June 13, 2007
Square Feet A Dose of Art and Entertainment Revives a Suburb By EUGENE L. MEYER
SILVER SPRING, Md., June 12 — Washington’s first suburban shopping district had its heyday here in the 1950s, but as people moved farther out and new malls sprouted to serve them, retailers and then offices left in droves, sending Silver Spring into a decades-long decline.
But now this once-ailing suburb, which abuts the District of Columbia and is linked to downtown Washington by subway, is enjoying a renaissance, a result of public involvement and private investment that is turning it into an arts and entertainment center, anchored by the Discovery Channel and the American Film Institute and including new offices, hotels, theaters, restaurants and housing.
As recently as the mid-1990s, such a rebirth would have seemed a pipe dream. The streets were often deserted; the vacancy rate stood at 39 percent for offices and about 25 percent for stores, and there seemed little reason for hope.
Douglas M. Duncan, then the Montgomery County executive and now vice president for administrative affairs at the University of Maryland in College Park, recently recalled that when he pledged to revitalize the area, “the attitude from the public was why bother, no one will ever come to Silver Spring.”
Gary Stith, the county’s Silver Spring coordinator, said that back then the city offered nothing to do when the workday ended and people left their offices. “We didn’t have the amenities,” Mr. Stith said. “There was no reason to stay.”
In addition, he said, there was an image problem, stoked by the fear that crime would creep in from Washington. “We used to say Silver Spring is safer than it looked,” he said. (Silver Spring still has its somewhat shabby side, which includes auto body shops, greasy spoons, a tattoo parlor and used book and record stores, but they are now considered part of its charm.)
Mr. Duncan feared that if nothing was done, the problem would spread to other areas. So, undaunted by a series of ambitious but failed plans that included a proposal by the Mall of America’s Canadian developers to build a huge mall in Silver Spring, the county acquired much of the downtown core and turned the project over to a private joint venture of the Foulger-Pratt and Peterson Companies, both major developers in the Washington area.
With $1.2 billion in public and private investment over the last six years, including $187 million from the county, much has been done. “I can’t think of any downside to this project,”said Bryant F. Foulger, a principal of Foulger-Pratt.
In April 2003, the American Film Institute, which has its main office in Los Angeles, moved from the Kennedy Center in Washington into a renovated 1938 movie theater, adding two more screens and bringing celebrities like Clint Eastwood for the grand opening and Martin Scorsese, Jane Fonda, Danny Glover and even Al Gore to town for presentations. The institute occupies 7,000 square feet of office space and has 25 full-time and 40 part-time year-round employees.
About the same time, the Discovery Channel shifted its headquarters and 1,800 employees from the more fashionable suburb of Bethesda, Md., five miles west, into an architecturally striking new building close to Silver Spring’s Metro subway station. The film institute and Discovery are now co-sponsors of SilverDocs, an annual documentary festival held each June; it started Tuesday.
The Birchmere, a music hall in Alexandria, Va., is planning to open a second location in a former J. C. Penney store across from the film institute in 2010.
An Arts Alley, where vendors set up tables on weekends, has emerged at Silver Spring’s southern end.
Mr. Duncan, whose third term as county executive ended late last year, tried to build enthusiasm for his vision by carefully staging public events. In 1997, he revived the annual Thanksgiving parade. Last year, an estimated 10,000 people watched the parade.
To make way for Discovery, the Tastee Diner, built in 1936, was moved a few blocks; the move — the diner already had a chassis and was lifted onto wheels and driven the distance — was made in the daytime, and attracted a large crowd. Hundreds attended the dedication of a new Fresh Fields (now Whole Foods Market) supermarket.
In the central redevelopment area, some 20,000 people attended the Silver Spring Jazz Festival last September. They crowded onto a “town green” of artificial grass and watched from every opening of an adjoining seven-level garage. The green, which has become a prime gathering place, is to be home to a 42,000- square-foot three-story civic building and ice rink/plaza.
The hub of activity is a single block of Ellsworth Drive that incorporates the facade of an original 1930s shopping center, one of the nation’s first with off-street parking, and a building that was the region’s first suburban Hecht’s department store. The former Hecht’s was converted into City Place Mall before the current renaissance and has languished with mostly discount stores. That is changing, slowly.
Ellsworth is often closed to vehicular traffic, especially on weekends, creating the feeling of a pedestrian mall. Lunchtime crowds eat al fresco along the sidewalk or at tables near a fountain, which has become a popular gathering spot.
The rebirth has brought many more culinary choices, with both chain and independently owned restaurants, like Ceviche, a Cuban eatery, and Mandalay, which serves Burmese food.
“Where there were 5 restaurants when we moved here in 2004, there are now 50,” said David Levy, Discovery’s executive vice president for communications. Discovery intentionally did not include a cafeteria in its building, Mr. Levy said, to encourage employees to patronize local establishments.
Residential neighborhoods adjoin the downtown, but no new housing had risen for 15 years until EYA (formerly Eakin/Youngentob Associates), a developer of urban housing, erected 57 town homes six years ago. The homes, close to the Metro, started at $260,000 and now sell for $650,000 to $700,000. Another 325 condos in three developments, with one- bedroom units priced from the high $200,000’s, have followed; 3,500 additional units are planned.
Several fashionable new condominiums and rental apartments, with a total of 866 units, have replaced a strip of car dealerships several blocks away, and 775 more housing units are under construction.
Work is scheduled to begin in September on a new $70 million covered transit center for the Metro rail system, a commuter railroad line, 145 regional buses, and a Greyhound bus station, replacing the present bus turnaround next to the subway stop. Serving 50,000 daily passengers, the transit center is scheduled for 2009 completion.
Nearby, Foulger-Pratt is awaiting final approval on a 200-room hotel, two residential towers with 410 units, and about 20,000 square feet of retail space.
Delegations from as far away as China now come to see the Silver Spring revitalization. At the spring conference of the Urban Land Institute this year in Chicago, a panel was devoted to Silver Spring’s success story. Office space has become so scarce that the vacancy rate is down to 3 percent of Silver Spring’s rentable commercial inventory of 6.5 million square feet, Mr. Stith said.
As Silver Spring’s renaissance has taken hold, the unincorporated community has struggled with issues of preservation. A landmark 1927 armory and a classic Little Tavern hamburger shack were razed, but a 1914 building used until last year as a fire station is to become a firefighting-themed brewpub. The facade of an old Canada Dry bottling plant is being incorporated into a new condominium building.
“The revitalized area has attracted incredible amounts of publicity, people and consumer dollars,” said Jerry A. McCoy, president of the Silver Spring Historical Society. “My fear is as the development spreads, all one- and two-story historic structures will be taken out. We’re just biting our nails.”
Jackie Greenbaum, who lives in a new condo and owns Jackie’s, an upscale restaurant that was formerly an auto parts store, is less fearful. “I see Silver Spring as a little like the East Village” in Manhattan, she said. “I think there’s a very good chance it will stay interesting and a little edgy. At least that’s my hope.”