As they do every December, Tracy Stanton and Carlos Cuevasa recently hosted a gathering at their Fordyce Place home featuring several local jewelry and textile artisans. Tracy and Carlos share an interest in healthy lifestyles and the environment. Having retired from the World Bank, Carlos now works in microfinance—providing financial services to poor and low-income clients—while Tracy is a program manager at Ecosystem Marketplace, an information source on ecosystem services such as water quality and biodiversity. They are both runners.
It’s natural that Tracy and Carlos’s neighbors Keith and Lynn Voight would be included in this artisan line-up. In addition to their day jobs, the Voights own All Things Olive, which specializes in authentic olive oil and other gourmet food items. You may have run into them at the Kensington Farmers’ Market on Saturday mornings. With an exotic choice of California extra virgin olive oils, herb infused olive oils, wine vinegars and tapenades on hand and ready for tasting, Keith will explain all there is to know about the health benefits of olive oil and more. The Voights came up with the idea for the business after a trip to Paris. And they live right here in Maplewood!
If you have ideas about Maplewood events or personalities to feature in this space, please let us know.
The Foundation for Advanced Education in the Sciences (FAES) notified the MCA back in September that it intends to construct a 31-unit student housing complex on its property at the intersection of Acacia and Cypress Avenues in Maplewood. A committee has been formed to address issues associated with the FAES proposal and monitor the progress of the proposed project.
The approximately four-acre lot is currently zoned for single family detached residential buildings (R-60). In order to develop the property with multi-family housing, FAES must be granted a rezoning from the Montgomery County Council. FAES recently informed the MCA that it intends to submit their rezoning application before the end of January. Signs will be posted on three sides of the property. All adjacent and abutting homeowners, as well as the MCA, should receive notice of the rezoning application from the attorney for the FAES.
The FAES has also requested attend the MCA general membership at the upcoming meeting on January 28th at Heart House. At this time it will present details of the proposed project and answer questions from neighborhood residents.
The FAES committee is tentatively scheduled to meet on Tuesday, January 27th to review the FAES rezoning application. If you’re interested in attending, please contact committee co-chairs Susan Cheney or Mark Nathans.
Ground has finally been broken on the last two remaining townhomes in the Bethesda Crest development, which sits on a 5-acre infill site on Rockville Pike just east of where Benton and Acacia Avenues end. When these are completed, there will be a total of 28 townhomes on the site, including four existing MPDUs. The site, which used to house the regional headquarters of Goodwill Industries, has been at the center of significant controversy beginning when it was proposed back in 2002.
Neighborhood efforts resulted in the scaling down of the project and significant trees being saved, among other concessions. However, in 2005 county officials ordered a halt to construction after MCA members called their attention to setback, height and other site plan violations. The Planning Board eventually ordered Elm Street, the developer of the project, to pay a small fine and adhere to a compliance plan. The amended site plan, which pertains in part to the two units currently under construction, included increased setbacks and more substantial fences and walls at the perimeter of the property.
Like the existing townhomes the new units are being built by Craftmark Homes. The developer has said that both homes are under contract and scheduled to be completed in March. (Only one other unit in the complex remains on the market, priced at $1.37 million.) Residents who have concerns about construction activity or notice anything else unusual are encouraged to contact the MCA.
The Baltimore Sun reported last week on County Executive Ike Leggett’s letter to Gov. Martin O’Malley, in which he stressed that the state’s draft action plan — due to be released this month — doesn’t sufficiently address the anticipated traffic congestion around the future Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
…the Draft BRAC Action Plan does not identify specific and concrete mitigations for anticipated major traffic congestion that will have significant ramifications for accessibility to NNMC/WRNMMC, the National Institutes of Health, Suburban Hospital…and on the quality of life of surrounding well-established neighborhoods.
The Governor’s BRAC subcabinet meeting released a draft of its plan for the Base Realignment and Closure process. The state’s draft budget for BRAC currently includes only $5.4 million in fiscal 2008, in connection to the Navy Med transfer of Walter Reed Army Medical Center functions to the National Naval Medical Center campus in Bethesda.
State funding for local transportation projects is still on hold as the wait continues for the release of the Navy Environmental Impact Statement, now planned for early December. BRAC is projected to add an estimated 2,500 new workers to the Bethesda base and double the hospital’s patient and visitor load to about 900,000 people per year by 2011.
MCA has learned that The McLean School, which is currently housed in a closed Montgomery County school in Potomac, has been in negotiations with the American College of Cardiology to purchase the College’s property to use as a high school for 300 students. Under the school’s proposal, the existing building would be retained, but most of the trees on the property would be removed for the construction of soccer fields, and reforestation would be done closer to Old Georgetown Road.
At the present time, no traffic plan exists for the school’s desired use of the property, and the school has not committed to attending the November MCA meeting to present its plans more formally. The ACC still intends to proceed to present its residential development plans to the Maryland National Capital Park and Planning Commission but has not rejected the school’s offer. MCA will discuss both of these proposed uses at the November meeting to see if there is a preference for one over the other.
As they do every December, Tracy Stanton and Carlos Cuevasa recently hosted a gathering at their Fordyce Place home featuring several local jewelry and textile artisans. Tracy and Carlos share an interest in healthy lifestyles and the environment. Having retired from the World Bank, Carlos now works in microfinance—providing financial services to poor and low-income clients—while Tracy is a program manager at Ecosystem Marketplace, an information source on ecosystem services such as water quality and biodiversity. They are both runners.
