County Touts Ridership of Shuttle to Bethesda Office Park Home of Marriott International

The first two weeks of shuttle service have seen an average of 200 riders per day

August 11, 2016 9:53 a.m.

Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett is touting a free shuttle service from the Grosvenor-Strathmore Metro station to the Rock Spring office park as an innovative way to keep office parks attractive to businesses that are considering moves to more urban areas.

Marriott International, the hotel giant headquartered in the Bethesda office park, has announced its intention to leave Rock Spring by the time its lease is up in 2022 for a more Metro-accessible location.

Leggett told Bethesda Beat that the shuttle, which will cost the county $400,000 a year, was an idea that came out of discussions with Marriott and other businesses in the park about the lack of transit connectivity. Marriott has about 2,500 employees who work at its Fernwood Road facility.

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Leggett said the county’s decision to set up the Rock Spring Park Express isn’t directly tied to its ongoing effort to persuade Marriott to keep its next corporate headquarters in the county.

“We’ve been having discussions with [Marriott] over the last year,” Leggett said. “We are hopeful that we will have a [new] location for them. But even so, it still raises a question about traditional office parks away from Metro. The normal bus service and the connection to Metro was not as direct as it should be and it was a reason for concern some of the businesses expressed.”

The shuttle, operated by the Montgomery County Department of Transportation (MCDOT), runs every 10 minutes on weekdays from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. and from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. It travels directly to and from the Grosvenor-Strathmore Metro station.

There are five stops around the Rock Spring office park, which is also home to the headquarters of defense and aerospace giant Lockheed Martin and Total Wine & More, the nation’s largest privately held wine retailer.

The roughly three-mile route has had an average of 200 riders a day since it started July 25, according to the county.

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Via MCDOT

According to a county press release, the county is also examining a “placemaking project” to bring food trucks, movie nights, live music or other events to the Rock Spring office park.

The office park is home to 7 percent of the county’s entire office space supply, but is 22.3 percent vacant, according to the Montgomery County Planning Department. The countywide office vacancy average is 19 percent.

If there are no other arrivals or departures by the time Marriott leaves, the vacancy rate would increase to 39 percent.

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The Planning Department is debating new zoning and land use guidelines for the office park through its Rock Spring Master Plan, with the goal of diversifying the mix of uses in the area.

Some of that diversification is happening already. Bethesda-based developer EYA is building a neighborhood of 168 townhomes on a plot of land originally reserved for office zone across the street from Marriott.

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