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A mixed-use development project planned for Silver Spring's Ripley District is moving forward with a new plan and a new name, but with a construction schedule still unknown, the area's long-awaited revival will still have to wait.

Ripley Street North, a project formerly known as Midtown Silver Spring, will feature 385 rental units in a 17-story "L"-shaped building and a smaller five-story building that will also contain 5,541 square feet of street-level retail. Original plans called for 314 units in two high-rise apartment buildings and roughly the same amount of retail.

The Montgomery County Planning Board approved the original Midtown Silver Spring plans in September 2008 and construction was expected to begin by the end of this year. But the developer, Vienna, Va.-based Home Properties, decided the housing market wasn't right for the project and decided to change the design.

"We love the project and hope to build it someday," Donald Hague, vice president of development for Home Properties, told the Silver Spring Urban District Advisory Committee Thursday. "It was a very expensive project."

Costly underground parking was scrapped in favor of above-ground parking and use of the adjacent Bonifant-Dixon parking garage, where a street extending Dixon Avenue from Bonifant Street to Ripley Street will be constructed. Of the 385 units, 12.5 percent will be moderately priced; rent is expected in the $1,700 to $1,800 dollar range for a one-bedroom apartment, Hague said.

Ripley Street North is planned for 1.8 acres on the northwest corner of Ripley Street and Dixon Avenue and will include a public park. The amendment to the plan the Planning Board approved last year will be submitted this week, and Home Properties hopes to go before the board in April. There is no timetable for construction, Hague said.

The Ripley District, an area currently filled with private surface parking lots, low-rise buildings and narrow, poorly paved roads, is located west of Georgia Avenue, south of Wayne and east of the CSX rail lines.

Pyramid Atlantic Community Arts Center moved into the district on Georgia Avenue in 2003. Both Ripley Street North and the 1050 Ripley Street residential project planned across the street were expected to follow. Construction still hasn't begun on 1050 Ripley Street, a 200-foot-tall, 318-unit, mixed-use high-rise building that received final approval from the Planning Board in July 2008.

Representatives from Washington Property Company, the Bethesda-based developer of 1050 Ripley Street, could not be reached for comment.

Progress Place, a county-owned hub of services for the homeless and needy on nearby Colonial Lane, may be affected or relocated as a result of future trail projects.

"It could be a thing where nothing [is] happening now, and then everything will happen at once," Hague said of the Ripley District after Thursday's meeting.

But despite the still uncertain future of the Ripley District, members of the advisory committee said they were willing to be patient if it resulted in a better development project. Home Properties may seek a gold certification, the second-highest level attainable, in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design rating system.

"We have supported [Ripley Street North] in the past," said Jon Lourie an advisory board member and architect. "Certainly this layout is far superior to what was originally planned."