County planning staff recommendations for development in the Chevy Chase Lake sector are ready for public review.

County planning staff are recommending that the sector—for which property owner Chevy Chase Land Company is planning a development—retain its human scale, and that there be a focus on traditional architecture and pedestrian-oriented, mixed-use development, Montgomery County Senior Planner Elza Hisel-McCoy said at a presentation in Chevy Chase Village last week.

The preservation of Coquelin Run, which runs through the sector, is another important part of the development, as is knitting together the shops on the east and west sides of Connecticut Avenue between Jones Bridge Road and Chevy Chase Lake Drive.

County planning staff recommend that 250,000 square feet of development, with building heights up to 70 feet, be permitted in the Chevy Chase Lake sector before the Purple Line is built through the sector.

Once the Purple Line is underway, the development cap would be raised to 750,000 square feet, and building heights of up to 90 feet along the Purple Line would be permitted, McCoy explained.

The planning department's recommendations for the development of the sector will be presented to the county planning board on July 16 at the the county's planning headquarters, at 8787 Georgia Ave., Silver Spring.

The recommendations set the "standard for appropriate development densities in Chevy Chase Lake," according to the planning department's website.

While much of the sector will be zoned for mixed-use development, planning staff is not recommending that there be much more commercial development than what is currently there now.

"You [already] have the shops—you need people to shop in them," and so the development will be a mostly residential one," Hisel-McCoy said.

Planning staff prepared the recommendations based on the assumption that the Purple Line would cross Connecticut Avenue between Jones Bridge Road and Chevy Chase Lake Drive on a bridge over the avenue, and that the Purple Line station—which will not have a kiss-and-ride component—would be an elevated station in the new development.

"If it’s not elevated, we’re recommending that we take another look at it," Hisel-McCoy said.

No new libraries, fire stations or schools are part of the recommendations, based on information supplied to the planning department by the county library system, county fire departments and Montgomery County Public Schools.

New parks and playgrounds are part of the recommendations, as requested by the county parks department.

The development plans of the sector's primary developer, the Chevy Chase Land Company, "continue to evolve, but we view the staff’s recommendations as just a starting point for the discussion," wrote Lisa Fadden, the company's vice president for public affairs, in an email to Patch.

"We would like to have additional feedback from the [planning board] about their vision for the area," Fadden added.

To learn more about the company's plans for the Chevy Chase Lake sector, visit the company's blog, at www.chevychaselake.com.

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How did Chevy Chase Lake get its name? Once upon a time, there used to be a lake there.

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