Falkland Chase complex is historic, planners say

Decision could affect development

The county Planning Board is recommending that a Silver Spring apartment complex built in the 1930s and being planned for partial demolition should be given historic designation.

The Planning Board’s decision on Dec. 6 that the complex should be deemed historic could have a dramatic impact on the developer’s current plans.

The County Council has the final say on the historic designation.

Preservationists have lobbied for the buildings’ historic protection since the 1960s. Home Properties, which purchased the complex in 2003, went public late last year with plans to demolish several buildings to make way for new ones.

The proposed plan would affect six buildings over nine acres on a parcel north of East West Highway, and would include construction of a ring of multiple buildings up to 15 stories high, an interior park and nearly 65,000 square feet of retail space.

‘‘This is an important project designed by an important architect as a whole project,” Planning Board Chairman Royce Hanson said before the vote, refuting the developer’s position that each parcel had varying levels of historic significance.

The Planning Board heard more than four hours of testimony from historic preservationists, Falkland residents and neighbors concerned with plans they said would increase traffic, dwarf the remaining low- to mid-rise apartments and damage the fabric of their neighborhood.

The handful of people providing testimony against the historic designation were mostly from Action In Montgomery, a faith-based community-organizing group.

Rachel Cornwell, senior pastor at Woodside United Methodist Church and a member of AIM, said the community’s concerns about a lack of affordable housing could be partially addressed by the new project. Cornwell cited Home Properties’ offer to build a total of 282 affordable and workforce units. Some of those units would be at the Falklands and others at another location in Silver Spring.

Nelson B. Leenhouts, co-founder of Home Properties, said his company opposes historic designation for the north parcel, but is not opposed to the protection for the east and west parcels, located on both sides of 16th Street. Those parcels are not planned for major redevelopment.

Christopher Goodwin, a historian with R. Christopher Goodwin and Associates Inc., a consulting firm hired by Home Properties, testified that the north parcel did not meet historic designation standards. According to his report, it is of a different architectural style and does not have the integrity of the east parcel, which was built as a New Deal project between 1936 and 1937.

A majority of those testifying disagreed. Richard Longstreth, chairman of the Maryland Governor’s Review Board on the National Register of Historic Places, testified that the complex was one of the most historically significant properties in Montgomery County.

David Rotenstein, a historian and member of the county’s preservation commission, rebutted Goodwin’s assessment, pointing to the historical documents used to back up the staff’s report that the Falkland Chase was developed as one cohesive development.

Falkland Chase was built in two phases and in three sections. The first parcel, 178 units completed between 1936 and 1937, was inaugurated by former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt in 1937. It was the first example of a garden-style apartment complex in Montgomery County, according to the Planning Board’s staff report.

The second phase, 301 units over two sections, was completed between 1937 and 1938. A portion of the original block of apartments was demolished in 1992 to make way for the high-rise Lenox Park Apartments.

‘‘We’re pleased. ... The chairman said it best, that they were hoping to preserve something of real value,” said Mary Reardon, preservation chairwoman of the Silver Spring Historical Society, after the vote.

The county’s Historic Preservation Commission, which voted in August to recommend Falkland Chase to the Master Plan for Historic Preservation, is now procedurally required to reconsider the issue before sending it on again to the Planning Board and County Council because it needs an amendment to the master plan. A commission hearing has not yet been scheduled.

The entire process could take six months to a year, Rotenstein said.

Barbara Sears, a Bethesda attorney representing Home Properties, said the developer would continue testifying to the value of the project at subsequent hearings.