The Montgomery County Council unanimously voted Tuesday to pass a zoning text amendment that will allow certain charitable and cultural organizations to use vacant commercial office space for storage.
“Office vacancy rates in Montgomery County remain an ongoing issue since the COVID pandemic,” County Council President Kate Stewart (D-Dist. 4), lead sponsor of the Street Activation and Vacancy Elimination (S.A.V.E.) ZTA bill, said prior to Tuesday’s vote. “This issue we know is not unique to us.”
The legislation will allow self-storage above the ground floor in buildings in the county’s “commercial residential” zone in which a charitable, philanthropic, or cultural institution occupies space on the ground floor. Currently, self-storage is only allowed in the “commercial residential” zone in basements in certain circumstances.
The new zoning text amendment would allow self-storage for qualifying organizations as long as the existing building is an office building that has had a 90% vacancy rate for at least two years and improvements to the existing building would not “cause practical difficulty or undue hardship for conversion” to a future commercial or residential use, according to the legislative report.
The legislation was sponsored by Stewart, Natali Fani-González (Dist. 6), Andrew Friedson (D-Dist. 1), Dawn Luedtke (D-Dist. 7), Laurie-Anne Sayles (D-At-large), Sidney Katz (D-Dist 3), Kristin Mink (D-Dist. 5), Gabe Albornoz (D-At-large), and council Vice President Will Jawando (D-At-large).
The goal of the legislation, according to its sponsors, is to limit office vacancies in the commercial residential zone and to encourage existing qualifying organizations to use the space. The county had a 19% office vacancy rate at the beginning of the year, according to Stewart.
“We’re at nearly double the amount of vacant office space than in a healthy office market, which means we have a lot of vacant, underutilized office buildings,” Stewart said. “With ongoing conversations of a future recession, tariffs and other things, there are a lot of unknowns and uncertainties as we look at the future.”
This bill is the latest in the council’s broader strategy to address office vacancies. In July 2024, the council voted to approve the Make Office Vacancy Extinct (MOVE) Grant Program, which provides office rental grants for eligible businesses that want to move to the county or expand their local space and county businesses looking to increase their existing footprint.
The MOVE Grant Program was introduced as a pilot program in March 2014 by then-County Executive Ike Leggett (D). However, it was never codified. The 2024 bill established the program under the law as part of the county’s Economic Development Fund. It also increased the maximum financial incentive that a business could receive from the county from $80,000 to $150,000 by increasing the eligible amount of space. Under the program, an eligible business can receive $8 per square foot of its office space.
