Bethesda Planners Declare Millennial Event A Success

Attendees at the Streetsense Montgomery County planners were hoping last week’s Streetsense-hosted party would introduce millennials to the downtown Bethesda planning process with the promise of free food, drink and cornhole.

After a few hundred showed up last Wednesday, planners now hope they can keep them interested.

“This was as much to share information, hear their questions and encourage them to be involved in the fall,” said Margaret Rifkin, part of the Planning Department’s team working on the Bethesda Downtown Plan. “We wanted to engage and invite people to be in our feedback loop in the fall, so we weren’t going out with specific questions about planning from our point of view.”

The event was organized by Streetsense, a brokerage, design and development company with a sprawling office at Bethesda Metro Center, after the Planning Department approached the company and developer JBG about more age-targeted outreach.

Until last week, planners hadn’t been able to get much of a response or input from millennials in sessions about the Bethesda Downtown Plan, which will bring new zoning and land use guidelines for the next 20-25 years of Bethesda development.

Streetsense did some basic surveying of what attendees would like to see more of in downtown Bethesda, information that Rifkin said the firm will provide planners in a few weeks.

She said it’s hard to know what portion of attendees work in downtown Bethesda, live in downtown Bethesda, work and live in downtown Bethesda or were representing event sponsors. The event was co-sponsored by Chevy Chase-based developer JBG and Bethesda-based Clark Construction.

“My perception was we got a very good complement of people who were work in downtown Bethesda and a small number who live there and we had just a few who both live and work in Bethesda,” Rifkin said. “But that’s just our staff circulating and talking with people. My feeling is this was a wonderful way to put out a wide net.”

Planners displayed the concept framework plan, a preliminary idea of where new development, parks and open spaces might go. Planners are expected to present their final work to the Planning Board this fall, which is expected to send it up to the County Council in the winter.

“We were really pleased with the number of people who came over to talk with our staff at length about the framework,” Rifkin said. “Although we know that many people would go anywhere for free food, we had a really good number of people who were genuinely interested.”

Photo via Montgomery County Planning Department

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