Rockville leads the way with affordable workforce housing once more with a new project in the works: Beall's Grant II (PDF link). Undertaken by Montgomery Housing Partnership, this project will provide 109 units of mixed income rental housing in downtown Rockville, from studios to three-bedroom apartments, with a parking garage, on the site where the current Beall's Grant apartments are, and extending out to Beall Avenue. It appears to be an ideal location: within walking distance of the metro, Giant, SuperFresh (when it opens), the post office, and all the other stores and businesses in downtown Rockville. Involving the renovation of an existing building and incorporating a wealth of green features, I imagine this is just the sort of affordable housing project Ike Leggett wants to promote throughout the county.

Montgomery Housing Partnership lists numerous green features (Word doc) they plan to incorporate into the buildings, from low-VOC paint and water-conserving and EnergyStar appliances, to use of native plants in the landscaping and recycled construction materials. As WECA President Patricia Woodward notes in a letter providing West End Civic Association's endorsement of Beall's Grant II, Montgomery Housing Partnership is a known and trusted partner in Rockville:

"Beall's Grant was bought and renovated by Montgomery Housing Partnership over ten years ago. In that time, they have been good neighbors who create no problems or disruptions from our special part of the city we love. Montgomery Housing Partnership has been a responsible partner, whose staff is committed to being responsive to any concerns we have ever raised. Questions regarding school numbers, parking spaces, and environmental impact have all been answered in a timely and thorough manner.

In addition to WECA, Mayor Susan Hoffman and the Rockville City Council have given their endorsement to the project, and it now awaits Department of Housing & Community Development approval of tax credits for funding. TCAT (the Town Center Action Team, responsible for envisioning and guiding our new downtown into existence) invited Rob Goldman of Montgomery Housing Partnership to present the project at City Hall last Tuesday to any interested Rockville residents, and appears ready to lend their endorsement also, pending some questions about parking issues and the height, setback and appearance of the facade facing Beall Avenue. Thank you to Bridget Newton and other members of TCAT for making this information available city-wide, and to Cheryl Kagan for forwarding me the documents linked to above. Beall's Grant II sounds like another great example of Rockville leading the way with both workforce housing and green building development.

First of all, I'm so glad to have had the chance finally to see The West End do their thing live. What a fun show! I still can't imagine what Brad Rourke has for breakfast but whatever it is we should all be eating a big bowl of it. And Mike Shawn is a joy to listen to on keyboards (and singing), Monique is probably the sexiest drummer in the universe, and new guy Matthew Taylor sounded great on bass. (Ok, I'm no music commentator -- I just know those guys put on a show that was really fun to listen to and be part of. And I enjoyed meeting Mike's mom and CindyCG and seeing familiar faces from all over Rockville.)

I took some video and was planning to put up a couple clips at YouTube as I did previously for The Digits and Nelly's Echo. After waiting for two hours for one of the files to upload though, I googled around to see if there was a way to upload a flv instead (since that's what youtube converts it to anyway and it's much smaller), and found a mention of Blip TV, which not only allows flv uploads, but shows them with the compression you set, and at a larger size than YouTube. As a test, I uploaded 24 compressed at 300kbps/128k at 320x240 (as I would do for YouTube) to Blip TV. What a difference! It uploaded in about 10 minutes and displays at a huge 624 x 470. Kind of a strange size, but I thought I'd go all out and try my favorite of the evening, Summertime, compressed at 400/128 and full size and it looks great! Here's one more for West End junkies: No Depression.

[Update, Apr 14: FLVs can be uploaded to YouTube as well. It's a speedy upload, but I think the file gets recompressed -- the quality at YouTube doesn't look as good as locally (testing in Flash, which I used to make the flv). Here is Summertime at YouTube.]

Next X on your calendar: May 25, when The West End performs at Hometown Holidays. I'm looking forward to it already.

Slideshow/video

On a less nerdy note, I returned in the evening with P to hear one of two musicians who I've listened to a lot online but never seen live: Nelly's Echo (or rather, Nelson and his band, Nelly's Echo). And of course I brought my videocamera just in case it was ok to tape. One of the good things about Austin Grill is that they don't crank the sound up so high that you can't talk to the people you came with, which I really appreciate, but it also means the recording has a lot of ambient noise. My favorite of the evening was Killing Me Softly, but the recording/slideshow I posted here is a bit of "Just a Dream", which you can hear a much better recording of here. Thank you to Steve, manager of Austin Grill, and to Nelson --who must surely be one of the few musicians who goes around and meets the people in the audience, even us oldsters-- for letting me tape. For those who still don't know, Austin Grill has live music almost every night of the week -- you can hear samples of a lot of it at the calendar page (click any music note) and at Austin Grill's myspace page.

Having spent the past weekend filming, feeding, watching and celebrating with the RMHS Poms and other RM Pom parents, I feel like I've earned a few pom mom bragging rights. I'm so proud of them! Congratulations to Sarah, Ally, Nava, Tiffany and the other 8 Poms for building up such a sharp, competitive squad, for placing well in all your competitions and looking good at RM football and basketball games too (and pep rallies). A huge thank you to Kathleen and Theresa especially, and to Shelby and Chloe and Jordan, for coming back and helping with practice and competitions. Here are some video clips from the past couple weeks. Looking forward to County's this coming Saturday. Go Rockets!

Update 2/12/08: Rockets placed 3rd (great job!) and Sarah took 2nd at counties, and the well-trained RM Bom Squad placed a definitive 1st at RM.

When I first started playing with this site almost 10 years ago, I used an Access database and html table cells to show the location of various shopping centers along Rockville Pike. It was clumsy but pretty cool given the state of Internet technology in 1998. Several years later, I turned it into a Flash map, when Flash 4, the first version that could communicate with a database, came out. I've finally started on a third version of the map, using Flash 8 and the wonderful object-oriented programming powers of actionscript. My inspiration was the zoning map I saw displayed at the second Zoning Forum at Glenview Mansion. It seemed like a perfect thing to make work interactively, so I bashed away over the holidays tracing out the zone boundaries over a map I'd already started on for use at this site. (Thanks to Katie Mencarini of the Planning Dept, I now have the beautiful big map that she created to work from).

The result can be seen here. You can see all zones and find out about each one as you mouse over it, or hide all the zones and turn them on individually to see which parts of Rockville are zoned Mixed Use Business, eg. Of course, I have a zillion plans for additions to the map, but while the zoning discussion is underway, it's a zoning map. Here's what I learned about the new zoning ordinance from Jim Wasilak, City Planner, and John Tyner from the Zoning Ordinance Review Committee at our Woodley Gardens West Civic Association meeting last Monday:

Most of the new zones are based on the ones in the existing zoning ordinance (created in 1975 and modified 200+ times since then), with changes to accommodate Rockville's current state. With most land already developed, the changes are aimed at redevelopment to support mixed uses (especially residential and commercial), to improve pedestrian friendliness, to control 'mansionization', to enhance the environment, and to keep our park and open space. It includes things like wider sidewalk requirements, specification of paved surface percentage allowed on a lot, and in addition to building dimension and height specifications, adds a specification for the transition in height between commercial and adjoining residential areas. The new proposed zoning ordinance also replaces the 9 processes previously required for site review to a single site review process, with the inclusion of different reviewers (City council, City staff, Planning Commission) dependent on the scale of the proposed project.

The zoning ordinance works in conjunction with two other City processes already in place: the Comprehensive Transportation Review (CTR), which examines the traffic impact of any proposed developments, and the APFO, which looks at schools, EMS, utilities and other infrastructure needs associated with new development. Regulation of home businesses based on their impact on the neighborhood is also included in the ordinance. For a look at the actual Zoning Ordinance Draft and information about the process, see the City website.

2007 was a great year for Rockville. We got our long-awaited Town Center, with all the good food, shopping, summer events and live music that came along with it. (Speaking of which, I highly recommend the recently-opened Thai Pavilion -- we had three of their vegetarian dishes last night and they were all superb). Good things happened following the City elections too (though more of you need to get out and vote in the next election!) I'm very happy to see that, thanks to the efforts of folks in Hungerford especially, reason won out in the council and once-a-week trash pickup will be implemented after all, and equally glad to see workforce housing coming to Rockville. I also salute the folks who ran for council and didn't get elected but still remain passionate about improving life in Rockville. I'll be attending Carl Henn's gathering this coming Friday (January 4, 7:30pm, 193 Hardy Place, 20852) to see his presentation on the energy/environmental future that Rockville faces and will report back here about that -- hopefully on my new actual blog that I plan to get set up soon. Happy New Year to all!

See Brad sing. See Brad jump. Go Brad, go! The West End (yes, our very own) look and sound like they enjoy every minute on the stage. Here are some videos of the band from their latest gig, at Austin Grill last week, shot by Rockville Central blogger CindyCG.

Like it? They'll be back February 23 in the same place: put a big West End X on your calendar.

A victory occurred quietly yesterday evening, one which reminds me of all that is good about Rockville. A motion was passed by the Rockville City Council, in their first session together, that allows the County to move forward with plans to make existing residential units above the shops in King Farm Village Center available for sale to people who live and work in Rockville and other parts of the county, as part of the County's commitment to providing affordable housing for residents and would-be residents.

It sounds like a simple enough thing, but all sorts of behind-the-scenes work had to be done, and done quickly, to bring it about. First of all, the County recognized an opportunity some weeks ago to enact legislation passed in summer of 2006 that ensures the creation of housing for teachers, firefighters, and other crucial members of our community who work here but would otherwise be squeezed out of the housing market. Residential units in King Farm Village Center had been offered to a seller for redevelopment or rental, and the County moved to exercise its right to purchase such property at the same rate as the seller for conversion and sale as workforce housing, contingent on the approval of the municipality (Rockville) of which the housing is part.

Rick Nelson of the Department of Housing and Community Affairs was the key player from the County. Both he and Rockville City Manager Scott Ullery apparently worked many long hours (including over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend) meeting with members of the King Farm Citizen Assembly (who held several emergency town meetings) and working with KFCA President Andrew Gordon and Eric Gotting of the KF External Affairs Committee to try and negotiate an agreement that would allow the County to proceed with this model workforce housing implementation before the deadline on the transfer of property expired, and still assure the residents of King Farm that the standards set forth for workforce housing would be strictly adhered to by the County for the duration of the project, and allow legal recourse for KFCA if not.

It was fascinating to watch the players at work in the (televised) council session last night. Mr Nelson was an articulate spokesman for DHCA and the worthiness of this County endeavor, but also recognized the concerns of the KFCA, represented equally articulately by Eric Gotting. Mayor Susan Hoffmann and Mr Ullery kept the proceedings moving forward, with new councilmember John Britton pointing out language changes needed to make sure both the City and KFCA retained their legal rights in the document, and councilmembers Marcuccio and Robbins affirming the worth of the project. City attorney Paul Glasgow addressed each legal issue and question that came up, and by the end of the session, a motion was passed that appeared to satisfy everyone. It was a gratifying conclusion to a complicated matter, and none too soon, as the extended deadline for the County to act is tomorrow. I look forward to seeing how the actual implementation of the project proceeds, and hope it will be a successful model for future affordable housing ventures in Rockville.

After their successful benefit concert last summer, the Digits were back on stage last Friday, this time at Outta The Way Cafe. I took my new video camera and posted some clips and stills here.

Hooray for the Gazette, who have endorsed my two favorites for City Council, John Britton and Carl Henn (they also endorsed Piotr Gajewski and Theodric Anderson, and Susan Hoffman for Mayor). Take that, whoever stole our yard signs! This is what they said:

"Our top choice is John Britton, who has served on the city Planning Commission for five years and was part of the committee that authored the proposed citywide zoning revisions now before the council. A private practice attorney who seems to have a command of land-use and environment issues, we believe he will serve the city well as it decides how Rockville will look for the next generation. He is one of the most impressive candidates Rockville has seen in several terms.

Carl Henn also earns our endorsement for his strong commitment to keeping Rockville a community that continues to serve its residents well. Mr. Henn never sways from his commitment to the environment - most intensely on the need to become less dependent on oil - but at the heart of that ardor is his knowledge of the issues important to the city. He is a well-intentioned, hard-working man who will bring civility back to the council."

Bring on those elections! (And don't forget to come out tomorrow night, Saturday, October 27 at 7pm to UUCR to listen and ask questions if you haven't made up your mind yet).

I just stumbled onto Katherine K's yelp reviews of lots of Rockville (and a few other) places. They're fun to read and informative too --doubly delicious-- especially the ones for Tuesday Morning and Moti's Falafel Stand. Plus she put in a plug for Dr. Praveen Gupta, who I knew in a different lifetime as part of a group of avid racquetball players at the DoubleTree on the Pike, before it became a Hilton and before the racquetball club turned into a conference center. I miss that club!

This was a great summer for music in Rockville, and it looks likely to continue into the fall. With Thursday evening music in Town Center thru Sept 13, music every Wednesday to Saturday night and Sunday Jazz Brunch at Austin Grill, concerts at F. Scott Fitzgerald and Parilla PAC, First Fridays in Town Square and more, a person could hear something new and different every day of the week.

Two of our favorites in recent weeks were the performance of some of the former Cascade in Blue members (some of whom are now part of The Slights who also performed) at Austin Grill on August 23, and The Digits' benefit concert this past weekend. I posted a couple short video clips here.

This morning I joined a tour (organized by Aileen Klein of the Town Center Action Team and David Levy, Rockville's Chief of Long Range Planning and Redevelopment) of the soon-to-be-open VisArts Center and the already-open Rockville Innovation Center, both housed in the Arts and Innovation Center in Rockville Town Center, on the corner of Gibbs St and the main square, next to the library and above La Tasca Restaurant. Both promise to be very welcome additions to the Rockville community. Harriet Lesser, VisArts' Director of Exhibitions, led the tour of the two-level VisArts center, which houses several working artists' studios, a gallery (where the opening show on Comic Books & the Arts will be), a large events room, ceramics and photography labs, and studios for painting and drawing classes. The Center is scheduled to open September 30 and will be offering all kinds of art classes beginning this fall.

Lynne Benzion, Associate Director of Rockville Economic Development, Inc introduced us to the Montgomery-County-run business incubator on the 4th and 5th floors of the building. The center offers a well-located, well-appointed place for start-up businesses (with tele-conferencing plasma screens in every conference room and WiFi available throughout), and one in which tenants may also take advantage of programs that teach business skills and offer support with licensing, intellectual property, financing and other issues from the Center's several sponsors (including Shulman, Rogers, Gandal, Pordy & Ecker, P.A. law firm, Adventist Health Care, Montgomery College, and Watkins, Meegan, Drury & Company, LLC, a Bethesda-based accounting firm). There are already several tenants, some of whom are listed on the REDI website.

Of all the candidates running for City Council in the November elections, there are two that I will vote for without hesitation: Carl Henn and John Britton. Both have been actively involved in Rockville civic life for years, as thoughtful and articulate spokespeople for issues they are concerned about. Carl Henn has been a tireless proponent of the need to seriously address issues of global warming and oil dependency in a real and immediate way in Rockville. He has a concrete plan to improve public transit and make Rockville more pedestrian friendly and energy efficient. John Britton is a friend of our family, and another example of someone who has devoted considerable time to improving the quality of life in Rockville, through his work with RORZOR, the Cultural Arts commission and most recently, as chairman of the Rockville Planning Commission. As he says in this Gazette article, Rockville is ready for changes to our code and ordinances that will impose a higher standard of environmental quality on our living. We agree.

Brad Rourke of Rockville Central has posted some well-written summaries of his interviews with the three candidates for Rockville Mayor in the elections coming up on November 6. There are even links to podcasts of the interviews available.

Volunteers for Manna Food Center are at the Rockville Farmers Market every Saturday, receiving produce purchased at the market for donation to needy families in Rockville and Montgomery County. Buy some for yourself and some for someone else! I noticed yesterday that some of the vendors (Query Mill Hill Farm) also contribute to the collection themselves.

The best part of the farmers market is finding things you don't see at the grocery store. Yesterday there were some tiny tasty cherries (available for probably one more week), Osaka purple mustard greens and bunches of little sweet pink turnips (pictured at right -- despite the fact that my attempt at photographic culinary artistry looks more like a pink-eyed alien creature than a delicious dish, they were both really tasty). One vendor said he expects all of the 4 kinds of eggplant grown on his Virginia farm to be ready next weekend. My favorite splurge at the market is a bunch of fragrant pink stargazer lilies, which open slowly over the course of a week or two and give the whole downstairs a lovely aroma, and are sold by the couple from Farmhouse Flowers.

Another note about Manna: In addition to collecting food from the farmers market, Manna Food Center also runs a great program called Smart Snacks, which "provides hungry elementary school students in Montgomery County with 10-15 nutritious and kid-friendly foods for the weekend in backpacks handed to them at their local school." See their website for details on this and other programs at Manna.

Another restaurant has opened in Town Center: Cosi! My daughter, who lives for their TBM's (tomato-basil-mozarella on freshly made rustic or whole-grain bread) and s'mores, is thrilled. We went for dinner last night and found the parking easy (the garage on the corner of N Washington & Middle Lane, right next to the restaurant, is now open). Business was good in the restaurant, the food was great (especially Cosi's own baked-on-premises bread and Signature salad), and we were happy to run into friends who had come over from Kensington to try it and to stock up on TBMs for school lunches.

Speaking of grocery stores, it looks like the new grocery store in Town Center will be a SuperFresh, expected to open in the fourth quarter of 2007.

Last night I went shopping at Bloom to get bunny food, since the place I usually get bulk rabbit food pellets, Animal Exchange, was closed and a certain someone in the house was desperate for food. I really like shopping at Bloom, where you can pick up a scanner when you go in and scan-and-bag as you shop and then be pretty much done with everything except running your credit card through the pay thing at the end. I also like their $1-each reusable shopping bags, which I think can even hook onto the bag holder that you can put in your cart as you shop (though I didn't realize that til I was looking at the picture I took last night). Oh, and I like the small carts too -- the ones that are in between regular size and a basket, and even have a little place to hold the scanner.

It seems that someone at Bloom really thought about what customers need to make shopping easier, though they still have a few kinks to work out (my scanner couldn't be read at the first location I tried and I had to go to a second, and when I was using it in the produce section, it thought turnip greens were Eastern cantaloupes). Other than those little glitches, it's a nice place to shop. If they carried some more environmentally friendly products (I couldn't find any paper product with recycled content or any dishwasher soap without phosphates or any cleaner that didn't have a hazardous-to-your-health warning on it), it would be ideal. Floppy says the bunny food is excellent too.

Want to watch Town Center being constructed? Here's a timelapse view of the construction of Rockville Town Center over the past two years, based on photos from the RockNet Webcam, set up on the Victoria Condominiums in October 2004. Rocknet has now amassed hundreds of pictures on the server supporting the webcam, all of them a view of essentially the same place (though the camera occasionally gets shifted by wind or other unknown factors and has to be set back to its original position). I've uploaded 112 of those pictures, kindly provided by Bob Ekman, who sorted through and batch color-corrected over 700 noontime photos from the camera. The set runs from October 2, 2004 through December 15, 2006 and is displayed in a Flash-based timelapse viewer (coded with ActionScript 2 and PHP, and you'll need the (free) Flash 7 player or higher to view it). Put on your hard hat and take a look.

Last night we celebrated my husband's birthday by eating out at Il Pizzico. We must've driven by the place a hundred times in the 15 years we've lived in Rockville, thought (mistakenly) 'bad name for a pizza place' and never actually gone there to try the food. Too bad for us though -- the restaurant has absolutely fabulous food, a fun bartender, and a very nice atmosphere, as many residents of Montgomery County obviously already knew: the place was packed. We had a half hour wait for a table, and our waiter told us this was slow for a Saturday night.

I'm no restaurant critic, but I can say that everyone in my family was very happy with their meal, including our two vegetarians, who had the Pansotti di Spinaci in salsa di Crema and Penne with an eggplant sauce (which I don't remember the Italian name for). My favorites of the evening were the Finocchio Marinato salad and the Creme Brulée for dessert. The portions were just right and the presentation (especially the salads) was lovely. We'll be back!

Speaking of historic buildings in Rockville, I just found this great collection of photos of historic Rockville at the Peerless Rockville website. Many thanks to the folks there for making these photos available for everyone to see.

A fascinating list of historic places in Rockville with photos and descriptions (saving the Dawson Farm residence, travelling on the trolley line from Rockville to Georgetown in the 20's and 30's, the significance of Frieda's Cottage) can also be found at the site.