A Washington, D.C., developer’s plans to develop a high-rise residential building in downtown Silver Spring that would incorporate and preserve the façade of the historic Tastee Diner dining car are moving forward after gaining county Planning Board approval Thursday.
Roadside Development is behind the plans, which call for construction of a 312-foot-tall building with 493 residential units, 20,000 square feet of commercial space intended for a grocer and a 422-space structured parking garage at 8676 Georgia Ave., planning documents state.
The proposed development, which will take up two lots between Georgia and Ramsey avenues, is near Mi Rancho, a longtime Silver Spring Mexican restaurant, and the county-owned Cameron Street parking garage. The 1-acre property is currently occupied by the former Tastee Diner restaurant, which closed in 2023, and a bank that was most recently a Capital One branch.
By a 4-0 vote, the board unanimously approved Roadside’s site plans and an amendment to the project’s preliminary plans. Commissioner Mitra Pedoeem, who was reappointed to the board by the County Council on Tuesday, was not present at Thursday’s meeting.
Several community members testified during a public hearing on the plans held before the vote, expressing support for Roadside’s preservation efforts and the amount of housing proposed for the building, as well as concerns about potential traffic congestion from the development.
Brian Corcoran, a partner at Roadside Development, told Bethesda Today after the board’s vote that with the site plan approval, the development team hopes to begin construction sometime in mid-2026.
Corcoran said he believes the project will be “transformative” for downtown Silver Spring. The development will be less than half a mile away from the Silver Spring Recreation and Aquatic Center and also the Paul S. Sarbanes Transit Center.
The building “will kind of be a gateway to a new district in Silver Spring [with] the aquatic center immediately to the northwest,” Corcoran said. “I think this … is really going to be the new ‘it place’ in Silver Spring.”
Planning Board Chair Artie Harris echoed Corcoran’s sentiments, calling the project “transformational for the county” before voting to approve the plans. Harris praised the amount of housing the building will have and the plans for a street-level plaza next to the Tastee Diner facade.
“This will be a place where people will want to be. It will activate the streets and be a very great community hub,” Harris said.
Commissioner Shawn Bartley also praised the project, noting that the Tastee Diner had been the setting of important life milestones and memories, such as eating at the diner with his wife after their wedding reception.
“It’s a spectacular project,” Bartley said. “I’m really excited that the owners are taking the initiative to make a building that’ll be a beacon in the community and taking the risk to push the building’s expanses to the maximum amount. It’s exciting.”
During Thursday’s public hearing, two Silver Spring residents, as well as Stephanie Helsing, president and CEO of the Great Silver Spring Chamber of Commerce, and Debbie Chalfie, preservation chair of the Art Deco Society of Washington, shared their feedback on the project.
Helsing shared the chamber’s support for the project in her testimony, noting that the redevelopment would reactivate that area of downtown Silver Spring. She noted that the community has faced economic challenges due to the pandemic and federal government layoffs.
“The subsequent changes in our workforce habits, a lack of boots on the ground, the closing of businesses, a loss of jobs, have hurt our general economy,” Helsing said. “The mission of the Silver Spring chamber is to widen opportunities by growing jobs and businesses to increase prosperity for all our residents. And this type of development is what Silver Spring needs to make it happen.”
Chalfie focused on the project’s preservation of the dining car, praising design changes developers had made to the building that make the car appear more prominent. Some of those changes include placing the car further away from the building and using darker-colored building materials for the parking garage behind the diner to provide greater contrast.
Patrick Kearney, an owner and resident of a townhome directly across the street from the diner on Ramsey Avenue, testified Thursday and told the board he was concerned about the amount of parking the building will have and the project’s impact on traffic in the neighborhood.
“Ramsey Avenue is a choke point. It is the narrowest street in the entire central business district,” Kearney said. “… By a long shot, it doesn’t have the capacity to hold what the current traffic is, let alone putting additional traffic in. How can you mitigate something like that?”
Slight change in plans
In July, the board had approved Roadside Development’s preliminary plans for a 550,000-square-foot mixed-use building consisting of up to 525 apartments and 25,000 square feet for ground-floor commercial uses at 8676 Georgia Ave. On Thursday, the board approved the developer’s revised plans that reduced the square footage to 500,000 square feet, with 493 apartment units and 20,000 square feet for commercial uses, according to planning documents.
Corcoran explained that the change in the number of apartments came as site plans for the building became more concrete based on market conditions.
While the previously approved preliminary plans had proposed a building height of 300 feet, Roadside received approval to increase the height to 312 feet.
According to planning documents, the zoning for the downtown Silver Spring property “generally allows for a maximum building height of 300 feet.” However, the Downtown Silver Spring Overlay Zone allows for additional height if more than 15% of a development’s proposed housing units are moderately priced dwelling units (MPDUs). To get the 12 extra feet, Roadside proposed that 75, or 15.1%, of the 493 apartments would be moderately priced.
Tastee Diner preservation
The plans for the high-rise were unveiled in May 2023 after the popular eatery closed in March 2023 after 77 years of operation. Roadside Development is proposing to preserve the diner’s historic dining car at the base of the building on the corner of Cameron Street and Ramsey Avenue.
According to the Maryland Historical Trust, the diner is “exceptionally significant as an extremely rare building type and a classic example of Art Deco/Modern commercial architecture.” There are few factory-built diners that have survived modern-day competition with the restaurant industry and only a dozen diners remain in Maryland, according to historical trust documents.
The Silver Spring diner was recognized by the Montgomery County Council in 1994 as a historic landmark. It opened in 1946 at Wayne and Georgia avenues. In 2000, owner Gene Wilkes moved the diner car to its location on Cameron Street to make way for the construction of Discovery Communication’s former headquarters.
Another Tastee Diner location in downtown Bethesda and in Laurel remains open.
