SunTrust Bank coming to Rockville Town Square

Well, if you were hoping for another interesting restaurant to open in the corner space at Gibbs Street and E. Middle Lane, you're bound to be disappointed by this turn of events. SunTrust Bank will be the new tenant there. Of course, there was a bank there before, if I remember correctly.

2 stabbed on N. Horners Lane in Rockville last night

Two people were stabbed last night in the 400 block of N. Horners Lane around 10:15 PM. Rockville police found the two victims and a third person outside a home. The third person retreated into the home, saying he had a gun. Montgomery County police assisted with an Emergency Response Team, getting the man to come out of the home and surrender.

He is identified as Dakota Shaynne Jones (DOB: 3/19/1988), of the 300 block of Howard Ave., in Rockville. Jones was arrested and charged with the following:

Second-degree attempted murder.

First-degree assault.

Reckless endangerment. 

The two stabbing victims were taken to a local hospital; their injuries were non-life-threatening, police say.

Anyone with information about this incident should call the Rockville City Police Department's Criminal Investigations Unit at 240-314-8938.

L.L. Bean opens today at Pike & Rose (Video + Photos)

L.L. Bean will open their newest store this morning at Pike & Rose. Located at 925 Rose Avenue, it is the only L.L. Bean location in the state of Maryland right now.

CLICK HERE: WATCH: L.L. Bean store tour

An invitation-only event was held yesterday for L.L. Bean fans, who were able to shop the two-level store before the general public. On hand for the event was L.L. Bean retail store Senior Vice-President Ken Kacere, who presented a $5000 donation to local chapters of the Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts. Also spotted on the premises were Montgomery County Councilmember Sidney Katz, and the famous L.L. Bean Bootmobile, which attracted cellphone camera users passing through Rose Park in front of the store.

Kacere thanked property owner Federal Realty, noting that it had taken the Maine-based firm over a decade to find the ideal location for a store in this area. He said Pike & Rose not only wanted L.L. Bean, but that the youth of the development meant they would have the opportunity to build exactly the store design they wanted. There will be activities and giveaways all weekend at the new store.

Montgomery County Councilmember
Sidney Katz (left) stopped by

L.L. Bean Senior VP Ken Kacere (second from left)
presents local Girl Scout and Boy Scout leaders with
a $5000 contribution

The L.L. Bean Bootmobile,
inspired by the company's first
product, had Pike & Rose patrons
pulling out their cellphones for a photo

Rockville biotech firm partners with Michael J. Fox Foundation on Parkinson's research effort

Vigene Biosciences, a biotech firm based in Rockville, has partnered with the Michael J. Fox Foundation to further research on Parkinson's disease treatment. The partnership will make viral vectors that target alpha-synuclein, a substance that clumps in the brains of Parkinson's patients, more readily available to researchers in 2018.

"We are pleased to have taken this step to make critical Parkinson's disease research tools more accessible to the wider research community," Dr. Zairen Sun, Vigene's CEO, said in a statement. "We believe that a key way to accelerate therapeutic development for Parkinson's patients is to provide validated viral vectors, that will enable researchers to obtain quality data, so that they focus on understanding the mechanisms underlying Parkinson's disease."

Jobocalypse ahead after Montgomery County Council approves $15 minimum wage

"That's a lot of extra

Slurpees to sell"

The potentially-devastating impact of a $15 minimum wage was evident moments after it was unanimously passed by the Montgomery County Council yesterday. A Bethesda restaurant owner observing the proceedings, who had been planning two additional ventures in the county, declared he would never open another restaurant in the jurisdiction. He said his existing downtown Bethesda restaurant might even have to close in the coming years, as a result of the new financial burden in a razor-thin-profit-margin industry.

Just consider the impact of two full restaurant operations, with all of the employees those would entail, now never existing. All of those jobs just vanished, and the economic impact of that unemployment far outweighs the slight cash boost to workers in existing restaurants - assuming they don't lose their jobs, or get replaced by touchscreen kiosks. Now multiply that among other entrepreneurs deciding to take their dreams - and jobs - elsewhere. Montgomery County's outlay of services, required by those unemployed folks, will increase, not decrease. Taxpayers will pick up that bill, along with the increased prices of food and merchandise. Heckuva job, Brownie!

Of course, this is exactly what the Council wants. The more unemployed people, the more people who have to crawl on their knees to the Council for "services." Dependency on government is the aim, and that involves keeping those at the bottom of the ladder from climbing the rungs.

Councilmember Hans Riemer and his colleagues effectively terminated the middle-class business opportunity of Airbnb a few weeks ago. Up until that point, a modest real estate investor could have bought a few small homes and condo units, and generated a good cash flow from Airbnb rentals.

Without the same level of tenant damage concerns, or having to seek evictions of problem tenants, a middle-class County resident could have more-easily generated money for larger investments and ventures than with traditional renting. Now, you can only rent out your own current place of residence - just one unit - and you have to be on the property during the rental. Nothing makes an Airbnb more appealing than a hotel room than a landlord sitting on your couch, right? Thanks, Hans!

Imagine, initiative and some work allowing County residents to attain upper class status - status the County Council enjoys now, as they work a few hours a week for $137,000 a year. Notice they don't consider you deserving that amount, too. $15 isn't even close to a living wage in Montgomery County, and they know it.

Increasingly moribund Montgomery County has suffered a net loss of over 2000 retail jobs since 2000, according to the Maryland Retailers Association. We've had a net loss in jobs since 2005, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows. Montgomery County's restaurant sector has "slowed since 2012, and remains flat," according to Melvin Thompson of the Restaurant Association of Maryland. 

Surprisingly, Councilmember Craig Rice also voted for the bill, despite his previous and correct concerns about the impact on African-American job-seekers, young workers in particular. According to a 2015 survey by The Community Foundation for the National Capital Region, BETAH Associates, Inc. and Montgomery College,  only 8.7% of black high school students surveyed in the County are employed, and only 30.7% of black high school dropouts have been able to obtain employment. Among Montgomery County's young black high school graduates, only 39.7% of those surveyed are currently employed. 

The hits just keep on coming from the most anti-business elected officials in the region. A Council that has done literally nothing to improve traffic congestion, or to provide direct access to in-demand Dulles International Airport for international businesspeople, is spending most of its time criticizing Gov. Larry Hogan - - who is actually doing something in proposing Express Lanes for I-495 and I-270, and funding Metro. And that's when they're not telling us which snacks to buy from vending machines, or banning circuses.

Reaction to the $15 wage vote by local Chambers and business organizations was muted yesterday. In the next few days, we'll find out if those leaders are ready to "get dangerous" and challenge the MoCo cartel, as former Gov. Bob Ehrlich exhorted them to do in 2004. Or go quietly into the good night, in the most moribund private sector economy in the D.C. region.