Syd's Cakes + Bakes opening at Montgomery Mall

Shilla Bakery in the Dining Terrace at Westfield Montgomery Mall has been dark for weeks, appearing to have closed for good. A new bakery tenant is taking over their space. Syd's Cakes + Bakes will keep this food court stall in local hands, as Syd's Bakery is a family-owned business.

Friendship BBQ construction underway at Rockville Town Square

Construction on the interior of the future Friendship BBQ is underway at Rockville Town Square. There's a long way to go, as you can see. The restaurant has a liquor license hearing scheduled for August 15.

MoCo residents to protest County Council ADU vote Tuesday

The Montgomery County Council will try to ram through revised Accessory Dwelling Unit zoning rules that will allow tiny homes to be constructed in backyards countywide, in many cases without requiring additional parking spaces. It is the first step in the Council's effort, driven by the developer sugar daddies who funded all nine members' 2018 campaigns, to end single-family home zoning in the County. Residents, over a thousand of whom have signed a petition opposing the ADU scheme, will protest outside the County Council building tomorrow morning, Tuesday, July 23, 2019 at 9:00 AM, at 100 Maryland Avenue in Rockville.

Councilmembers, led by Hans Riemer, plan to introduce another zoning scheme that will allow duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes, boarding houses, and even assembly of single-family home lots into stack-and-pack apartment complexes, in currently single-family home neighborhoods. Too incompetent to address the County's moribund economy, failing schools, and rising violent crime, the Council's Maoist-inspired strategy is to bring down successful neighborhoods and school clusters via allowing multifamily development in every neighborhood countywide, and through forced busing of children to schools outside of their neighborhoods.

Residents who have seen the results of similar radical strategies in Seattle and San Francisco are saying, "No, thanks" to the ZTA plan. The ZTA plan will increase school overcrowding in desirable school clusters, and the ultimate multifamily rezoning will more than quadruple existing school overcrowding. Protesters will ask the Council to delay the ZTA vote tomorrow.

West Elm opening this fall in Rockville

More "coming soon" signage has been posted in the windows of the future West Elm storefront on Rose Avenue at Pike & Rose. The modern furniture and decor retailer is expected to open this fall in the Pinstripes building. As you can see, they are now hiring, as well.

Interestingly, on a recent weekend night (not the same evening these photos were taken), the crowd at Pike & Rose exceeded the number of people out around Bethesda Row in downtown Bethesda. The loss of the Regal Cinemas Bethesda 10 and Barnes & Noble have been truly devastating, just as I warned the Montgomery County Council and Planning Board, both of which declined to require a replacement cineplex despite having the authority and responsibility to do so.

McDonald's testing Blueberry McGriddles at Washington, D.C. area restaurants - here's my review

McDonald's is testing Blueberry McGriddles at select Washington, D.C. area locations, including some in Montgomery County. The new McGriddles have the same sausage or bacon, cheese and egg fillings found in the original McGriddle sandwiches, but swap the maple syrup-filled pancakes for blueberry pancakes.

The blueberry pancakes retain the
McDonald's Golden Arches imprint
of the original McGriddles

This is a rare event, as the D.C./Maryland/Virginia area is rarely used as a test market for potential menu additions by fast food chains. McDonald's did test Mighty Wings at the former 4500 East-West Highway location in the 1990s. The chicken wings were introduced briefly nationwide almost twenty years later, in a fancier box than the plain white one the test wings came in.

The Blueberry McGriddle came with a
thick, folded scrambled egg, but
deletes the maple syrup filling found in
original McGriddles pancakes

Should Blueberry McGriddles be added to the permanent menu? Watch my review for my thoughts and a detailed look at the test item, which comes in sausage and bacon versions, and is only available during morning breakfast hours.

Montgomery County 911 system fails again

Officials don't know how

many emergency calls went

unanswered during outage

Montgomery County's 911 system failed twice Thursday, according to the Montgomery County Police Department, which does not operate the system. An MCPD spokesperson said that County officials cannot, as of now, tell them how many urgent 911 calls went unanswered during the service interruptions, but that the department is aware of one caller in need of basic life support medical services who was affected.

Callers who dialed 911 around 8:30 AM yesterday morning - and again between 9:35 and 9:43 AM - could not get through to the 911 call center, and instead heard a message saying they number they'd reached was out of service. According to MCPD, the failure was traced to a network outage between system components.

There is no indication that the Alert Montgomery system informed citizens of either outage. Montgomery County Government has yet to post any statement regarding the outages as of this writing.

It was exactly three years ago that I broke the story of a similar 911 system failure. Later, the County tried to cover up the fact that Alert Montgomery had failed to issue alerts to subscribers until long after the outage had ended. Two people were confirmed to have died has a result of that 2016 911 system failure, 

Yet despite their failure having fatal results for two of their constituents in 2016, the County Council has clearly failed to change its ways. Here we are again, with another 911 outage three years later. Similarly, the Council failed to upgrade the public safety radio communications system for County first responders for more than a decade, deliberately kicking the can down the road to have more play money to spend on their cartel sugar daddies.

In fact, since taking the oath of office last December, the latest Council has failed to take action on a single major crisis. Not a single thing has been done to exercise oversight and update the 911 system, complete our master plan highway system, turn around our moribund economy that now ranks last in the region by every economic development benchmark, nor to address rising rates of violent crime.

Most of the current Council term has been spent on a grotesque attack on the men and women of the Montgomery County police department. The Council's continual slander, defamation and disparagement of Montgomery's finest only put our first responders and the public in greater danger. Which fits perfectly with the County Council's record of making public safety a low priority, to the point that there are actual people who have died as a result of their failure to address basic government issues like providing a functioning 911 system. It's outrageous.

Chevy Chase Cars Express Store opens at Montgomery Mall

Chevy Chase Cars has opened a new Express Store on Level 1 at Westfield Montgomery Mall in Bethesda. Similar to the Tesla Store at the mall, they have vehicles on display and touchscreens with information about them. Potential buyers can learn about vehicle features and the buying process at the store, and then order their car using the website from their home or office.

The set-up is similar to the
high-tech, high-end customer
experience found at the Tesla Store

Touchscreens demonstrate how you can configure your vehicle options and Protection Plans. There is a special Express Store price displayed for each car. You can choose to pay in full, or via lease or credit. It will also show an instant price for the trade-in value of your current vehicle. A "Personal Concierge" functions much like the chat feature dealerships and retail websites increasingly have online. You can even select to have your vehicle delivered to your home.

While Chevy Chase Cars' main dealership is located in downtown Bethesda, your future vehicle may actually be on-site at the mall. A decent size inventory of cars is currently parked outside near the former Sears Auto Center building, in addition to those on display inside the mall.

Touchscreen in showroom
allows buyer to learn about options,
protection plans, delivery method,
and to call on a virtual concierge

Chevy Chase Cars vehicles
parked outside the former
Sears Auto Center at the mall