Meeting Roundup: July Redevelopment Committee

On Wednesday evening, the Wheaton Redevelopment Advisory Committee held its July meeting with guest Councilmember Marc Elrich. It was the last meeting for five WRAC members who are terming out of their positions. There will be no meeting of WRAC in August and new members will be sworn in in September. Here's what was discussed:

• Rob Klein from the Department of General Services described the public hearing for the in front of the County Council Tuesday evening. 16 speakers delivered three minute testimony, including a representative of WRAC. Accessory apartments and transition zones were among the items discussed.
• Klein said that negotiations between the County, WMATA and B.F. Saul were going well, with a "tone of cooperativeness", but the County realized it needed to do more engineering work to pin down more precise estimates of costs before deciding the breakdown of funding between the three partners. One example of further engineering work was geotech surveys. "We need to know what's under the ground," Klein said. 
• David Dise, director of the Department of General Services will attend the WRAC September meeting to give an update on the progress of the project.
• Councilmember Elrich gave to the committee. Regarding the proposed lines of the system, Elrich said that "you should be able to go anywhere in the County", from Wheaton, with three lines connecting here (Veirs Mill Road, Georgia Avenue and University Boulevard). "It will improve Wheaton's position," Elrich said, but stressed that the schedule of lines being built would depend on when engineering could be finished.
• Elrich also discussed C/R zones as they have come up in his committee as a zoning text amendment. "I personally don't like them", he said, adding that he believes the strategy behind the zones is too one size fits all. "I don't see the point of imposing anxiety on single-family neighborhood when the downtown core is already established."
• Elrich also expressed frustration on both the lengthy special exception process for accessory apartments and the lack of enforcement from the County on their own housing codes.
• The economic development subcommittee of WRAC will follow up on Steve Silverman's discussion from the June meeting, as well as coordinate a business and civic survey with Sidney Cooper of the Wheaton Urban District.
• Fran Ware, a member of WRAC, was appointed branch manager of Silver Spring Library, moving from h, and therefore had to resign from the committee. The new branch manager at Wheaton, Diane Whitaker, will be invited to join the committee.