The area surrounding the White Flint Metro is growing denser each year as developers continue to construct large projects and now officials are looking into setting up an entity to beautify the area and possibly manage local events.
The entity could provide services similar to what Bethesda Urban Partnership does in downtown Bethesda.
The problem is funding. Unlike Bethesda, the newly named Pike District doesn’t have a parking lot district or an urban district tax to help fund what is commonly called a business improvement district.
On Tuesday morning, the White Flint Implementation Advisory Committee—a group of development, residential and government representatives—discussed the issue with Montgomery County Council member Roger Berliner; members of the county’s Office of Legislative Oversight; and Claire Schaefer, president of the Mount Vernon Triangle Community Improvement District in Washington, D.C.
Schaefer said a majority of the improvement districts in the District are funded through taxes levied on large properties—office buildings or residential properties with 10 or more units. She said forming an improvement district normally requires a push from the private sector, which often benefits by seeing an increase in property values.
Improvement districts are designed to supplement government services, Schaefer said, by employing people who provide additional cleaning of streets and open spaces as well as neighborhood services.
The Office of Legislative Oversight recently issued a report examining different business and community districts across the U.S. that identified possible issues in setting up new ones in the county that centered on the lack of other parking districts and issues surrounding establishing a new urban district tax.
Berliner encouraged those attending the meeting to begin thinking about an economic model different from the Bethesda Urban Partnership model—which has a $3.4 million budget and 30 employees.
About 82 percent of the partnership’s funding over the last year came from parking meter and fee revenue, according to the legislative oversight report. That funding source couldn’t be replicated in White Flint/Pike District because there’s no parking lot district.
“This is an important time to have a different kind of conversation,” Berliner said. “Do we have the capacity to tax ourselves? Are people comfortable with taxing themselves for these purposes and what is the rate?”
It was more of a listening session for development officials, which included representatives from Lerner Enterprises, Saul Centers and Federal Realty. Given their ownership of large properties in the area, the businesses may be required to contribute more if the county creates a traditional improvement district model that’s funded primarily by commercial property owners.
It’s not clear yet what financial responsibility would fall on residential property owners—who may range from condo owners to single-family homeowners inside a new district—if an improvement district was created. Some improvement districts, such as in the District, only tax properties with 10 or more units, while in Bethesda, new condos are taxed, but those that existed before the Bethesda Urban Partnership was formed are not.
