Property Owners’ presentations (continued)

Holladay Properties. Rita Bamberger. Nicholson Lane to Marinelli Road, bordering the Grand and Rockville Pike. MetroPike Plaza. Have an approved development plan under TSM zoning. “Prime corner. . . very heart of the new White Flint community, and a vital link between future developments to north and south.” Important visual link and infrastructure (Woodglen Dr. through property connecting to Marinelli). Currently 2.2 FAR. Should increase density because otherwise proposals are dwarfed by surrounding buildings, such as the Grand. And we’re 100 feet from Metro, so we need 4.0 FAR. Biggest obstacles are low density, right of way dedication to Rockville Pike. The Grand should have had the extension of Woodglen Dr, but somehow they didn’t dedicate the land, the Grand got built, and now we have to have that on our property. Plan calls for primarily commercial because the Grand has all the residential already; but we need some residential.  Pervious and tree canopy requirements don’t work. Once we start underground parking, have to develop the whole property at once.

Nkosi Yearwood, staffer for White Flint: “add some clarity to that.” Series of utilities placed in the intended right of way. The Grand was supposed to dedicate it. Cmsnr Robinson: we need to get something from the Grand. Piera Weiss, staffer for White Flint: trying to expand Rockville Pike right of way, need 8 feet more.

Chrmn Hanson: a couple things people need to get used to. 1) doing most we can with tree canopy, and 2) perviousness or a reasonable substitute will become standard practice. Everybody has to figure out how we achieve that. The other thing is that we’re still working on the zoning issues, one concept we’re batting around is to start with a maximum FAR for a site, but provide some ratio of minimum amounts of residential and commercial. May add up to more than the maximum if did them all.

(Just give us a number.) Robinson: not the way it’s going to be. Hundreds of zoning proposals. Some places where a rigid standard is inappropriate; some places should be all residential. Give some flexibility. Looking for an overall number. Don’t see how every proposall can be 60-40. Cmsnr Presley: have to figure out how to do that. Closer to Metro? How do we achieve collectively the goal? Hanson: if you’re adjacent to Metro, we want a high ratio of residential, but to make this interesting place, make street level retail. To leave this entirely to the market places an extraordinary amount of faith that the market is interested in planning. Development occurs in cycles. Real estate is about as close as we get to a perfect market in the U.S. Bursts of enthusiasm in a highly-distributed environment. Until you’ve overbuilt, and then you can’t get a loan for that, for a while.

Cmsnr Alfandre: It will revert back. Geographically small site which makes it difficult to hit the ratio, but it needs to work both ways. If going to be flexibility in zoning, and we come up with mixed use zone, one of the important reasons for that is to give flexibility to the market, but it has to work both ways. Consider this while we consider how we’re going to phase or stage. Instead of a race to the courthouse, we may have some natural phasing and staging of how it comes to the market based on zoning. We need suggestions of how to work out staging.