Democracy Center residential development

Democracy center is a cluster of three office buildings at the corner of Rockledge Drive and Westlake Terrace/Fernwood Road. It backs up to the I-270 Spur.  You probably didn't know this, but part of this property had a publicly accessible but privately owned park with basketball courts and walking trails.

In the above photo, one of the existing Democracy Center commercial buildings is on the left and beyond it the under-construction residential building. Rockledge Drive is in the foreground. 

That park-like part of the property is being developed into a seven-story residential complex with up to 386 housing units. There will also be a 1.3 acre privately-owned public open space between it and Rockledge Dr, as well a narrowed Rockledge Dr with tree pits installed in the existing right-of-way to provide for bike lanes on each side of the road. You can find out more at Montgomery Planning.

This is the current view from Rockledge Drive. The 1.3 acre open space will be where all the construction equipment and supplies currently are.

 

Side View

Here's how it looks from the side. This is from between the existing Democracy Center buildings.  The main entrance to the building will be in this area.

View from the I-270 Spur

This is what you see if you are driving north on the I-270 Spur just after Democracy Blvd.

 I took the bottom photo on Thursday, the rest of them I took on Friday.

 

 

Last night's Lunar Eclipse

 

Last night there was a Lunar Eclipse.  It wasn't total, but it here in the DMV it was pretty close.  Maximum in Bethesda was at 12:12 and I took these pictures about 10 minutes later, because, as Neil Sedaka's song says Waking Up is Hard to Do. 

It was quite rainy yesterday evening so I figured it would be overcast all night.  When maximum eclipse occurred there were thin high clouds so you could easily see the moon. However, there was also some light scattering by the clouds so the whole picture glows a little.  These two pictures were taking about a second apart, so the differences are mostly due to a slightly different exposure, but, about a minute after I took them, heavier clouds started covering the moon.