More News

What is Fenton Village?

That was the simple question asked of residents from the Silver Spring neighborhood last week at a forum to discuss the future of the area bordered by Fenton Street to the east, Georgia Avenue to the west, Wayne Avenue to the north and Philadelphia Avenue to the south.

Some felt Fenton Village should remain as is: home to residents of diverse backgrounds, long-established service-oriented shops and locally-owned restaurants that don't constitute "destination shopping." Others wanted to capitalize on what they called the neighborhood's "funkiness" to carve a more prominent niche for Fenton Village within a redeveloped downtown Silver Spring.

After an overview of the neighborhood was presented April 22, the roughly 50 people in attendance broke into five work groups to discuss Fenton Village. One group of community members spoke thoughtfully of how Fenton Village has evolved and how to preserve the neighborhood's character while still bringing in visitors and viable businesses.

"I just remember my kids being able to ride bicycles to the stores and they felt safe," said Cynthia Parker, a resident of Fenton Village since 1966 and co-owner of Silver Spring Books, on Bonifant Street. "It was a sense of community because people kind of looked after each other."

As much as she enjoyed the old days, Parker also admired the "high energy" of Silver Plaza on Ellsworth Drive in the revitalized downtown area of Silver Spring. She said such an atmosphere could help Fenton Village businesses survive.

"I'm not sure how we would replicate that but I don't want it to become Westfield Wheaton," she said at the forum, which was held at the Nora School at 955 Sligo Ave.

Silver Spring resident Karen Roper has lived in Fenton Village for 25 years and frequents Parker's store and other independent businesses in the neighborhood. She says these shops give the neighborhood a "sense of community" because the owners have "a stake in the community."

But those stores have been jeopardized by an uncertain economy and large-scale development projects slated for the neighborhood. For example, Parker has seen her rent go "up big time" this year because of her landlord's increased property taxes. A longtime Thayer Avenue record shop, Roadhouse Oldies, had to relocate within Silver Spring last year because of the developer of mixed-use project Studio Plaza, planned for between Georgia and Silver Spring avenues, owned the property and will include it in the project.

Other proposed projects for Fenton Village include The Adele residential building on Fenton Street, an unnamed 52-unit residential development at 814 Thayer Ave., the Moda Vista mixed-use project at Fenton and Silver Spring Avenue, and Bonifant Plaza, a 72-unit residential project.

Most residents agreed that a priority for county officials and landlords in Fenton Village would be to preserve the area surrounding those projects, or as Silver Spring resident Mary Reardon put it: "I want someone who lived in Silver Spring years ago to come back and recognize it."

But a priority running counter to preservation of the neighborhood is giving it a visible identity recognizable to those who don't live there. That identity would bring in new customers and businesses.

"When we started doing Fenton Village meetings, a lot of people didn't know where Fenton Village was," said Darian Unger, chairman of the Silver Spring Citizens Advisory Board and the moderator of the discussion group.

Parker's business has been on Bonifant Street for 18 years but people often come in and think the store has just opened, she said.

But residents said they don't want another Ellsworth Drive with overt marketing and density providing its visual identity. In attempts to define Fenton Village, the word "funky" was frequently used, followed by praise for the existing diversity of the neighborhood's businesses and its residents.

When it was time to summarize their 30-minute discussion, the residents seemed to have difficulty reducing the conversation to talking points. In their inability to pin down Fenton Village's identity to something simple and concise, they seemed to have explained exactly what they liked so much about it.

"[It's an] environment that is funky and different from anything that you would encounter anywhere else in Montgomery County; that's what you would market here," Roper said. "Tired of same old same old same old? Come to Fenton Village!"