Residents in and around the Westbard area of Bethesda are calling for the County Council to delay its final approval of a controversial new master plan for the area that would allow for the redevelopment of an aging shopping center and other key properties.
A group of volunteer residents called “Save Westbard” held a meeting Sunday afternoon at the Washington Waldorf School in which many expressed their outrage over even a pared back plan for the area that could get final council approval this month.
Bethesda resident Jeanne Allen wrote an opinion piece published Friday in The Washington Post detailing her opposition to the plan and writing “perhaps the biggest story of the region is not getting much notice.”
On its Facebook page, the Save Westbard group encouraged its supporters to comment on the piece.
The density and building heights that garnered preliminary approval from the full council March 22 would allow for as many as 1,213 new residential units to be built in the area of River Road and Westbard Avenue over the next 30 years.
That’s about half of what the county’s Planning Board recommended in December, and came after council member Roger Berliner, who represents Westbard, lobbied colleagues to significantly cut back.
But some at Sunday’s meeting said Berliner’s alternative still allows too much development, even though they recognize the more-than-50-year-old Westwood Shopping Center at the center of the area could use an upgrade.
Some said residents should consider incorporating the area to institute their own council and planning department.
Jeanne Allen leads votes at Sunday's Save Westbard meeting. Via YouTube/Save Westbard
Developer Equity One, which owns the shopping center and several other sites along Westbard Avenue, has said it plans to move quickly on a redevelopment project that would bring a roughly 250,000-square-foot retail center and townhome community to the property.
At Sunday’s meeting, the more than 250 people in attendance voted “to not allow our community to be re-labeled as ‘urban’ by the Planning [Board],” to ask the council to delay its final vote on the plan by four weeks, to restrict the plan to a maximum of 580 additional residential units and to “request/demand” the council release all emails between council members and those representing developers.
It’s the latest in what has been a particularly contentious master planning process, even by Montgomery County standards.
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.
One November 2014 meeting devolved into residents shouting criticisms at county planners. During council public hearings in February, opponents urged the council to defund the Planning Board, implied council members were influenced by political contributions from developers and equated developers to the Koch brothers.
In her Washington Post opinion piece, Allen compared Equity One to “Donald Trump for shopping centers” and said the council’s preliminary approval of the plan “to placate a major developer is fraught with nonsense, government overreach and a ‘we know best’ mentality. We don’t need change for change’s sake.”
