days; Fridays are worse and longer. It's worst for those trying to get on the beltway or go north, but it also impacts the eastbound traffic pretty badly since it is usually backed up most of the way back to the hospitals (eg, where the NCC park is.) In the AM, heading west on JBR often takes 4 or 5 light cycles to get across Conn Ave. The feds, the state and the county have been actively involved trying to deal with the current mess on Jones Bridge and the 5000 extra cars per day that BRAC added a few months ago. Add dozens of school buses and hundreds of teacher, staff, student and parent cars to that mess - really? On what planet does that make sense?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I live in RCH and don't oppose the middle school--it will be traffic, the loss of the park is sad but there are other parks in walking distance, and it would be nice for my child to walk to school vs. being bused everywhere. But I have to say that NCC park is not in the middle of traffic hell. I drive on Jones Bridge twice every morning and often in the afternoons as well. I rarely have any delay at all. In the afternoons it stacks up to turn left on Connecticut but no worse than it did before BRAC. Where is this traffic hell of which you speak?

I commute by heading from E/W Hwy to Connecticut Ave every morning to get on 495. It is a traffic hell for sure. You must not drive it during rush hour.

The intersection of E/W and Connecticut is bad if you're heading west, that's true. Connecticut often stacks up southbound between Saul and Jones Bridge too. But the roads that directly border NCC park are definitely not traffic hell. I drive it twice in morning rush (7:30 and 8:15) and also during the after-school, government worker dismissal time of about 4-5. I turn left on Connecticut from Jones Bridge and head north to the beltway in the morning and there's no traffic hell northbound on Connecticut either.

Anonymous wrote:I haven't been following the debate but live in the BCC cluster. Does anyone know why they aren't just using the money to add facility space to and then beautify the building and grounds and athletic fields of Westland?

It was my understanding that there is no way to expand the core facilities-those are the cafeteria, gym, lockers. It would lead to a lot of locker sharing which is far from ideal. It also creates a school that is large, and if you look at BCC's recent "Color Day", potentially hard to control.

Anonymous wrote:I live in RCH and don't oppose the middle school--it will be traffic, the loss of the park is sad but there are other parks in walking distance, and it would be nice for my child to walk to school vs. being bused everywhere. But I have to say that NCC park is not in the middle of traffic hell. I drive on Jones Bridge twice every morning and often in the afternoons as well. I rarely have any delay at all. In the afternoons it stacks up to turn left on Connecticut but no worse than it did before BRAC. Where is this traffic hell of which you speak?

I commute by heading from E/W Hwy to Connecticut Ave every morning to get on 495. It is a traffic hell for sure. You must not drive it during rush hour.