DRAG RACES ARE COMING TO WHEATON!

No, not the kind with cars on the street – Ru Paul’s Drag Race show will be making appearances this weekend at the Westfield Wheaton mall.  (For the uninitiated, you can check out more info here or the show here.)  It has actually won Emmys for both the show and its host Ru Paul, so I guess it’s weird but wonderful!

In any event, Westfield corporate management decided this would be a great way to kick off the summer season for their malls, and Wheaton’s turn is this weekend, June 4-6, on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  It will be staged on a tractor-trailer setup on the South parking lot in front of where the Ana Mendez University was (and next to Party City), facing towards the JC Penney’s building.  I had a meeting with the Mall Manager, Stuart Amos on Saturday who wanted to give make sure KHCA got a head’s up so if you hear or see anything, you’ll know it’s not UFOs or a foreign invasion.  The shows will be from 7:00-8:15 PM and 9:30-10:45 PM on all three nights.  Attendees will be in their cars in the parking lot.  Mr. Amos told me that they are taking pains to make sure the show volume does not exceed the county noise limits, including requiring a sound engineer on site throughout, accompanied by a police officer with authority to enforce those limits and turn down the volume knobs if needed.

That said, it does sound like it will be a hoot and, although tickets are almost sold out, as a good-will gesture to the neighborhood, Mr. Amos says the show will comp us two tickets (each covering a car with two passengers).  They will be good for any show (except the 9:30 Saturday show, which is sold out), so if you’d like to attend and see the spectacle, drop an email to Karen Cordry (karenc425@aol.com), by 6:00 PM on Wednesday, June 2, and we’ll do our random draw for the lucky winners!

REPORT ON KHCA SPRING MEETING

We had our Spring Meeting on May 25, to discuss the ongoing discussions on the County Planning Department (preparatory to actions by the County Council) on two major ongoing projects.  The first is the Thrive Montgomery 2050 master planning proposals which will set a framework for where the County is going and how it wants to get there over the next 30 years.  The second is the Attainable Housing Strategies Initiative (AHSI), which is looking at proposals to open up a variety of single-family zoned neighborhoods to a more diverse set of housing types.  This latter issue came to the fore with a Zoning Text Amendment proposal (ZTA 20-07) from Council Member Will Jawando last fall.  After initial review of the issue made clear that there was both a lot of interest and a lot of concerns, the subject was referred to the Planning Board for more review.  The Planning staff will make recommendations to the Planning Board on June 24, and it will then report to the Council by the end of the summer.

Our meeting did not have a huge number of attendees but that meant that the attendees got a chance to have some in-depth discussions with our speakers.  The PowerPoints from the presentations are available here and here.  Most of the discussions focused on the AHSI issues since they are more likely to bring changes in the near future for KHCA.  It does appear that all of the meetings and discussions have had an effect on the original thinking on this topic.  On the one hand, there are concerns that these changes will result in pushing out existing homes and creating overcrowding and strain on existing infrastructure, so that there should be controls on allowing these new proposals.  The other concern is exactly the opposite – that, if the concerns are too strict, that no one will be interested in these projects and the goal of channeling the increased housing density to come in the next 20 to 30 years to the most appropriate locations will not be met.  Thus, the planning staff is walking a delicate line between ensuring projects are appropriate and compatible, while not making the approval process so difficult that no one applies. 

This means that the primary issue will come down to what can be built “by right,” i.e., if the project meets the prescribed standards for height, setbacks, lot coverage, etc., it need only use the normal permit process rather than requiring a special application with public hearings and so forth.  Building by right has much greater certainty about what is allowed and the schedule for proceeding so this is a huge plus for builders.  The initial ZTA proposals were looking at being able to proceed by right on up to four lots combined.  The Planning Board staff is now likely to reduce that to only two lots and to also require that there be conformance with a “form book” or “design standards.”  (The general idea is that there would be certain basic housing plan templates that have been found acceptable and that one would have to work from one of those templates to be able to use the “by right” process.) 

Those templates would be based on standard “house-sized” buildings; i.e., they would not be allowed to exceed the normal size limits for a single-family home in the area.  Of course, as we have seen, that does allow some very large houses to be built, but the idea is that that space would be configured so they could be occupied by 2-4 families and not just one.  While these are not expected to meet the price limits for “moderately priced development units,” it is still assumed that they will provide added numbers of housing at reasonably priced levels, i.e., rather than one small house selling at perhaps $475,000, it might be possible to have a duplex or triplex, with each unit selling at say $400-$450,000, so more families could be accommodated.

There will also likely be recommendations for larger projects, including townhouses and small apartments in areas near rail and bus transit lines, and along major arterials such as Georgia, Connecticut and Viers Mill, but these will likely still need to proceed through the “optional method” process which does involve a more searching review process and public input.  It looks like the boundary for these is likely to be a half mile radius which does exclude virtually all of KHCA because of the presence of the Mall.  (And Plyers Mill does not count as a major arterial.)

We will be preparing some comments from KHCA on the direction of these proposals, which we will circulate separately and we would very much welcome your reaction and views.  While in many ways these proposals will return to housing modes that used to be common, this “Back to the Future” proposal is still likely to result in many changes over time, so we definitely want to part of the process! 

Many of our KHCA neighbors are involved in fighting hunger as volunteers, donors.  Jackie DeCarlo works at the Manna Food Center, which is interested in piloting a Little Free Pantry in KHCA.  This is a concept much like the Little Free Libraries we have around the neighborhood. By giving and/or taking nonperishable food items from a central, open location, neighbors are able to decrease barriers to healthy food, especially among seniors or others with transportation or income constraints. Manna will be providing a “start-up” kit to construct and stock the pantry.  Manna is interested in our neighborhood because about 75 individuals from zip code 20895 have sought its services recently and the surrounding zip codes have from 4 to 818 neighbors needing food.  If you are interested in supporting a trial effort of Little Free Pantry in our area, please contact Jackie here (jacq.decarlo@gmail.com).  This sounds like a great effort, so hope a lot of folks can jump in to help her with this effort.

We have a list of all of the streets in KHCA, broken up into one or two block chunks with the number of houses in each group.  Click HERE to view the list.  The listings that are in bold already have a block captain; we still need someone for the balance of the blocks.  Please consider becoming a Block Captain (you can even put that on your resume).  This won’t be an overly burdensome job – we’ll ask your help in working with our effort this spring to get everybody’s name and contact information on your designated block.  After that, we’ll mostly just ask that you reach out to someone new that moves into the neighborhood and offer them a warm KHCA welcome (while you get their information to add to the list!)  Thanks so much for your help and let’s make sure KHCA really is a warm welcoming place to everyone who lives here!

To carry out our many activities, KHCA needs your support -- both through your volunteer efforts and also, your financial donations. All residents of Kensington Heights are members of KHCA, and all members are welcome to attend and speak at KHCA meetings. However, to be a voting member, and to help support our activities on your behalf, KH residents are asked to pay annual dues of $10 per adult resident (18+ years) to a maximum of $30 per address. These monies are much appreciated and help to ensure that KHCA remains financially viable. Thank you!

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