Bethesda’s planned 250-foot-tall tower gets green light, despite reservations for local architects

Rendering via StonebridgeCarras

It’s official. The Montgomery County Planning Board has given the thumbs up to a planned 250-foot-tall building, known as Avocet Tower, in Bethesda, Maryland, though with some limitations.

Bethesda Magazine reported that Planning Director Gwen Wright said, “This is an internationally known architectural firm. The artist is an internationally known artist, and it’s taking things to the kind of level of design excellence that we’ve been striving for, but I do think we have to be careful because others may try to say, ‘Well, you know, we can do this with the local architect we hired down the street.’”

Sorry, local architects, but you’re going to have to become super world-famous before you can get anything like this approved in the area again. When it comes to what to expect with this tower, it will be located at 7359 Wisconsin Avenue. The entire package of plans by developer StonebridgeCarras entails an approximately 220-room AC Hotel by Marriott, a 3,650-square-foot plaza, and 400,000 square feet of office space.

The project is expected to break ground in 2019 with a delivery by 2021.

For more in-depth details on what the Planning Board thinks of this project, be sure to head to Bethesda Magazine.

• Planning Board Gives Thumbs Up to Hotel, Office Tower at Bethesda Police Station Site [Bethesda Magazine]

• 250-foot-tall downtown Bethesda project plans to break ground by 2019 [Curbed DC]

• New renderings released for 250-foot-tall mixed-use project planned in downtown Bethesda [Curbed DC]