Council Approves Lincoln Street Abandonment For Suburban Expansion

The Montgomery County Council unanimously approved the abandonment of a portion of Lincoln Street in Bethesda Tuesday, a move Suburban Hospital officials have said is necessary for the hospital’s expansion.

The expansion plans have been hotly contested by the Huntington Terrace Citizens Association, a group that represents the facility’s neighbors.  After extended testimony from both sides, the Montgomery County Board of Appeals in October that would add a 300,000 square foot addition on to the hospital along with a nearly 1200-space, 35-foot-tall garage. The citizens group has objected to the configuration of the designs and the hospital’s plans to remove ten homes it owns in the neighborhood for the expansion, which neighbors have said will affect the area’s residential character.

Last month, a Montgomery County Circuit Court judge Huntington Terrace’s appeal of the ruling, and the citizens group has announced it will appeal again.

The Lincoln Street abandonment was the only portion of the plan subject to council approval. It would affect the easternmost block of the street, between Old Georgetown Road and Grant Street. Both County Executive Isiah Leggett (D) and the council’s Transportation, Infrastructure, Energy and Environment committee the move after finding the road “is no longer necessary for present public use or anticipated public use in the foreseeable future.”

“The objections raised by HTCA and its counsel have much more to do with the intensity and massing of the proposed expansion, and its compatibility with the surrounding Huntington Terrace single-family residential neighborhood, rather than the effect of closing the subject block of Lincoln Street,” read a council packet.

At the Tuesday hearing, County Councilman Roger Berliner (D-Dist. 1) – who represents the neighborhood and chairs the T and E committee – said the issue of the road abandonment was a “narrow” one in the context of the larger debate. “The overwhelming evidence is that the abandonment itself is not a problem,” Berliner said.

After prompting by Berliner and County Councilman Marc Elrich (D-At Large), lawyers for the hospital and Huntington Terrace agreed to set a time to meet to discuss what the citizens group called “tweaks” to the plan that may make the expansion’s impact on the neighborhood more manageable. At a committee worksession last week, the citizens group had asked councilmembers to require that meeting.

While the council didn’t make the meeting a condition of the approval, Berliner called the verbal agreement to meet a “step forward” towards better relations between the hospital and the community.