Two developers pursuing and constructing projects around the White Flint Metro station have scheduled a public meeting to solicit ideas on what the area should be called.
The event will take place at Streetsense’s Bethesda offices from 6 to 9 p.m. Sept. 11. It will include a presentation about the emerging urban district and then shift to a conversation about marketing the area.
“We hope we can drill down to between five and 10 names that everyone is happy with,” said Lindsay Hoffman, executive director of Friends of White Flint, the nonprofit organization comprised of residents, developers and local businesses with a stake in the development of the area. “Then the plan is for StreetSense to take those names and do market research and come up with a recommendation from there.”
The event is being funded by two of the area's primary developers—The JBG Companies, which is developing the North Bethesda Market project, and Federal Realty, which is constructing Pike &Rose.
Vanessa Rodriguez, a spokeswoman for Federal Realty, said JBG and Federal Realty have agreed to take the lead on branding the district and coordinate their efforts with the other property owners on Rockville Pike.
“Our main goal is to interact with the community, get their thoughts on naming this area and foster creative ideation through a fun, interactive Charette session,” Rodriguez said in an email. “The session will also present case studies on how these types of branding initiatives have been successful throughout the country.”
The question of what to name the district came into focus this spring as a branding campaign got underway. JBG and Federal Realty officials have questioned whether continuing with the name White Flint was the best option because it is closely associated with the aging, now almost completely shuttered White Flint Mall. Meanwhile, Lerner Enterprises, which owns the mall and is planning a large-scale development on its site, has supported keeping the name White Flint.
The county has remained neutral on the naming question, deferring it to The White Flint Downtown Advisory Committee, which is a 14-member panel appointed by County Executive Ike Leggett to advise the county on issues in the emerging district.
The forum will be moderated by Holly Sears Sullivan, president of the Montgomery Business Development Corporation.
The developers hosting the September meeting want to make it clear that any name changes for the area would not affect residents’ mailing addresses. Rodriguez said any name change or branding efforts would be similar to the approach taken with an area like Adams Morgan, where people know it by that name, but residents still use a Washington, D.C., address for mailing purposes.
Any name change would solely be for business and marketing purposes, Rodriguez said.
“It’s a discussion about coming up with a way to effectively brand and market the commercial properties along [Rockville Pike] to create an exciting new urban center in Montgomery County,” Rodriquez said.
Once Streetsense finishes its market research and comes forward with a recommendation, the plan is to present that to the Downtown Advisory Committee, according to Hoffman. Members of the committee said during a July meeting they would be interested in a presentation on rebranding or renaming the district and that its members would consider the merits of any proposal after the presentation.
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