Strathmore Square at Grosvenor construction

Strathmore Square is the development next to the Grosvenor-Strathmore metro station. It's been in progress for years. I blogged about the construction of the first two buildings in 2023.  This is the third building, called Building 5 A and B in the initial plan but now named The Reserve at Strathmore Square. It is a senior living experience.  They clearly aren't doing them in order.  The full plan calls for an eventual 6 buildings.

This building is directly adjacent to the metro station parking garage and the Kiss and Ride.  It looks like they are starting the second floor now.

Part of the development includes this 1.2 acre park.  The new building is behind it, the existing buildings to the right, and the Grosvenor-Strathmore station on the left.
 

Bethesda metro station has re-opened

 

The two-month long shutdown of the Red line between Friendship Heights and North Bethesda is now complete.  Today trains resumed running through the formerly closed stations.  One of the big accomplishments was building a mezzanine at the southern end of the Bethesda metro station. This will connect to the Purple Line station.

The new entrance is not complete, but metro claims the rest of the work can be done without impacting trains.  Here is the southern end of the Bethesda metro station platform.  The center part of it is blocked off for mezzanine construction.
 

The mezzanine is there, but there is still work to be done. The supports are in and covered with fire retardant insulation.

 Standing under the new mezzanine looking towards the current entrance.

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.

 

 

COMSAT building in Clarksburg being demolished

COMSAT Laboratories demolition

 

The COMSAT laboratories building, located at 22300 Comsat Drive in Clarksburg, Maryland, is currently being demolished. COMSAT (Communications Satellite Corporation) built this nearly 500,000 square foot research and development campus in 1969 and occupied it until 2005. Since then it has been mostly vacant and has been completely unused since 2015.

The building is clearly visible from Interstate 270 just before the exit for Clarksburg Premium Outlets (but on the opposite side of 270).

 The building was designed by architect Cesar Pelli, who also designed  the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur. This property was considered for historic site designation but in the end, the Planning Board did not recommend it as part of the 2025 Clarksburg Gateway Sector Plan.

I saw this reported by Bethesda Today and took pictures of it today. It doesn't look like much was accomplished in the past few days, but I could only see one side of the building.

Construction at 4725 Cheltenham Drive

 The Chetlenham is a new multi-family residential building being constructed on Chetlenham Drive where the old Midas car repair shop was.  It is next to the CVS and on the other side of Wisconsin Avenue from the Marriott headquarters in downtown Bethesda, Maryland. I first posted about this in May of last
year.

  

The back of the building.  There is an alley to the left of the building which will remain.

 

According to the plan, it will be a 76,841 square foot nine-story building with 102 units including 8 live/work units.  There will be no on-site car parking, however there will be 53 long-term and 2 short-term bicycle parking spaces.  There is a public garage (number 42) directly across the street. Cheltenham Urban Park is also next door to the building.  

 

This building is surrounded by the CVS parking lot. Here you can see the CVS in the background to the left.

 

Back 'n Side

The view from near the CVS entrance at the back and one side of the building.

Bethesda Metro Station construction

 Bethesda Metro Station is getting a new south entrance and connection to the future Purple Line light rail.  Work has been going on inside the station for a while.  On Wednesday I took photos of the status.

 At the far (southern) end of the station a wall panel is removed and you can see the real walls behind it.  The area is open behind the red plywood.  When the station was built they envisioned a future south entrance so left a knock-out panel for it. 

 To give you a sense of scale, at the very center of the plywood is a full-sized door, so I think the opening is 12 feet tall.  It seems a bit close to the tracks for a bridge over the tracks but I guess not. 

False Walls

I never knew the curved concrete walls of the station were removable panels and the real station walls weren't curved.  Here you can see the gap between the real wall and the apparent wall.

The new entrance will be located on Elm Street near Wisconsin Avenue and  will only have elevators, no escalator to the metro station.  A mezzanine will be built over the south end of the platform to allow access to the trains.

 

Fossil extension cord

I can't be 100 percent sure, but it really looks like when they poured the original concrete station walls they left an extension cord there and it left this serpentine outline.

 

Station in July 2025

 Here's how the station looked last July, the concrete panel that has since been removed was still up on the right side of the picture and they were still building the work areas on the platform. 

 

More information:

•  WRA page about their work
•  Montgomery Planning page about the entrance
•  Bethesda Today article about escalating costs

Strathmore View construction

 

Strathmore View office

 Strathmore View will contain 108 townhouses starting from the 1.2 millions and 17 single family detached houses. It is located on Strathmore Avenue near the Academy of the Holy Cross Catholic girl's high school.  In fact, the development is on both sides of the entrance and takes up some of what was the school property. 

Townhouses under construction

 This also replaces St. Angela's Hall which was owned by the Sisters of the Holy Cross and was a group home for retired nuns. The original project was supposed to include a senior living home, but I don't see that on the current plan.  

Single family house 

The first of 17 single family houses has been completed. Most likely this will be the model home. 

Construction of homes

 The Montgomery Planning pdf for the development has more details.

White townhouses

The townhouses in this section have been covered with the Tyvek moisture wrap but haven't been finished yet.

The west end 

The west end of the property along Strathmore Avenue, still bare dirt where more houses will go up.  On the left is Strathmore Ave.

Bike lanes on Fernwood in the Rockspring/Rockledge area

Fernwood north of Democracy

Fernwood Road, near where the new "Grandview" senior living community is going in has been under construction for a while.  There was even a time where one direction was entirely closed.  This is between Democracy Blvd and Montgomery Mall. (Not sure what they call it now, maybe WestLakeField Montgomery ShoppingMallTown?)

 For a while it wasn't clear exactly what they were doing, but now you can clearly see that separated bike lanes are going in.  They were starting to pave them when I went by. (The red dump truck on the left was delivering blacktop.)  

Fernwood and Rock Spring Dr

 Here at the Rock Spring Drive intersection you can get a good look at the new bike lanes. To the left, behind the trees is where the Marriott headquarters was.  One of the new residential buildings can be seen peeking over the trees.

Fernwood and Rockledge

 They are working on what I think will be the main entrance to the Grandview on the left.  Going up the hill (which is the bridge over I-270) the bike lanes are fully in and paved.

The start

 This is facing the other direction on the bridge.  The separated bike lanes start here right behind the arrow sign.  It's a bit unclear how this spot will look when they are done.

Fernwood near Democracy / The other end

They aren't nearly as far along at the Democracy end of Fernwood.  They haven't even gotten the sidewalk replaced.  Since there are 3 lanes of traffic here (two left-only onto Democracy and one right-only onto Democracy. There is no straight to continue on Fernwood, even though just the other day I saw someone go straight here).

Out with the new

They clearly made a mistake at some point, because they were tearing up a newly laid section of curb.
 

 

Bethesda Community Store expansion

Bethesda Community Store porch

 

Call Your Mother moved out of the parking lot of Bethesda Community Store ("Browns") a while ago. For some time the lot was empty with a fence around it, but now they are expanding the original building. Now the building is being significantly expanded. The new version will be over double the size of the old. (Of course, the old building was really, really small)

The wood flooring and supports for the front porch are being replaced.  There isn't very much left of the original building. 

 

Expanding Browns

The original building is just the porch and the left section.  They took out the walls on both sides (and the back I believe) leaving only the floor, front wall, porch, and roof as original.  The rest is entirely new.

The lot

 The store is situated on the corner of Old Georgetown Road and Greentree Road (incidently, Latitude 39 degrees runs through the parking lot). Here is the lot as seen from the parking lot entrance on Greentree Road. Picnic tables and a shed are at the back right and the store is back left. The part with a white roof is all new construction.

Browns from across Greentree

Here is the view from across Greentree road. The black clad construction fence obscures most of what is going on.

As a kid my parents would sometimes take me to Browns to get lunch. I always got a Ham, Lettuce, and Tomato on Rye, it was the best. The store seemed really small even (and it had gray trim, not red). It was really just the deli counter, some snacks, and the cash register.  That version of the store has been long gone and the building has been unused since 2016, Call Your Mother deli had a food truck/trailer in the parking lot starting in 2020 but that's it.
 

Construction on Cheltenham Drive

Construction and CVS

Most of the construction in Bethesda ends up being on the west side of Wisconsin Avenue, but here is some on the east side.  The old Midas auto repair location next to the CVS pharmacy has been torn down.  It will be replaced with a mixed-use residential building with up to 102 residential units as well as up to 8 live/work units. You read the site plan here.

Cheltenham Drive and demolition

 This is a pretty small piece of property, 110 units seems like a lot. The maximum height allowable is 90 feet. The average space per unit works out to only 710 square feet (probably a bit smaller due to walls and hallways).

From behind

 Anyone else remember when Midas was called "Midas Mufflers" and they specialized in replacing (wait for it)...mufflers?

Stratton Place luxury homes: cleared land

Construction at Stratton Place

Stratton Place (also called the Andrus Property) will be a relatively small development of luxury homes build between Greentree Road and I-270.  According to the planning board resolution (pdf link), it "proposes eight (8) new lots by subdividing the rear of seven (7) existing lots, for a total of 15 lots, on a total of 5.38 acres of land zoned R-90. Eight (8) houses will be new, six (6) will remain, and one (1) will be demolished and replaced." However, that changed this time last year and all six of the existing houses on Barnett Road have been demolished.  Confusingly, the planning documents are split between multiple folders, one for 2023 and later and at least one for documents before then. Worse, the interactive development finder map only links to the earlier ones.

 Here is the view from Greentree Road looking towards Interstate 270.  On the right some trees remain in the back yards of existing houses.  In the far distance you can see one of two remaining houses on Barnett Rd.  this entire cleared area was heavily wooded with the exception of the far left where there were houses nestled among the trees.

Frontage on Greentree Road

Greentree Road at the Stratton Place development a new road will enter the development here. To the right, not visible, is the Amalyn development.

 I last posted about Stratton Place in October. at that time they were just clearing the (magnifcant) trees from the property.  Since then they have finished that part of the project, torn down some old houses, and re-graded the land. I also posted before work had begun.

From the back of the property

The current grading is still pretty steep, this is looking from the middle/back of the property towards Greentree Road.  In the distance you can see the Amalyn housing development.

Barnett Road

There used to be 8 houses along this road, six were included in the Andrus property and were demolished, only the first house and the last house remain.  New curbs have also been installed.

Another Amalyn housing development update

 

Green houses

Here's another update on the Amalyn housing development in Bethesda, Maryland. When completed there will be over 300 single family houses and townhouses on this 75 acre lot.  Well over half have been completed or are under construction, but there are still a few areas to go. 

Most of the construction is on the south, east, and west edges, the northern and central sections are mostly (but not completely) finished. This is on the site of the old WMAL transmitter towers and abuts I-270 and I-495.

This first photo is on the southern edge along Renita Lane, I-495 is on the other side of the trees. This set of houses is well underway with the walls and roofs up for most of them.

Almost complete houses

 

These houses are also on Renita Lane, directly across the street from the prior photo.  The siding is up and some of the houses are painted.

New houses on Silver Linden St

This area in the south east corner of the development at Silver Linden St and Renita Ln has a mix of completed (with people moved in) and still under construction houses.

Townhouse construction

 

Three sets of townhouses in various stages of construction.  In the foreground you can see the foundations are in, to the right they are finishing up a row of gray townhouses, and in the background another row is under construction, walls and windows are in but siding is not on. This is towards the south west side of the development.

A row of townhouses under construction

 

A row of six townhouses under construction as seen from the rear.  The garage doors are not on but the windows are in.

A few more houses

 

The sales center used to be here, but it has been removed and three hosues are going in. This is on the north west side of the development.