Making Silver Spring safe for kids and adults
by Casey Anderson
Silver Spring has succeeded in making its business district an inviting destination. That success has attracted large crowds of unsupervised teens and young adults. At the recent Safe Silver Spring Summit at Montgomery College, participants debated how to keep Silver Spring a welcoming place while making it safe for all.
Rollin Stanley, the director of planning for Montgomery County’s Planning Board, argued that when land use and transportation infrastructure decisions succeed in encouraging pedestrian traffic and “activating” the ground level of commercial buildings and MDUs, the surrounding area becomes less attractive to criminals as it becomes more attractive to people looking for places to live, work, and shop. In other words, the principles of smart growth are good for public safety as well as economic development, environmental sustainability, and other goals of planners.
In many ways, Stanley’s arguments were compelling. Muggers are less likely to approach a victim on a street where heavy foot traffic makes it likely they will be observed and maybe even confronted by passersby. The same goes for thieves who steal or break into automobiles.
Not everyone, however, was convinced. Jonathan Jay, a neighborhood activist, said smart growth is not a panacea for public safety problems in the Silver Spring central business district, where neighboring residents have complained about large numbers of disorderly (and sometimes violent) teens and young adults who gather in the Fenton and Ellsworth area.
I argued that it is not enough to just attract lots of people; for Silver Spring’s redevelopment to succeed over the long term, the central business district has to attract people across the spectrum of age and income. Adults often complain that they do not feel comfortable there. Many feel as though it has been taken over by large crowds of rowdy teenagers, especially during the later hours of weekend nights.
Some might say that complaints about misbehavior by teens hanging around in downtown Silver Spring have been blown out of proportion. One woman suggested in a hallway conversation at the summit that tensions between adults (mostly white and more affluent) and teens (including proportionately more minorities from families with less money) largely reflect of racial and class tensions.
The debate reignited recently when an anti-violence concert sponsored by Mixed Unity, a group of local teens who organized in response to the killing of Blair High School student Tai Lam, ended with the arrests of several audience members who started a fracas during the final musical performance.
Peterson Cos., which manages the retail development along Ellsworth (but not the City Place mall), brought in a new private security team in 2008. They’ve given “stay-away orders” to people who repeatedly engage in disruptive behavior and other tactics. By many accounts, this has has curbed much of the worst behavior.
On the other hand, Veterans Plaza, currently under construction, will bring an ice skating rink and other amenities to the intersection but displace “The Turf,” the astroturf lawn where teens had previously congregated. That will make the question of how crowds of kids fit into the future of downtown Silver Spring more pressing. When Live Nation, a major concert venue, eventually opens just two blocks away, some residents are concerned that the problems associated with unruly crowds will get worse.
Complaints about out-of-control teenagers in downtown Silver Spring may be overstated, but they are not baseless. When I visit the CBD after dark, I sometimes (not always) encounter teens who walk four or five abreast to force pedestrians they encounter off the sidewalk, gather at the intersection of Fenton and Ellsworth to settle scores with fistfights, curse and make lewd remarks to both acquaintances and strangers, or show obvious signs of intoxication.
All of this is not enough to keep me away from the area, but it makes me think twice about bringing my wife and kids. Few people in Silver Spring want to see the area become another Bethesda, but does living in a vibrant urban area mean having to tolerate behavior that would be considered unacceptable west of Rock Creek Park? I hope we do not have to choose between gentrification and an enviroment that those of us on the cusp of middle age (or beyond) try to avoid.
The answer is not to run the kids off, but to create an environment that discourages uncivil behavior by (among other things) bringing more adults into the mix.
The health of downtown Silver Spring, and other redeveloping urban and suburban business districts, depends on drawing older adults and families as well as the stereotypical urban pioneers, and this means a retail and programming mix that caters to a wider range of people. The Pyramid Atlantic art store in the Fenton and Ellsworth development is a good example of the kind of retail that can pull in adults. Restaurants alone are probably not enough.
This issue is not just important to the quality of life in Silver Spring. New Urbanism needs an answer to critics who say it is fine for people in their twenties who don’t have kids, but doesn’t offer an appealing or realistic opportunity for families>. Leaving aside the knotty question of how to improve urban schools, we won’t succeed in remaking our urban and suburban centers without addressing this issue.
Casey Anderson is a lawyer and community activist who lives in Woodside, just outside of the Silver Spring central business district, with his wife and two children. He is a member of the Silver Spring Citizens Advisory Board and the board of directors of the Washington Area Bicyclist Association, but in contributing to Greater Greater Washington he is speaking only for himself.