Smart growth advocates have applauded Prince George’s County Executive Rushern L. Baker III’s commitment to support new projects near the county’s 15 Metro stations, but as the county executive considers the best place to put a new $650 million regional hospital, he is making them nervous. Baker plans to hold a forum Feb. 28 at the Prince George’s Sports & Learning Complex to begin vetting four possible sites for the hospital. Two of them, the shuttered Landover Mall and the newly built Woodmore Town Centre, are nearly three miles from a Metro station in locations that require pedestrians to cross a Capital Beltway interchange. To the pro-transit crowd that has backed Baker as he presses the federal government on the importance of locating agencies near Metro stations, choosing either site would be a mistake.

About 100 advocates for turning White Flint into a transit-oriented urban area crowded into a back room at Seasons 52 one evening earlier this week to talk about making Rockville Pike “hip.” The location was appropriate. The restaurant is in a block of newer buildings near the White Flint Metro stop that also includes an Arhaus Furniture store and a Whole Foods Market. The block is linked together by landscaped streets and sidewalks. Across Rockville Pike is White Flint Mall. Built in the 1970s, its empty stores and surface parking lots are exactly what many people at the Jan. 29 networking event want to replace. Advocates for urban development built around public transportation say White Flint can be a model for similar growth elsewhere in Montgomery County and in the nation as a whole. To accomplish that, groups that sprang up around the sector plan process a few years ago are redoubling their efforts and drumming up support to make sure their vision is carried out.

Nearly one-hundred people came out to talk about the future of White Flint at a happy hour Tuesday evening co-hosted by the Friends of White Flint and the Coalition for Smarter Growth at Seasons 52 on Rockville Pike. Lindsay Hoffman, from Friends of White Flint, and Kelly Blynn, from Coalition

Smart Growth advocates and supporters of dense, transit-based redevelopment of White Flint gathered in North Bethesda yesterday to mingle and discuss the large-scale changes coming to Rockville Pike in the next few decades. The nonprofit Friends of White Flint, which describes its mission as implementing the 2010 White Flint Sector Plan, co-hosted a happy hour at Seasons 52 in North Bethesda Market with the Coalition for Smarter Growth. In the crowd were neighbors, transit activists, developers, County Council members Roger Berliner (D-Bethesda-Potomac) and Hans Riemer (D-At large) and others from outside the White Flint area interested in the various projects that are estimated to bring 14,000 housing units and 13 million square feet of redevelopment around the White Flint Metro station.

Regional authorities’ idea raises some concerns