Montgomery officials are under no illusions about the county’s image among the Washington region’s young: boring.
“We’re a little sleepy,” said County Council member Roger Berliner (D-Potomac-Bethesda). “We go to bed early.”
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For all its prosperity and family-friendly suburban appeal, Montgomery is in the throes of a midlife crisis. That angst has led to a new item at the top of the public policy agenda: a yearning to be hip.
County Executive Isiah Leggett wants to make Montgomery more competitive with the District and Arlington County for the coveted millennial demographic, or “Generation Y” — roughly defined as those between ages 18 and 34. Plans include a revised set of policies that officials hope will spawn the next U Street corridor, Adams Morgan or Clarendon — dynamic, walkable communities where the young will not only play but also live and work.
Leggett (D) is expected to announce the formation of a “Task Force on the Night Time Economy” to study ways to enliven the bar, music and after-hours dining scenes in communities including Bethesda, Rockville and Silver Spring.
The panel, whose members are still being recruited, will consider everything from loosened liquor laws and noise ordinances to relaxed regulations covering urban amenities that connect people: food trucks, cafes, outdoor movies. “You have to make the county more appealing,” Leggett said. “You have to make sure that sense of vitality is there.”
This is similar to the theory of change promoted for the past decade by University of Toronto urbanist Richard Florida, who says cities can regenerate economically by attracting a robust “creative class.” That means young professionals in technology fields along with musicians, artists, gay people, writers and creative elites he calls “high bohemians.”
Council member Hans Riemer (D-At Large), who with council member Marc Elrich (D-At Large) is a principal advocate of the task force, said the county needs more of a return on its enormous investment in its public school students.
“After we spend, what, $150,000 in this county to educate them?” asked Riemer (actually closer to $180,000 from kindergarten through 12th grade, schools officials estimate). “And where do they go? They move to Clarendon. They move to D.C.”
The county’s concern is reflected in the data. According to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, 36 percent of Arlington’s population is between ages 20 and 34. Montgomery’s proportion is 19 percent, trailing the District (31 percent), Prince George’s County (23 percent) and Fairfax County (20 percent).
The county’s share of residents ages 25 to 34 grew just 4.6 percent between 2000 and 2010. Montgomery also has the highest percentage of seniors among jurisdictions in the capital region. The number of residents ages 55 to 64 grew by more than 50 percent between 2000 and 2010. And the 65-to-74 bracket is up 24 percent in the past decade, a threefold increase from 1990 to 2000.
“We are aging faster than we probably anticipated,” Leggett said. The traditional, suburban Montgomery will not disappear, he said, but for the tax base to grow — and to help support a burgeoning aging-in-place population — a new county has to take root alongside the old.
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