Charming Charlie closing at Rio Lakefront in Gaithersburg

Those "Everything Must Go!" and "Going Out of Business!" signs so ubiquitous in shop windows around Montgomery County in recent years have popped up at Charming Charlie at Rio Lakefront in Gaithersburg. A closing sale is underway at the women's apparel boutique. Please note that if you have any Charming Charlie gift cards, the last day you can redeem them at this store will be August 14, 2019.

Sugarland Factory opening at Gaithersburg Square

Sugarland Factory, a treat shop whose cupcakes are a specialty, is coming to Gaithersburg Square at 524 N. Frederick Avenue. It will be located next to Ross. The store is currently under construction inside.

Royal Farms, Starbucks opening at Spectrum development in Gaithersburg (Photos)

Mega gas station/convenience store

will include car wash

Documents filed with the City of Gaithersburg show plans to construct a Royal Farms convenience store and mega gas station, and a Starbucks with outdoor patio seating, at the Spectrum development at Watkins Mill Road and MD 355. Unlike competitor Wawa, which will be a significant distance from any interstate off-ramp, Royal Farms will have a prime, high-traffic location right at the I-270/Watkins Mill Road interchange. That long-delayed interchange is now nearing completion.

Rendering of front of Royal Farms
Gaithersburg opening at Spectrum development

Royal Farms will feature a 5300 SF convenience store building, including gas pumps and a car wash. The project's developer will have to obtain an amendment to the original Spectrum approval to do this, as the service station use approved by the Mayor and Council called for a 4800 SF retail store.

Fill'er up at the 10-pump
Royal Farms mega gas station

Plans show Royal Farms will have a ten-pump gas station with canopy. Fuel tanker trucks will enter the site from Paramount Park Drive. This will be the first Royal Farms in Montgomery County.

Royal Farms site plan; gas pumps
at bottom, car wash at left

The Starbucks will include a drive-thru; whether it will compete with the other drive-thru Starbucks in Gaithersburg by operating 24-hours-a-day is not yet known. Also proposed as a change to the approved plan is a reduction in size of a retail/restaurant/office building to 4500 SF, in order to provide more parking spaces on-site.

Wawa Gaithersburg opening November/December 2020

The Gaithersburg Wawa store, that mega-gas-station/convenience store chain's first in Montgomery County, will open in November or December 2020 if approved by the city. Wawa would beat its arch-rival Sheetz to MoCo, as the latter has only come as close as Frederick County so far.

Wawa Gaithersburg will be located at 405 South Frederick Avenue (a.k.a. MD 355), on a site currently occupied by a 1950s retail structure. That existing building was found to have no historical significance by the Gaithersburg Historic District Commission in May, clearing the way for its demolition once the Wawa is approved.

Front of Wawa Gaithersburg store

The new Wawa is expected to generate 274 new automobile trips during the peak morning rush hour, and 259 new trips at the peak of evening rush hour. Both are likely conservative estimates, especially until the novelty of a Wawa in our county wears off. Wawa will provide 46 parking spaces, including two handicapped spaces and two motorcycle spaces. Two bicycle parking spaces will also be provided at the front of the store. Wawa is planning to have more parking than is allowed under City code, and therefore is requesting a waiver to be able to exceed the maximum.

Wawa's arched gas station canopy will be familiar to many who regularly travel non-interstate highways in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia. The Gaithersburg Wawa will feature six gasoline pumps.

An initial joint public hearing will be held before the Mayor and Council and Planning Commission on August 5, 2019. City staff has not made a recommendation on approval yet, because the first public hearing has yet to take place. The Mayor and Council will likely cast their final votes on the project in October, and the developer will have permits in hand by December, if the schedule moves ahead smoothly.

Gaithersburg Wawa site plan

Kudos to developer 1788 Holdings for delivering the first Wawa in Montgomery County - and it's going to be full-scale Wawa, not their urban format store. Will Wawa open in time for Montgomery County to have their first taste of the famous Wawa Thanksgiving travel tradition, the Wawa Turkey Bowl, on Thanksgiving Eve 2020?

Stay tuned to Sam Eig!

Downtown Crown Wine & Beer to host launch of Astro Lab's first 2 canned beers Friday at 11 AM

Tahia New Zealand Pilsner

Astro Lab Brewing will launch their first 2 canned beers in the Silver Spring brewery's history this Friday, July 26, 2019 at 11:00 AM. Be one of the first and few to pick up a can of Tahia New Zealand Pilsner, or the Fresh As IPA - or both. Both will be available for sale in limited quantities, no pre-sale orders, at only two locations - Astro Lab at 8216 Georgia Avenue in Silver Spring, and at Downtown Crown Wine & Beer at 303 Copley Place in Gaithersburg.

Fresh As IPA

Topgolf Germantown construction turning heads on I-270 (Video+Photos)

What is that being constructed along I-270 in Germantown? That's on the mind of many a rubbernecker driving the congested interstate these days. The tall poles you see are for the future Topgolf Germantown, and it's quite impressive if you pull off and take a closer look.

There hasn't been this much speculation about odd structures off 270 since the indoor skydiving and Carvana towers were erected. What is Topgolf? It's an entertainment center and event venue with a variety of golf target games for all ages, a full bar, and a sit-down restaurant.

Waters Appliance in Gaithersburg to close

Waters Appliance, located at 216 E. Diamond Avenue in Olde Towne Gaithersburg, will close July 31, 2019. They are holding a closing sale until then, with savings up to 75% off. It looks like there is still plenty of inventory, so stop in while there's still time.

The appliance parts supplier has been in business since 1964. Vintage signs and the classic interior bring back memories of simpler times. Truly the end of an era in Olde Towne!

MoCo residents to protest County Council ADU vote Tuesday

The Montgomery County Council will try to ram through revised Accessory Dwelling Unit zoning rules that will allow tiny homes to be constructed in backyards countywide, in many cases without requiring additional parking spaces. It is the first step in the Council's effort, driven by the developer sugar daddies who funded all nine members' 2018 campaigns, to end single-family home zoning in the County. Residents, over a thousand of whom have signed a petition opposing the ADU scheme, will protest outside the County Council building tomorrow morning, Tuesday, July 23, 2019 at 9:00 AM, at 100 Maryland Avenue in Rockville.

Councilmembers, led by Hans Riemer, plan to introduce another zoning scheme that will allow duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes, boarding houses, and even assembly of single-family home lots into stack-and-pack apartment complexes, in currently single-family home neighborhoods. Too incompetent to address the County's moribund economy, failing schools, and rising violent crime, the Council's Maoist-inspired strategy is to bring down successful neighborhoods and school clusters via allowing multifamily development in every neighborhood countywide, and through forced busing of children to schools outside of their neighborhoods.

Residents who have seen the results of similar radical strategies in Seattle and San Francisco are saying, "No, thanks" to the ZTA plan. The ZTA plan will increase school overcrowding in desirable school clusters, and the ultimate multifamily rezoning will more than quadruple existing school overcrowding. Protesters will ask the Council to delay the ZTA vote tomorrow.

Montgomery Village teen missing

Montgomery County police are searching for a missing teen from Montgomery Village. Tyaysha Aquia’ Janay Waters, 16, hasn't been seen by family or friends since Tuesday, July 16, when she left her Battleridge Place home on foot. Police describe Waters as an African American female, 5’3” tall and weighing 135 pounds. She has brown eyes and black hair.  Waters was wearing a black top, black shorts, and a pair of white "Nike Air" tennis shoes when she disappeared.

Anyone who has information regarding the whereabouts of Tyaysha Aquia’ Janay Waters is asked to call the Montgomery County Police Special Victims Investigations Division at 240-773-5400 or the police non-emergency number at 301-279-8000 (24 hours).

Montgomery County 911 system fails again

Officials don't know how

many emergency calls went

unanswered during outage

Montgomery County's 911 system failed twice Thursday, according to the Montgomery County Police Department, which does not operate the system. An MCPD spokesperson said that County officials cannot, as of now, tell them how many urgent 911 calls went unanswered during the service interruptions, but that the department is aware of one caller in need of basic life support medical services who was affected.

Callers who dialed 911 around 8:30 AM yesterday morning - and again between 9:35 and 9:43 AM - could not get through to the 911 call center, and instead heard a message saying they number they'd reached was out of service. According to MCPD, the failure was traced to a network outage between system components.

There is no indication that the Alert Montgomery system informed citizens of either outage. Montgomery County Government has yet to post any statement regarding the outages as of this writing.

It was exactly three years ago that I broke the story of a similar 911 system failure. Later, the County tried to cover up the fact that Alert Montgomery had failed to issue alerts to subscribers until long after the outage had ended. Two people were confirmed to have died has a result of that 2016 911 system failure, 

Yet despite their failure having fatal results for two of their constituents in 2016, the County Council has clearly failed to change its ways. Here we are again, with another 911 outage three years later. Similarly, the Council failed to upgrade the public safety radio communications system for County first responders for more than a decade, deliberately kicking the can down the road to have more play money to spend on their cartel sugar daddies.

In fact, since taking the oath of office last December, the latest Council has failed to take action on a single major crisis. Not a single thing has been done to exercise oversight and update the 911 system, complete our master plan highway system, turn around our moribund economy that now ranks last in the region by every economic development benchmark, nor to address rising rates of violent crime.

Most of the current Council term has been spent on a grotesque attack on the men and women of the Montgomery County police department. The Council's continual slander, defamation and disparagement of Montgomery's finest only put our first responders and the public in greater danger. Which fits perfectly with the County Council's record of making public safety a low priority, to the point that there are actual people who have died as a result of their failure to address basic government issues like providing a functioning 911 system. It's outrageous.

Xfinity opens at Rio Lakefront in Gaithersburg

Xfinity has opened its newest store at 31 Grand Corner Drive at Rio Lakefront in Gaithersburg. The interactive showroom and staff will guide you through the latest technology from Comcast, ranging from entertainment to home security and phone service.

Riemer admits Montgomery County is in "crisis"

Montgomery County Councilmember Hans Riemer (D -At-Large) admitted at a gathering of developers and real estate industry insiders Tuesday that the County he's helped to run for the last nine years is in "crisis." Just last year, in a bizarre and rambling press conference, Riemer had denied Montgomery had grown moribund - despite reporters citing official federal statistics proving it was at rock bottom in the region by every economic development benchmark. But at Bisnow's Future of Bethesda and Beyond event yesterday, Riemer changed his tune and acknowledged MoCo is getting whipped by Northern Virginia. But despite being surrounded by local business experts on panels at the event, Riemer brushed aside their advice and doubled down on stupid, falsely claiming the problem is a lack of skilled workers.

Riemer also lied about just how bad the crisis is. He falsely told the Bisnow audience that Northern Virginia had only dominated job growth in the region for the last two years. In fact, it has dominated throughout this century. The numbers just get worse and worse for Montgomery. Northern Virginia accounted for 91% of all job growth in the region over the last year, according to a Stephen S. Fuller Institute report cited at the Bisnow event.

For the second time in as many weeks, Foulger Pratt CEO Cameron Pratt hit the nail on the head, calling for a long-delayed new Potomac River crossing to Dulles to be built. "Look at the number of jobs being created just a few miles away on the other side of the river," Pratt told the Bisnow audience. "We've got this Great Wall of China, which is the Potomac River, that nobody can cross because there's one access point down at the American Legion Bridge. If we could connect to all of the economic activity in Northern Virginia and the Dulles Toll Road by building a bridge, all of a sudden Gaithersburg and Germantown become connected instantly."

Riemer also admitted that, despite loud declarations since 2014 that the Council would tackle the missing school capacity infrastructure crisis, "some of our most attractive real estate markets are in moratorium right now." Humiliating! He promised the Council would get around to ending the moratorium sometime late next year, a La-Z-Boy agenda pace that business leaders in attendance found less than reassuring.

Duball, LLC President Marc Dubick said the moratorium "scares the living heck out of our institutional partners. Clarity with schools should be a top priority." But despite claims that it was, the Council never actually provided that clarity, much less the classroom space needed.

Think about it. Riemer has taken in tens of thousands of dollars from his developer sugar daddies over the last decade. Yet, even with nine whole years to solve the problem, he still couldn't even deliver the basic infrastructure needed to prevent a moratorium. Along with cratering the County's economy, destroying the food truck industry in the County, and tanking the nighttime economy, it shows incompetence of the highest order.

Surrounded by expert advice from business leaders, who correctly identified the problems as missing highway infrastructure and a hostile business climate with high taxes and over-regulation, Riemer was again lost without backup from cue cards and staff. According to Riemer, highly-educated Montgomery County lacks skilled workers, and needs to train its workforce. He also delivered a rambling and incoherent speech promising that the Purple Line would attract biotech jobs to the already-densely-developed Silver Spring area, when in fact, such companies need larger campuses that are only viable along I-270 and in White Oak, neither of which is on the Purple Line.

Riemer isn't the sharpest tool in the drawer, that's for sure. Only at the end of his political career in Montgomery County has he finally summoned the courage or the shame to admit the jurisdiction he's run for nine years is in a full blown economic crisis. But as they say, the first step is admitting you have a problem.

Maryland named worst state to retire in

High taxes, cost of living,

crime & poor health

sink state in national ranking

Just days after one of Montgomery County's top CEOs bodyslammed elected officials for failing to build the highway infrastructure needed to compete with Northern Virginia, those same County officials and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan were treated to a piledriver from Bankrate.com. The financial advice website ranked all 50 states from best to worst as retirement destinations. Maryland was named the absolute worst state in America to retire in, finishing dead last.

Bankrate cited Maryland's high taxes, high cost of living, unaffordable health care, high crime, and poor health as the primary reasons prospective retirees should steer wide and clear of our state. The last place finish is a national humiliation for our smug, corrupt and self-promoting elected officials. While our Draconian taxes, surging crime and high cost of living are already notorious, the survey especially stung because our elected officials have routinely crowed about how healthy Montgomery County is.

Not so, says Bankrate, which used Maryland health data from Gallup, the U.S. Census Bureau, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to evaluate the wellness of Marylanders, and their access to health care in the state. This isn't the first report to contradict false statements by County politicians on public health. A troubling percentage of residents in eastern Montgomery County self-reported they are in poor health in a County survey that was (not-surprisingly) ignored by all media outlets except this one. And just last year, Montgomery was found to have the highest and fastest-growing rate of sexually-transmitted disease in the state.

Where should you retire? Bankrate declared Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, South Dakota, Florida, and Kentucky as top destinations for those calling it a career. In dead last, Maryland is far behind Alabama, Tennessee, Texas and other states that are already destroying it in economic development. Along with more disastrous news on that front in recent weeks, will Montgomery County's Lake Wobegon fever finally break and bring serious change to the leadership of our moribund jurisdiction?

Cinépolis Luxury Cinemas construction update at Kentlands Market Square (Video+Photos)

Here's another look at the construction of the Cinépolis Luxury Cinemas at Kentlands Market Square in Gaithersburg. The video also gives you a quick tour of the latest progress on other new storefronts around the property.