Residents near a federal construction project in Bethesda say they've woken up to radios blaring at 4:30 a.m., seen half-naked workers changing clothes in a residential parking lot and almost been blocked in their driveways. As construction continues on the $300 million, 40-acre Intelligence Community Campus-Bethesda (ICC-B) at 4600 Sangamore Road, some in nearby neighborhoods claim disruptive contractors who park outside of the secure, fenced-in site have been a problem for months. Not all of the workers on the project have the necessary security clearance for the site, so some choose to park on nearby neighborhood streets. While there is legal two-hour parking on streets such as Overlea Road in the Sumner neighborhood, resident Jane Croft said she and her husband have had to call Montgomery County traffic officers a few times to issue tickets. "It was difficult getting out of our driveway because there were cars parked on both sides. That has improved a lot," Croft said. "But we've been there when they've been issuing tickets. Guys come down and just look at the tickets and just throw them on the seat." At a meeting on Tuesday organized by neighborhood groups, deputy project manager Jim Turner said officials have continually told the workers — most who appear to be subcontractors for general contractor Whiting-Turner — to avoid parking on neighborhood streets. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is the federal agency in charge of the project. Turner said project managers have opened up about 40 spaces on another federal site on MacArthur Boulevard. There's a roughly 20-space lot available on the ICC-B campus and recently, 100 spaces were made available in the campus' new parking garage. 
"As soon as we started to recognize that there were issues, we started to work on one, seeing if we could find some alternative places for them to park out of the neighborhoods," Tuner told the citizens groups. "What we began to find was there was a lot of illegal parking in the no standing zones, in the areas that would block driveways, most recently on Sentinel Drive." Charlie Bragale, who lives on Baltan Road in the Sumner neighborhood, said workers will sometimes pull up with music blaring as early as 4:30 a.m. He said he awoke on Tuesday to see a worker, apparently sleeping in his vehicle, with his feet sticking out of the truck's window. Laurene Sherlock, who lives in the Sumner Square Townhomes across the street from ICC-B, said she's found chicken bones, food containers and drug paraphernalia littered around her parking lot and the Shops at Sumner Place. Sherlock and Croft said the disruptions subsided for a time, but there has been a recent uptick. "We're dealing with human nature and people will pay attention to what they're told to do for a few weeks," Sherlock said, "and then things start going back to the way they were." The ICC-B project involves constructing a new building for the Defense Intelligence Agency, which is taking over the secure campus from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. That agency moved to Virginia in 2011 as part of Base Realignment and Closure. The new-look campus is expected to be complete in 2017. Construction on the main Centrum building should wind down at the end of summer, which according to project officials will mean a roughly 30-40 percent decrease in the amount of workers on-site. A smaller building closer to Sangamore Road will still be under construction and a renovation of the fourth and fifth floors of the existing Erskine Hall will continue. The completed campus will house 3,000 employees with 1,800 parking spaces. Project officials have said they hope to set up an employee shuttle to and from the base from the Friendship Heights Metro station. The project's design, featuring a modern looking main building, grassy parks and bioretention areas, impressed many nearby residents who were initially wary of the proposal. Map via Google Maps
Neighbors Complain Of Disruptive Construction Workers Near Bethesda Intelligence Site
