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good for the environment. The master plan calls for extensive networks of
street trees and additional green space throughout the urban district. It also
calls for developers to use modern storm water controls for the first time in
many parts of downtown.
In the town center project now underway, the county is spending more than
$240,000 to decontaminate lots where a former gas station and dry cleaner
leaked toxic chemicals into the ground. About 10 percent of the 22 acres of
pavement and old buildings will be reclaimed as green space.
Some Naysayers in Crowd
Beyond the downtown core, the master plan divides the business district into
three neighborhoods and proposes a mix of tailored zoning and publicly
funded projects to stimulate development in each of them.
Fenton Street Village, a 14-block area just south of the town center project,
is envisioned in the master plan as a spiffier, more vibrant enclave of the
small businesses that are dominant there. Now, Fenton Street features
empty, locked storefronts, vacant lots and a faded 1960s look of brick fronts
covered in faux stone siding and aluminum panels. Just one office building
along Fenton has participated in the county's three-year-old cost-sharing
program to upgrade exteriors.
Fenton Village businesses and residents of nearby East Silver Spring have
clashed with the county in past efforts to upgrade the area, and skepticism
remains about whether the master plan offers the best solutions.
"The county gives me some heartburn," said Bob Colvin, president of the
East Silver Spring Citizens Association, who is critical of a master plan
proposal to narrow a traffic intersection in Fenton Village for a park
expansion.
Mike Gerecht, president of CD Publications, a newsletter publishing
company on Fenton Street, recounted how the parking requirements in Silver
Spring's old master plan made it difficult for small businesses to expand. He
called the new plan's proposal to convert Fenton Village parking lots to
housing "ludicrous."
"You're taking away parking from a retail area," he said. "It wouldn't help
[business] people."
Laura Steinberg, who co-chaired a special citizens advisory committee on
Silver Spring's downtown from 1997 through 1998, is both hopeful and
anxious about Fenton Village.
"At this point, I think it's small businesses that need the most support, or it
[Silver Spring redevelopment] won't be what people thought it could be," she
said.
Despite its homeliness, Fenton Village possesses a more comfortable urban
scale than the industrial clutter of the Ripley District and South Silver Spring,
two adjoining areas southwest of downtown. Ripley Street, which lends its
name to the district just east of the Silver Spring Metro, looks like a narrow
alley and is lined with decrepit warehouses, wrecked cars and makeshift
parking lots.
With high-rise housing once envisioned for this area a dashed fantasy, the
new master plan advocates more commercial zoning for office buildings. But
the plan acknowledges that proposed public improvements may create their
own problems--a planned southern extension of Dixon Avenue in this district
could further fragment the area's small lots, and a bike trail route slices
through part of Progress Place, a facility that provides food for the
homeless.
"We can't afford to lose any space," said Deborah Cooper, executive
director of the nonprofit corporation that operates Progress Place.
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