Construction underway on new Pike & Rose office building

Construction has begun on a new Class A office building at Pike & Rose, known as 909 Rose Avenue. Although the office market in moribund Montgomery County is weak, with no major corporate headquarters locating here in two decades, property owner Federal Realty is making a similar move to rival JBG Smith - moving their own headquarters from up Rockville Pike into this building, just as JBG will relocate its Chevy Chase HQ to 4747 Bethesda Avenue.

Federal is marketing the rest of the available space in 909 Rose with an emphasis on the amenities found in the Pike & Rose development, which now boasts arguably the best one-stop dining collection in Montgomery County. And the AMP concert venue and iPic Theater. The building itself will have a rooftop lounge and outdoor deck. Federal Realty is also promoting the idea that, with its HQ on-premises, tenants will have a better experience compared to a "remote landlord."

Fallsgrove Sunday Safeway bank robber strikes again - and gets away again

Encore! Encore!

The same suspect returned to the scene of his alleged past crimes this past Sunday at the Fallsgrove Safeway at 14939 Shady Grove Road. As he has done each month so far this year, he passed a note to the teller at the in-store SunTrust Bank, obtained cash, and fled. He even came around the exact same time as he did last month. What's astonishing is that no one was prepared for him by now, and that some of the basic anti-robbery strategies appear to not be employed by SunTrust.

No exploding dye pack? No marked bills? Or other similar tactics to lead police to the perpetrator after a getaway? You would think the bank would be expecting the guy at this point, and that police would be staking out the bank on Sundays.

Instead, we have another photo of the suspect pulling off his latest alleged heist. It's no wonder he's often shown on his phone while at the store. "I can't believe how easy it is to rob a bank in Montgomery County - thank God for our soft-on-crime County Council," he must be saying to disbelieving friends. It's SunTrust customers in Rockville and elsewhere who have to pay ever-higher banking fees to make up for the cash that people like this guy get away with.

Anyone with information about the suspect or these bank robberies is asked to contact the Montgomery County Department of Police – Major Crimes Division at 240-773-5100. To be eligible for a reward, tipsters may call Crime Solvers of Montgomery County toll-free at 1-866-411-TIPS (8477). Crime Solvers will pay a cash reward of up to $10,000 for information provided to them that leads to the arrest and/or indictment of this suspect. Tipsters may remain anonymous.

Rockville City Council vacant seat down to 5 finalists

Will developers have reason
to celebrate the closed process
to fill this Council vacancy?

Rockville's Mayor and Council interviewed twenty-one applicants for the vacant seat on the City Council on Saturday, March 2, 2019. They have now reduced the list of potential replacements for former councilmember Julie Palakovich Carr to five. Those five will be interviewed again on Tuesday, March 5 at 7:00 PM. The interviews will be broadcast live on Channel 11 and streamed live on the City website.

The five finalists are (click on name to read their application):

Monique Ashton - a  PTA cluster coordinator for the Richard Montgomery cluster in Montgomery County Public Schools, and a senior vice-president at Ogilvy.

Cynthia Cotte Griffiths - Richard Montgomery High School's Parent Teacher Student Association (PTSA) President and editor of the former Rockville Central blog and Facebook page. With an extensive professional background in non-profits, she is currently Executive Director of
DC-MD Justice For Our Neighbors in Rockville.

James J. Hedrick - Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) employee who currently serves on the Executive Committee of the Twinbrook Community Association (TCA), and on the board of Rockville Housing Enterprises.

Eugene M. Thirolf - retired Director of the Office of Consumer Litigation (OCL) in the Department of
Justice, with 20 years volunteer experience in the Richard Montgomery cluster that included being president of the PTSA at three schools in the cluster. He also was head of the Montgomery County Liquor Board, and a five year commissioner for the Rockville Ethics Commission, in addition to being a volunteer in youth sports.

Robert J. Wright - a former Senior Advisor with the U.S. Department of Energy, Wright served on the Rockville City Council for three terms beginning in 1995. He was defeated by Larry Giammo in the 2001 Rockville mayoral race, after some memorable rhetorical showdowns during the old Citizens' Forum segment of Mayor and Council meetings. A majority of residents sought a more responsible and lower-density development policy that year, among other concerns. Wright is promising not to run again in November if he is chosen to fill the vacancy now.

One thing clear so far in this process: the city needs a special election to fill vacancies like this, so that residents have a chance to fully interrogate the candidates in debates and forums on the critical issues like growth, development, and adequate public facilities. A second thing we know for sure is that this will be a somewhat-dramatic selection, as the Mayor and Council are split into two factions of two apiece. Someone will have to flip sides to anoint the winner here. Finally, residents will probably find time spent on recruiting and supporting five responsible-growth candidates for the real election this fall more effective than time spent worrying about who serves out the remaining months of this term.

Residents can ostensibly start weighing in on the finalists during the Community Forum at tonight's Mayor and Council meeting at 7:00 PM at City Hall. That meeting will follow a closed session, as the City is apparently facing a lawsuit that the Mayor and Council will discuss privately.

Future storefronts unveiled at Pike & Rose (Photos)

Construction walls have come down at three future additions to Grand Park Avenue at Pike & Rose. Unveiled on the Federal Realty development's main street are the facade designs of BurgerFi, Sweetgreen and Sunday Morning Bakehouse.

Burger Fi has an angled Dodge Neon Green arch across the top of their facade. It looks like some equipment, including a beverage refrigerator, are already in place inside.

Sweetgreen also looks far along inside, and their main and pedestrian-facing blade signs are already lit. The other two businesses are still awaiting installation of their signs.

Sunday Morning Bakehouse is still in the drywall stage inside. They are now hiring employees, and plan to open this summer. If you can't wait until then, chef-owner Caroline Yi has recently started a delivery service with a 30 mile radius. She also is vendor at the Pike Central farm market at Pike & Rose, which will resume this spring.

Stein Sperling moving to more-prominent Rockville location

The law offices of Stein Sperling Bennett De Jong Driscoll will soon be moving to a much more high-profile location in Rockville. Currently located on W. Middle Lane, the firm is about to relocate to a newer office building on Wootton Parkway. Their sign was just installed atop the building, and I can report it could be seen heading southbound on I-270. It's now one of the sharper and more prominent signs along the interstate in Montgomery County.

Photo via Stein Sperling

Rockville's Supernus Pharmaceuticals announces record quarter and full-year financial results

Despite a December stock drop, Rockville's Supernus Pharmaceuticals found 2018 overall to be the best year in the company's history. Supernus announced Tuesday that it had its best full-year financial results ever, and 2018 also saw the firm's most successful single quarter results in history, as well.

For the year of 2018, Supernus enjoyed $408.9 million in total revenue, and full-year operating earnings of $144.4 million. Their record 4th quarter reported $115.9 million in total revenue, and operating earnings of $39.9 million. Last month, the company capped off the hot streak with their launch of Oxtellar XR, a partial seizure therapy product.

Biotech continues to be the rare exception in an overall moribund Montgomery County economy. Firms like Supernus and Silver Spring's United Therapeutics - which is completing an ambitious Unisphere campus expansion - have been the only bright spots as Northern Virginia continues to deliver a bruising beatdown in the competition for major corporate headquarters, of which Montgomery County has attracted none in two decades. Until voters force a change in the County's leadership direction on economic development, all we can do is cross our fingers and hope one of these smaller firms can make the leap to the Fortune 500.

Yext Rosslyn announcement pounds final nail into MoCo's tech job coffin

Northern VA declared

"next Silicon Valley"

after tech firm follows

Amazon's 25000 jobs

into the Old Dominion

There's nothing new about Northern Virginia destroying Montgomery County when it comes to economic development, nor about tech firms choosing the "birthplace of presidents" and D.C. over moribund, high-tax-and-regulation MoCo. But Montgomery's sad role as pinata in our regional rivalry just got weaker than ever last week, when New York-based tech firm Yext announced it would open a new office in Rosslyn with 500 high-wage jobs. On the heels of Virginia's victory in the nation's biggest job sweepstakes - Amazon's HQ2 that will open in Crystal City - the Yext move now has national power brokers officially declaring Northern Virginia the "next Silicon Valley."

Rosslyn's latest big "get" follows other new arrivals to Arlington's business hub with monumental views like the world headquarters of Nestle, Corporate Executive Board, Gerber and Deloitte. Not to mention all the other HQs NoVa has nabbed in recent years, including Hilton Hotels, IntelSat, Volkswagen and Northrop. Yext has leased the top three floors of 1101 Wilson Boulevard, a Class A tower with breathtaking views of the Potomac River and Capitol dome, among other landmarks, according to the Washington Post. Most embarrassing of all, the Yext deal wasn't even a deal - Virginia is paying them no tax incentives, Yext founder Howard Lerman tells the Post. Meanwhile, Montgomery County hasn't attracted a major corporate headquarters in two decades.

Capital One tower in Tysons,
the tallest office building in
the D.C. region

Montgomery has a national reputation as being hostile to business, a high-cost location to do business from, and having an ideological aversion to completing its master plan highway system - or adding Express Lanes to jammed interstates (unlike Virginia). How bad is it? Bethesda-based Donohoe Companies' CEO Chris Bruch had to chastise Montgomery politicians, who are furiously trying to block Gov. Larry Hogan's Express Lanes proposal for I-270 and the Beltway, in a letter published by the Post last weekend.

In other counties and cities, local officials are usually allied with business leaders like Bruch to complete major infrastructure projects. Here? Welcome to Clowntown, U.S.A.!

But our horrible reputation has compounded many past defeats with a major one. All major local jurisdictions have been competing for some time to be seen as a national tech hub. The Amazon and Yext victories have now led to that contest ending with the official recognition that Northern Virginia has won: game, set, match: Virginia.

"Northern Virginia's status as an East Coast tech hub got a major lift last week," wrote the Post's Aaron Gregg of the Yext announcement. "Northern Virginia is a reservoir of untapped talent," Lerman told Gregg. "I think it's the quiet next Silicon Valley." Gregg notes that the hits taken by Pentagon contractors in the Obama-era knucklehead budget battles on Capitol Hill led Virginia officials to turn to the private sector. "They have succeeded with a string of influential corporations setting up offices and headquarters in places such as Rosslyn and Tysons."

How much did we lose when the Montgomery County Council fumbled the Amazon golden ticket last year? 25,000 new jobs, $4 billion in lost wages, and $12 billion in collateral economic growth that Amazon would have provided. None of that even includes the tax revenue that would have accrued to Montgomery and Maryland.

Although it's unclear if our corrupt elected officials are capable of being embarrassed, particularly when they are being coddled and protected by an obsequious local press and surrounded by "Yes Men," we now know that Amazon was watching and listening to their public statements and actions very closely last year. Anti-Amazon and anti-business sentiments made by councilmembers last year were topped off by the capstone of the Council canceling the biggest infrastructure project near our proposed Amazon site in White Flint - while the Amazon executives were touring White Flint. It doesn't get any dumber than that, folks.

"For Amazon, the commitment to build a new headquarters requires positive, collaborative relationships with state and local elected officials who will be supportive over the long-term," Amazon said in its official statement announcing they were withdrawing their New York proposal. Yes, the comments and behavior of our "local elected officials" were indeed given heavy weight by Amazon. Anti-business sentiments and a bizarre, radical opposition to needed new roads were clearly not the winning message.

“A small group of politicians put their own narrow political interests above their community," New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said after Amazon's pull-out there, but he could have been talking about the Montgomery County Council, too. Nobody knows Montgomery's reputation for being hostile to business better than Yext founder Lerman, who grew up in Vienna. That irony echoes the Amazon decision as well, where one of the key decision makers for Amazon in the HQ2 search was Holly Sullivan, former President of the Montgomery County Economic Development Corporation. Sullivan knew our elected officials very well, and was very familiar with our business climate and failing infrastructure and traffic congestion. After all, she had to drive around it herself for several years! She knew exactly what Amazon would get by selecting Montgomery County, and...egads!!! Yikes!

Fortunately for New York City, at the end of the day, they're still New York City and an economic powerhouse even without Amazon. At the end of the day, Montgomery County is still...moribund.