Remarks by Josh Linden
96 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 1 of 4
- Play at 1:05:44
“Did they talk at all about... Hunter, this is an amazing site. I remember I visited there before they started this process years ago. And it was kind of interesting or difficult to visualize what would come, given what it was originally there and intended to do. And part of that was also the connectivity piece. And I was wondering if they talked about, because the original campus wasn't built to be highly connected. It's obviously surrounded by a couple of highways. Did they talk about how they, or did they, enhance connectivity not just kind of walking through the site, but like from the…”
Planning Board · Jul 16, 2026
- Play at 1:12:11
“Yeah, I wanted to add my thanks to everyone involved with organizing the tours, both the ones that have happened to date and hopefully more in the future. So it's really cool to see how, in this case, MCPS may start to change some of their thinking around some school design choices. I think that could be pretty transformative, and not just with clean energy, but kind of the entire orientation of the site, as we've talked about in some instances, to kind of further a lot of the goals that we have from a transportation perspective, from an urbanist perspective, and on and on. These are, you…”
Planning Board · Jul 16, 2026
- Play at 1:40:57
“I think I understand the reason to apply for the removal of the TMP, or at least maybe a couple of the reasons. But from your perspective, could you describe kind of your interest in removing it?”
Planning Board · Jul 16, 2026
- Play at 1:41:54
“So I think my knowing that there is a little bit of... at least with the testimony we've received today from the Darnells, I don't know if their sentiment is kind of more broadly shared in the immediate neighborhood. My concern with removing the reporting entirely is it could lead to a lot of disagreement over what the actual conditions are at the school. So say, you know, neighbors continue to be, or some neighbors continue to be unhappy with her kind of exit onto Tuckerman. And they perceive a certain level of traffic coming and going during the peak hour. And they make assumptions about…”
Planning Board · Jul 16, 2026
- Play at 1:44:14
“Mm-hmm. Well, that seems relevant then. I assume the community association probably distributes some information to the neighbors.”
Planning Board · Jul 16, 2026
- Play at 1:45:14
“Yeah, I understand that. I mean, I don't want to – I don't think we can litigate exactly, like, is there carriers or not. No, no, just one more thing. The subject of the TMP is just the two things that – You brought up, not the queuing.”
Planning Board · Jul 16, 2026
- Play at 1:45:39
“No, I understand. It sounds like there's a shoulder that some cars theoretically could take advantage of. I understand there's no actual parking allowed.”
Planning Board · Jul 16, 2026
- Play at 1:45:53
“No, I understand that's what's allowed. I'm talking about the space, the space in the roadway for vehicles.”
Planning Board · Jul 16, 2026
- Play at 1:46:19
“For cars to prevent the queuing on so I guess but my final question then is you mentioned You know other schools or in other situations so focusing on the TMP the reporting and meeting Other examples might be annual reporting you mentioned that Or biannual is that something that you're open to kind of I understand the administrative burden of doing this monthly for sure and It's obviously, it still requires kind of counts, probably on a daily basis. But is that something you'd be open to monthly or not monthly, annual reporting?”
Planning Board · Jul 16, 2026
- Play at 1:48:33
“So my final question, then, is I'm just trying to kind of understand that the 50 vehicle limit will remain, correct? On a daily peak hour, that's not going away? I'm just trying to anticipate. Like, it would be nice if we could.”
Planning Board · Jul 16, 2026
- Play at 1:48:59
“Ideally, there is a situation which not everyone's always going to be happy. I understand that. But ideally, there's a situation where this won't have to continue being kind of relitigated within the community, limit the amount of potential conflict between community and the school. So I'm wondering if the 50 vehicle limit remains, but the counting goes away, what is there to sort of understand if more than 50 trips are coming?”
Planning Board · Jul 16, 2026
- Play at 1:49:53
“I understand operationally you're doing what you can. I 100% understand that. I guess this is more a question for staff. Is this a concern for staff, that there is a vehicle limit requirement, but the counting is going away? And what does that mean for compliance? I'm just curious. Because this does seem like a unique situation. I don't think anyone has an interest in overburdening this particular school. I just want to make sure that there's not some inconsistencies, or we're not actually adding to potential conflict down the road.”
Planning Board · Jul 16, 2026
- Play at 1:53:31
“Yeah, I'll move to approve staff's recommendation with conditions. I'll just briefly add that I hope that if comments do come into the school about queuing that folks do see, that you'll be kind of willing to look into that. It's outside the scope of this TMP discussion, but if there is potentially dangerous situations exiting a particular street, I think we can all kind of understand kind of that concern. I think we all live in neighborhoods that have dangerous streets, and we don't want to exacerbate that. So I just hope the school will be willing to listen when those come in.”
Planning Board · Jul 16, 2026
- Play at 2:07:46
“I just had a question from my own understanding. This extension is, you know, effectively for time to get to the site plan, correct? And so what maybe the applicant, the question partly for the applicant too, what is the downside of, given the reasons you gave for the extension request, which include, you know, the marketing conditions, you know, local policy and things, which makes some sense. But what is the downside from your perspective of just moving to site plan? even given those conditions and not needing this extension request.”
Planning Board · Jul 16, 2026
- Play at 2:09:33
“Sorry, did you have anything to add to that?”
Planning Board · Jul 16, 2026
- Play at 2:10:24
“Requests are also considered for site plan. Sorry. If you do a site plan and it is approved, there is a period of time to go to do everything you mentioned, right? You know, record your plaid and on and on. Are there extension requests associated with that part of the process post site plan? I guess that's, is that something that we matter for DPS or how does that work kind of post site plan?”
Planning Board · Jul 16, 2026
- Play at 2:11:21
“Okay. Got it. Got it. Thanks. Yeah, I was just curious how these kind of from an extension standpoint and kind of where you would make decisions to either proceed or pause. I'm just kind of curious the decision making around that. So thanks.”
Planning Board · Jul 16, 2026
- Play at 3:55:02
“Yeah, so I have a few. So I'm going to try to organize my questions into a few, I guess, categories. And I don't want to take up kind of, if others have questions, like as I'm going through this, I don't want to just roll through many minutes of me talking only, but Just to get things started, I had a couple of questions on the open space, Civic Green, two of them in particular. Civic Green on Wisconsin and the Shoemaker block. So I guess because, yeah, thanks. So starting on Wisconsin. We've talked about this a little bit in the context of actual development applications, whether we should…”
Planning Board · Jul 16, 2026
- Play at 3:59:35
“Okay. That makes sense. Sorry, go ahead.”
Planning Board · Jul 16, 2026
- Play at 4:00:48
“I totally get that putting the puzzle together in a way that tries to check all those boxes is tricky. It sounds like visibility has been a big priority. I would just offer a few counterexamples to prioritizing that, maybe the expense of other things. If you look at downtown Silver Spring right now, on the corner of Colesville and Wayne going north from the metro, there's that large open space that was likely done a few years ago, maybe in connection with development. I can't remember exactly the history there. Highly visible, right? It has a lot of nice design, and it is very underutilized.…”
Planning Board · Jul 16, 2026
- Play at 4:03:29
“Is this the one that goes down a lot? It goes straight down.”
Planning Board · Jul 16, 2026
- Play at 4:05:04
“Yeah, thanks for reminding me about that context. That makes a lot of sense. And yeah, difficult to overcome the natural features of a place sometimes. So 100%, that makes sense.”
Planning Board · Jul 16, 2026
- Play at 4:06:52
“I'm going to save, I think, what may be the somewhat thornier comments for the end. So I'll just quickly get to a couple of environmental comments. The first is I would really, when we get to the work sessions, I would love us to include as an additional goal not just climate resiliency but climate mitigation. or greenhouse gas mitigation. It's inherent to these types of plans and these planning principles. I just don't want it to get lost in the wash. I want us to kind of reinforce the idea that this type of development is inherently more climate friendly because it's on a per capita level.…”
Planning Board · Jul 16, 2026
- Play at 4:11:31
“So to that point, though, we're introducing the idea of a green buffer. we're introducing a double planted row of trees, not a single, but a double. We have the lower height and the suggestion or maybe the requirement that it's facing Belmont with a residential kind of look. That's a lot of things. That feels like a lot of things relative to other plans that we've done. And I'm just like, why are we choosing to go so over and above with this particular site, considering what you said, that it's not a huge height difference, another floor and a half maybe. I mean, I guess you can sort of,…”
Planning Board · Jul 16, 2026
- Play at 4:13:04
“Well, that's fine. That's fine. We can do it in the work session. I'm just sort of airing kind of the concern at this point. There is language about the intent, but we talk about compatibility, the intent of compatibility in other plans, too. And I guess what I'm getting at is we're going further. My impression is we're going further with this overlay recommendation.”
Planning Board · Jul 16, 2026