"Wheaton Redevelopment" is an oxymoron.

To summarize: WRAC and WUDAC worked publicly for a long time to address residents' interests and desires in redeveloping Wheaton. They came up with a large-scale plan with the involvement and participation of a private developer who had a financial incentive to try to ensure success.

In an unexpected move, the County Council then disregarded the WRAC/WUDAC ideas and concerns, offered the community no input, and chose their own plan, which did not include developing the bus bay platform (or many other ideas presented by WRAC/WUDAC). Instead, with respect to the bus bays, money was set aside to study the feasibility of such a plan. Now the money has been removed.

This is Wheaton Redevelopment.

The County Council has no interest in Wheaton redevelopment. The County Council championed by Navarro benefit from the status quo of Wheaton. They want it to remain depressed town where they can get free votes for providing social services and small grants and subsidies to failing businesses.

To call this project "redevelopment" is a joke. It's just the county creating a new government building in Wheaton - hardly redevelopment.

Did this happen?

Did Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett's administration announce his choice of a developer for Wheaton on Jan. 29 before the Montgomery County Council as this article stated in the beginning?!

Thanks for your patience! I found out that the meeting has been postponed until Feb. 26.

Let's hope that the County Executive and County Council can actually get on the same page this time. I'd love to see input and buy-in from Jacob Sesker. The fact that this announcement was scheduled and then postponed may imply that the County Executive made an arrangement with a developer without first consulting closely with council staffers, which would not be a good sign.

Hi again, Esther (and hopefully Rob Klein, as well). Could we get an update on the "planned discussion about Wheaton redevelopment between the Montgomery County Council and the executive administration"?

I've posted another update to this story.

Something sounds really fishy about this. The original date was January 29th and its been postponed repeatedly until just a few days before the County Executive releases his proposed budget for the next fiscal year. Will the Wheaton community be shut out completely, just like they were last year when the Council decided to dump the metro project?

This approach is worrisome. Government openness is essential is such projects. What type of information they are discussing that will affect the developers bids? Anything other than price negotiations should be open to the public at this point.

Well, that was an anticlimax. Glass half full: Perhaps it is good for the executive and council to work things out privately before a deal is announced. We don't want more time and effort wasted on another BF Saul. But why did it take an additional two months before the executive could even discuss the deal with the council? From Councilmember Valerie Ervin when the BF Saul deal was announced in July 2010: "We all knew that a piecemeal approach was not the answer to revitalize the Wheaton Central Business District." And then from council legislative analyst Jacob Sesker when the deal collapsed two years later: "There are far fewer unknowns when it comes to the public sector building a building that the public sector will occupy than there are with a complex public-private partnership..." And so the county chose piecemeal even though they knew it wasn't the answer. Why? A summary from Councilmember Nancy Navarro: "I was hoping for a little bit more of a middle ground or a collaboration that would be forthcoming from DGS and the Executive. That didn’t really happen.” The council, DGS, and the Executive all want to see Wheaton revitalized and now the economy is picking up. Our request: Please get in the same boat and all pull together for the benefit of Wheaton and the county. I hope we see something ambitious, visionary, AND realistic this time around.