In 1992, horseshoe sandboxes, tot lots and soccer fields were standard elements of suburban-style neighborhoods in Montgomery County.
In 2015, as development in the county becomes increasingly urban in nature, those amenities aren’t nearly as relevant, pushing the Montgomery County Planning Department to update its requirements when it comes to recreational facilities.
“Horseshoes aren’t as popular,” said Robert Kronenberg, who oversees the department’s review of projects in Bethesda and much of Silver Spring. “I have only seen two projects in 15 years that incorporated that facility. Over the last decade, as we’ve seen more high-rise buildings come in, our guidelines haven’t really been accommodating.”
Today, bocce ball courts, dog-washing stations and yoga studios are in vogue. But the county’s Recreation Guidelines, written in 1992, don’t include them, at least explicitly.
The guidelines provide point values to private developers for proposed recreational facilities including tot lots, horseshoes sandboxes, volleyball courts, bicycle trails, playing fields and community gardens.
In order to receive site plan approval from the Planning Board, the sum of those points must match or nearly match the “demand points” assigned to a project based on its housing type and number of units across each of five age categories.
Planners said they’ve been able to work with developers of high-rise projects in downtown Bethesda and Silver Spring that don’t initially meet the guidelines so that the outdated nature of the requirements haven’t posed major challenges.
But they’d still like to update the rules to match modern-day development styles and the county’s new Zoning Ordinance that went into effect in 2014.
To do so, planners held a meeting with landscape architects and engineers in December and plan to hold more sessions to come up with a more flexible approach to recreational amenities.
“Recreation is changing, so what people want is changing,” said Kipling Reynolds, the Planning Department’s Area 3 chief who oversees projects in Potomac, East County and the up-county region.
Robert Sponseller, an architect and design principal with Washington, D.C.-based Shalom Baranes Associates, said the December meeting was encouraging.
“They’re going about this in a very careful and intelligent way by reaching out to different landscape architects to see what’s going on in the marketplace today,” Sponseller said. “I don’t think the old plan envisioned cooking classes in these buildings or a flower garden or herb garden. These things provide benefits that aren’t really recognized in the old code.”
“We’ve started to see Montgomery County embrace and recognize that these facilities are now more about an actual experience,” said Sri Velamati, chief financial officer at Rockville-based developer The Tower Cos. “There’s a bit of a trust factor from both sides that you’re going to have a quality jurisdiction and a quality developer trying to get it right.”
Velamati said The Tower Cos., which is behind a major revamp of The Blairs apartments and shopping center in Silver Spring, is contemplating adding bicycle pedals that when pushed, would emit a light show.
He said The Tower Cos. has also focused on adding natural light to stairwells as a way to encourage residents to take the stairs.
“Doesn’t that provide something from a recreation perspective? It’s sort of going through and thinking, is a dog park recreational? Or is it just recreational for the dogs?” Velamati said. “The core intent of the guidelines is to get people out and to get them having fun but doing it in a healthy way. We’re just trying to be creative about our approach to that.”
Sponseller said the December meeting also included a discussion of creating distinct recreation requirements for buildings in urban and suburban settings.
“The development teams are usually more than exceeding what would be minimum requirements for recreation space,” Sponseller said. “But depending on the location, it might not be desirable to overdo it on the amenity side because then your residents aren’t members of the local community, aren’t supporting local retailers. It’s a difficult balance.”
Mary Beth O’Quinn, who’s managing the revision of the guidelines for the Planning Department, said planners hope to present their ideas this spring to the Planning Board.
“We want to provide more flexibility and more choices,” O’Quinn said, “so that there are more ways in which a developer can meet those criteria.”
