The Pike District (and our executive director) Featured in Washingtonian Magazine

Why, yes, it is kind of cool to wake up and find executive director Amy Ginsburg and Friends of White Flint quoted in Washingtonian Magazine.

“Stable doesn’t mean stagnant. Just look at what’s happening in some of Montgomery County’s most family-friendly communities. Take Zip code 20852, between Bethesda and Rockville proper, where the median home price was $397,850 last year and, on average, has fluctuated less than 1 percent over the past decade. Even though its real-estate prices haven’t, the neighborhood has changed drastically. In the last few years, county planners have torn down many of Rockville Pike’s aging strip malls and replaced them with mixed-use developments with modern features. The idea was to lure millennials with the area’s easy walk to Metro and the notion that suburban living can be just as cool as anything in DC (or at least Arlington).

Younger residents are indeed moving there, but not necessarily to glitzy new properties like Pike & Rose, a complex of condos, shops, theaters, and cafes. Go a few blocks off the Pike and you’ll find 50-year-old subdivisions of single-family houses that are being bought up by young families for the usual reasons—they’re affordable and come with good schools and parks. Meanwhile, it’s often empty-nesters who spring for the new luxury high-rises.

Both demographics, though, are attracted to the fact that the neighborhood is now within walking distance of amenities that used to be reserved for urbanites. “Before, if you bought a house in Luxmanor or Garrett Park, all you got was a house and you had to drive down to Bethesda or up to Rockville,” says Amy Ginsburg, executive director of Friends of White Flint, which keeps track of the neighborhood’s redevelopment. “Now you have places to walk to—compelling places, terrific restaurants, gyms, public events.”