National Public Radio Considering Move to Silver Spring
By Silver Springer • Apr 19th, 2007 • Category: Business and Economic Development
Montgomery County government, including the Department of Economic Development and the Silver Spring Regional Center are trying to lure National Public Radio from its location at 635 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, D.C.
NPR is crunched for space at its current location and is considering a move to downtown Silver Spring.
According to Gary Stith, director of the Regional Center, financial incentives are being provided to bring the deal to a close. Stith also said they would likely locate somewhere in the Ripley district of downtown and require around 400,000 square feet of office space, a building size closer to Discovery Communications’.
The addition of NPR would only magnify Silver Spring’s position as the media hub of the region with companies like TV-One, World Space and Discovery Communications headquartered in the urban district.
Silver Springer is
Email this author | All posts by Silver Springer
Are there any office buildings slated for the Ripley area? Or do you think a design will wait until NPR signs on the dotted line?
How did Discovery handle the move?
No there isn’t and Discovery has money and built it’s own headquarters, that’s how they handled their move. The Discovery building was going to have 300 foot spire but that got cut and I believe the building was going to be taller but the NIMBYs and Park & Planning got to that too.
So with less square footage, instead of consolidating their operations here they opened additional operations in the Dulles corridor of Va.
The fact that there is no office building proposed large enough to accommodate NPR makes the task that much more difficult.
Actually, I haven’t heard of Discovery having any other operationsin NoVa, but the current building was going to be one story shorter, and was increased from 9 to the current 10. There was going to be a 350-foot spire, which was subsequently reduced to 300, and then scrapped after area “astronomers” complained about light pollution (which is complete bull, since its already way too light to do astronomical work near the downtown area anyway). Discovery.com has operations on Blair Mill Road at East West Hwy in South Silver Spring. Discovery also got huge concessions from the county for moving to Silver Spring, something which would obviously help NPR, especially since NPR relies on government funding and donors to operate. All of this gives credence to the fact that whoever is building Studio Plaza is a complete idiot for scrapping the office component of his project (as reported by the Silver Spring Penguin).
Pennster, Discovery opened a Television and Technology Center in the Dulles corridor back in August 2005, the actual address is 45580 Terminal Drive, Sterling, VA. They also have the Discovery Education Center in Bethesda. Here is a link.
With requirements allocatiing 20% of the project for public use space nobody uses, overly strict height limits, NIMBYs and the planning dept recommendations well…now the building is smaller. The $27 million incentive was the result of the Depts of Economic Development at the County and State level, it had nothing to do with park and planning.
As for Studio Plaza, I was at the same meeting with the Penguin so I know exactly what was said by the developer. I was going to have a write up on it. The only thing that stopped him from building the office building was park and planning.