Two of three County Council members on the body’s Planning, Housing and Economic Development (PHED) Committee voted this week to increase the amount of affordable housing required in the Westbard Sector Plan.
Council member George Leventhal, who along with Hans Riemer supported the council staff-suggested increase, said more affordable housing should be the county’s first priority in Westbard, an area of Bethesda around River Road and Westbard Avenue that has just 48 rent-restricted affordable housing units—about 4 percent of the area’s households.
“This will provide opportunities for folks who work at the Westwood Shopping Center potentially to live there too and not travel long distances,” Leventhal said during the committee’s work session Monday.
PHED Chairwoman Nancy Floreen abstained from voting on the increase, saying she has concerns about how the requirement could impact developers’ ability to pay for other sought-after public amenities such as the restoration of the Willett Branch stream that runs through the area, road improvements and public civic space.
Council member Roger Berliner, who represents the area but isn’t on the PHED Committee, expressed a similar concern.
“This plan provides a boatload of [affordable housing],” Berliner said Monday, referring to previous agreements that would require about 125 new income-restricted affordable units in any new development at the Park Bethesda site and 45 new affordable units at the Housing Opportunities Commission-operated Westwood Tower site.
Both Westbard Avenue properties are home to existing apartment buildings, but the properties’ owners have asked for zoning in the Westbard Sector Plan to allow them to build new apartment buildings on surface parking lots.
The affordable housing increase, if approved by the full council, would boost the amount of moderately priced dwelling units (MPDUs) required in most new Westbard development projects from the countywide 12.5 percent standard to 15 percent.
By county law, rents for MPDUs can’t surpass rates deemed affordable for households earning less than 60 percent of the Washington, D.C., area’s median income. While MPDU maximum annual income restrictions vary based on the type of housing unit and number of people in a household, the minimum annual household income is $30,000 for rental units and $35,000 for for-purchase units.
The increase would likely have the most impact on developer Equity One’s redevelopment plans for Westbard’s Westwood Shopping Center.
According to an estimate that Planning Department staff provided the PHED Committee, the increase would result in an extra 16 moderately priced dwelling units (for a total of 68 affordable units) in Equity One’s redevelopment of the 11-acre shopping center site. It could also bring an extra seven of the units if Equity One applies to build housing on three of its nearby sites.
Equity One told Planning Department staff the 16 extra MPDUs on the Westwood Shopping Center site would cost the developer an additional $5,750,000, or $360,000 per unit. Berliner worried that cost could make the developer less able or less willing to help pay for the cost of a key road realignment of Ridgefield Road and a roughly 10,000-foot civic space that would be part of its project but potentially given to the county for public use.
Some in the community also have worried about zoning rules that allow certain projects that provide more affordable housing units than required to build higher-than-recommended building heights.
“To characterize this as [saying] we’re voting for higher heights and fewer amenities I think is a substantial overstatement,” Leventhal said to that criticism. “I hope that the Planning Board will demand the maximum amount of amenities. We’re granting [property owners] a dramatic increase in the value of their land so I would find it very disappointing if the property owner simultaneously says we can’t afford it but we can’t tell you why.”
Also during the Monday work session, the PHED Committee recommended against changing zoning for most of the Westbard properties along River Road—rejecting the suggestion of allowing for a floating zone that could allow for redevelopment through a more intensive review process. The properties include a 7-Eleven, gas stations and self-storage facility.
