Rockville Cemetery walk scheduled for September 10

"Find a grave" of notable figures in Rockville and American history on Saturday, September 10, from 9:30-11:30 AM, as Peerless Rockville hosts a guided walk through Rockville Cemetery. Dating back to the 1750s, the historic resting place has many familiar names on its grave markers.

Co-sponsored by the Rockville Cemetery Association, the walk will be led by historian Eileen McGuckian. The cost is $15 for the general public, and $10 for members of Peerless Rockville, a historic preservation organization. There are only 40 spots on the tour, so sign up early if you are interested.

To reserve your spot, call 301-762-0096, email info@peerlessrockville.org, or sign up online. The cemetery is located at 1350 Baltimore Road.

Sign installed at Dunkin' Donuts at Galvan in Twinbrook (Photos)

The permanent sign is installed at the future Dunkin' Donuts in the Galvan development near the Twinbrook Metro station in Rockville. A "D" door handle has also been installed outside. There's still a long way to go on the inside. This is one of several Dunkin' Donuts that have either opened, or are planned to open, in Rockville.

Can a county running on Windows 2000 be called "Tech Savvy?" Uh...yep.

What happens when your county government is found to be running on Windows 2000...fourteen years after the year 2000? When your county 911 system goes down, and two residents calling for help die during the outage...and your Alert Montgomery messaging system doesn't send out an alert until 11 minutes after the outage is over? When your public school system's "secure" student information is held in a database that hasn't been supported by its developer since 2012?

You get an award!

Montgomery County and the Public Technology Institute gave us some much-needed comic relief from the horrors of terrorism and the presidential campaign this week, when they announced that PTI has declared MoCo to be "tech savvy."

You can't make this stuff up, folks.

It's a major award! Seriously, though, what was it that put us over the top?

Was it Councilmember Roger Berliner, when he asked: In the year 2016, when attempting to dial 911 in an emergency - “Would I be looking at my cellphone for alerts? I don’t think so.”

To quote his colleague George Leventhal, in the midst of publicly berating a female County employee on live television, "WHAT YEAR IS IT?! WHAT YEAR IS IT?!"

It's 2016. The same year a state audit of MCPS found that exterior users can gain access to "any destination on the MCPS network." That an insecure connection protocol used by MCPS administrators shows login credentials in clear text. That 86 third-party business partners of the school system improperly have "network-level access to the entire MCPS network." That every computer tested by state auditors was determined to be running an outdated operating system. That 75% of the workstations they tested did not have the latest security updates downloaded. And that 13,000 MCPS computers were determined to not even be compatible with the anti-malware software tool the school system uses.

Was that "tech savvy" enough for the judges?

No, perhaps what put us over the top was the County Council throwing a tantrum that the aforementioned County operating system was so ancient, that it couldn't sync calendars with the fancy new phones councilmembers could afford after voting themselves a 28% raise (don't you wish you could do that at your office?).

Or a tech-based effort to "help" food trucks, which ended with 96% of food trucks either leaving the County, or going out of business altogether. Was that what snagged us the tech savvy award?

Maybe it was the drone adventure by the same County official who helmed Councilmember Hans Riemer's aforementioned food truck fiasco. That former Riemer campaign operative and donor, who was rewarded for his efforts with a $150,000-a-year County position created just for him, spent about $3000 of taxpayer funds on drones without clearing it with the higher-ups. After County Executive Ike Leggett got wind of it, the early Christmas presents ended up as extremely expensive paperweights in the County Innovation Officer's office.

That had to be it, right?

Or maybe it was the County Department of Liquor Control's paper-and-Post-It Notes inventory system, which has restaurant and bar owners taking the lead in efforts to boot the current County Council from office?

There's just so much tech-savvyness here in Montgomery County, it's honestly hard to say.

Whatever "open data" and "big data" efforts that have been made by Montgomery County have simply been aping similar moves by other jurisdictions across the country in that direction. It was just a few years ago that the City of Baltimore, the State of Maryland and Montgomery County were stealing wholesale from New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani with their various CityStat, CountyStat and StateStat programs, without crediting Giuliani, Bill Bratton, or other pioneers in the field.

I recall a consultant standing before the Mayor and Council of Rockville a few years ago, eagerly promoting the idea that he could shift the venerable Rockville Reports newsletter from print to online. Not exactly groundbreaking; should he have received an award?

By the way, in researching PTI, I noticed something else odd: two of the other jurisdictions that received the Tech Savvy award were Evanston, Illinois, and Mesa, Arizona. If you check the PTI Board of Directors list, the City Managers of Evanston and Mesa currently sit on the Board. Can anyone explain that?

Designs for new retail center at 900 Rockville Pike posted (Photos)

The Rockville architecture firm of Steven J. Karr, AIA, Inc. has posted the results of the Schematic Design Study it developed for 900 Rockville Pike. Client J. Danshes LLC is attempting to develop a retail center on a property that has proved challenging to develop up until now.

SJKAIA, Inc.'s designs show a new, 7000 SF retail building on the site, and 34 parking spaces. Construction is forecast at $1.9 million, with an anticipated delivery date of January 2019. The renderings also show an apparent ingress/egress solution, which had been a sticking point with the property owner next door in the past. In previous attempts to develop the property, the Maryland State Highway Administration had declined to approve new curb cuts between that adjacent property to the south, and Edmonston Drive. An easement was sought to utilize the curb cut on the adjacent property as a shared access driveway at that time.

If successful, this would bring a lot more value to the community than the previous project proposed here by another applicant, a billiards store.

Renderings courtesy Steven J. Karr, AIA, Inc.
All rights reserved

Chuy's is coming to Rockville (Photos)

Austin-based Tex-Mex chain Chuy's has leased the vacated Ruby Tuesday space at Federal Plaza. Construction is now underway inside and outside the future restaurant.

Like all Chuy's locations, this one will have a shrine to Elvis, and hubcaps and wooden fish hanging from the ceiling. It will also have the recipes taken from towns on both sides of the border, and emphasis on fresh ingredients, found in all of their restaurants.

Chuy's started in 1982, but only began to expand outside of the Lone Star State in 2009. The Rockville location is part of a planned expansion in the D.C. area. Get ready to order a Big As Yo Face burrito, pay further tribute to The King with the Elvis Presley Memorial Combo, and cool off with one of their signature cocktails.

The restaurant will be located at 12266 Rockville Pike.

Mayor & Council approve Rockville Pike Plan, EYA Tower Oaks project, Circulator study

The final Mayor & Council meeting of the summer in Rockville last night had a full agenda, with several long-term projects gaining approval. More than eight years after beginning the process, the Rockville Pike Plan received unanimous approval from the body. Mayor Bridget Donnell Newton reminded everyone that part of the delay was caused by the city's consultant, who drew up a plan that was not viable for Rockville. Successive mayors and councilmembers, and planning commissioners, were tasked with reshaping a European vision into something more suited to Rockville.

Depending on your perspective, the revised Pike Plan is either more flexible, or more favorable to developers, than the one sent to the Mayor and Council by the Planning Commission. Most prominently, building height restrictions will be much more liberal than the Planning Commission's height caps.

In other development news, the Mayor & Council unanimously approved EYA's Tower Oaks development, which will include 375 housing units along Preserve Parkway. Last minute edits to the plan included a notation that affordable units be spread out through the development rather than clustered in one spot. Newton suggested "scattered;" EYA SVP Aakash Thakkar said his firm uses the term "integrated" to mean the same thing. The latter language was deemed acceptable.

Councilmember Beryl Feinberg wanted some assurance that a shuttle would begin service for residents before 100% of the units were sold. Thakkar said 50% occupancy would create the "critical mass" needed to support the shuttle in terms of ridership. The Mayor and Council also accepted that provision.

Planning and Zoning Director Susan Swift suggested the Mayor & Council tie the shuttle to the issuance of occupancy permits for 50% of the single-family homes, townhomes and mulitfamily buildings. That would give City staff a way to verify the threshold had been met, she said.

Finally, the Mayor & Council voted 3-2 to approve a study of a Circulator bus or trolley within the City. City staff would develop a scope of work for the project in September. A consultant would be hired by early 2017, and a report would be due by Fall 2017.

Councilmembers Julie Palakovich Carr and Mark Pierzchala opposed the study. "I'm not enthusiastic about this," Pierzchala said. "As far as a Circulator type solutions, we have all the information we need right now. It's expensive."

Pierzchala said he also feared that a City Circulator would prompt Montgomery County to withdraw its investment in existing bus service, leaving Rockville taxpayers holding the bag. "I am really afraid...the County would have a justification to eliminate Route 45. Suddenly, we're in the transportation business."

After extensively considering various Circulator scenarios, Pierzchala said, "I can't make it work."

Palakovich Carr concurred. "I'm not sure what else there is to learn at this point," she said. "I just don't think we need to spend $60,000 or more." She suggested Rockville put its efforts toward County proposals like Bus Rapid Transit, and more direct door-to-door options for those in need.

Newton declared herself "disappointed" with the dissenters, arguing that the Circulator would address many of their stated political goals on the environment, among other issues. Feinberg proposed exploring having the study done by University of Maryland graduate students to save on costs.

While not ruling it out, Newton said it was important that the City use professional and experienced consultants. "This needs to be...done with the best experience and knowledge," she said.

Sports Authority closes in Rockville (Photos)

Sports Authority has closed at the Montrose Crossing shopping center in Rockville. The store looks cleared out of merchandise inside, although shelves and checkout counters remain in place.

It will be interesting to see what Federal Realty does with this large space - bring in Dick's Sporting Goods, another big box retailer, or reconfigure the space into multiple retail and dining units.

Dick's, which bought the intellectual property rights and 31 leases from the bankrupt Sports Authority chain, has stores in Wheaton Plaza and Rio/Washingtonian Center in Gaithersburg.

Speaking of Dick's, that mega chain is poised to be the second biggest beneficiary of the closure, according to a study by NinthDecimal, an audience intelligence data firm. Walmart, Target, Marshall's, Kohl's and Kmart are all stores where current Sports Authority shoppers spend money, the firm found.

Federal Realty may pick up some of the lost traffic at their Pike & Rose development diagonally across the street. Not only are they adding a Nike Factory Store, but REI - now under construction at Pike & Rose - is forecast to be the fourth most-likely destination for Sports Authority patrons.