Rockville Arby's building fenced off (Photos)

Construction fencing has been erected around the vacant Arby's restaurant at 11710 Rockville Pike. No new tenant has been announced, and the building is still being marketed for lease. Maryland property records do not show a sale of the property as of this morning. 

A Shake Shack restaurant had been proposed for the building, but those plans were, sadly, withdrawn. That was a huge mistake by the burger chain. They would have done massive business here, especially in drive-thru sales. If I was an investor in Shake Shack, I would be screaming. At least Tom Bodett left the light on for us in the kitchen. Hopefully a smart fast food chain like Jack in the Box or In-N-Out leases this building soon.

Da Yu Hot Pot plans scrapped on Rockville Pike

After more than three years of anticipation, it looks like Da Yu Hot Pot isn't going to open in Rockville after all. At least, not at this 1701 Rockville Pike location. Workers have removed the restaurant's logo sign from the building, and there is a dumpster out front, although there's no indication construction ever began inside. Da Yu Hot Pot may have been a victim of the pandemic, as the popular China-based chain installed its sign here on the former REI storefront in February 2020, just weeks before the first coronavirus cases in Montgomery County were reported.

Rockville Wegmans construction update (Photos)

Brick work is being added to the facade at the future Twinbrook Quarter development at Rockville Pike (MD 355) and Halpine Road. The first phase of the B.F. Saul development will include Wegmans as the retail anchor tenant. You'll notice that the color of the brick on each segment of the facade changes. One section is tan, and the next is a more traditional red. Brick facade installation will continue through the fall.

Inside the building, walls are being constructed for hallways and apartment interior rooms. Plumbing, duct work and electrical wiring are also being installed. Outside, underground utilities are still going into place, and new sidewalks, pedestrian ramps and traffic signals are being installed at the intersection of Halpine and Chapman Avenue.

Rockville Planning Commission to review site plan for new biotech development along I-270

There's a rare bit of good news on the high-wage employment front in Montgomery County, and not surprisingly, it's coming to us once again from the biotech sector of the economy. 2 Research Place, LLC (a shell company that appears to be an entity of Soltesz) has proposed a seven-story life sciences building for 2 Research Place in Rockville, along I-270. The development would include a six-story above-ground parking garage with 400 parking spaces, and a park. An existing office building and parking lot on the 2.82-acre property would be demolished.

Existing site as seen from I-270

The office building will be placed on the side of the property that fronts I-270, to take advantage of the visibility to the 250,000 cars that pass by the site on the interstate each day. This prominent vista will  "promote Rockville as the center for life science uses," the applicant's attorney, Pat Harris, writes in a letter to planning staff.  The building is being designed as a state-of-the-art research office building, with floorplates and ceiling heights scaled to the ideal measurements for laboratory uses as much as office use. 

I-270 is also figuring prominently in the office building's design. Its long facade facing the highway will be "sheathed in an iconic, high-performance glass and metal façade system with variable panel shapes and spacings that amplify the feeling of movement, making a strong connection to the high-speed passersby," Harris writes. Alas, there are no high-quality renderings of the proposed architectural design available as of this writing, only the totally-uninspiring placeholder diagrams shown here.

Proposed site plan

The applicant is going above-and-beyond on several fronts. 100 more parking spaces than the 300 required by the City will be provided in the garage. And the development would include 12,267 square feet of public use space, essentially double the amount required by the City for a project of this size and use.

Office building rear with lobby entrance at left,
and loading docks at right

Side view of office building

The other side view

A centrally-placed large, central lawn will provide a park-like setting with seating. It will be placed in front of the rear of the office building and the parking garage. Auto traffic will circulate around it between the office, garage and main driveway access. A separate patio space with landscaping is also proposed for an area between the office building and the garage. The applicant is proposing a 4' sidewalk to connect the office building with Research Place, but is seeking a waiver to allow the sidewalk to be a foot narrower than the 5' required by the City.

Parking garage

The applicant is seeking a second waiver regarding the rooftop of the office building. Due to the specialized equipment required for life science research uses, the applicant is seeking permission to have more of the roof area dedicated to such equipment, and for the setback from the roof edge to be less than required under current City code. A 19'-high screen is proposed to hide the equipment from view.

Planning staff are recommending approval of the Site Plan, with conditions. The Rockville Planning Commission will review the plan at its meeting tonight, June 28, 2023 at 7:00 PM.

VinoRita wine slushies kiosk to open at Montgomery Mall in Bethesda

A new frozen treat is coming to the Dining Terrace food court at Westfield Montgomery Mall in Bethesda. VinoRita, a kiosk dispensing frozen wine slushies, plans to open next month at the mall. This will be the small-but-growing chain's first location outside of the south, where it currently has two kiosks in North Carolina, and one in Georgia.

VinoRita's wine slushie menu features its most popular Blackberry Sangria, alongside Peach Frose, Strawberry Daiquiri, and Blueberry Pomegranate. The kiosk won't be just for adults; there is a selection of non-alcoholic flavors available. VinoRita will be open 10:00 AM to 8:00 PM Monday through Wednesday, 10:00 AM to 9:00 PM Thursday through Saturday, and 11:00 AM to 7:00 PM on Sundays. 

Rockville's historic Wire Hardware building acquired by Futuris

Rockville staffing and technology firm Futuris has purchased the historic Wire Hardware building at 22 Baltimore Road, the company announced this morning. It will serve as the company's headquarters. Futuris plans to preserve the building, while updating it with contemporary sustainability and "green" features. Interior changes will emphasize natural lighting.

"We are incredibly excited about this significant investment in our future," Futuris CEO/CFO Robert Day said in a statement. "The acquisition of this exceptional building will not only allow us to accommodate our expanding workforce, but also provide a collaborative space that fosters creativity."

The two-story, Queen Anne-style building was completed in 1898. According to Maryland Historical Trust documents citing information compiled by local historian Eileen McGuckian, this property was in an area of the city that began to develop in anticipation of the arrival of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, whose Rockville train station would open in 1873. The railroad continues to operate today under the ownership of CSX, and is a major route used by trains between Washington, D.C. and Chicago.

William Wallace Welsh acquired the property at 22 Baltimore Road in 1884, building a frame general store that burned down in 1895. He then constructed the new store, as well as a home. The house, which was right next to the store, was demolished in 1978. From this prime location directly across from the railroad depot, Welsh and his partner David H. Warfield sold tools, grain, fuel and "provisions," McGuckian wrote. Paul Wire acquired the business and property in 1964, reestablishing it as Wire Hardware & Lumber Company.

Rockville would welcome Little Saigon from Falls Church

The City of Falls Church appears to have gotten caught trying to do its version of Montgomery County's highly-controversial "minor master plan amendment," for a small area that includes the popular Eden Center at 6751-6799 Wilson Boulevard. Home to over 100 businesses, the Eden Center is a commercial and cultural center for the local Vietnamese and Vietnamese-American community, and is often referred to as "Little Saigon." A plan seeking input about the future of that property and others surrounding it understandably rattled that community, and the small business owners. Falls Church is now furiously backtracking, telling The Washington Post that the plan was actually meant to explore how Eden Center "might be enhanced," and the center's owner has vigorously assured tenants and patrons that it did not request the initiation of the "Small Area Plan."

I don't closely follow local politics in the City of Falls Church, so I can't tell you if the city government is controlled by developers like Montgomery County's is. Is there a Falls Church equivalent to the Montgomery County cartel? I can't answer that, either.

But the Falls Church plan's "scope of work" looks very close to a Montgomery County minor master plan amendment. Such an amendment, the legality of which has been strongly debated but not successfully challenged in Montgomery County court so far, is virtually always initiated by a landowner in the area in question. Because it is illegal to rezone a single property for the benefit of its owner, Montgomery County created the MMPA process to provide a quick road to developer profits without requiring the complication of a full sector plan update.

How does the MMPA process work? A landowner and developer quietly approach elected officials and the Montgomery County Planning Department with their plans. Planning staff are directed to draw up a small map that includes the property seeking upzoning and redevelopment, and several other random properties around it. The Planning Department, Planning Board, and County Council tell the public the MMPA is simply an attempt to create a vision for the future of the area in question. In reality, a precise zoning change sought by the landowner/developer is already known, and will be ratified by the Board and Council after a "public process." The landowner/developer then submit preliminary and sketch plans for the redevelopment that was planned all along, but which the public has usually been kept in the dark about throughout the MMPA process.

To add insult to injury, the Planning Board and County Council rarely use the significant power they wield in the MMPA process to extract community benefits from the future development the new upzoning will allow. For example, a developer initiated the MMPA process for an area around the intersection of Wisconsin Avenue and Elm Street in Bethesda over a decade ago. It was seeking to redevelop 7272 Wisconsin Avenue at greater height and density than allowed under the zoning at that time. Greater scale means greater profit, and the MMPA is what allows that profit to be reaped.

Did the Planning Board and County Council use the opportunity to require the future developer of 7272 Wisconsin to construct a replacement Capital Crescent Trail tunnel under Wisconsin Avenue? No. In fact, it extracted no concessions at all in that MMPA. The original developer got the upzoning it sought, but ended up dropping its plans, and a second developer later successfully redeveloped the site. Now Montgomery County taxpayers are facing an $82.5 million tab for a tunnel that may never even be built at this point, all because the Council couldn't burden its developer sugar daddies with any extra expenses on their extra profits gained at public expense (schools, roads, services, and...trail tunnels).

So, while it may well be true that the owner of Eden Center did not request the City of Falls Church to initiate the "Small Area Plan," the process and zoning tool sound extremely similar to Montgomery's MMPA. I would suspect it's very likely some property owner within the plan area absolutely did get this process started. 

While many assurances are being made to the public and press about what the Small Area Plan plan won't do, city leaders are indeed going to be voting on a plan this Tuesday night. That plan states that introducing residential housing to the commercial sites that are included in the plan area is a high priority. It does propose squeezing a hotel with a ground floor cultural center onto the parking lot of the Eden Center, kind of a strange idea for shopping center that currently has a shortage of spaces at peak times.

However, the plan doesn't recommend redevelopment of the Eden Center at this time. It appears the well-organized efforts of the engaged community who patronize or own businesses at the center were effective in forcing a retreat by the City of Falls Church. 

But if the feared gentrification does come to pass in the future, the City of Rockville will be more than glad to warmly welcome the businesses at Eden Center to relocate here. Similar gentrification of Asian commercial hubs in Washington, D.C. and Northern Virginia have been a boon for Rockville over the last two decades, as many of those businesses and residents have relocated here. As a result, Rockville is now arguably the top dining destination in the region for Asian cuisine, in addition to the many Asian retail and service businesses here. 

The Asian community in Rockville has become a major economic engine for the city. One reason this has happened is that land use decisions in Rockville are not made by the Montgomery County Planning Board or Montgomery County Council. The city has its own planning authority. Politically-active residents, and two consecutive mayors who made it a priority to retain Rockville's small town neighborhood character, have been able to hold off the high-density urbanization happening elsewhere in the County. Among the benefits of that, is many storefronts ideal for small business that might have been lost are still here.

A plan that envisioned turning Rockville Pike into a concrete canyon was batted down and soundly defeated in the last decade. As a result, the Pike has remained the retail powerhouse that has made it the biggest generator of commercial revenue in the entire state of Maryland. Sites like the former Century Ford dealership, that had been envisioned by out-of-town consultants as another cookie-cutter urban "town center," ended up redeveloping in classic Rockville Pike style, with fast food restaurants, AAA auto services and an urgent care clinic. While the Twinbrook Quarter development received a density exception, largely on the basis of its eagerly-awaited Wegmans grocery store retail anchor, imagining developments of its size up and down both sides of the Pike reminds us of the bullet Rockville dodged in recent years.

Assuming Rockville voters continue to make wise choices at the ballot box this November, the city should remain an attractive destination for diners and Asian businesses alike. If Falls Church elected officials someday find developer profits to be a higher priority than keeping the jewel of Little Saigon within its borders, Rockville will be more than happy to add those businesses to our fold.

Map courtesy City of Falls Church