City of Rockville Approves B.F. Saul’s Exemption Request

City of Rockville Councilmember Beryl L. Feinberg was the sole voice to oppose Councilmember Mark Pierzchala’s proposal to grant B.F. Saul an exemption for the proposed redevelopment of the Twinbrook Quarter. The 3 to 1 vote on Monday, February 4, 2019 has set the City of Rockville on a trajectory for radical transformative growth. The 18 acre site, currently occupied by stores like Sheffield Furniture, is across the street from Congressional Plaza, which is anchored by the Fresh Fields grocery store. The B.F. Saul request for an exemption was in part connected with conditionally signing Wegmans as an anchor tenant for the new project, which when completed will be four times larger than Rockville Town Center.

The exemption would permit the city to loosen the Adequate Public Facilities Standards (APFS) test that measures capacity for public schools to permit an increase in school overcrowding from the current 120 percent up to 150 percent. Representatives from various parent teacher and community citizens associations presented testimony that overwhelmingly opposed special consideration for B.F. Saul. In contrast, support for the exemption came from the younger generation of millennials who spoke stating that they wanted walkable communities with bars, and that “if you build it, we’ll come.” Support also came from citizens associations in Twinbrook and Lincoln Park, both of which felt that their communities “on the other side of the tracks” had been neglected by the city for too long.

The mayor and city councilmembers, who voted for the exemption, did so in expectation of a tax revenue windfall for the city with the expectation that the county’s school building projects would be completed prior to new school enrollments coming from B.F. Saul’s new mixed use development on Rockville Pike. The strongest assurance presented to parents with children in already overcrowded schools was that those, who purchase condominiums tend to have no children, and that school enrollment numbers are impacted by single family home resales.

The Twinbrook Quarter development project is expected to take more than a decade to complete, and when done will have buildings as high as 200 feet towering over Rockville Pike to the west and the railroad tracks to the east.

The tension among the city’s councilmembers was papable due to late revisions in submitted documents. And, it was uncomfortable in the audience when the mayor asked those in attendance to stop shaking their heads in disapproval and disagreement with her comments as Mayor Newton explained her rationale for the calculated risk to permit B.F. Saul to move forward and to not place the city into a building moratorium.

Mayor Bridget Donnell Newton told her fellow councilmembers and those in the public hearing that though the county has a school overcapacity problem, the schools still rank high. In contrast, those schools that are under capacity in the state are in places where there is no economic development or growth. The mayor underscored that the city and the county have a good problem to have to deal with.

With the blame for over capacity shifted onto desirable single family neighborhoods, like the greater Twinbrook area to the east and the homes off of Old Georgetown Road and Tuckerman Lane to the south and west, the future of Rockville Pike according to the planners belongs to towering buildings with dinky condominiums inhabited by dual income with no kids households.

At the time of the posting of this article, Yahoo Finance reported that B.F Saul's REIT, which is traded on the New York Stock Exchanges as BFS, was trading at a price to income ratio of 34.73.

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Come in here, dear boy, have a cigar, You're gonna go far, You're gonna fly high,You're never gonna die, You're gonna make it if you try, They're gonna love you.

And did we tell you the name of the game, boy? We call it "Riding The Gravy Train."

Lyrics from Pink Floyd's "Have a Cigar"

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This is the thirteenth article in a series on Windermere and community planning in North Bethesda.

Visit www.WindermereNeighbors.org.