July 19th, 2007
Silver Spring, Sprung; The ‘Burb is Revived with Movies, Cafes and Cool-Cat Condos
Silver Spring, Md., isn’t a planned community or a municipality. The unincorporated zone just across the border from the District doesn’t even have a mayor or a single elected official. Silver Spring defies many definitions, but its lack of a label doesn’t detract from one fact: This neighborhood is convenient and growing.
Just seven miles northeast D.C., the Maryland neighborhood — named for a spring discovered by 19th-century journalist and politician Francis Preston Blair — is one of the region’s fastest-growing business and residential centers. Its renaissance started in 1998, with a redevelopment agreement between Folger Pratt and Peterson Companies to revitalize and redesign the area. Discovery Communications’ move to town in February 2003 helped jump-start the region’s meteoric growth.
Area residents are pleased with the changes they’ve seen. Brian Haney, a 25-year-old banker for SunTrust, grew up in Silver Spring and has high praise for all the recent development. He recently bought a condo at the Silverton, a mod new complex carved out of a 20th-century Canada Dry bottling plant. “They’ve done a good job spreading things out and opening opportunities to new businesses,” said Haney. “It was much maligned and run down just a few years ago, but now it’s a thriving cultural melting pot.”
Silver Spring’s proximity to the nation’s capital likely led to its surging Hispanic and African immigrant population. As a result, regional food is all the rage here. Take a walk down Ellsworth Drive and find everything from Thai, Vietnamese, Mexican and Jamaican cuisine to chain joints such as Chipotle, Red Lobster, Macaroni Grill and Eggspectations. There’s plenty of fine dining to satisfy the populace’s increasingly sophisticated palate, too.
And the second area branch of bakery CakeLove draws carb-craving hordes with its dazzling and daunting selection of fresh baked goods. (935 Ellsworth Dr., cakelove.com; 301-565-2253). Just sniffing the air inside, where bakers whip up buttercream frosting and dense cakes, probably adds a couple hundred calories to your daily reckoning.
Most area residents are young professionals or empty nesters who’ve moved here to enjoy culture, cuisine and a bustling condo scene. More than 3,000 new residential units are slated to go up in the next few years. Located just over the District’s northeast border in Maryland, the vibrant and revitalized Silver Spring measures 61 square miles. Nearly all of its downtown area is pedestrian-friendly
In fact, it’s planned that way. For instance, Arts Alley, at the intersection of Georgia Avenue and Blair Mill Road, connects several businesses including Mayorga Coffee Factory (one of several downtown hot spots to offer free WiFi along with jolts of java), Moorenko’s ice cream shop (which hosts weekly folk music concerts by toddler favorite Miss Belle) and The Gallery restaurant (a Latin American joint).
The area also holds an artists’ market on the second Saturday of each month April through early December (weather permitting). The Alley is the first in a series of South Silver Spring PedestrianPOSTLinkages projects aimed at transforming alleyways into destinations.
Silver Spring is also convenient to public transportation: Metro’s Silver Spring station lies in the heart of downtown, and the Forest Glen stop recently became more accessible due to a $7.7 million pedestrian bridge across Georgia Avenue (between Locust Grove and Forest Glen Road). There’s also VanGo, the area’s free shuttle that runs throughout the downtown area Monday through Friday. It’s so popular that urban planners are pushing to add weekend hours. And the Silver Spring Metrobus transit center, currently the second-busiest transit station in the system, will double capacity by summer 2009.
But many residents don’t leave Silver Spring often, since both offices and after-work diversions are so plentiful. Families picnic on the unnaturally green patch of SoftLawn at the corner of Fenton and Ellsworth Streets. Think highfalutin Astroturf: It isn’t mowed — it’s vacuumed and supposedly never causes allergy flare-ups.
Shops are also plentiful and varied, though mostly a chain gang including Ann Taylor Loft, Ulta, DSW Shoe Warehouse, Pier One and American Apparel. Nesters flock to Strosnider’s Hardware Store (815 Wayne Ave.) for tools and gardening gear and its next-door neighbor, Whole Foods, for groceries.
Perhaps catering to the increasingly young and fitness-conscious condo dwellers, the ‘hood also boasts a healthy number of gyms. Scheduled to open late this year, L.A. Fitness (Fenton and Ellsworth avenues; 301-589-2323; lafitness.com) fills 48,500 square feet with 80 pieces of cardio equipment, a full-size basketball court and a 25-yard long pool. Gold’s Gym, Washington Sports Clubs and Willow Street Yoga Center (8561 Fenton St., 301-270-8038; willowstreetyoga.com) also operate downtown.
Anyone wanting to live among the action has many choices, thanks to all the residential units going up or in place. Gary Stith, director of Silver Spring Regional Center, said: “Most of them are condos, which is a fairly new phenomenon in Silver Spring. There weren’t any [condos] until about two years ago, but now with all of the amenities available, it’s created the need.”