Silver Spring's Once-Vibrant Downtown Is Stuck In The Past

[DCReid]

"...Silver Spring, a dense suburb abutting D.C.’s northern border, has around 6M SF of offices and 3M SF of retail space, but those sectors have been stuck in a downward spiral. With its office stock averaging 50 years old and featuring no new buildings in the last two decades, Silver Spring has fallen behind other D.C. suburbs in attracting and retaining businesses.

This has led to a steady stream of occupancy loss, and it has had a domino effect on the area’s retail sector...."

https://www.bisnow.com/washington-dc...he-past-125071


I'm surprised reading about this as I thought the DC suburban districts are a model for those other metros, with their good transit connects, and mix of residential, office and retail. Areas like Ballston and Bethesda were vibrant when I lived there just a few years ago (and I bet there still are), but I never went to Silver Spring.

[3rd&Brown]

Originally Posted by DCReid

"...Silver Spring, a dense suburb abutting D.C.’s northern border, has around 6M SF of offices and 3M SF of retail space, but those sectors have been stuck in a downward spiral. With its office stock averaging 50 years old and featuring no new buildings in the last two decades, Silver Spring has fallen behind other D.C. suburbs in attracting and retaining businesses.

This has led to a steady stream of occupancy loss, and it has had a domino effect on the area’s retail sector...."

https://www.bisnow.com/washington-dc...he-past-125071


I'm surprised reading about this as I thought the DC suburban districts are a model for those other metros, with their good transit connects, and mix of residential, office and retail. Areas like Ballston and Bethesda were vibrant when I lived there just a few years ago (and I bet there still are), but I never went to Silver Spring.

I wonder if there is more resistance in the suburbs for office to residential conversion? Would theoretically be a solution but the NIMBYs might come out and claim it would have a negative impact on schools, etc, in terms of additional enrollment strain, though over the yars that has been debunked with shrinking family sizes etc.

Office to residential conversions in big cities don't need to deal with that kind of resistance.

[Crawford]

I lived in Silver Spring for about two months, in corporate housing, a little after 9-11. I was supposed to be in Bethesda but they ran out of room at their other place.

Kind of a strange place. Tons of development & planned construction everywhere but still felt semi-depressed. Super multi-ethnic. Everything from Ethiopian extended families to 20-something frat boys. Felt like a bit less than the sum of its parts. I've been back, and there's a huge new library and a new rail line is soon opening. Still feels odd and unfinished.

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I lived in Silver Spring for about two months, in corporate housing, a little after 9-11. I was supposed to be in Bethesda but they ran out of room at their other place.

Kind of a strange place. Tons of development & planned construction everywhere but still felt semi-depressed. Super multi-ethnic. Everything from Ethiopian extended families to 20-something frat boys. Felt like a bit less than the sum of its parts. I've been back, and there's a huge new library and a new rail line is soon opening. Still feels odd and unfinished.

Yeah, totally agree... Silver Spring seems to be doing "all the right things", but there's just something strangely lacking there. Maybe it just hasn't quite transcended enough from the "suburban downtown' to a standalone core of its own. It doesn't feel as cohesive as neighboring Bethesda.

[mhays]

I haven't been there. But it looks like mega-blocks, above-grade garages, stroads, and the heavy rail line (despite its benefits) are holding it back from being a cohesive urban center.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by mhays

and the heavy rail line (despite its benefits)

I have to imagine that the metro station in downtown silver spring helps much more than it hurts, but yeah, that ROW could definitely use more crossover connections.

[llamaorama]

I think places like that are going to be cooked.

Montgomery County seems like a monoculture of bedroom communities in commuting distance to office clusters. Monocultures don't like change.

I guess it's hard to imagine places like like that struggling because they are so rich. Instead it will probably be more like a long-term stagnation. The surrounding affluent residential areas will stay affluent for now but will deal with declining tax revenue and services and an aging population. The 1970s office buildings will get torn down and hopefully replaced by apartments that would be more affordable, but the energy level and foot traffic and transit ridership will never recover. In turn there will be less local retail and commerce. Younger people and businesses will pack up and leave.

[Crawford]

Silver Spring isn't affluent tho. And it isn't a monoculture. It's basically the DC version of Queens. A polyglot mix of everyone from everywhere.

Montgomery County, as a whole, is fairly affluent and professional, but it's extremely diverse. The county schools are only 23% white and speak 162 languages. Really the only rich white area is the Bethesda-Chevy Chase-Potomac corridor. And it isn't really a bedroom county. Lots of major job centers. Bethesda, NIH, lots of biotech, etc.

https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/about/

[llamaorama]

I was defining "monoculture" more along the lines of jobs and lifestyle and what economic sectors the main employers are in.

I suspect a lot of people who live or work there are indirectly employed by the federal government and also live there for career reasons and not because they are particularly rooted to the area.

Obviously those labs or military installations aren't going anywhere but I could see an erosion of general white collar office jobs due to people working remotely. Those institutions are vulnerable to political pressure inside the Beltway.

That would probably make the area less diverse as well because you wouldn't have a bunch of STEM grad students moving there anymore. Also there would be fewer job clusters.

[pj3000]

I don't see Silver Spring in danger of getting "cooked" at all. It's office market is struggling just like everywhere else, but the difference is that it isn't everywhere else.

It's part of the nation's capital and further, it borders DC proper... so it's always going to benefit from that and feature a constant churn of population in it's downtown area in particular. For any office woes, there's been a bunch of new residential construction there over the past decade and it will only continue to evolve. As Crawford mentions, Montgomery County is akin to the Queens of the DC area, and far from a monoculture in all aspects of the term... i.e., for every white collar employee/contractor of the NRC/NIH/etc who lives in Bethesda or Potomac, there are 100 immigrant service sector workers who live in Wheaton or Gaithersburg.

[Doady]

Main strip with 1 or 2 storey retail along a road with 4 lanes in each direction. Should be 4 storeys at least.

Where there are tall buildings there is still no streetwall. There are lots of above ground parking garages. Towers are parking on the bottom half, offices on the top half.

All that above ground parking, sometimes seven storeys above ground, suggests it is too expensive to build office towers there. The office space is expensive without any real benefit.

Why would a developer build a office tower that requires building seven storeys of above ground parking, and why would a tenant pay the extra expense that comes with the extra seven storeys of above ground parking? No reason.

[mhays]

Of course there's a reason. It's all commercial real estate economics and codes. When the towers were built, there was some combo of low land cost, high excavation/shoring cost (possibly), market acceptance, and a land use code that allowed lots of above-grade parking. If the parking ratios are high, putting all of the parking below-grade gets even more difficult--and might be effectively impossible geometrically on a small site.

In that combo scenario, a developer literally CAN'T spend way more for a truly urban project (absent a rogue zillionaire) because they won't get financed, at least under competitive terms.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Silver Spring isn't affluent tho. And it isn't a monoculture. It's basically the DC version of Queens. A polyglot mix of everyone from everywhere.

Montgomery County, as a whole, is fairly affluent and professional, but it's extremely diverse. The county schools are only 23% white and speak 162 languages. Really the only rich white area is the Bethesda-Chevy Chase-Potomac corridor. And it isn't really a bedroom county. Lots of major job centers. Bethesda, NIH, lots of biotech, etc.

https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/about/

oh look -- he posted an actual link -- we knew you do it awesome work kiddo --