My Opinion: Woodley Gardens Shopping Center Was Not In Need Of Rescue
Sep 11, 2008 11:39 - 2 Comments
Posted by: Brad Rourke
Department: Opinion
Tags: city council, mayor, What do you think?, Woodley Gardens, zoning
Department: Opinion
Tags: city council, mayor, What do you think?, Woodley Gardens, zoning
>Monday morning, I got an email from a friend asking about whether the City was planning to rezone the Woodley Gardens shopping center — the one on Nelson Street with local landmarks Carmen’s and the Hard Times Cafe, among other neighborhood businesses. They’d heard that this would be discussed at Monday’s Mayor and Council meeting. I checked the agenda and found nothing on that subject.
But plans were in the offing. If you read the Gazette, you know that a number of residents came to Citizens Forum that night and spoke up about the idea of rezoning that shopping center from its current “C-1″ zone (which means it is commercial) to a possible mixed-use zone that will be called “MXNC”:
Residents of Woodley Gardens attended Monday night’s council meeting in droves to oppose what they thought was a decision to rezone their neighborhood shopping center on Nelson Street. . . . However, council members responded that while they had not yet voted on the issue, they support designating the shopping center as mixed-use commercial (MXC), which would allow for the same height and density that now exists, but with differing setbacks. . . .”That to me is a dead issue,” Councilman John B. Britton said Monday. “MXNC was already decided among my colleagues that that was not going to work.”
This gathering was evidently driven by an item that had appeared in the draft new zoning ordinance that the RORZOR committee developed.
Watching the video of the proceedings, the pleas from local residents as well as business owners were heartfelt, well-reasoned, and persuasive. The only problem is that the Mayor and Council had already heard about the issue and were definitely inclined to go along with the residents on this one. Their Civic Association president, Jim Reschovksy, had already testified to the Mayor and Council on the subject and won their hearts (and minds).
The Mayor and Council are charged with reviewing, amending, and finally adopting the new zoning ordinance. It is their responsibility, as the ones who are politically accountable, and they are going through the massive document line by line. This is taking time. In the meantime, they have made no decisions. (They are meeting in a worksession tonight to discuss the draft, and will devote the September 22 meeting to further discussion. They hope to adopt the ordinance on October 6. Furthermore, they may choose to reopen the public record on the ordinance — stay tuned.)
The group who testified appeared to have been organized and requested to attend — a flyer had been circulated and many speakers said they had just heard about the issue a couple of weeks earlier. Their talking points were all very similar. The whole thing appeared designed to convey a groundswell of support — which there was. But, sadly, the energy of this group appeared to have been activated without reason.
Says the Gazette: “‘Mr. Reschovsky represented your view well,’ [Mayor Susan] Hoffmann told the audience. ‘When [he] did, it certainly sealed the deal for me and I’m not surprised that the community prefers to keep the character of the shopping center.’”
My fear is that the citizens who took the time to come to City Hall and testify may now feel as if they were brought under false pretenses. The organizers, presumably, could have checked on the status of Woodley Gardens Shopping Center with a quick phone call and would have found that perhaps other important issues were more worthy of their time. This one already had been handled.
I hope that, next time there is an issue that demands community input and about which residents’ good energies are needed, that they are still willing to step forward as they did Monday night.
What do you think?
Dear Brad, >
For those of us who attended the August 4th City Council meeting where Woodley Gardens was discussed by the Council, it was not clear that there was a consensus among the Mayor and Council on the Woodley Gardens neighborhood’s request. Numerous requests for clarification were sent back and forth among the Council members and others during August and the early part of September. In fact, even on Monday night, Mr. Britton stated that indeed a decision had been made, and other councilmembers stated that no decision had been made. The Sentinel’s online article about the Monday (September 8th) Council meeting can be viewed at http://www.thesentinel.com/266834848971646.php
The confusion between C-1, C, and MXNC zoning was so grave that Councilwoman Phyllis Marcuccio requested that the City Planning Staff prepared comparisons for Woodley Gardens, the Stonestreet Market, the Maryvale Market, and the Burgundy Estates Shopping Center. The architectural schemas were available on Monday night to the Council. I do not know yet if the general public is aware that these drawings and specifications are available, but I urge those who are in areas where MXNC is proposed to request copies of the schema. The zoning map available to citizens shows MXNC near West End, Potomac Woods, Woodley Gardens, Lincoln Park, East Rockville, and Twinbrook. Some of these areas are now marked “TBD” on a revision that so far has been distributed only to the Council.
These comparisons confirmed what we in Twinbrook already knew: that MXNC would result in a building approximately 7 times the size of the current building in Woodley Gardens, or about 2 times the size of what could be built under the current C-1 zoning in Woodley Gardens. This probably does not include a parking garage under MXNC zoning to accomodate 804 cars. It is unclear from the City-provided documents where the parking garage would need to go. (Brad - I’ve sent you by separate email the City-provided graphics for MXNC and C-1 maximum buildout for Woodley Gardens and I hope you post them on this reply.)
I am not going so far as to say that MXNC is inherently bad zoning. All the MX (mixed use) zones share similar strengths and weaknesses. But it is necessary for Rockville citizens to recognize that if a rezoning were to occur under a normal Neighborhood Plan process, the citizens would have the right to specifically limit and tailor any change in the zoning, including heights, setbacks and uses, where an upzoning is proposed. The City-provided architechtural schema prove conclusively that a switch from C-1 to MXNC is an upzoning.
Since Twinbrook is the only neighborhood with an active neighborhood plan, we DID send such a recommendation to the Planning Commission with regards to the MXNC zoning proposed for the Twinbrook Shopping Center and Twinbrook Mart on October 10th, 2007.
With the Planning Commission’s record regarding Beall’s Grant II, Twinbrook, etc, and the controversies about citizen notification, it was a very savvy decision for the neighborhood to bring its concerns on camera to the Mayor and Council. Obviously, the citizens are finally taking notice that RORZOR and the zoning ordinance revision is indeed a very big deal for all of Rockville.
If even the Councilmembers could not agree that a decision had been made, how were the citizens to know? When the critical documents (the City-provided architectural schema) were only shown to the Mayor and Council on Monday and NOT AVAILABLE TO THE CITIZENS, how can the Mayor and Council ethically keep the public record (the legal record) closed for comment? I was especially surprised as I watched Mayor Hoffman’s response to Citizens Forum that Mayor Hoffmann apparently does not understand the legal difference between legally binding recorded and transcripted comments entered into the public record versus comments made after the public record is closed that the Mayor and Council are not legally required to consider in their decision.
We can thank Jim Reschovsky, the Woodley Gardens Community, and Councilwoman Marcuccio for insisting that accurate and citizen-comprehensible documents be created by the City planning staff. This is the FIRST time such documents have been available. I expect that the complete set of schema will soon be available on PDF, or you can request them from the City of Rockville. I would be grateful if you would make them available on your website for review by all Rockville citizens.
Sincerely,
Christina Y. Ginsberg, M.S.
President, Twinbrook Citizens Association
Member, RORZOR
That’s a very thoughtful and helpful comment, Christina. Thank you.>
Here are links to the PDF files Christina provided (each is just shy of 1MB):
Woodley Gardens at “maximum”, as C-1.
Woodley Gardens at “maximum”, as MXNC.
Yes, BIG difference! Glad the commercial zoning is likely to stick.
Also, here is the Sentinel’s take.