Sections of Price Avenue and Elkins Street will be closed beginning today so that restaurants on those streets in Wheaton can have added space to accommodate outside dining. See the map here for the specific locations. Tables will be set up in the roadway. Diners can use them for carry-out purposes, but unlike the Bethesda Streetery, Montgomery County says some restaurants will actually have servers providing sit-down service at the Wheaton Streetery.
Restaurants will also have the option of hosting diners indoors again beginning today at 5:00 PM. But for those not quite ready to make that leap yet, the Wheaton Streetery will provide more room for al fresco dining. Tip: Don't forget the sunscreen if your table is not in a shaded area!
One of the worst things about Wheaton is how skinny the sidewalks are and how there's basically zero nice outdoor restaurant/bar seating options.
ReplyDeleteIt's ridiculous how unnecessarily auto-centric Wheaton still is. One side of the highlighted block of Price St., for example, consists entirely of an underutilized public parking lot. AND YET the other side of the street has street parking and a tiny sliver of a sidewalk. The area is very pedestrian unfriendly and La Rumba has no space for outdoor dining - all so we can fit in another couple, highly redundant/unnecessary parking spaces. The county really needs to spend some money bringing Wheaton's street grid and streetscape out of the 60s now that downtown Silver Spring with its brick pavers and bike lanes is looking sharp.
TOTALLY agree with the above comment. The problem is that Wheaton is squeezed within 3 state highway routes. You can see small measures taken recently like decreasing the speed limits (finally) and then putting some parking spaces on Georgia to create a buffer from people walking...but its not enough. The County needs to put some resources into improving walkability in wheaton for sure.
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