Committee session today to discuss and provide a recommendation for council consideration on a declaration of no further need the disposition of county parking lots 25 and 44 located in Bethesda, Maryland. We have Mr. Kenny here from our council staff to help us walk through the pocket and members of our department of transportation to discuss this with us. Mr. Kenny, I'll turn it over to you. Thank you. I will provide a brief introduction. The executive proposes the transfer of two subject properties to a private developer, lots 25 and 44 associates LLC. This facilitates the general development agreement entered into by the county and lots 25 and 44 associates. The proposed disposition will transfer approximately 77,000 square feet of land parcels between these two properties. lot the property known as LOT 25 at 4707 Highland Drive in Bethesda and LOT 44 at 4704 West Virginia Avenue. These properties are currently surface parking lots operated by MCDOT. The combined fair market value of these properties is estimated to be $12.3 million. In exchange for these properties, the developer will provide a parking garage and public park, the combination of which will exceed the value of the land and improvements of these two properties. This development will include in addition to the 145 space garage and public parks a total of 224 rental units at the lot 25 property and 46 new four sale units at the lot 44 property, lot 25 at least 34 of these units will be available to residents below a 70% area median income under the MPDU program, as well as seven MPDU units for available for residents under 50% AMI at the lot 44 property. These are in addition to the market rate units at each of these developments. The Council received written testimony which is provided in the packet from Amanda Farber, President of the East Bethesda Citizens Association in support of the disposition and proposed development. Council staff suggests the committee recommend approval of the draft resolution approving the disposition and declaration of no further need. Thank you very much, Mr. Kinney. This is Department of Transportation of anything to add. First of all, thank you for having us here today. Embo Wolland and from the Department of Transportation, Deputy Director Chief Operating Officer with me as Jeremy Souther's, our Acting Chief of Parking. Director Conlan could not be here today due to some very good news. He is out in California accepting the American Public Transit Association's one of their most prestigious awards for innovation for a ribbon-cutting ceremony that many of you attended down at the Brookville, Bustipo. So that project was recognized this year as the sole winner of their innovation award. So great, that is great news for us. So Chris had to go out there, we got late notice of the award. So we sent somebody at the proper level to go receive and accept that award. As Stephen mentioned, this is the last step in the decision process. The project itself is consistent with the Bethesda Master Plan. And Mr. Salad, as I understand, has a presentation that was provided. If you want him to walk through that, he's happy to go through that for your benefit. Maybe just quickly walk through it and see if anyone has any questions, but I don't think we need to spend a great deal. I'll enter real quick. Yeah. Is it up on one? We're in transition. Go ahead. You can go ahead. Next slide. The first slide shows just area locations of where the lots are located at the image on the left Offshows lot 25 and 44 with Wisconsin splitting the metal so both lots are located to the east of Wisconsin Avenue The image to the right shows a image from the downtown Bethesda plan that identifies both of these locations as continuation of the eastern greenway. Lot 25 is the active recreation destination and Lot 44 was a neighborhood green. So those were addressed to the proposals and we'll talk about this briefly. Next slide. Some site detail information for Lot 25, 60,000 square foot, it's a split zone. The western portion closer to Wisconsin is a CR-3 with a 70-foot height. The eastern portion closest to the residential is a CR-T, the .5 with a 70-foot height as well. Again, they're located between Maple Avenue to the North and Highland Avenue to the South. It's currently a public parking lot with 129 public parking spaces. Next slide. Lot 44 is located a block to the south of Lot 25. It's a 17,000 square foot partial zone CR-3 with a 70 foot height. It's located to the between West Virginia Avenue and Chase Avenue. Currently it's a 54 space public parking lot. These are just images that show the current existing images of the existing sites on the one that left a lot 25. It's looking north into the lot and the image to the right, a lot 44 looking south into a lot 44. Next slide. This is a breakdown of the appraise values. The latest appraisals were performed by JLL and January 15th of 2024. Both of them were evaluated for highest and best use for the redevelopment of them. It breaks down that Lot25 was appraised at $8 million. Lot 44 was $4.3 million with a total value of $12.3 million. This gets into details of the general development agreement. We had some measures from multiple developers. DOT put out a request for development proposal in 2020. We we begin to negotiate a general development agreement with Montgomery County and lot 2544 associates. That was signed on July 25th, 2023. Some key elements of the General Development Agreement, lot 25, 224 rental apartment units, 15% of those will be 70% AMI. An additional 11 units will be deeply affordable at 50% AMI in the mix of studio and one bedroom two bedroom units. That site will also house the public parking garage underneath of the residential building, which is a hundred fifty hundred forty five space public parking garage, as well as a half acre public park that will be a continuation of the eastern greenway. Lot 44 approximately 46 for sale condo units. 15% of those units will be 50% AMI with a mixture of one bedroom, two bedroom, three bedroom units. Another unique element that we negotiated was a discounted condo fees for those seven units. So all of the affordable units will also have discounted condo fees as a part of the agreement. That partial will also have a 7,000 square foot public park. Again, continuation of that Eastern green way in downtown Bethesda. Next slide. This is just an overview. This is a valve census. This was part of the developer's submission, but it shows a lot 25 to the left with the public park component adjacent to the residential component. The middle-wited out area is not part of this development agreement. That's a separate developer proposal. An area to the right is a lot 44 development with a smaller partial of park that shows the continuation of the Chevy Chase existing park all the way through to the lot 25 park. As well. Next slide. This is just an additional imaging as well. The lot 44 on the left. That's Tilbury Lane. You can kind of see there. That's looking north from the existing Chevy Chase Park looking north. You can see the development there to the left of the small park. The one to the right shows lot 25 kind of looking south. Again, the larger park that's of component, the half acre park is component of Lot 25 with the proposed development. And you can see further to the left of that image, the Lot 44 development as well. I think that's it. Is that the last slide? Yep, I think that's it. We're available for any questions you may have. Great. Thank you. Turn it over. What did you, yeah? Chair glass. Thank you very much. Madam Coach, Chair. I appreciate the presentation and appreciate both departments' thoughtfulness in going into this because at the end of the day what we're really talking about are 224 rental units, 15% of which are affordable for individuals making less than 70% of the area median income. That's really important and that's for a lot of 25. And then for a lot of 44, again, 46 residential condos with 15% affordable units for individuals making less than 50% AMI. So this is deeply affordable housing in a wonderful community. And I just want to end by saying I'm very appreciative to Amanda Farber and the East Bethesda Citizens Association for supporting these really important projects. So my appreciation to them and appreciation to you and I look forward to supporting this. Thanks. Thank you. Council President Freetzen. Thank you, thanks to both chairs. Thanks to the executive branch. I'm very familiar with this project. I was there for the announcement of the general development agreement back in early summer of 2022 if my memory serves me well enough and really appreciate all of the work that has occurred up to this point. You know what we're talking about here is affordable housing in the most expensive part of the county where it is most challenging and most difficult to pull off. It's the leveraging of public land, county land, to pursue our most important public interest right now, which is ensuring that we have housing for people who desperately need it. This is about fulfilling the downtown Bethesda plan and the Eastern Greenway, which this agreement will help us to do, and which is core to what is being discussed here. And I just wanted to note as well, it's part of our ongoing and broader effort to transform parking lots into places for people, whether that's parks or whether that's housing or whether that is a combination of both, which this is an example of both a park for the community and a place for people to live. So really excited about this activation. I really appreciate the engagement of the community as was noted with East Bethesda and with Amana Farber and the support. you can hear the benefits of that public engagement and collaborative effort. I did wanna note that there's four sale as part of this effort and there is the retaining of public parking. That makes this extremely complicated. It makes it very difficult. It makes it more expensive, it makes it more expensive, but these were things that were pursued and are part of the final deal. They do have an impact in the amount of affordable housing and the depth of affordable housing that can be provided, but I think there was a significant effort to balance all of these interests in a way that moves us forward in a thoughtful way and really appreciate all of these interests in a way that moves us forward in a thoughtful way and really appreciate all of the efforts and glad that we have the amount of coordination and collaboration that we have between county government and the private sector, between the council and the county executive and between different departments and agencies to be able to move this forward. And I'm hoping we can do more of this. More affordable housing in our places where it's needed the most in the county. More turning parking lots into places for people, more housing, more parks, more amenities, and more fulfilling the plans that we put forward to the community and making sure that we bring the private and the public sector together to actually deliver on the amenities, the housing, and the public interest together to actually deliver on the amenities, the housing, and the public interests that the community has long advocated for and supported. So really excited about this, being before us and look forward to approving it today. Thank you. Seeing no other colleagues on the committees needing to ask a question or comment, I will say we will move this forward to the full council for recommendation with no objections, no objections, and I will say that's probably an enthusiastic moving forward. So I want to thank Mr. Kenney and DOT for coming over and we will move this forward to full council. Thank you so much. And we are adjourned for the government operations and fiscal policy and T&E joint committee session. That is it for us.