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.
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.
