Officials will present updated designs next week for the Intelligence Community Campus-Bethesda (ICCB) on Sangamore Road, a once controversial project that neighbors now say should fit in better with the surrounding wooded area.
Representatives from the Army Corps of Engineers and construction company Whiting-Turner will provide “the updated Architectural Vision for the campus,” according to Montgomery County Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC) coordinator Phil Alperson. The meeting is set for 7 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 7 at the Washington Waldorf School (4800 Sangamore Rd.).
In November, seven or eight of some of the most vocal community leaders said they were pleased with alternate designs presented in a small community meeting. The $300 million, 40-acre campus at 4600 Sangamore Rd. is surrounded by parkland.
Winnebago Road resident Harry Pfohl said the designs included new features that better integrated the campus into the forest around it and that they were very well received.
“They presented some real ways to integrate the project with the National Park forestland behind it and to landscape the garage to provide for a more wooded, natural setting,” Pfohl said. “The concepts were unanimously enthusiastically received by the community leaders. That really says something.”
The campus, which will be expanded to hold about 3,000 employees, use to house the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency headquarters. That agency was relocated to Virginia under BRAC and the Defense Intelligence Agency will take over Sangamore Road.
Pfohl said the neighbors were particularly impressed by the stormwater management plan and landscape features such as small ponds.
“Everyone was grinning,” Pfohl said in November.
