Scheduled to open in late February, the Silver Spring Aquatic and Recreation Center will be an urban oasis in the new Elizabeth Square community. Montgomery County Administrator Marc Elrich visited the facility for the first time in September 2023 and called the experience “amazing. “
SILVER SPRING, Md. – Nestled between 3 high-rise apartment buildings at the end of Apple Avenue and on Fenwick Street, just behind the courthouse and up the hill from the railroad tracks, a cozy corner of downtown Silver Spring is where you are. .
The new South County Regional Aquatic and Recreation Center in Elizabeth Square will be an unprecedented urban oasis featuring state-of-the-art pools, hot tubs, fitness center, multipurpose rooms, kitchen and fitness clinic. A facility like this has never been built in the county, and citizens like Don Braverman, 90, Izola Ancar, 84, and Stan Starr, 68, can’t wait for it to open.
Ancar, Braverman and Starr live in The Leggett, a newly constructed income-restricted apartment building for people 62 and older. The opening of The Leggett on May 4 was the first phase of the Housing Opportunity Commission’s complex plan for this area of the city.
Ms. Ancar moved into the building in June 2023. When he left, he said he got information about the aquatic and recreation center from a representative from the leasing office.
“It’s got everything,” she said. “I love to swim, and my knees are kind of bad, but they have the heated pool. That’s good. I will use the pool every day.”
On days when it’s hot and not very windy, Mrs. Ancar sits in front of the Alexander House building next to the Leggett. She enjoys people-watching and enjoying the breeze with her friend Cheryl Bigham.
Cheryl Bigham (L), and her friend Izola Ancar (R) sit in front of the Alexander House, one of three residential buildings in the new Elizabeth Square.
With the sound of cars zooming on the roads in front of them, hammers hitting nails, power tools buzzing and the trains chugging along the tracks behind them, Ms. Ancar and Ms. Bigham get giddy when they talk about the future of the neighborhood.
Ms Bigham, 62, says she has lived on the fourth floor of Alexander House since 2022.
“When they showed me my unit, they showed me the pool that they were building,” she recalled. “They said it was for residents.” (At the time, she wasn’t sure if everybody would be allowed in.)
From his balcony he sees and listens to the promoters of the aquatic and recreational center. But the noise doesn’t bother her. When she comes in, she doesn’t hear much because her windows are insulated.
Ms. Bigham is looking for the treadmill when the recreation center opens.
“Water aerobics is for our joints,” he said.
Mr. Braverman ended up in Leggett after his son advised him to move from the single-family home he had spent years in to an apartment in Silver Spring. I wasn’t sure if I’d live in a small unit. However, he says the staff has been “amazing. “
Due to the condition of his knees and his lack of balance, Braverman says he can no longer ride a motorcycle like he used to. So, you’re looking for the motorcycle on the desk at the new recreation center.
“You can’t open it soon enough,” he said. I’ve been in high school here, but unfortunately the motorcycle is rarely the one I want or want. That’s why I want it to open up. “
The Holy Cross Health clinic is on the second floor of The Leggett and connected to the Silver Spring Recreation and Aquatic Center. For now, all patients have to enter on through The Leggett.
Mr. Braverman also commented that he has been consulting with the number one doctor who will treat patients at the Holy Cross Health Partners clinic [an elevator upstairs] for more than a year.
The County Recreation Department and Holy Cross Health hosted an informational town hall for the citizens of The Leggett in August 2023.
Other tenants, like Starr, feel that “it’s taking too long!”
“We heard the date changes,” he said during a county-sponsored information session at the Silver Spring Aquatic and Recreation Center, hosted in particular for the citizens of The Leggett.
Initially, it announced that construction would be open until June 2023, but the county now says no one will lift weights or swim until the end of February.
“Generally speaking, it’s a wonderful idea, but we get lost in the details,” Starr said.
Stan Starr, 68, sits in his apartment on the grounds of the Leggett.
Among his gripes, the self-proclaimed “Mayor of The Leggett” believes that Costello, the construction company tasked with building the rec center, parks their cars along Apple Avenue leading to the cul-de-sac where his building and the SSRAC are located.
“The carpets are in ruins because those other people didn’t need to put tarps to cover the carpet, so they hunt them down, and now this beautiful carpet is in ruins,” he said. “The chimney alarm. . . I was told they were cutting off the chimney alarm because the structure of the pool was generating dust. But what if there’s a genuine fireplace?
Mr. Starr left the Arrive Silver Spring apartment building on Georgia Avenue a few months after a woman died in a fire on the eleventh floor. Despite his concerns, he said he likes his new unit, and is “glad” he moved.
The carpet on the door of the Leggett in September 2023.
Dulce Flores is the leader/resident of Leggett.
She says she and her staff communicate to tenants about the SSRAC and let them know how convenient it will be to use.
“All they have to do is take the elevator. They don’t want to drive,” he said. They usually have to wait for members of their family circle. Now they can simply move on to the second floor. There are other people. “who are swimmers and, right now, are moving on to other recreational centers. “
“It’s a great addition just for residents, but also for the entire zip code,” Flores added. “Employees will benefit. We’re all excited about it. “
Dulce Flores is the community leader/resident of Leggett.
Flores is anticipating more traffic on her doorstep.
“It will bring attention to our community. But we like to be seen,” he said. “The older people are uncles and grandmothers, and it’s smart to know we’re here. It’ll be smart for us. “
A short walk from Leggett and right next to SSRAC, the county’s first public housing construction is still standing. More or less.
The Elizabeth House, the oldest public housing building in the county, will be completely demolished in the coming months.
Casa Isabel is empty. The 194 senior citizens have moved out, and while some have moved into The Leggett, others have had to look for housing elsewhere. A sign on the old doors indicates that the assets contain asbestos.
What remains is the hull of a construction that still leaves decades of flow.
Chelsea Andrews is the executive director of the County Housing Opportunity Commission (HOC). He said the 10-story building that has housed Silver Springs citizens since 1966 has “outlived its lifespan. “It will be completely demolished in the coming months.
Recent adjustments to public housing permitting agencies, such as HOC, leverage personal investment and other housing subsidies to serve the same families and Americans in a financially sustainable business model. The latest phase of Elizabeth Square’s progress is to upgrade Elizabeth House with new mixed use. , mixed income building.
In the meantime, a temporary plaza will create another entranceway to the recreation and aquatic center.
Architectural rendering showing one of the entrances to Elizabeth Square. Photo courtesy of the County Recreation Department.
“We are excited to bring new life to the Downtown North district of Silver Spring, new amenities to serve the whole community, and new opportunities for all families to take advantage of this prime location right next to the Metro,” Andrews said in a statement. “HOC is tremendously proud to be part of an innovative partnership with the Montgomery County Government and the Lee Development Group to create Elizabeth Square – an exciting new destination in Silver Spring which offers affordable housing colocated with incredible retail and community amenities.”
Between The Leggett, The Alexander House and the upcoming new state-of-the-art Elizabeth House, there will be a total of 908 residential units. HOC also operates Holy Cross primary care facilities, but amenities that so many citizens will enjoy for decades to come. Andrews, is the County Recreation Department’s new “world-class” South County Regional Recreation and Aquatic Center.
Architectural rendering showing the courtyard and main front of Elizabeth Square after all the work is completed. Photo courtesy of the country’s Department of Recreation.
Construction of the colossal and highly anticipated Silver Spring Hybrid Recreation and Water Center began in October 2019.
The concept for the task was a partnership developed two years earlier between HOC and Gabe Albernoz, then the County’s Director of Recreation.
“They were going to come with some kind of recreational apparatus for the citizens of this subdivision and he thought it was an opportunity for something bigger, and so he called me,” recalls David Dise, director of the county’s Department of General Services. We thought, ‘yes, that’s a wonderful idea. Since then, we’ve been working with HOC and the County Recreation Department to explore what it could be. “
Construction of the exterior of the facility in June 2023.
The county’s resolution to marry HOC allowed them to tap into an asset that was already going to be used. Building the aquatic and recreation center without the housing component would have been more expensive and more complicated because there are so many other giant lots in Silver Spring’s central business district.
“I think it’s an opportunity, a task, and all interests evolve at the same time. So the sheer synergy of doing it here exposed us to this opportunity,” Say explained. “The smart thing is that all the partners involved have realized the benefits. It has been a wonderful environment for cooperation. “
KDG Architecture was brought in by HOC to draw up the designs to fill the 120,000 gross square feet of public recreation space. When it was time to break ground, Dise turned to Lee Development Group, builders who constructed The Fillmore Silver Spring, the Civic Building in Veteran’s Plaza, and the county’s first library-recreation center in Wheaton.
“We’ve built branded services in other parts of the county and that’s the kind of facility we’d like to build elsewhere, so it’s wonderful to see that it’s a combination; It’s a three-service building,” he said. County Administrator Marc Elrich, who has followed this task since his first proposal. He was a member of the county council at the time and remembers there was a lot of enthusiasm about partnering with HOC.
An employee at the Costello structure (right) shows the pool to County Manager March Elrich (left) and David Dise (center) during a stopover in September 2023.
During his first stop at the construction site in late September 2023, Elrich said what he saw was “impressive. “
“Being inside this and seeing what they’ve done is quite remarkable and you realize the magnitude of the demanding situations that arise in this construction in terms of what you are supporting as a residential tower. . . How they organized it. It’s all “just. . . just beautiful,” Elrich said.
“It’s a senior center, it’s an aquatic center, and there are recreational activities, classrooms, and an advertising kitchen that can be used for training. So it’s a complete package that can be used for many other services,” he said. he continued.
Robin Riley is the county’s director of recreation. She oversees 22 other recreation centers throughout the county and played an important role in advancing this ambitious project.
An internal wall of the SSRAC presents the characteristics and spaces of the floor.
The SSRAC will be MoCo’s first regional center, and according to Riley, it’s filled with endless opportunities.
“While it will serve seniors [above us] if you look around, there’s tons of other residents that we serve here and it’s accessible by Metro and to lots of downtown businesses that can come here before work and after work,” Riley said during a recent tour of the space. “We’re excited about the opportunity to do something in a more urban environment that we’ve never done before.”
So far, she’s hired nine full-time employees and hopes to fill several seasonal positions soon.
The first site of the facility will feature multi-use activity rooms, a public use domain and social domains.
On the floor there is a gym where citizens can play basketball, badminton, volleyball and, of course, pickleball.
The exercise and weight room, as well as movement and dance studios with an ambience for ballet and Zumba, are also on level 2. There’s a culinary arts kitchen where Riley says the cooking categories will be located and seniors can be told how to fix it temporarily. Each room has express programs for the community.
The biggest attraction that will surprise and sponsor to the fullest is the dominance of water on the lower level.
A view of the Olympic-sized swimming pool inside the Silver Spring Aquatic and Recreation Center. Photo via County Recreation Department.
With a total of 14,500 feet of water surface in the 26,500-foot natatorium area, the area includes a pool for diving and swimming festivals, a warmer temperature recreational pool, a recreational pool, and two spas.
High school competitions will be held in the Olympic-sized pool, and as the host of the Maryland Senior Olympics in 2023, the county hoped to have the area available for some aquatic events.
The recreational pool features a variety of fun aquatic details, adding a slide domain with a raised rock platform and a six-inch-deep children’s lagoon with splash pads. In addition, integrated evaporative drains draw all air out of surface water, minimizing chlorine. that the entire facility may not have that indoor pool smell.
Photo via County Recreation Department
The locker rooms in the cottage are another unique design feature. Due to new county legislation requiring family locker rooms and non-binary restrooms for the first time, the county placed the cabins, in addition to the men’s and women’s locker rooms, in a recreation center.
To make everything more sensible, there is also a green roof in the installation.
It’s an environmental site design element that minimizes the heat island of the inner city, boosting what water captures and limiting the amount of runoff into the storm sewage.
One of the elements that has been taken into account when designing the area is the effort to minimise the noise of exercise in the rooms of the building. Sound monitors have been placed in all exercise-oriented apartments to ensure no outside noise enters.
The windows are triple-glazed and feature an additional layer of glass.
The walls are soundproofed. Therefore, if a noisy basketball tournament is taking place, it will probably not spread to the rest of the rooms.
Soon, they will be adorned with photographs, plaques and memorabilia from some of the area’s top athletes, as the facility becomes the new home of the County Sports Hall of Fame.
“We know that the pool and the gym are going to be active sports places, so it was just a natural fit,” Riley said.
Architectural rendering of the bronze statue of Dominique Dawes to be placed at the SSRAC.
A bronze statue of one of the most notable members will be placed at the entrance, as a symbol to the citizens of what they too can achieve.
“Dominique Dawes is a resident of the City of Takoma Park and is indeed a hallmark of the county,” Riley said. “She’s really worried about the construction of all of this. We hope he will come here and give categories as well. “
What happens when you open a world-class aquatic and recreational center in one of America’s most diverse cities?
A recent study conducted by WalletHub ranks Silver Spring first in socioeconomic diversity and fourth in cultural diversity. Census data shows the city’s makeup is 39. 1 percent White, 29. 3 percent African American, 24. 6 percent Hispanic, 6. 8 percent two or more ethnicities. and 7. 9 percent Asian, meaning the multicultural faces that will fill the halls of SSRAC could look like a living mosaic, embodying a combination of horizons.
Just over 23. 1% of the population is under 18 years old, while 11. 7% of citizens are at least 65 years old. And the average family salary in the region is $91,970.
County Executive Marc Elrich believes this is a good thing.
“I think it’s going to help the network feel like they’re reaping benefits from the kind of services that serve a diverse population at a point that they don’t feel like they’re seeing,” she said. “I think the combination of populations is wonderful civilizing forces. A lot of times people don’t know each other, but when you come together and share spaces, I think it has an effect. . . bring other people together and interact with each other. It helps to create some kind of common bond and some form of understanding between all the people you deal with in that county. “
Providing programs for a wide variety of people may seem challenging, but Carmen Berrios, a manager within Montgomery County’s Recreation Department, says the team is excited to get started.
A digital sign will display important messages in front of the SSRAC.
Six days a week, various activities will be held to help seniors and people attending the status quo stay active and fit. There will be water biking, aqua yoga, general swimming categories and all kinds of extra categories, Berrios says, which will be located in the water. On land, each and every member of the family will be introduced to a huge diversity of categories, from Zumba to Tai chi, Bikram yoga, arts and crafts, all kinds of dances, and much more.
“We need to have a robust and active facility, so we need to make sure we’re providing the systems that our network needs; especially for the seniors who will be living here with us, we need to make sure that we are providing “Montgomery County is a melting pot of cultures. It’s what makes us such a glorious position to work and work in. It’s the diversity of our network, and therefore our network hub will be no different. We’ll be varied in both age teams and as well. “
Berrios was tasked with gathering feedback from neighboring neighborhoods and selling the online survey that is helping the county tailor its programming to long-term users.
In March 2023, Berrios, Riley and a few other members of the recreation branch asked local teens to talk about their interests and what they wanted to see within SSRAC by handing out loose pizzas and other snacks at a youth outreach event in Wheaton. The county says it sought to make sure they were in contact with children and included activities that interested them.
In the breakout sessions, the teens were candid, and said they wanted an arcade room, phone charging stations, a selfie wall, McDonald’s, escape rooms, scooters, essay writing, anime, money management and K-POP dancing classes, plus SAT/ACT help. They also wanted activities like boxing, sword fighting, archery, mini golf, bumper cars, crochet, darts, karaoke and laser tag, among several other ideas.
“It’s a vital assembly to make sure we hear their voices,” Riley said. “We know that young people have a voice and that if they have the choice, they will come. “
In March 2023, Montgomery County Recreation staff engaged with teens to gather their input and ideas for the SSRAC.
The youth progression team, which Riley says is “dynamic” in top schools, middle schools, and elementary schools, has the difficult task of motivating young people to engage in positive activities that will allow them to stay out of trouble.
With youth violence on the rise and youth intellectual fitness issues across the country and county, the Department of Recreation hopes the SSRAC will be an area for teens.
From 2017 to 2022, the backlog of violent crime increased by as much as 40% in downtown Silver Spring, according to the county’s crime database. Montgomery County Sheriff Marcus Jones announced in December 2023 that between fiscal years 22 and 23, arrests of youth 17 and younger for violent crimes increased by as much as 329%. The county’s fitness director said at the time that the silver lining was that violent crimes committed among teens had declined from the sharp increase in 2021 and were now close to pre-pandemic levels. Chief Jones also talked about how teens are more likely to be victims than criminals. He added that the impression that offenders are getting younger is true and that among 12- to 17-year-olds, statistics show that the greatest accumulation of violent crime occurs among 15-year-olds. -Old.
The county Police Department also reported a 120% increase in youth overdose deaths between 2021 and 2022. The department’s data shows that two years ago there were five fatal overdoses of young people 17 and older, compared to 11 deaths in 2022.
“We need them to come here,” he said, Riley. No we need them to pile up in the square, on Elm Street or in Ellsworth. We need them [at SSRAC] to participate in an activity that they will love and stay connected to. “
Architectural rendering of the SSRAC, showing the rear view of the facility from Fenwick Lane once the new Elizabeth House is built. Photo courtesy of the County Recreation Department.
The department agrees.
“That’s surely part of the answer,” Elrich said. We want places for young people to hang out and activities that engage them. This is one of the benefits of this establishment. You can find a lot of things to do and I hope that many children will come here and be among them. Adults who moderate intelligent behavior and learn.
The goal is for the aquatic and recreational center to be completed by February 24. Elrich pointed out that delays in the origin chain are the main waiting factor.
“I don’t feel too bad about the length of the delay, given the complexity of the project,” he said.
At this point, it is too early to attempt to quantify the effect the Silver Spring Aquatic and Recreation Center will have on this colorful community. But when the last brick is laid and the paint dries on the walls; when all the developers are past and the seniors are dressed and fit to sweat; When the kids are passed out after school and the pool tiles aren’t raining yet, they have a position to pass by.
It sits between three high-rise apartment buildings at the end of Apple Avenue and Fenwick Street, just behind the courthouse and up the hill from the railroad tracks, on a great corner of downtown Silver Spring. That’s where they’ll locate what they’re looking for.
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