Trickling Down or Gushing Up? Redevelopment or Revitalization in Montgomery County

Dan Gross/The Gazette. Victor Lantang and his partner Nirmala Pane pose Tuesday outside their Indonesian restaurant, Sabang, on Grandview Avenue in Wheaton. Small business owners, such as Lantang and Pane, say they aren't benefiting from redevelopment in the same way that larger entities, such as Westfield Wheaton, have. County officials, however, say mall redevelopment eventually will have a collateral effect for nearby Wheaton businesses, some of which are located just across the street on Veirs Mill Road.

I don't look at the Gazette newspapers a lot (but I like them). The web cover story, "Business in the Shadow of the Mall," is about how independent business owners in the Wheaton area feel like the majority of Montgomery County's financial and technical support for merchants is going to big businesses, particularly at the Wheaton Mall.

The same goes for Silver Spring. That's an urban renewal program, not a ground-up assets-based revitalization program. I know I saw an article about this in a local paper, although I can't find it... Finally though the UMD Urban Studies program has added a website component that is more than just a brochure, and the report, "Minimizing Small Business Displacement in a Revitalization Zone: The Case of Silver Spring" from the student Economic Development Seminar, Spring, 2005, is online. It suggests for incentives and support for independent merchants in Silver Spring. Meanwhile, you have your Red Lobsters and Olive Garden type chains, and for a pedestrian, Silver Spring is grotesque...

We have the same issues in DC. We do have the DC Main Streets program, but it's not working so well. People are interested in the money, but not in implementing the model Main Street Approach, which is intricate and multiplicative in its design and impact.

Two of the DC-based Main Street programs that seem to be doing the best (in my opinion) Barracks Row and Shaw (there are others) appear to be the most committed to the model--including the historic preservation component.

The current issue of Main Street News has two excellent articles assessing 25 years of the Main Street Approach. They aren't available online to non-members but I am suggesting that the NMSC make them available in the public portion of the Main Street website because they are such good discussions of the Main Street Approach.