gaithersblog.net

Historic Preservation Advisory Committee, November 2, 2006:

• 7 Brookes Avenue, tree removal
• 104 Chestnut Street, replacement of the front driveway pad
• 5 Walker Avenue, tree removal

Board of Appeals, November 9, 2006

• 789 KIMBERLY COURT WEST
  

  The application requests two variances: 1) a six (6) foot variance of the thirty (30) foot front yard; and 2) a six (6) foot variance of the ten (10) foot side yard both required for structures by Section 24-32(c) of the Zoning Ordinance. This variance is being requested for a garage addition to the house in the R-90 (Medium Density Residential) Zone at 789 Kimberly Court West, Lot 48, Block A, Diamond Courts, Gaithersburg, Maryland.

Stories this week, continued.

• Council gives warm reception to new height limitations, by Chris Robinson
  
  

  A developer seeking to exceed the city’s height limits on Frederick Avenue has revised its request and lowered its planned buildings.

  A developer for Broadstone Apartments, formerly Stratford Place, in January sought to boost the maximum building height permitted on Frederick Avenue from three to eight stories. After a public outcry, partially related to confusion over where the request for a zoning-text change came from, the request was withdrawn.

  I’ve discussed this story before.

• City sees spike in gang-related crime, by Jaime Ciavarra
  
  

  Two alleged Gaithersburg gang members are charged with attempted murder after police say they stabbed a man on city streets last month.

  It is the most violent incident in a string of increased gang-related crime that has plagued the Gaithersburg area over the past six weeks, including robberies and property thefts, said Det. Patrick Word of Gaithersburg Police.

• State money to bring I-270 repaving, brick sidewalks, by Chris Robinson
  
  

  A $16 million State Highway Administration project will provide resurfacing for more than four miles of Interstate 270 from Falls Road in Rockville to Muddy Branch Road in Gaithersburg.

  Meanwhile, a $75,000 grant from the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development’s Community Legacy program will fund adding a brick sidewalk from East Diamond Avenue to Chestnut Street at the entrance to Olde Towne.

Several items in this week’s Gaithersburg Gazette:

• Push is on for light rail along upcounty transitway, by Melissa A. Chadwick
  
  

  ‘‘It ought to be a light-rail project, which will attract more riders,” said Congressman Albert R. Wynn (D-Dist. 4) of Mitchellville.

  Other officials agreed.

  ‘‘I have never seen economic development around a bus stop,” said State Sen. Robert J. Garagiola (D-Dist. 15) of Germantown. ‘‘It needs to be rail.”

  Thirty-one elected officials, community activists and candidates for state and county office signed a petition of support for a light-rail CCT.

  The group also unveiled a marketing campaign for the project, declaring the CCT is ‘‘Good to Go.”

  Maryland’s Secretary of Transportation Robert L. Flanagan said in a telephone interview on Monday that the Department of Transportation is reviewing both the light-rail and bus options and will choose the better mode of transit sometime next year.

  ‘‘It is our responsibility to develop the best light-rail alternative and the best bus-route alternative,” he said.

  It is too early to know which will be best, he said.

  This was the event I blogged about earlier.

• Developer asks to re-lease West Deer Park apartments, by Jaime Ciavarra
  
  

  ‘‘[T]he redevelopment of this property for townhomes … is simply not feasible and cannot be financed,” Scott Copeland, principal of RST Development, wrote in an Oct. 18 letter to Mayor Sidney A. Katz. ‘‘On the other hand, by retaining it for rental units … we will address a market where there is a housing shortage.”

  The shift is a first in city history, and planners are researching how and when returning the buildings to rental units could be approved, said Greg Ossont, the city’s planning and code director.

  The city already authorized a new site plan for the construction of luxury townhouses in January 2005. To return to rental units, RST will have to go back before the Planning Commission and may need to add measures — such as more parking spaces — to bring the buildings up to current code.

  ‘‘It’s not as simple as tearing the fence down and renting them out,” Ossont said. ‘‘The city needs to go through the legal planning process again. We’ve got a lot of question marks at this point.”

  This is an ongoing story.

• Spanish Catholic Center moves again, this time to Olde Towne, by Sebastian Montes
  
  

  The Spanish Catholic Center first opened its Gaithersburg branch in 1986, most recently operating out of cramped offices on East Deer Park Drive. After the move to Olde Towne, the center plans to be up and running today.

  The new building is at 415 East Diamond Ave. In July, the City Council rejected the site as the site for a day-laborer center.

  In its job placement program, the SCC sees 60 to 70 workers from across the upcounty four days a week, last year providing more than 8,000 employment leads. At two informational sessions each morning — the first for men, the second for women — the SCC does not ask a worker their immigration status.

  I don’t know where to begin on this one. The whole day laborer thing started when the SCC was at 117 N Frederick. Also, is there a reason why the SCC would not consider contracting to run the proposed day labor center in Festival?

Today in the Post, Nancy Trejos writes,

For Edgardo Garcia, an immigrant from El Salvador, an affordable housing proposal under consideration by Gaithersburg officials could give him the opportunity to buy a home after six years of renting an apartment.

For Bob Drzyzgula, a homeowner and 17-year city resident, the proposal could mean more “slums” for a downtown that many say sorely needs upscale businesses and homes.

These opposing views underscore the culture clash dividing Gaithersburg, a city of about 60,000 residents whose suburban comforts have given way to the urban challenges of an economically and racially diverse community.

First of all, I don’t understand why these are “opposing views”. By my recollection of the affordable housing hearing she references in the article, very few speakers — even among the developers — opposed having an affordable housing policy at all. The entire debate, I thought, surrounded the question of whether redevelopment in Olde Towne had to include affordable units, given that Olde Towne is now almost exclusively “affordable”. Even if Olde Towne were exempt, the proposal called for the developers to make a contribution to an affordable housing fund.

As the City Council considers a proposal to require developers to set aside affordable housing for moderate-income and middle-class families, it is also struggling to find a location for an employment center for day laborers, many of them immigrants.

“It’s not this little city anymore,” said Grace Rivera-Oven, who has a local cable show and has been a vocal supporter of the day-laborer center. “I think [there’s] a socioeconomic division, and you add . . . different people from different places, and I guess it’s kind of a little bit of a ‘not in my back yard’ kind of thing. People are threatened by it.”

“What they’re looking at is doing something that will potentially act as a disincentive in an area that is having a great deal of difficulty attracting development at all,” said Drzyzgula, who is critical of the day-laborer center but does not think that the center is related to the affordable housing debate.

Unless I’m in error, these are the only two references to the day laborer center in the entire article. Ms. Trejos seems to be struggling here to connect the labor center with the affordable housing issue, but failing miserably. Why are these references even in the article?

I think, again from my recollection of the meeting, that the people on the the two “sides” of this debate are much closer together than what is represented here. Virtually everyone is supportive of affordable housing. The only question is how geographically concentrated this housing should be, and how to encourage reinvestement in older properties so that they don’t decay into slums. Ms. Trejos seems to miss this point entirely. What is the Post’s goal here?

Update/correction: Rereading what I wrote here I thought I should add that it is true that there was a bit more to the debate — the affordable housing advocates thought that the proportion of MPDUs called for should be higher than what was proposed. The sum of the MPDU and Workforce requirements in the City proposal is the same as the MPDU requirement for the County — 15% — but the County, if I recall correctly, does not presently have a Workforce housing requirement. Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but the advocates would prefer that the MPDU requirement be set at 15% or higher just like the County, and any Workforce requirements be put on top of that. However, I didn’t sense much traction for that suggestion on the Council — I think that the Council was primarilly concerned with the Olde Towne/No Olde Towne question.

The video of that meeting is available on the City’s website.

Update: Note this comment on BeyondDC:

Gaithersburg has been a slum as long as I have been alive. HOC, under the directive of down-county politicians has long worked to make the upcounty an affordable housing mecca despite the lack of transit and healthcare infrastructure so that the County could go about city building in Bethesda and Silver Spring…

Update 2: There was a letter in the 11/05/06 Washington Post responding to this article:

Why did this article seem to try so hard to connect the day-laborer issue with the issue of affordable housing? The day laborers in the Olde Towne area of Gaithersburg number — as evidenced by the size of the crowd at the street corner — only in the dozens, while the affordable housing units in that area number in the hundreds. This is a diverse community, ethnically and socioeconomically. We are trying hard to work together to find solutions that work for everyone.