Amazon HQ2 single land use zoning and Knopf, Brown, Elrich and Andrews existing homeowner-biased vision of 'community friendly'

  Norman Knopf's law partner David Brown was honored as a "community hero" in 2004 and showed his hostility to renters in a 2013 letter.

 [dead link since retrieval of the letter copied and pasted below]

 http://m.gazette.net/gazettenet/db_285534/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=w3dq0lqW






It’s time the development process needs to have a new paradigm developed.

Before any projects are approved first by the Planning Commission and later by the County Council, there ought to be input from independent economists and sociologists.

Here in North Bethesda, the land of the construction crane, myriad developments have been approved and have begun. Here are some questions that might not have been asked:

(1) What are the economic rationales based on? If on experience, that assumes the future will be a continuation of the past or present. We are living in times unlike the past. For example, future generations will be electronic-educated with different work goals. Have existing developments reached the promised potential?

(2) Since virtually all of the residential units are rentals, won’t that change the societal effect on the area? Renters do not have a financial interest in the community. Renters tend to move more often than homeowners.

(3) Do decision makers understand true traffic effect? For example, the only traffic counts are for vehicles passing through intersections. Where do they start, stop and end? The conference center promised at least 10 percent of its attendees will use public transportation. Has anyone checked on that? (I live across the road from the center, and I doubt 1 percent fill that category. Most cars are single occupants.

(4) What is the economic Plan B in case Plan A does not work out? A lot can change between the time construction begins and when it opens for use. The Wisconsin where I live is a perfect example of that because it was being built when the economy was strong, but when it opened its unit sale prices were so far out of line buyers stayed away until the prices dropped radically.

There is an old saying: Measure twice before hammering once. A lot more innovative thought needs to go into development decisions and their processes.

David H. Brown, North Bethesda



  Renters have an interest in living in a nice community, with good schools particularly if they have children.  They rent, often houses as well as apartments, because they can't afford appreciated resale existing home sale prices such as the resale prices demanded by those who bought into "The Wisconsin" condo low and want to resell at enough profit to pay for replacement housing and moving costs.  People may also rent to save a down payment to buy.  Renters could also have been foreclosed on or short sold previously owned homes in the post 2007-9 housing market and general economic 'great recession' with spotty and savagely unequal rates of state and local GDP growth from 2011 to the present.  Landlords have an interest in maintaining the community, surrounding their immediate properties, to keep rents high including house and townhouse landlords.  As much as 1/3 of Montgomery County, MD are renters.  And [corrected link] many renters don't move (page 18-19)


 [screen shots added May 30, 2019 update]

as often as David H. Brown would have former readers of the now defunct Gazette believe.


   Now-exposed tenant-hater David H. Brown moved on in 2014 to calling out a lack of coordination in changing uses for the land now used for Lord and Taylor that is also the former site of the now demolished White Flint Mall.  There is another Lord and Taylor just over the District of Columbia border near the Friendship Heights WMATA Red Line metrorail station.  Parking at that location is restricted entry and may require payment.  


  Another unasked, and unanswered, question in the planning and land use policy community of tenant and homeowner citizens, property owners and county government is how many customers of the Lord and Taylor store that is all that's left of White Flint Mall drive from upper northwest DC or southwest Montgomery County bordering subdivisions in the built-up, single use, residentially-zoned 'green wedges' between the Wisconsin avenue, River Road and Massachusetts avenue corridors.  License plate views in the parking lots as well as sales tax receipts paid by each location to either DC city or Maryland state governments can start to answer the question if Lord and Taylor's reluctance to close their store is based on customer residency overlap because of free parking in the White Flint store and paid parking at the Friendship Heights store.  

   Montgomery County and Maryland state government subsidy packages offered to Amazon.com if they choose to build HQ2 where White Flint Mall stood are based, in part, on easier coordination of large development, and reuse of large pieces of land, if only one owner builds a 'development' to serve one use that is not residential.  


  Planner and council development oversight process 'fatigue' with mixed use development oversight results after 12, and maybe 16, years of civic/citizens hostility to virtually all new housing units proposed.  "Oversight fatigue" continues unless the new housing units are 'well designed' and 'respect the character of the neighborhood' (code words for regressively more expensive and raising resale prices proportionately).  Supremacy of an increasingly unaffordable resale housing market over the new housing market results.  The supremacy of profit-taking in the resale, and one existing rental unit turnover at a time, and rental housing markets enabled by 'community friendly' council members and county executives Marc Elrich, Phil Andrews and Isaiah Leggett and their friends in the civic/citizens association and Montgomery County Civic Federation (100% existing homeowner) 'community,' is further perpetuated by lawsuits brought by land use lawyers like Norman Knopf and David H. Brown who lose their cases while still driving up new housing developer costs.  Elrich's, Andrews' and Leggett's resistance to 'smart growth' is protected by lawyers for existing homeowner resale profit interests.  

  Most 'smart growth' mixed use development near public transit has become a higher density of higher income people.  Lower income and working class people displaced out of Montgomery County if their name doesn't 'come up' a 'winner' on waiting lists for various types of mostly HUD housing choice voucher-subsidized housing and MPD (moderately priced dwelling) Units, where moving out of Montgomery County, MD, is the 'free market' and individually privatized solution to reducing the waiting list time if not enough affordable housing units are both produced and retained.  A slow and steady displacement of residents, to Frederick, Prince George's and Howard Counties and the District of Columbia, on the basis of income class results, because of massive existing homeowner resistance in the service of the special interest of individual resale profits for each homeowner, as Montgomery County, Md grew anyway between 2003 and 2018. 



[dead link since retrieval of letter copied and pasted below]

http://m.gazette.net/article/20140910/OPINION/140919787/-1/white-flint-development-plan-lacks-coordination






Wednesday, September 10, 2014
White Flint development plan lacks coordination


Thanks to the county’s unimaginative approach to development, new construction will continue to be DIY — do it yourself. What we have is a hodge-podge of buildings totally lacking in symmetry of design. For example, here in the North Bethesda/White Flint sector, exteriors lack cohesion. In any parcel, one building is a poor relation to its neighbor.

Why is this happening? Absence of bureaucratic courage to be innovative. Why? There are those who wonder who is in charge of change, Council or the Planning Commission. It is my understanding that the planners are an advisory arm of the lawmakers.

When a new project is submitted for approval, decision makers consider design symmetry a long-lost cousin. In a word, lack of coordination.

But, we should not be surprised. There is little if any thought given to understanding where vehicles begin their trips, where they stop and how often, plus where they end. There are lots of calculations about vehicles passing through intersections, and which way they may turn. In truth, many of those trips begin/end way beyond a particular sector.

Part of the problem stems from economic/vehicular/societal assumptions. It would help to know who are the people flooding into new residential units. Where they work, shop, how often they use public transportation versus private vehicle usage, etc. would be helpful. “Build, and they will come” is a dangerous motto.

The current North Bethesda/White Flint development plan lacks coordination with surrounding sectors. For example, take Wisconsin Avenue/Rockville Pike/Md. 355 is not just one long roadway. The “buck” stops at vastly different “communities” as if they were cocoons.

Instead of relying solely on developer predictions of viability, county development decision makers should hear from independent experts in fields such as economics, society psychology, etc. It also would do well to have higher educations students take part in fact gathering and analysis for class credit. Some of their ideas and conclusions might be refreshing.

It is a given that developers gain profits, and the county gains tax revenue. There is nothing wrong with that. But, a little more imagination and coordination could encourage decision makers to have the courage to create a new era of development that could raise the bar for the rest of the nation.

David H. Brown, North Bethesda



The writer has been a rotating chairman of the Rockville Board of Appeals.
  

Norman Knopf, 2018 event organizer for Marc Elrich, civic litigator history back to 2005

  Much turnover in the Montgomery County (#MoCo) electorate between 2002-2018 make it difficult for many voters to remember how Marc Elrich is beholden to the special interest of single-family and townhouse (s/f and t/h) homeowners in the civic/citizens association community (with its umbrella group montgomerycivic.org).   


  Civic/citizens association members believe they should be the only county residents profiting from development in the form of their resale prices generating enough profit to pay replacement housing and moving costs.  


  Providing an estate for survivors (adult children or other estate executors) if a person attained the ultimate goal of 'aging in place,' supported by senior housing advocates, namely dying in place is another more-highly valued profit from real estate sales than building new housing units.  If survivors of a deceased homeowner don't choose to move into the house, to keep ownership 'in the family,' houses are often torn down and replaced to repeat the cycle of a single unit owner-occupied home as growing asset value.  Teardowns don't add units only fill up more space on residentially-zoned land lots. 

  Marc Elrich thanked attorney Norman Knopf for organizing a q and a in Chevy Chase section 4 (Town of Chevy Chase). 


  Norman Knopf, and his law partner David Brown, have made a legal career of representing citizens/civic associations, with the money to pay their fees a marker of wealth and class privilege, filing lawsuits against the county and builders of new housing (singled out and demonized as 'developers') in #MoCo local political discourse since after the 2002 local elections.  

  Wealth and class privilege transcends the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protected classes of race and national origin, as one Chevy Chase section 4 (Town) homeowner of likely South Asian/Indian subcontinent national origin Ajay Bhatt sued to retain the fence he built on right of way land needed to build both the Purple Line and a bike trail crossing Columbia Country Club's golf course just west of Connecticut Ave (MD route 185).  Bhatt had to earn a high income to afford his house in the first place even before fence construction, demolition, and litigation, costs. 

  Consensus views emerged that new housing builders' ('developers') influence must be limited by applying the bipartisan national issue of campaign finance reform in the local context of public campaign financing for the 2018 MoCo elections.  The elections have more candidates than usual because of the imposition of term limits that were a backlash to raising property taxes on a property tax base that has become regressively less affordable since 2003 when 'developers' were originally singled out.  


   Social liberal and fiscal conservative economic views in a Democratic-voting county, where Republicans only have 'open and accountable government' and fiscal issues left to organize around as backlash to 'scandals' like the responsiveness of the Department of Liquor Control to business orders, leading even Democratic candidates in the 2014 and 2016 elections to call for privatization of liquor sales.   Beer and wine sales already are privatized while stores cannot sell below a Montgomery County (Dept. of Liquor Control) DLC price.   

  To appear to be 'bipartisan' and not 'one-sided' unions and their PAC donations as well as corporate PAC donations are also singled out as much of the county government budget is payroll and benefit packages to county employees.  
  
  Candidates who still accept PAC money have the decision to accept it used against them as a 'negative campaign' or 'opposition research' issue.

  Corporations (including new housing builders/'developers') have given far more money to candidate committees and 'slate' (group of candidate) committees than unions.  

   It is inaccurate to assert and, indeed a lie, to equate corporate and union PAC donations.


   More relevant to local Montgomery County, MD elections since 2002 the finance, insurance and real estate (development) industry spent over 3 times as much money as that spent by unions on candidate and party committee ('campaign finance') donations in the 2012 election cycle.  


    

   Often abbreviated as FIRE it has also been called 'wall street' (of the NY City borough of Manhattan) as that is where its capital is assembled for income and retirement investing, at individual and institutional levels, as well as state and local government public finance (think of bonds that pay for most infrastructure with taxes before and after the infrastructure is in use). 


  One example of Norman Knopf and David Brown's legal work included suing Montgomery County itself to prevent the sale of unused county land to a private owner who wished to build one more house in an already expensive neighborhood where even older homes sell for over $1 million




 A connected [and wealthy] community working together was the key to the preservation of Maiden Lane Urban Park. In February 2000, the Maiden Lane site was sold by the county to a private buyer to build a home. Alerted to the news of the sale in June 2000 when trees on the site were marked for cutting, the community sparked into action and formed the Committee for the Preservation of Maiden Lane Park, hiring the law firm of Knopf and Brown and initiating a legal fight between the county, buyer and the community which lasted for four years.
The awards presented Saturday reinforced the years of effort to preserve Maiden Lane Urban Park.  Awards were given to Norman Knopf and David Brown from the law firm of Knopf & Brown, to former County Council President Blair Ewing and former [Republican predecessor of term-limited Roger Berliner] Councilmember Howard Denis for their support in passing two County Council resolutions in 2001 urging that Maiden Lane be made a park and to Department of Parks Land Acquisition Specialist Bill Gries for his guidance to the community in brokering the land transfer.





 leading to many older homes being torn down and replaced with bigger homes.   

 Republican Councilmember Howard Denis, the last Republican member of the Montgomery County council, replaced another Republican Betty Krahnke in a 2000 special election after Krahnke was forced to resign because of health reasons.  Roger Berliner was a Democratic councilmember in a rich, and growing richer one rental and owned housing unit turnover at a time, social liberal fiscal conservative Republican district first elected as a local manifestation of a national Democratic 'wave election' of 2006.


  I call 'mansionization and teardowns' suburban renewal (analogous to urban renewal in the past) that displaced from the neighborhood any person who, for a long list of reasons, couldn't 'keep up' with rising 'costs of living' mostly housing purchase (or rental) and maintenance.   Inclusionary zoning and mixed income housing policy goals, that should be enforced in all sector and master plans, were set back perhaps permanently.  


  Another example of Norman Knopf and David Brown's work that weakened inclusionary zoning and mixed income housing goals by enriching existing and new 'market rate' single-family homeowners one sale at a time, over time, occurred just 'outside the beltway' where existing homeowners unsuccessfully fought new townhouses 



 Neighbors objected to that entrance, arguing additional traffic would pose safety risks and force them to move their parked cars on what is now a small neighborhood street. But the neighborhood association, which hired anti-development attorney Norman Knopf, didn't have much of a leg to stand on when it was revealed residents are technically parking illegally right now because of the small size of the road.


in the Fleming Park neighborhood (subdvision) bordered by Grosvenor Lane and Fleming avenue. 



   Current shoppers in the Kensington Safeway at Connecticut and Knowles avenues with a bus stop served by multiple bus routes (Ride On 34, 5, 7, WMATA L8 kept operating on weekends by Ride On)  may not be aware of Norman Knopf's history of being retained to prevent the replacement of an older grocery market with a larger market. 

  The Safeway store in the 4 Corners North Silver Spring neighborhood on eastbound MD route 193 (University Boulevard) is still operating in the same store design and space as the former "Soviet Safeway" in Kensington that Kensington First raised the replacement costs of in their attempt at litigation carried out by Norman Knopf.   

  Only the inability of Kensington First to privately fundraise Knopf's fee, which Mr. Knopf would not reduce, forced the dropping of the lawsuit.  Cafe Monet and Cottage Monet later went out of business in their Armory Avenue storefront.



Kensington First withdrew its appeal of the Montgomery County Planning Board’s approval of the project on July 29 because ‘‘we just didn’t have enough money to pay our lawyer, Norman Knopf,” said Judy Hanks-Henn, president of the group.
Knopf’s fee for filing and representing the group for the appeal was $10,000. The group had raised more than $8,000, said Caya Cagri, another Kensington First member, but pledges for the remaining amount ‘‘just didn’t pan out.”
Knopf declined comment. The group has returned the money to the donors.
Approved by the Planning Board last July, the new store will be 54,000 square feet, more than twice the size of the current store. It will also have a total of 268 parking spaces in street-level and below ground lots.

Hanks-Henn said Kensington First has never opposed the store. But, the group argued the new store should have to conform to the stricter design requirements for Kensington’s historic district across the street, even though it was not officially in the district.
The Planning Board rejected that argument when it voted unanimously to approve the project in July 2004. Kensington First filed the appeal on May 13, a month after the board issued a written opinion confirming its approval of the project.
The decision to withdraw the approval was ‘‘very disappointing,” said Cagri, who owns Café Monet and Cottage Monet, a gift shop, on Armory Avenue. ‘‘We put a lot of work into it. I don’t know what to do.”
  


   The Montgomery County Civic Federation honored Norman Knopf with a "Community Hero" award in 2004.  By 2005 Mr. Knopf wouldn't act in the spirit of the award by reducing his legal fee to Kensington First to handle a land use lawsuit that was already on questionable grounds because the Kensington Historic District boundary excluded the Safeway property at issue.   Additional legal costs probably raised the costs to future businesses in rent to the shopping center owner and are reflected in lower labor costs from fewer cashiers (only 1 or 2 lanes in use) as well as 'self check out' machines.  People may have also changed their food purchases to home delivery from Safeway, and other food sellers, as well as subscriptions to community supported agriculture local farms.  Very few local community supported agriculture farms offer delivery to customer homes.  Customers must plan to pick up their weekly 'fruit and vegetable boxes' in shopping center or school parking lots to get value from their subscriptions.


  Readers of this post can now be more informed voters in the June 26, 2018 Montgomery County Democratic primary election by deciding for themselves if they like Marc Elrich's relationship with Norman Knopf who raised the housing prices and rents of new residents as well as making them stand in longer 'supermarket checkout' lines even for self checkout machines.