Wheaton construction update: AMC Theatres Wheaton 9, Bar Louie at Wheaton Plaza (Photos)

Impressive work on the new addition at Westfield Wheaton Plaza. The new AMC Theatres Wheaton 9 cineplex facade is coming together as the renderings suggested. There's no signage on there yet, but there is at the future Bar Louie in the same wing. Olive Garden will be the other tenant in this structure.

Leggett's WSSC nominee sentenced for DWI in 2007

T. Eloise Foster, Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett's nominee to the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission, was sentenced for driving while impaired in Howard County in 2007. She was sentenced to unsupervised probation, alcohol counseling, 10 hours of community service, and fined $200, according to The Baltimore Sun.

Foster was pulled over by a Maryland state trooper on Interstate 95 in Howard in June 2007. She failed several sobriety tests, and was charged. Foster was budget director for the state of Maryland at the time.

Leggett, who was a victim of a drunk driver himself in a 2009 crash, called for tightening drunk driving laws in December 2015. The County Council is scheduled to interview Foster Tuesday at 11:00 AM. They are then scheduled to confirm her appointment 55 minutes later.

"The Montgomery County Council joins our Police Chief in calling for the State of Maryland to strengthen our laws against drunk and impaired driving," Council President Nancy Floreen wrote to the Montgomery County delegation to the Maryland General Assembly in February of this year.

Drivers with interesting driving records seem to be joining WSSC often these days. The Washington Post reported that the agency's latest chief was involved in five accidents while driving WSSC vehicles. She totaled one of those WSSC vehicles in a rollover accident on the Capital Beltway, the Post reported.

More LED lights installed as Ellsworth Place celebrates 100% lease-up of anchor tenant spaces (Video+photos)

Petrie-Richardson Ventures announced Thursday it has leased 100% of the anchor tenant spaces at its revamped Ellsworth Place mall in downtown Silver Spring. Guitar Center was the last to sign on, with Burlington Coat Factory, Dave & Buster’s, Marshalls, Michaels, Ross and T.J.Maxx already aboard.

With the heaviest leasing lift behind them, the owners are now preparing for what should be a big official Grand Reopening of the updated retail center later this year.

“We are very excited that within the four years of ownership and redevelopment of the property, we have 100% leased the anchor tenant spaces at Ellsworth Place,” Terry Richardson, president and COO of PRV said in a statement yesterday. “Our retail center and the entire downtown Silver Spring area have been in the midst of a cultural evolution, now more rapidly morphing into a vibrant urban center frequented by local residents and visitors from across the Greater Washington Region. With our anchors in place, we are on track for a grand reopening before the holidays.”

Part of that redevelopment has been a major renovation of the interior, and a modern re-skin of the facade.

Updated rendering of Ellsworth Place
released by PRV yesterday, which includes
new anchor tenant signage

Here's a look at that ongoing progress toward the above rendering this week, where workers from Signs Unlimited of South Carolina were painstakingly installing each new LED panel on the corner of the building near the Regal Cinemas Majestic 12 cineplex. And all of this is being accomplished while still preserving the building's historic art-deco facade, which dates from its beginning as a Hecht's department store in 1947.

Signage touting future Purple Line station at Silver Spring Library (Photos)

Promotional window screens have been installed touting the future Purple Line light rail station, which will be constructed at this spot right outside of the Silver Spring Library. It gives some basic explanation of what you'll be able to connect to, and what other rail and bus connections you'll be able to make on the route. And indicates that you'll still be let on board if all you're wearing are wraparound sunglasses and an XXL-size Hanes Beefy-T.

Is that an office in the road up ahead? (Photos)

Only in downtown Silver Spring! A pop-up office space has popped up on Ellsworth Drive at Downtown Silver Spring this week. Designed by architectural technology students at Montgomery College, and sponsored by Adventist HealthCare, the co-working space offers free WiFi.

Anyone can use it. Let's see if this office space can be filled amidst a moribund Montgomery County economy.

Guitar Center officially confirmed as tenant at Ellsworth Place mall in Silver Spring

Ellsworth Place mall confirmed yesterday what readers of this blog have known since April: Guitar Center is the latest tenant to sign on at the revamped retail center in downtown Silver Spring.

The giant music store chain has signed a long-term lease for 14500 SF on Level 4, near the pedestrian bridge that connects to convenient parking in the public garage across the street.

“Guitar Center will add to this dynamic entertainment district, with The Fillmore Silver Spring directly across the street and a 40,980-square-foot Dave & Buster’s opening this fall on the top floor of Ellsworth Place,” Terry Richardson, president and COO of Petrie Richardson Ventures, the owner of the property, said in a statement Monday. “Our revamped retail center has undergone significant renovations to produce both an urban edge and modern feel. Guitar Center brings another eclectic experience to Ellsworth Place.”

Rockwood Capital is the co-owner and co-developer of the mall. In their press release, the mall owners also confirmed another new tenant, Shoe City. I first reported that addition on June 1.

MoCo planners pan Westmore Ave. bus parking plan; Carver on life support - now what?

A second Rockville site targeted by Montgomery County as a potential school bus depot, 1000 Westmore Avenue, failed to gain approval from staff at the County Planning Department yesterday. The staff report recommends the County Planning Board disapprove the County's request to acquire the site, a proposal to be taken up by the Board at its June 16 meeting.

In the report, staff indicates that they conclude the proposed acquisition of the site by the County for parking school buses there is inconsistent with the County's master plan and the existing zoning of the property. They say the County has failed to provide sufficient information regarding all of the potential impacts on the surrounding residential neighborhood. In absence of that information, staff says they have independently concluded that the noise impact could be far higher with buses than under other light industrial uses in that zone. Other impacts identified by staff include traffic, safety and environmental issues.

Indicative of the rush to acquire any usable site for buses, the result of County elected officials' failure to do so prior to the deadline for turning over the existing Shady Grove bus depot to developers, the County did not submit a Site Selection Study or analysis. Without such a study, staff wrote, they cannot support the acquisition of this - or any other - site by the County for a bus depot or parking lot.

The IM 2.5-H-50 zoning of the Westmore site does not allow industrial uses with excessive noise, dust or other disruptive impacts, and does not require the sort of transportation links that a fleet of buses would need to get in and out of the neighborhood.

In another indication that the County Council did not do its homework, the County Department of General Services Deputy Director Greg Ossont wrote to planners that DGS is using money allocated to it by the Council last summer to buy the Westmore site. All nine councilmembers voted in February to approve funding for design and construction of a bus depot at the other controversial Rockville site, the Carver Educational Services Center. Several councilmembers have now attempted to distance themselves from that vote, claiming they had not read the resolution they voted for.

Were it not for those two actions by the Council (among others), we would not be in this situation today, an embarrassment the Council understandably wants to downplay. Never has "the dog ate my homework" caused so much trouble for so many communities.

Planning staff heard loud and clear from Rockville's Mayor and Council, and residents, that Westmore - like Carver - was completely unacceptable for a depot. The Legacy at Lincoln Park Homeowners Association, the Lincoln Park Civic Association, Rockville Housing Enterprises, and the East Rockville Civic Association were among the formal organizations weighing in against the bus plan for Westmore.

Several letters noted that the bus plan is in conflict with the Lincoln Park neighborhood plan residents collaborated with the City to pass in 2007, which included the intent to phase out industrial uses around the community.

The final decision now rests with the Planning Board.

Should the Board follow the recommendation, and with the Carver proposal on life support, the County will be in full panic mode shortly in its effort to find a site. Ossont has recently indicated the Gude landfill is off the table due to environmental issues. Where to next? Derwood? Avery Road? Darnestown? The plot thickens.

The question now is, which MoCo community is going to be left without a chair when the music stops in this fiasco, unless the Council simply blows up the whole "Smart Growth Initiative" project, allowing the depot to remain at Shady Grove. It is unclear whether they would face legal action from the developer if they were to do so.