On this day during which we celebrate the founders of new urbanism and Kentlands and the City of Gaithersburg leaders for being national leaders in supporting this vision, it is appropriate to look at where Kentlands Downtown has been, is today, and will be tomorrow.

 

Kentlands Downtown as a Mall??? Lakelands as Walmart and a McDonalds??? 

 

History

(see http://www.kentlandsusa.com/sub_category_list.asp?category=19&t... for a complete history)

The following is excerpted from 'The emergence of modern Kentlands' by Richard L. Arkin:

 

The modern history of Kentlands begins with the 1988 sale of 352 acres of the old Kentlands Farm from the Kentlands Foundation Trust and Helen Danger Kent to Great Seneca Limited Partnership, a division of Joseph Alfandre & Co.

Alfandre quickly sold -- for $17 million -- a portion of the site adjacent to the future Great Seneca highway (then under construction) to midwestern shopping center magnate Mel Simon for development a modern (and rather conventional) regional mall. Alfandre's initial thought was to develop the rest of the former Kentlands Farm along somewhat conventional suburban lines, but with the architecturally pure house types he was known for building, most recently in his Washingtonian Woods subdivision.

But Alfandre became increasingly captivated with the beauty and order of the rather formal old Kentlands Farm complex and his sense of what could be accomplished began to evolve. Perhaps, he thought, the farm complex buildings could become the heart of a neighborhood more reminiscent of old-time country villages.

Alfandre met with land planners Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, then best known for their recently completed project at Seaside on the Florida panhandle, a neotraditional resort village. After trips with Duany to a number of U.S. and European traditional towns, Alfandre became convinced that a neotraditional town could work at Kentlands. He hired Duany's firm, DPZ, to create a vision, the Kentlands Vision, of a new-old community -- a neotraditional neighborhood -- at Kentlands.

In June 1988, Alfandre, City officials, scores of planners and other professionals, the public, and Duany and his wife and partner Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk (DPZ), held a weeklong planning 'charrette' at the old Kentlands Barn. The result was the Kentlands Plan, a detailed scheme for developing Kentlands as a new, mixed use, economically and physically varied old-town neighborhood in Gaithersburg.

City approvals were quick to follow and Alfandre formalized the community in December 1988 by creating the Kentlands Citizens Assembly. At that time, he appointed five developer members as its officers and trustees. DPZ maintained a presence in a converted farm building as the Kentlands 'Community Architect' to oversee development.

The following May, to generate interest in the project, Alfandre transformed the area near the Kentlands Mansion by pitching a giant tent on Kent's former Hidden Garden (now the Kentlands Green in the Old Farm District) for the Kentlands Festival of the Arts. (In September 1991, the arts and charitable character of the community was reflected once again when a bevy of artists and interior decorators transformed the old mansion into the Kentlands Designer Showcase as a fundraising exercise to benefit the National Symphony Orchestra.) An Old Farm Charrette in mid 1989 proposed using the mansion, barn, and other buildings to create an arts campus for Gaithersburg in Kentlands, a vision that is slowly being realized.


A formal groundbreaking ceremony was held in October 1989 and the new Kentlands neotraditional neighborhood was on its way.

 

 

 

The first residents of the new Kentlands moved into Rocky Gorge homes in the Gatehouse District early in 1991, but a real estate slowdown was already under way. One aspect of the slowdown was a sharp recession in office construction that resulted from changes a few years earlier in the tax laws. Another was a collapse in the development of retail space and a virtual shutdown in mall development throughout the nation precipitated by a series of leveraged consolidations of department stores. One casualty was the Simon development operation, which pulled out of Kentlands as part of a financial restructuring.

By midsummer, the Resolution Trust Corporation, a Federal supervisory agency that had been set up to bail out financial institutions, had begun poking around the B.F. Saul operation, suggesting it was overextended. Alfandre's homebuilding subsidiary began building its Old Farm houses and infrastructure construction continued, but by the end of the summer, it was apparent that Alfandre was in deep trouble.

 

 

 

According to Alfandre, the enclosed mall had been envisioned as being the economic 'engine' that would drive Kentlands development. The mall's disappearance left Kentlands with no money generator. GSDC responded by converting part of the mall property to residential, eventually persuading the Bozzuto Corporation, a residential developer, to build the Beacon Place rental apartments and the Copperfield condominiums on part of the mall property. (Copperfield II was built later on a parcel across Kentlands Boulevard.)

 

 

 

While residential development continued successfully in 1994 and the city opened the Kentlands Mansion as an art gallery, museum, music performance space, and venue for parties and business meetings, 1994 turned out to be a year of turmoil.

Early 1994, GSDC revealed that several months earlier, it had sold 26.5 acres of the community to Wal-Mart for development of a huge superstore and was proposing to build a drive-through McDonald's on a 3.5 acre lot adjacent to the Wal-Mart parcel. The proposed Wal-Mart would have been a 160,000 square-foot single-story warehouse store with an adjacent automobile service center.

The Wal-Mart store, which would have been some 550 feet long and more than 300 feet deep, was proposed for the high bluff overlooking Lake Varuna and was to be surrounded by nearly 20 acres of parking. The complex would have covered what is now all of the eastern section of Kentlands (including nearly all of the present-day Market Square commercial district and the entire Kentlands Bluff residential district). The Wal-Mart complex would have started at the proposed NGS Boulevard (approximately where the drive lane from Mattress Discounters to Michael's currently exists) to Lake Varuna.

By the time the Wal-Mart plan was filed with the city in May, community activists had already organized the Citizens Alliance for Planning Excellence, an umbrella group that drew members from Kentlands and surrounding communities in and around Gaithersburg. CAPE, which Richard Arkin chaired, formed an alliance with local unions and business organizations, raised funds, organized petition drives and letter writing campaigns, distributed anti-Wal-Mart buttons, picketed, spoke at civic and governmental meetings, and lobbied city officials.

After a long, hot summer and fall, the Wal-Mart proposal slowly went dormant, with the company finally pulling out of Kentlands entirely in October 1995. Wal-Mart flirted briefly with the Hazel-Peterson group, then developing the Rio/Washingtonian project, but finally abandoned Gaithersburg entirely at the end of the year in favor of building in Germantown's Milestone automobile-oriented big-box retail project.

 

A Main Street and Walkable Kentlands Downtown

Today, instead of a mall or Wal-Mart, Kentlands Downtown enjoys a diverse mix of national retail and small businesses centered along a walkable Main St. and Market St.  Over 240 businesses call Kentlands Downtown home.  A large corporate center is developing nearby with a great mix of small town village of homes within walking distance.  A weekly farmers market and concert series brings the community together and acts as a destination for the surrounding region.  A number of Arts and Entertainment businesses have located here and the City has invested in the Arts Barn and Mansion to further add a center to the community.  Kentlands Downtown is currently seeking an Arts and Entertainment District to build on this base.  A charrette was held a few years ago to plan the future of the downtown.  It calls for another evolution over the coming years transforming much of the downtown into a small scale mixed use urban core with offices, retail, and residential centered around a light rail stop.  See more details here:  http://www.gaithersburgmd.gov/Documents/masterplan/kentlands_bvd_co...

 

We celebrate the continued spirit of Kentlands visionary founders and the City of Gaithersburg for supporting its growth over the years.