Full Week Ahead: Another New Restaurant Embarks Silver Spring’s Success
By Silver Springer • Aug 20th, 2007 • Category: Arts, Food and Entertainment, Business and Economic Development
It’s been a while since the last post on the Silver Spring Scene, but the summer can make you do crazy things!  Everyone is on vacation and moving at snail pace (there’s a dearth of news on the other blogs as well).
The good news is that there’s a back log of news that needs to be posted.ÂÂ
Like the title says a new restaurant wants to touch down on the Colesville road which is becoming Silver Spring’s rendition of Broadway in a way that is coming along quite nicely compared to what the rest of the D.C. area has to offer.
Owner of the shop directly adjacent to the Lee
 The new restaurant would be called ‘Sabroso’.The image above was supposed be a conceptual rendering of the alterations that would have taken place. The owner planned on spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to alter the façade of the building but was stopped by an injunction from the Silver Spring Historical society.
The two low-rise retail structures that straddle Colesville and Fenton are designated historic.
A stop order was placed on the former Rostas Collection fashion store because new tenant T-Mobile was altering the façade beyond what was allowed.ÂÂ
Silver Spring Historical Society says that the only alteration that can be made are the removal of the multicolored canopies along each store front. The bay windows, stone facades must stay the same.
The same rule applied not only to Sabroso but another new restaurant planned called Rainbow Café.ÂÂ
Sabroso still plans on incorporating a large illuminated sign above the main entrance.
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Dearth of news? Yes. While I’m tempted to plug my ongoing series on the Purple Line, it’s pretty clear that there will be no more news until September when the Government comes back and starts doing things for us to complain about again.
Sigh. August is the cruelest month.
But Peruvian rotisserie . . . well, that makes everything better.
We knew it would happen. Preservation of “historic” properties (this block? give me a break!) will bring a halt to revitalizaiton outside the Ellsworth core area. Sorry folks, if people can’t change the buildings, in most cases, they can’t operate here. At least, not modern restaurants and shops. But we’ll still be very attractive to 2nd-hand stores — which is what our so-called preservation community wants.
How in the hell is this block a “historic” property? Just because something is old doesn’t make it historically worthy. I thought the idea beyond preservation was that it had to be something worth preserving? Why don’t we just designate the McDonalds on Colesville as historic while we’re at it? Historically, its a hotbed for crime.
There’s nothing unique or special about that block…its just old. And from the looks of things, it could use a new facade. I’m all for keeping Silver Spring’s character, but some of this preservation is a bit out of hand.
Are the buildings on the northeast corner of Fenton & Colesville (with Willow St. Yoga & American Apparel) considered historic? If so, then they did a good job with their recent renovation. Can’t they do the same thing on the JC Penney side of the street?
What’s kind of silly is that for at least two decades the north side of Colesville has looked like a crappy collection of canopies, neon and low-end shops. Now that companies want to come in an spend money, the “hysterical society” takes interest. Amazing.
T-MOBILE is the best could do on this prime real estate directly on Colesville.
Ya know.. how that we’re far enough into the “new century” that the reach of historic societies in beginning to hit upon the nausiating wheaties-box-on-its-side architecture of the 1950’s-60’s, isn’t it time to start re-thinking the span of control of historic societies? I mean - there are certainly things worthy of preserving in the area… And I kinda wish the strip mall across the street had been a little better restored by Downtown SS… but I really see nothing or architectural value in those stores there.. they symbolize the transformation of architecture from an artform to a post-WWII baby boom build as much as you can as cheap as you can efficiency model. And as we still haven’t really worked our way OUT of that model yet (at at the current pace, probably never will) Why are we preserving symbols of our entry into this dreadful era? And I’m certainly not saying new architecture will be any better, I guess I just kinda feel it’s 6 in one, half dozen in the other.
It seems to me more young people need to join this preservation society.