The group of residents and business and government reps which will be charged with letting county government know what’s going in White Flint was confirmed on Tuesday by the County Council.
Twelve members: Lee Barnes, Bob Daley, Brian Downie, Deirdre Johnson, Francine Waters, Kenneth Hartman, Peggy Schwartz, Thomas Murphy, Andrew Shulman, Paul Meyer, Bernard Meyers, Clifford Cohen and Tara Flynn will make up the first White Flint Downtown Advisory Committee.
They’ll meet to discuss issues that come up as White Flint undergoes a wave of redevelopment that will transform strip malls and White Flint Mall into town square-oriented, mixed-use centers.
The Committee will also be key in recommending when to pull the trigger on a Bethesda Urban Partnership-like business improvement district that would be funded by the county for the purpose of providing White Flint with basic services, possibly including trash collection, landscaping and marketing.
Barnes, who is president of Kensington-based Barwood Taxi, and Daley, from the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel, are the Committee’s two small business representatives. Meyer and Meyers are residents from the White Flint Sector. Cohen (Chevy Chase) and Flynn (Garrett Park) are resident members from outside the White Flint Sector.
Developer representatives include Downie, from Bethesda-based Saul Centers Inc. That group owns the Staples shopping center at Rockville Pike and Nicholson Lane and the Metro Pike Shopping Center across from the White Flint Metro station.
Johnson works for Rockville-based Federal Realty Investment Trust, which is behind the Pike & Rose project at the Mid-Pike shopping center. Waters represents Lerner Enterprises, which built White Flint Mall in the 70′s and is now in the planning stages to replace it with a mixed-use town center.
Murphy and Shulman will work on the Committee as representatives from the Greater Bethesda-Chevy Chase Chamber of Commerce. Bethesda-Chevy Chase Regional Services director Ken Hartman, from the county executive branch, will round out the Committee as a non-voting member.
