The Chevy Chase Library, shown with the counry club across the street. Image by the author.

While the exact measure depends on how exactly you define the community, Chevy Chase in Maryland is one of the wealthiest areas not only in the region, but in the entire country, and is locally synonymous with privilege and exclusion. As one might expect, with a median home sale price exceeding $1 million, housing costs in the area are high. Due to needed renovations at a local municipal institution, the county has an opportunity to take a small but powerful step to address this, one it cannot afford to squander.

The Chevy Chase Library, located on Connecticut Avenue about half a mile north of East-West Highway, requires more than $3.5 million in “extensive renovations” as part of Montgomery County’s effort to modernize multiple branches across the county. So the county decided to explore adding housing to a replacement library to offset the cost.

In April last year, the county put out a call to developers to evaluate interest in the project — they found there was plenty. With this interest in mind, the county is providing two options to the public for input before a decision is made on how to bring the facility into a state of good repair. The first would be a traditional publicly funded renovation of the existing facility. The second would be to enter into a public private partnership (PPP) with a developer to create a mixed-use development with a housing element, which would help defray the costs of a new replacement facility.

While the exact nature and scope of the project would depend on specific proposals, the site’s proximity to transit merits high density. Any housing element is expected to be rental housing, and developers have expressed interest in building both market rate and subsidized housing of up to seven stories when asked for non-committal submissions of interest.

Housing near and on top of libraries is not a new concept, and Montgomery County would be far from the first community to build such a development. Chicago has undertaken multiple housing projects as part of library redevelopments with varying levels of subsidy and affordability on the apartments. A library redevelopment in Brooklyn that broke ground in 2019 includes six floors of below market rate apartments targeted at 30 to 80 percent of area median income. Milwaukee is partnering with developers to build four library branches including both affordable and market rate units.

Montgomery County has a dire need for more housing to help tackle the housing crisis, and the Chevy Chase library is in a good spot to do so. It currently occupies land straddling the border between a sea of single family zoning and a small section of multi family and mixed use zoning, down the street from a future Purple Line station. Nestled between two major downcounty cores and soon to be connected to each by a light rail line, the area screams for dense housing.

By law, a minimum of 15% of units would need to be affordable to those making 65-70% of the area median income. Beyond that, the need to offset construction costs could potentially limit the number of affordable units. But even market-rate multifamily structures are less than half the price, on average, of larger detached single family homes. The county forecasts that more than half of the new housing needed to accommodate new households between 2020 and 2040 will be multifamily rental housing, and another quarter will be multifamily owner occupied housing (including apartments, condos, and townhomes/duplexes/triplexes/quadplexes).

While the two proposals have been up for public comment for some time now, the county recently held a couple of outreach events, and posted a public survey to solicit feedback from the community more directly. Most of the feedback has been from Chevy Chase residents and, perhaps not surprisingly, most of it has been against housing, often focused on the needs of the enclave rather than those currently excluded from it. Familiar concerns about traffic and selfish profit-driven developers abound.

One respondent claimed that Chevy Chase — home to supreme court justices, lobbyists, politicians, and two country clubs, one directly across the street from the library — is “ground zero” for development in the region, and that its citizens are “powerless fighting the resources and contacts of developers in Montgomery County.”

Another commenter said that thanks to two existing high rise apartment buildings and “several more” nearby, “enough is enough.”

And another said simply: “I’ve lived in Chevy Chase since 1964 and I think there has been entirely too much development here. Just leave the library alone and let the residents of Chevy Chase enjoy it.”

It would be foolish to squander this opportunity for more housing, and some commenters agree, though thus far there have been a mere handful. The county’s survey for input is open until November 15th.

Michael English is a resident of Downtown Silver Spring. He holds a  B.A. in Political Science from Southern Connecticut State University and a Masters of Public Administration from George Mason University. He is passionate about matters of county governance and housing affordability. Mr. English is a member of the steering committee of Montgomery for All. All views expressed in this piece are his alone.