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Redevelopment plans are changing for a portion of a Silver Spring apartment complex — where two parcels were designated as historic last year — as the developer opts to spread the project's density over several buildings rather than build a massive high-rise.

Home Properties, the Vienna, Va.-based developer of the Falkland Chase apartments in Silver Spring, will submit to the Montgomery County Planning Board new plans for the north parcel of the site, located at 16th Street and East West Highway, at the end of the month. About 1,200 rental apartment units are planned for the north parcel, to be divided among several buildings, including two 12- to 13-story buildings on the north end of the parcel.

In March 2009, the Montgomery County Council ended a contentious battle between the developer and preservationists by adding two-thirds of Falkland Chase to the Master Plan for Historic Preservation but leaving the north parcel open for redevelopment. Falkland Chase was originally built in 1936 and 1937 and was dedicated by then-First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt as the second housing complex in the country built under the New Deal Federal Housing Authority. The south and west parcels contain 270 garden-style apartments.

After the council's vote last year, Home Properties and county planners changed plans for the north parcel from about 1,000 residential units in a single high-rise building to a plan to spread the units over several buildings, because it would be easier, more cost-effective and more aesthetically pleasing.

"We knew we were basically going to start over," said Michael Eastwood, Home Properties' vice president of development.

The proposed ratio of affordable-housing units on the north parcel, a sticking point for the council in allowing redevelopment there, will remain. There will be 150 moderately-priced dwelling units and 56 work-force housing units on the north parcel, as well as 56 work-force housing units made available in other Falkland buildings, Eastwood said.

The north parcel will also include an internal network of private streets between the residential buildings, 60,000 square feet of retail space and about 1,500 parking spaces – some underground, some elevated – for both residents and retail customers. Home Properties is negotiating with Harris Teeter grocery stores to occupy the ground floor of an eight-story mixed-use building fronting on East West Highway. Construction on the north parcel will not begin until Harris Teeter, or, if those negotiations fail, another supermarket, is leased, said Donald Hague, senior vice president for the Virginia-based developer.

The rest of the retail space on the north parcel will likely surround more than an acre of public green space that will be connected to an acre of green space on the south parcel of the site across East West Highway. There will also be private parkland on the north parcel.

But preservationists still opposing the project say that parkland will be less useful, because it's separated by East West Highway. It's one of several complaints still lobbied by preservationists, including the potential for increased traffic and whether the redevelopment will fit with the historic nature of the other two parcels. Preservationists can no longer fight to save the north parcel, but they aren't going quietly.

"Whenever there is a project plan that involves a historic property, designated or not, we will testify against the project," said Mary Reardon of the Silver Spring Historical Society.

Some residents still oppose the redevelopment on the north parcel, claiming the developer kept them in the dark about development plans and plans to relocate the tenants north parcel's existing 182 rental units when they are demolished. Hague said Home Properties relocation offer remains: Tenants of the north parcel will have "first shot" at moving into a similar unit on the west or south parcel with no increase in rent. With a 45-percent annual turnover rate at Falkland Chase, there will be plenty of units available, Hague said, and as new plans proceed, more information will be available to residents.

"For residents, it's not so much a question of ‘What [is planned]?' as ‘When?'" Hague said.

But Belinda Folb and her family won't be around for that day. Folb, who testified against redevelopment before the county council last year, moved out of her family's apartment on the north parcel this past weekend.

"We were always in limbo. You never know when or where you are going to go with these plans," she said in a phone interview Thursday. "We are a family, we have a 2-year-old. It was too stressful and hard to know that at any point and time we would hear something about our future."