Even before a County Council committee deliberated over proposed zoning and building heights for his company’s properties Tuesday afternoon, Equity One Executive Vice President of Development Michael Berfield said the developer is ready to move on its redevelopment plans for Westbard Avenue in Bethesda.
“We’re going,” said Berfield, who in an interview Tuesday morning with Bethesda Beat also said Equity One is developing an initial sketch plan application and talking with Planning Department officials about submitting the application as soon as possible after the council approves the Westbard Sector Plan, which could happen in April.
Equity One, the New York-based publicly traded shopping center owner, has pushed for zoning changes throughout the sector plan rewrite to allow it to build a roughly 250,000-square-foot retail center and town homes at the Westwood Shopping Center, a more than 50-year-old facility it bought in early 2014 along with a host of neighboring properties.
Some residents of single-family neighborhoods around the shopping center have loudly denounced the idea of redevelopment on that site and other properties, arguing more density would ruin the suburban feel of the Westbard neighborhood, add students to already overcrowded schools and attract more traffic to River Road.
Berfield, who grew up in Bethesda and who has served as Equity One’s point person throughout the process, said it is likely redevelopment of Westwood Shopping Center would be in the first phase of the developer’s plans.
Berfield said the developer is talking with various grocery store companies, including Giant Food (which has a location in the existing shopping center), about taking over an anchor grocery store space in the new development.
Berfield said that since taking ownership of the shopping center, Equity One has extended the leases of any retailer whose lease has ended only to the summer of 2017, another indication of how quickly the developer is hoping to move on its plans.
“That’s what I’ve been saying from day one is putting aside what people think of the sector plan, our plan, I think there’s a positive in the fact that you’ve got a company that is in position to invest the type of money we’re talking about investing,” Berfield said. “There’s a lot of developers out there who will push for approvals and push for plans and sort of get everyone worked up and then all of a sudden, everything comes to a grounding halt. We’re fortunate to be the type of company that views this as a very long-term investment. So when you’re looking at it in that type of view, you start as soon as you can.”
It’s unlikely the building density and height recommendations made later Tuesday by the council’s Planning, Housing and Economic Development (PHED) Committee impacted Equity One’s plans.
The committee, made up of council members Nancy Floreen, Hans Riemer and George Leventhal, voted to slightly decrease the maximum allowable density on the Westwood Shopping Center site, and to add language to the sector plan that explicitly limits Equity One to building town homes on the adjacent former Manor Care assisted living site.
At the suggestion of council member Roger Berliner, who represents Bethesda and who presented his own alternative to the Planning Board-recommended sector plan, Leventhal and Riemer voted to limit building heights to 75 feet at the Westwood II Shopping Center at Ridgefield Road and Westbard Avenue.
At the Westwood Tower site on Westbard Avenue, the committee agreed with the Planning Board’s recommendation to allow new apartment buildings of up to 75 feet tall that are anticipated to bring 150 more apartment units, 30 percent of which would be income-restricted affordable units managed by the county’s Housing Opportunities Commission.
The committee also agreed with the Planning Board’s proposed 110-foot maximum building height for a set of Equity One-owned Westbard Avenue properties now home to the Bowlmor bowling alley, a gas station and a storage facility.
Berfield said the developer’s sketch plan is likely to include some renderings, massing diagrams and expected phasing of the project and could also include plans for new apartments on the Westwood Tower property—where the Housing Opportunities Commission holds a ground lease.
Developers aren’t required to submit detailed building designs until later stages of the Planning Department’s project approval process.
In an email to council members shortly before Tuesday’s PHED work session, resident Robert Lipman asked members of the committee “to take a strategic pause” in order to create “a foam block scale model that shows the maximum possible development” for the entire Westbard sector.
Leventhal dismissed that suggestion during the work session, saying that no sector plan in the history of Montgomery County has ever seen a “maximum buildout” and that foam blocks wouldn’t represent the varying architectural styles of the buildings that are developed over the roughly 30-year term of the plan.
During council public hearings in February, Lipman held up a Monopoly board and directly accused Berfield of trying to buy support from the community for Equity One’s project.
In the Tuesday morning interview with Bethesda Beat, Berfield said he wasn’t surprised by negative reactions to his company’s plans and that those opposed to redevelopment “have legitimate concerns and they’re fully within their rights to ask questions, to challenge assumptions.”
But he also said he was taken aback by what he labeled as opponents’ attempts to “delegitimize” those residents and others who have spoken up in support of the project.
“At the public hearing, to have people get booed for supporting the project; these are intelligent, mature people. To be booing people at a public hearing to me is just—I would have expected a little more,” Berfield said. “I would’ve expected a slightly higher level of discussion about the project as opposed to just easy little catch words people like to use and a lot of anger and bitterness at their own neighbors who support this thing. It’s really too bad.”
