About 130 people showed up to a Saturday morning “Design Workshop” earlier this month, another in a long line of outreach events by a county Planning Department in the middle of rethinking the future of downtown Bethesda.
Buoyed by free coffee and snacks, the group of surrounding homeowners, condo owners, developers and developer lawyers helped planners etch out a map of Bethesda’s best green spaces, bike paths, worst intersections and main gathering areas.
But mostly missing were millennials, the 20- to 34-year-olds who the Planning Department says make up 40 percent of the roughly 10,610 residents of the 450-acre downtown Bethesda area. Planners counted six of them at the March 1 meeting.
“We realize that if we want to achieve a good cross section of community involvement, we need to particularly reach out to the folks that so far we feel haven’t been heard,” said Margaret Rifkin, one of the lead planners on the Bethesda Downtown Plan.
The Plan would essentially rewrite the zoning guidelines and priorities for transportation, development and public space for the next 20-25 years in a downtown Bethesda area that is projected to double in population by 2040.
But that message hasn’t reached the young people who might be most affected by it. It’s also a group that Montgomery County is actively attempting to attract to the area with looser alcohol restrictions and a more lively nightlife scene.
“To be honest, I probably wouldn’t be inclined to attend a design workshop, at least not without ample lubrication from free alcohol or food,” said Christian Pollard, a 22-year-old who lives on Avondale Street.
The Planning Department, a government agency, can’t exactly sponsor a happy hour at Caddies on Cordell or Tommy Joe’s.
Rifkin said planners are looking for groups or businesses to host them, or ways to latch on to social activities more geared toward the millennial generation. They’ve spoken to dozens of condo associations, neighborhood groups and property owners over the past few months.
At one meeting, a few older condo owners expressed their distaste for moving the permitted time for alcohol service one hour later to match D.C. and Prince George’s County. That got written up as “universal opposition to the County Executive’s Nighttime Bethesda proposal, if it means extending bar hours and changing the revenue ratio,” in a meeting summary provided on the Bethesda Downtown Plan website.
The Plan won’t address liquor laws (which are the state legislature’s domain) but Rifkin said the outreach events often spur action on a variety of items of civic importance.
“There’s that benefit that if you show up to something like this, you discover there are three other folks in Bethesda who want to see x, y or z type of bikeway improvements, for example,” Rifkin said.
Planners on Monday gathered the Department’s millennial-aged employees for an impromptu focus group. The basic question: What would it take to get you to attend one of these events?
The group said the focus would have to be on shorter-term improvements.
That’s one reason why Pollard, who moved from Adams Morgan to be closer to his downtown Bethesda workplace, said he’s not too inclined to give his input on the future.
“In my situation, I probably wouldn’t be the best person to ask,” said Pollard, who is renting. “I’m not exactly a permanent resident. I really think Bethesda is awesome. I can’t complain about a lack of anything. Once you start to explore it, you find more parks and you find more places, even if a lot of those places are geared toward an older crowd. But my viewpoint might be skewed.”
About three-quarters of downtown Bethesda’s population rents, according to data the Planning Department mined out of 2010 Census block level data.
Kelsey Berkowitz, 23, said she moved to Bethesda from the Foggy Bottom area because of its slightly slower-paced, mix of suburban and urban feel.
She also had a relative who lives here introduce her to Bethesda once she moved to the area from Massachusetts.
“I was looking for a place where I could kind of get out of the bubble,” she said.
Berkowitz, who works at a lobbying firm in D.C., saw a flyer at her Edgemont apartment building and attended a November meeting looking for resident feedback on the Plan.
“Planning is on the right track,” Berkowitz said. “The first thing, no matter what generation you are in, you need to be asked. I don’t know that I’m representative of our generation since I’m interested in politics and public policy naturally, which is why I went out.”
Planners have also embarked on a social media campaign aimed at getting as much input as possible — one not seen in previous sector plans for other areas.
Rifkin admitted she is still learning how to use Twitter for a special “Bethesda Downtown Plan” account. Bridget Schwiesow, communication manager for the Planning Department, said planners are trying to increase their use of Instagram and Facebook.
Before the March 1 workshop, planners asked for people to send in photos of what they liked and what they didn’t like about Bethesda. They’ll host another meeting in early April at the Bethesda Library.
“We do feel it is important to know what younger people consider important. That’s really part of what we want to be finding out,” Rifkin said. “Bethesda is a very well-informed community and it’s not to say that folks won’t be sitting down and reflecting on what would be desirable for the next generation. But we won’t know until we hear from them.”
