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"Metro can become a magnet, Metro can focus development, Metro can cause higher density in certain areas," Benjamin said. "But it won't happen automatically just because a station is there."

Metro, however, is widely credited with helping Bethesda develop from a bedroom community of large homes and small businesses to the high-rise commercial center it is today. The question of where to put the Metro stops and which branch of the red line would be built first in Montgomery led to fierce political battles, said a former county official.

While Silver Spring got its station six years before Bethesda, the Wheaton-Glenmont line stopped at Silver Spring for years while county officials pushed Metro to complete the Rockville-Shady Grove line, the official said.

Without Metro, "I don't think Bethesda would look like it does today," said Cleatus Barnett, a Silver Spring resident and a Metro board representative since 1971. "Before Metro, it was fully developed with low-rise private businesses like hardware stores and Gifford's Ice Cream. It really blossomed when Metro came. Now you have those gleaming high-rise office buildings housing the architects of the technology age."

The differences also boil down to location, development officials said. Silver Spring's Metro stop was built on available land at the existing railroad tracks near a lumberyard, coal company and car dealership -- not exactly drawing cards for new shops and restaurants. The businesses already concentrated on Georgia Avenue were a short walk from, but not adjacent to, the Metro station. In Bethesda, by contrast, the underground station emerged on Wisconsin Avenue at East West Highway, at the heart of Bethesda.

"I think in many ways [Metro] was the glue that kept it all together" in Bethesda, said Alvin McNeal, manager of property planning and development for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transportation Authority, which operates Metro. "Some redevelopment was underway, but it probably wouldn't have occurred as fast as it has without [Metro]. . . . It obviously redefined that entire core of Bethesda."

Suburbanites' changing shopping habits also hurt downtown Silver Spring in ways that Metro couldn't help, development officials said. As new shopping centers such as Montgomery Mall and Wheaton Plaza sprouted with their wide-open parking lots, shoppers seemed to forget about the once-bustling downtown Silver Spring, with its family-owned restaurants and mom-and-pop shops.

Stewart Schwartz, of the Coalition for Smarter Growth, credited Metro with helping both Silver Spring and Bethesda by focusing growth in concentrated areas and generating tax revenue that helps pay for the rail system.

"I don't know what Bethesda looked like [before Metro], but the one thing I've learned is Metrorail actually saved the economies of the inner suburbs and the city," Schwartz said. "Unlike Detroit or Houston or other cities where interstate highways had shifted so much development to the suburbs, Metrorail helped counteract that in our region."

Indeed, from a new hardware store to a shiny Fresh Fields, downtown Silver Spring is already showing signs of renewal. The Metro stop, county officials say, will be a key force in keeping it going.

"You often get this 'tale of two cities' orientation with Bethesda and Silver Spring, but there's still a symbiotic relationship there," said Scott Reilly, the county's assistant chief administrative officer who has been involved in Montgomery planning issues since
1975. "Silver Spring is kind of a bedroom community to Bethesda. They're interrelated rather than opposing."

                                 © 2001 The Washington Post Company

Groups Endorse Transit Incentives

Washington Post
Thursday, April 19, 2001

A proposal to spend an additional $1 million on mass transit incentives was endorsed this week by environmental groups and the business community, but the proposal's sponsor said its fate may depend on whether the County Council agrees to raise taxes to deal with budgetary constraints.

County Council member Steven A. Silverman (D-At Large) hopes to persuade his colleagues to spend more money on programs designed to boost mass transit use and help alleviate traffic congestion.

He proposed expanding the county's "Fare Share" program in targeted congested areas. The program provides monetary incentives to encourage private sector commuters to get to work without driving alone. About 3,000 employees from 74 companies participate.

In addition, Silverman wants to explore the possibility of free bus service in congested areas and pro

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