Rockville, MD – what Andres Duany calls ‘America’s best new town center’

[Cirrus]

“The best New Urbanist center, in my opinion, is the brand new Rockville Town Center. Very mature. Very credible as urbanism.” - That according to Andres Duany, undoubtedly the most respected new urbanist in the country, but NOT the designer of Rockville Town Center, which is an infill redevelopment in downtown Rockville, MD.

You can view pictures of the rest of downtown Rockville here. It is satellite city turned suburb of Washington, DC, and has a Metro station on the Shady Grove leg of the Red line. Rockville is the next locality south of Gaithersburg, which is the location of Kentlands, the first non-resort new urbanist development, which was designed by Duany.

Obviously these pictures are several months old. Construction has since finished and tenants have begun to occupy space.

The center of the development is a small town square. Note the architectural diversity, even though the buildings are all the same height. The building on the right w/ the green windows is a public library.




The sloped building is part of "regular downtown".






Note interior parking.


The brick building in the background is part of "regular downtown", but was just built 3 or 4 years ago.









This street is the north edge of the "town center" development, thus its considerable width. Just to the right there is a surface parking lot that takes up a whole block and cuts off the town center from the central part of regular downtown.


That block is currently in the planning stages to be redeveloped with residential buildings and a large hotel. It will bridge the gap between the town center and the skyscrapers of the modernist downtown Rockville, and will look like this:

[Cirrus]

I have about twice as many pictures, including several of the more contemporary-looking buildings, but I can't find them

[ColDayMan]

Eh, not bad.

[Jeeper]

Not sure what's so great about it. It looks a little too plain and manufactured for my taste.

[Cirrus]

Uh huh. It's new. Don't compare it to a centuries-old neighborhood. The point is it's superior to most other freshly-built new urbanist town centers. Do you disagree?

Also: Since we're on the subject, if someone will please find me a solution to the "new urbanism sucks because it's new" problem that is a superior means of developing in suburbs (not established central cities), I would be most grateful.

[Ex-Ithacan]

Well that was a bit of a surprise. I haven't been to downtown Rockville in years, and I guess I'm missing some good new stuff. I better make a trip up there this fall. Thanks Dan.

[J. Will]

The best part of it appears to be how they broke up the facades to make it look like they were built at different times. They could have broke up the height more.

[skylife]

Originally Posted by Cirrus

Uh huh. It's new. Don't compare it to a centuries-old neighborhood. The point is it's superior to most other freshly-built new urbanist town centers. Do you disagree?

Also: Since we're on the subject, if someone will please find me a solution to the "new urbanism sucks because it's new" problem that is a superior means of developing in suburbs (not established central cities), I would be most grateful.

Really man. This needs some landscaping and patina and people, but I'm pretty pleased with that. Can't people appreciate the small victories?

And I like the sorta neo-deco rendering at the end.

[OhioGuy]

It looks good to me! I've been watching the development of this over the past couple of years via Rockville Town Center's webcam. Good to see it all basically together now.

[boisecynic]

Cool. Thanks for the pics. I'm an ex-Rockvillian. Is that great Chinese restaurant still at the shopping center near at Viers Mill and Twinbrook?

I can't help but think of that REM song Don't Go Back to Rockville every time I hear about Rockville.

[BnaBreaker]

It's not the best i've ever seen, but it's definitely up there. Then again, i'm no professional, so maybe there is something I just don't see in it.

As for the argument that new-urbanism is bad because it's new, well, people would hate them even more if they tried to give them a manufactured "weathered" look. Just give them a few decades and i'm sure they'll look nice and lived in.

[JackStraw]

Originally Posted by Cirrus

Uh huh. It's new. Don't compare it to a centuries-old neighborhood. The point is it's superior to most other freshly-built new urbanist town centers. Do you disagree?

Also: Since we're on the subject, if someone will please find me a solution to the "new urbanism sucks because it's new" problem that is a superior means of developing in suburbs (not established central cities), I would be most grateful.

I agree that it is a cool town center. When I saw the title to this post I thought it was going to be like Robinson town center outside of Pittsburgh. Put it this way, it is a mile long strip mall with 25 acres of full parking!!! It is superior to other new town centers in my opinion as I see you were trying to make. This is cool for new suburban growth, and I think they are doing a good job in some areas of that around D.C., and I stress some. The best we could be doing as a nation is saving our old town centers though that were built through different times, different architectural styles, and have culture. These ones these try to emulate.

[guynvb]

I like it also. I think it will age quite gracefully.

[stepper77]

I've been wanting to see what Rockville looks like for quite sometime, so, thanks so much for sharing! Unfortunately, I don't think there is any getting around the "looks too new" criticism. But, that development seems pretty nice actually. The differing architecture styles make it all the better.

[Atomic Glee]

I really dislike the "looks too new" criticism. It "looks" new because it IS "new." Old buildings look old because they're, well, old. They looked new once, too.

[Wheelingman04]

I like it.

[BigKidD]

Pretty impressive development. Also, I wish many cities would adopt the interior parking garage idea when building them in downtown centers,

The city of Walnut Creek in the SF Bay Area did the same thing in relation to creating parking structures within newly created buildings which extended the traditional downtown shopping area. Thus, one would not know that the parking garage existed expect the entry/exit areas for cars. Quite an improvement over a parking garage taking up space for future development.

[Xing]

When I first saw it, I thought Rockville was much closer to D.C. , and had a much greater grid, but you can see on a satelite image that this space isn't that big at all. Amazing how large they made that city look.

[waterloowarrior]

bids eye view from microsoft

http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=...8767&encType=1

nice pics, thanks for sharing this with us!

found some nice stuff on the city's website

site plan

Facts About Phase I
of Town Center:

• WHAT
  Residential, retail, restaurant, cultural, library, business incubator and other public uses.
• WHEN
  First components, including the Rockville Library, began opening in Fall 2006. The Grand Opening and Dedication of Rockville Town Square occurred on July 17, 2007 at 10 a.m.
  
• WHERE
  Bordered by Beall Avenue on the North, East Middle Lane on the South, North Washington Street on the West and Maryland Route 355 on the East.
• SIZE
  12.5 acres (Phase I of 60-acre Town Center Master Plan).
  
• DETAILS
  - Approximately 644 total
  residences, 15 percent of which are
  moderately priced (96 units).
  
  - 185,000 square feet of retail and
  restaurants.
  
• DEVELOPMENT COST
  $369.1 million ($267 million private and $102.1 million public funding).
• PUBLIC INVESTORS
  City of Rockville, Montgomery County, State of Maryland and United States Government
• PRIVATE INVESTORS
  RD Rockville, LLC, Federal Realty Investment Trust.

(pic is from the rockville gov't website - linked above)


webcam

[flar]

It's reminiscent of DC with the ~6 storey street walls.