Montgomery County and Metro have announced a formal partnership and preliminary developer solicitation to pave the way for up to 3.7 million square feet of life science-focused mixed-used development in North Bethesda, the economic development apple of Montgomery County’s eye.
The county and transit authority signed a memorandum of understanding and announced a request for qualifications on Monday, beginning the hunt for a development partner to build a University of Maryland-anchored project, integrated with a new North Bethesda Metro station entrance, on 14 noncontiguous acres of vacant Metro-owned land at the southwest corner of Rockville Pike and Old Georgetown Road.
No plans have yet been submitted for development on Metro’s land. That’ll be up to whatever developer is hired through the selection process that Monday’s announcement kicked off. But, in general, the idea is for an integrated community anchored by a new, permanent home for the University of Maryland Institute for Health Computing — a higher-education campus, announced in 2022 and opened nearby in subleased space in 2023, that applies artificial intelligence and other cutting edge computational technologies to medicine, pharma and health care.
Metro says it expects the project at buildout to clock in somewhere between 2 million and 3.7 million square feet, developed in phases on ground leases. The IHC might occupy something on the order of 300,000 square feet, Tom Lewis, the county’s development ombudsman, told me, leaving most of the site’s development capacity for a mix of nonacademic uses, including office space for spinoff companies, housing, retail and public space. A UMd. spokesperson wouldn’t confirm that anticipated facility size.
