A further review session with Rockville Mayor and Council is scheduled for the regular public meeting on July 18, in the Council Chambers, City Hall.

The West of Lake parcel at Tower Oaks is at the SE corner of Wootton Parkway and Tower Oaks Blvd.  It lies North-South between Wootton Parkway and the edge of the parcel occupied by the Legato building, and East-West between Tower Oaks Blvd. and the Cabin John Stream bed (across which is Clyde's restaurant).  In the original CPD plan, this site was designated for an office building, hotel  and a health club.  A prior un-constructed proposal existed for an office building on this site.  The current proposal returns to the concept of the CPD designation.  The site presently has a moderate open green space buffer along both mentioned roadways.  The remainder of the site is forested.

This proposal involves a hotel and health club complex and a separate office building.  The hotel will include 300 units in two towers.  One tower is intended for common overnight hotel service; the other is intended for residence service.  The towers will be joined at ground level by a complex containing a ballroom, conference and dining space, hotel support services and 75,000 square foot retail health club, along with associated structured parking.  The hotel will be operated as a Renaissance Hotel by Marriott Corp.  The Renaissance chain is a high quality, upscale brand.  Due to its proximity to Marriott's international corporate headquarters in Bethesda, this hotel is expected to be a flagship installation.  The hotel complex will be positioned toward the SW portion of the site (along Tower Oaks Blvd.).

The office space will be in one building positioned in the northern portion of the site (along Wootton Parkway).  It will include 198,400 square feet of space.  To achieve this density, 98,400 square feet of density must be transferred from other CPD allocations.  This is a 14.5% density increase for this site, but no net increase within the CPD.  Thus, remaining parcels on the site will have correspondingly less density in future build-out.

While the positioning the buildings close to the roadways will increase their visibility, an environmental benefit is that less of the existing forested space will be impacted.  This leaves appreciable space to be dedicated to the Stream Valley Park concept in the CPD.

A significant concern for this Association with all of Tower Oaks build-out is the potential for traffic generation that may congest adjoining roadways (with the potential to cause cut-through traffic on our residential streets) and essentially isolate the neighborhood by over-burdening the boundary roadways.  All new construction in Tower Oaks has the potential to do so because of the age of its approval and the effect of other unrelated approvals that have deteriorated background conditions even without the un-built Tower Oaks traffic.  Yet, this proposal remains within the scope of the CPD approval so there is little opening to address trip generation as a fresh issue.  Also, it is fairly arguable whether small density shifting will have a plus or minus effect on trip generation.  Nevertheless, any variation is expected to be small proportionally.

Three images are offered below to portray this proposal.  These appear in .PDF (Adobe Acrobat format) from the links below.  [Note: These images are offered as a courtesy review for this Assn. by Tower-Dawson LLC, through the counsel at Holland and Knight LLP.  We appreciate this cooperation in informing affected neighborhoods.]

Warning: each image is a large file size.

Site Overview:  Tower Oaks, West of Lake Hotel/Office/Health Club Proposal
[Note:  In this image, these proposed buildings appear toward the upper right corner.  The building in the lower left is the North Gateway parcel with its existing building.  In the lower right of the image is the structured parking of the Legato building.]

Site Plan:  Tower Oaks, West of Lake Hotel/Office/Health Club Proposal

Landscape Plan:  Tower Oaks, West of Lake Hotel/Office/Health Club Proposal

Copyright © 2005, Hungerford Civic Assoc.
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Last updated: July 13, 2005