Two major property owners in the Westbard section of Bethesda came away from a Planning Board work session Thursday with taller allowable building heights than initially recommended by county planners.
Capital Properties, which owns the 110-foot tall, 258-unit Park Bethesda apartment building on Westbard Avenue, asked for maximum building heights ranging from 150 feet to 35 feet for a series of buildings it one day might pursue on existing surface parking lots.
County planners initially recommended maximum building heights of 50 feet throughout the property, in part because of concerns from residents of the Westbard Mews town homes to the south.
Lynne Battle, a Westbard Mews resident, told the Planning Board that Capital Properties shouldn’t be allowed taller building heights based on the existence of the 110-foot-tall apartment building, which was converted to residential use in 2002 after serving as a federal government office building.
“It was a grandfathered government office building allowed to stay there,” Battle said. “Now that is being used as an endpoint to allow a lot of height. We are a neighborhood of townhouses and we don’t want to have high-rises going up.”
But Robert Brewer, the attorney representing Capital Properties, pointed to 4.5 acres of mostly parking lots around the Park Bethesda. About 3.5 acres are behind the existing building and Brewer said a taller building in that area wouldn’t bother neighbors.
He also said the developer would be willing to help provide a new street to River Road and a pedestrian connection from Westbard Avenue to the Capital Crescent Trail behind the site, but that those improvements “won’t happen without redevelopment.”
Capital Properties said it also will commit to designating as affordable housing 25 percent of the new residential units it’s planning to build.
The Planning Board tentatively agreed to allow a maximum building height of 110 feet directly behind the Park Bethesda, with the allowable height dipping down to 35 feet directly adjacent to Westbard Mews.
Equity One, which hopes to pursue a major redevelopment project focused on the aging Westwood Shopping Center, requested 125-foot maximum building heights on the Westwood II Shopping Center site at Ridgefield Road and Westbard Avenue. The property owner asked for the same maximum building height next door, at the site of the Citgo gas station at 5471 Westbard Ave.
Planners recommended allowing maximum building heights of 50 feet. Planning Board commissioners, after debating what would be the acceptable height to incentivize redevelopment of the properties, agreed on a maximum allowable building height of 90 feet with the same density recommended by planners.
“There’s a pretty awful building there and to get it redeveloped, it has to have height,” Planning Board Commissioner Norman Dreyfuss said.
Any redevelopment project on the Westwood II site could also include the realignment of Ridgefield Road, a solution pitched by planners hoping to channel traffic onto Westbard Avenue away from the single-family neighborhood to the north and west.
Equity One also asked for a maximum allowable building height of 150 feet at the site of the Bowlmor bowling alley at 5353 Westbard Ave. Planners recommended 75 feet and the Planning Board agreed on a 110-foot maximum building height.
The Planning Board is expected to finalize its recommendations for the Westbard Sector Plan Dec. 17.
Starting next year, the County Council will do its review and make its own recommendations, which would be final. The council will hold its own public hearing and work sessions on the Planning Board recommendations.
