By Adam Pagnucco.
Recently, County Executive Marc Elrich announced that he was asking the county council to establish a Tax Increment Financing (TIF) mechanism to support the implementation of the Viva White Oak project in East County. The project has been in the works for a decade and Elrich asserts that it will ultimately construct nearly 5,000 housing units along with retail, hotel and office space. The TIF is intended to channel additional property taxes resulting from the project into supporting infrastructure.
Is Elrich right? Is Viva White Oak ready to launch?
First, a bit of history. Viva White Oak’s roots lie in the 2014 White Oak Science Gateway Master Plan. The plan, which addressed the area bounded by the Northwest Branch, Columbia Pike, Cherry Hill Road and the Prince George’s County border, called for an array of new development – especially commercial amenities – in an area of the county that had seen little change. Its core was the headquarters campus of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which was seen as a potential anchor for economic development. The plan stated:
One of this area’s greatest strengths is the consolidated headquarters of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) at the White Oak Federal Research Center (FRC). FDA brings thousands of employees and visitors to its state-of-the art campus, presenting synergistic opportunities to reimagine and rethink the possibilities for surrounding communities. FDA could serve as a gateway to attract companies that offer high quality employment in fields such as health care, pharmaceuticals, life sciences, and advanced technology.
At the core of this vision were two tracts of land near FDA. The first, called Site 2, was a former sludge composting facility owned by county government. The second was a sand and gravel site owned by Percontee, Inc. The plan said this about these parcels.
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After closing the Site 2 facility, the County began to consider the property for a public/private partnership to develop an “East County Science and Technology Center” to take advantage of proximity to the FDA headquarters. The County issued a Request for Proposals in 2008 for a development partner to create a “World Class Bio/Life Sciences, Education, and Research Community where the brightest and best regulators, researchers, professors, students and medical professionals can meet and share ideas, research and information that will lead to continuing technological, scientific and medical advancements.”
Percontee representatives began meeting with community groups in 2006 to discuss their concept of a “LifeSci Village”– a mixed-use center with residential, retail, and bioscience/biotech jobs. In December 2011, the County chose Percontee as its Site 2 development partner. The Percontee property and Site 2 total 300 acres and the developer’s proposed development program includes over seven million square feet of commercial space and 5,360 residential dwelling units (Figure 4 shows a conceptual layout).
The concept layout for LifeSci Village in the White Oak plan.
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Since this was envisioned as a large development, it needed a lot of infrastructure. The plan called for a new elementary school as well as “ample parks and open space amenities, including civic greens, a local park, and an integrated trail and bikeway system.” The plan also called for nearby bus rapid transit (BRT) lines on US-29 and Randolph Road.
The plan passed the county council on an 8-0 vote. Then-Council Member Elrich abstained. According to the Washington Post, “Elrich said that he was troubled by the lack of staging but that a ‘no’ vote could be construed as opposition to job creation in the area.” Staging refers to the linking of specific development phases to the construction of infrastructure necessary to support that development.
Over the next few years, the county signed a general development agreement with Percontee and the project obtained land use approvals from the Planning Board. In 2021, Bethesda Beat quoted Percontee official Jonathan Genn as saying the project might break ground the following year. But Elrich, now the county executive, replied, “Maybe there’s something there, maybe there’s not, but we haven’t seen anything.” The county council, eager to see development proceed, chided Elrich for his “continued opposition to one of Montgomery County’s top economic development priorities.”
Given the reporting four years ago, why hasn’t Viva White Oak broken ground yet? That’s not clear, but in 2022, a nearby civic activist alleged that a prospective tenant claimed that the project “has been unable so far to obtain financing because it has not been economically justified.” Who knows if that’s true, but for whatever reason, construction has not advanced.
However, that may be changing. A year ago, Baltimore developer MCB Real Estate announced that it was leading development at Viva White Oak, with supportive comments from Elrich included in its statement. MCB was listed as an “owner’s representative or contract purchaser” while a Percontee affiliate was listed as “owner” in a 2024 planning application. And Elrich’s request for Tax Increment Financing (TIF) confirms both an infrastructure funding mechanism and the county executive’s support for the project.
So is Viva White Oak going to happen? To answer that, we have to understand what a TIF is first. That will come next!