TAKOMA PARK, MD – After years of insisting that new housing belongs outside the city limits “somewhere over on University Boulevard,” Takoma Park residents were horrified to learn that a 148-unit apartment building had been approved on University Boulevard, just outside the city limits.
The proposal would replace a mostly vacant surface parking lot and an aging Brutalist-style medical office building, a structure widely recognized as one of the region’s premier examples of architecture that makes people instinctively wonder what the fuck the architect was thinking.
“There are so many vacant lots to build housing on all along University Boulevard. Why the hell did they have to choose THIS vacant lot!” complained longtime city resident Martha Showalter proudly displaying her “Immigrants Have a Home Here” yard sign. “I didn’t want development on the part of University where I drive. I meant even further away…like Wheaton or College Park.”
Residents immediately cited familiar concerns, including increased traffic, neighborhood character, parking, school overcrowding, gentrification, environmental impacts, dangerous shadows, noise, not being “affordable” enough, birds’ flight patterns, haunted spirits, and an alarming increase in the number of people who might someday walk past their homes.
“I’m not a NIMBY,” insisted another resident during public testimony. “I just think that every specific project I’ve ever seen, and will ever see, is deeply flawed.”
Many expressed outrage over the loss of the existing medical office building, despite admitting they had never actually entered it. Others argued that the parking lot already serves an important community purpose.
“That asphalt has tremendous historic significance,” said one opponent. “Many of us have been not parking there for decades.”
Residents also warned that replacing an underused office building with apartments would accelerate gentrification, while simultaneously arguing that the project would reduce nearby property values.
“It will somehow do both,” explained neighborhood activist Job Prius. “The important thing is that it sounds concerning to all sides.”
Traffic remained a primary objection.
According to opponents, constructing apartments on one of Montgomery County’s busiest transit corridors – served by multiple bus routes, sidewalks, bike infrastructure, and within walking distance of the almost completed Purple Line – would inevitably result in every new resident driving everywhere, all the time.
“People keep calling this ‘transit-oriented development,'” said another resident. “We support transit-oriented development. We just don’t support development that’s oriented toward transit.”
At press time, the Montgomery County Planning Department reported receiving dozens of strongly worded letters from the Community Vision of Outside Takoma Park and Brutalist-Style Medical Office Building Historical Society, whose 300-plus members insisted the building was “an irreplaceable architectural treasure” despite having spent the last 50 years pretending it didn’t exist.
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