While smartgrowth advocates oppose the giant parking garage to be built as part of the project to extend Bethesda Row south, the project should improve the Capital Crescent Trail by widening it and creating a short spur to Woodmont.
Stonebridge-Hoffman also has an agreement with the county to rebuild the adjacent section of the Capital Crescent bike trail, better integrating the path into downtown and fixing its dead end into Bethesda Avenue, where developers will widen and landscape the path with pavers. "Now there will be a place to stop" says Stonebridge's Firstenberg. "You will have a beautiful hardscape telling you you're in the middle of this urban area." Firstenberg also has plans for a bike drop-off on Woodmont once the residences are complete, now that bikers are loosing their unloading point, with a connection behind the building to the trail.
This is a stretch at best on this development improving the Capital Crescent Trail.
The development project will cast a shadow on the Trail for most of the day, blocking where now there is sunshine all day long.
The "improvement" to Woodmont Ave. is a major stretch in that it improves the CCT again. The CCT needs to go to the Tunnel via the Bethesda Ave /Woodmont Ave intersection, it won't help that choke point at all. If anything it will dump Trail users farther away from the Bethesda Tunnel and thus farther away from the actual Trail. Higher density this close to the Trail can not be seen as an improvement only further choke the overused Trail at Bethesda.
Posted by: Pat Garvey | February 07, 2011 at 06:09 PM
Pat, aren't you one of the people who have been lamenting the loss of trees along the future CCT due to the purple line? Isn't shade one of the things you complain of losing? Which do you want shade or sunshine?
As for the connection to Woodmont, for people going to the tunnel it is a non-issue since they will continue to go the way they currently do. But, since it turns out that not everyone is continuing to the tunnel, those who are going south on Woodmont will find they have a slightly shorter connection.
It will have to be a very ugly building to not be an improvement over a parking lot. Maybe a bike shop or other trail destination will open there.
Posted by: washcycle | February 07, 2011 at 06:26 PM