Bethesda Magazine July/August 2009 85

paradise lost?By the year 2020,

wi l l a growing populat ion

and increased urban development

hurt the qual i ty of l i fe in the

Bethesda area?

By Bob Guldin

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86 Bethesda Magazine July/August 2009

The Bethesda area may be agreat place to live now, butwhat will it be like in the year2020? Will it have fallen vic-tim to its own appeal?

The things that have attracted current res-idents—great schools and neighborhoods,lively downtowns, access to Washington,D.C., and a strong local economy—willdraw more people in the years ahead.

“The biggest challenge is that everybodywants to live” there, says Kathy Reilly,Montgomery County planner-coordina-tor for the Bethesda area. “It’s so vibrantand diverse.”

For decades, Bethesda has been makingthe transition from a leafy bedroom com-munity to a thriving urban center. Thatchange will continue, and may even accel-erate, bringing more residents, more traf-fic—and a need for some smart planningto maintain the attractive quality of life.

According to the Montgomery Coun-ty Planning Department, the Bethesda-Chevy Chase study area (the area west ofRock Creek and inside the Beltway) con-tained about 92,000 residents in 2005.Planners expect about 112,000 residentsby 2020, and 119,000 by 2030. That’s notsurprising, given the county’s stronggrowth over several decades, an expansionthat is expected to continue as a popula-tion of about 951,000 in 2008 rises toabout 1,075,00 in 2020.

The county forecasts that most of thesurrounding communities will also growsteadily. Between 2005 and 2020, theRockville area’s population could growfrom about 52,000 to 68,000; NorthBethesda could increase from 41,000 to68,000; Kensington/Wheaton could gofrom 77,000 to 85,000; and Silver Springfrom 35,000 to 55,000. The bottom line:southern Montgomery County commu-nities, including Bethesda, Chevy Chase,North Bethesda and Rockville, are pro-jected to be the fastest-growing areas in thecounty over the next 11 years. (The one real exception to the pattern is Potomac,where the population is expected to holdsteady at about 47,000 over the next 30years.)

For an area that’s densely populatedalready, that kind of growth could be hard

to absorb. It will mean more cars andmore crowded public transit, more ener-gy use, more pollution and waste, and agreater demand for every kind of ameni-ty, from schools to parks to senior centers.

But population growth isn’t all bad. Agrowing population will boost housingvalues, help local businesses and result inmore tax revenue for the support of pub-lic services.

too much, too fast?The biggest question facing the Bethesdaarea is: Where will all the new residents live?As Rollin Stanley, Montgomery County’splanning director, likes to point out, only4 percent of the county’s land is still openfor building, given current zoning. So put-ting the new arrivals in subdivisions in dis-tant suburbs probably won’t work.

The answer, according to most local plan-ners, is creating new clusters of tall build-ings to increase urban density. Stanley saysbuilding on a larger scale makes sense forBethesda’s urban center and all along Metro’sRed Line from Bethesda to Shady Grove.Apartment and condo buildings close topublic transit probably will be more than200 feet tall, with smaller buildings in ar-eas that aren’t close to transit hubs.

Planners call this approach the “NewUrbanism.” The idea is to create walka-ble, attractive, high-density communi-ties near mass transit where people canlive, work and shop and where cars are

not a daily necessity. Many believe the trend toward bigger

buildings and a more urban scene is un-stoppable. Dave Feldman, executive di-rector of Bethesda Green, a local nonprofitthat promotes sustainable development,says, “Is Bethesda changing from a bed-room community to an urban area? Yes,it’s moving toward high density. We needto adjust to a different lifestyle.”

But some residents who perceive the lastremnants of small-town atmosphere dis-appearing from Bethesda and the sur-rounding towns express unhappiness withhigh-rises and big-city traffic. “For peoplewho have been around for a long time,there are concerns that things are happen-ing too fast,” says Ilaya Hopkins, who untilJuly 1 was president of the East Bethesda Cit-izens Association. “We have to be sensitiveto the natural resources we have, to the joyof having green spaces in our increasinglyurban environment. We have lots of littlegems—the trick is preserving them.”

Carol Trawick, Bethesda business leaderand co-founder of the Jim and Carol Traw-ick Foundation, says, “We have to adjustto the population explosion, that’s a real-ity. But that doesn’t mean we have to loseour human scale—we need to maintainit. We don’t all want to live in high-rises.”

Roger Berliner, the county council mem-ber who represents Bethesda, Chevy Chaseand Potomac, favors a middle ground onthat issue.“I believe we can enjoy the NewUrbanism and protect the quality of life ofolder neighborhoods,” he says.

A step toward maintaining the area’straditional housing stock came in 2008,when the county council passed Berlin-er-sponsored legislation to restrict thepractice of tearing down houses and build-ing much larger “McMansions” on rela-tively small lots. The law reduced the al-lowable size of replacement houses byabout 20 percent, restricting both newhouse “footprints” and their heights.

Bethesda Realtor Jane Fairweather pre-dicts that most neighborhoods in the year2020 “will look pretty much the same” asthey do now. The teardown trend will con-tinue, she says, but people will build small-er homes than they did a few years ago be-cause of the anti-McMansion law, the high

Bethesda Green’s Dave Feldman

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cost of energy and the aging of the popu-lation.

According to U.S. Census Bureau andMaryland Department of Planning fore-casts, the number of people 60 years of ageand older living in Montgomery Countywill increase 37 percent by 2020, fromabout 181,000 in 2010 to 248,000.

“Who’s going to live in large houses?”Fairweather asks.

The aging of the population also will in-crease the demand for condos, town hous-es and apartments in downtown areas,she says, because older people want to beclose to restaurants and stores and wanta sense of community.

a gl impse ofthe futureIf you want a glimpse of what the New Ur-banism will be like, take a look at the re-development plans for the White Flintarea. “The Rockville Pike is currently a

strip mall on steroids,” Berliner says. Thequestion is, “Can it evolve into the para-digm of the New Urbanism?”

Stanley has high hopes. “I’d like to seea tree-lined boulevard with transit downthe middle of it,” he says, “and much morevibrancy in the streets. In 10 years, you’llsee more local streets that create grids—not those super-blocks that surround theshopping centers.”

Nkosi Yearwood, the county’s seniorplanner for White Flint, says that as thearea shifts away from its strip mall retaillandscape, the county wants to combine“vertical living” with “horizontal living.”That could mean parks, open space, pub-lic plazas, wide sidewalks and a medianwith trees to go along with the apartmentbuildings.

Hopkins, the East Bethesda neighbor-hood leader who is also co-chairwoman ofthe Western Montgomery County Citi-zens Advisory Board’s Education and Qual-ity of Life Committee, is skeptical that thecounty can make the White Flint plan work.

“The ideas are fine on paper,” she says. “Weneed to see them translated into reality.”

Berliner acknowledges that when itcomes to remaking White Flint, “the de-tails will be fiercely contested.”

According to Yearwood, plans are sim-ilar for the areas near the Twinbrook,Rockville and Shady Grove Metro sta-tions. “Not as intense as White Flint,” hesays, “but the same sorts of principles.”

The Woodmont Triangle section ofBethesda will be another area in the midstof a transformation by 2020. In 2006, thecounty council passed a plan that per-mits much denser development, includ-ing tall condo and apartment buildings,in an area that is currently defined bylow-rise buildings and smaller, locallyowned shops.

The recession has put virtually all de-velopment in the Woodmont Triangle onhold. But by 2020, many of the new proj-ects are expected to be under way.

A number of small-business owners inthe Woodmont Triangle worry that rede-

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88 Bethesda Magazine July/August 2009

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BESTPLACE velopment will drive themout of business, which would al-ter the small-town feel of the area. “Asdevelopment comes, the rents go up. It’shard for local businesses to stay in busi-ness,” says Neal Freed, president of FreedPhotography on Cordell Avenue.

Ginanne Italiano, president of TheGreater Bethesda-Chevy Chase Chamberof Commerce, says small businesses inthe Woodmont Triangle will face chal-lenges, but most will survive. “There areloan programs and financing programs,especially for businesses that have beenhere for a long time,” she says. “And mostof the residential projects will have spacefor retail on the first floor—but will themom-and-pops be able to afford it?”

Italiano says there will still be areas—“a half block here, a quarter block there—with lots of quaint and unique businesses.”

play ing intraff icPerhaps the toughest single problem theBethesda area will face as it moves toward2020 will be getting people where theywant to go. With a growing population andmore development, traffic will continueto get worse, even if more people takemass transit.

Dan Hardy, the county’s chief trans-portation planner, says traffic in Bethes-da and North Bethesda (including part ofRockville Pike) is expected to increase 15percent over the next 10 years, given pro-jected developments already approved bythe county.

Traffic in the Bethesda area is expect-ed to be made worse by the shift of up to2,500 military jobs to the National NavalMedical Center (formerly Bethesda NavalHospital). A Montgomery County studypredicts that the military’s realignmentplan will add about 900 cars to both themorning and evening rush hours near theNational Institutes of Health.

In addition, the Metropolitan Wash-ington Council of Governments expectsthe number of jobs in its “Bethesda-NIHCluster” to grow from 94,000 in 2005 to108,000 in 2030, and for the number in

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the North Bethesda-Rockville area to growfrom 104,000 in 2005 to 143,000 in 2030.More jobs mean more commuters andmore traffic.

The Purple Line—a light-rail connec-tion between New Carrollton in PrinceGeorge’s County and Bethesda—may bebuilt by 2020 to ease some of the east-westtraffic (just how much is the subject ofintense debate between Purple Line sup-porters and opponents). The line will prob-ably follow the Capital Crescent Trail eastof Bethesda, come through the train tun-nel under Wisconsin Avenue and end infront of the Bethesda Row Cinema. A newentrance would be carved at the south endof the Bethesda Metro station, providingeasy passage between the Red Line andPurple Line stations.

While the prospects generally look goodfor the quality of life in the Bethesda areain 2020, one of the biggest unknowns isthe future of the local economy. If it wors-ens or is slow to recover, times will becomefar more difficult for the area’s many busi-nesses, and construction plans will con-tinue to be put on hold. But Hopkins, theneighborhood leader, says a slow eco-nomic recovery could have a silver lining.It would “give us a little breathing space,”she says. “We do have a great thing goinghere—we don’t want to lose it.”

Bob Guldin is a writer and editor basedin Takoma Park.

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Bethesda Magazine July/August 2009 89

Neighborhood leader Ilaya Hopkins

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