Save the trees: Friendship Heights residents urge changes to GEICO campus redevelopment plan at public hearing

The MoCo Planning Board voted to approve new plans for the large mixed-use, residential project

August 3, 2026 11:55 a.m.

Geico's 26-acre corporate campus in Friendship Heights, at 5260 Western Ave. Photo credit: Elia Griffin

For many residents of Montgomery County’s dense, urban community of Friendship Heights, the grounds of the GEICO campus were a place where they walked the dog, learned how to ride a bike and played in the shade of tall trees. That landscape is certain to change after redevelopment plans centered on the property were approved by the Montgomery County Planning Board on Thursday.

During a Thursday night Planning Board public hearing, which revolved around new redevelopment plans submitted by Bethesda-based developer EYA, more than 60 county residents testified about the plan. Many people expressed their sadness about the plan’s removal of more than 30 mature trees on the property and worry about the subsequent climate and environmental implications.

“This month alone in our neighborhood we had heat waves due to climate change that brought temperatures to 104 degrees. Without shade trees in the new development, this site will become a heat island,” Christine Knauer, co-chair of the Village of Friendship Heights Ad Hoc Committee on Climate Change and Environment, said Thursday night.

Knauer said the committee was “very concerned” about the impact of the redevelopment plans on preserving the existing canopy of trees for shade and protecting native trees.

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The property’s trees are so important to area residents like Mikel Moore, a Brookdale resident and board member of the Little Falls Watershed Alliance, that for the last three months she has been leading community walking tours of the forested area on the GEICO campus. During the tours, she aimed to highlight the property’s trees, wildlife and what the community fears will be lost.

“You have an opportunity to save some trees tonight,” Moore told the board while showing a photo of a tall willow oak tree that would be cut down.

Moore said that she was not against the development but opposed areas of the plan that encroach into a green, forested buffer that sits between the Brookdale neighborhood and campus.

The proposed project at 5260 Western Ave. calls for demolishing and redeveloping GEICO’s mid-century style building and transforming the campus with two surface parking lots into a mixed-use development. When complete, the development would consist of 356 multi-family units in three apartment buildings, 180 townhouses, several pocket parks, pedestrian connections to the nearby Brookdale Park and Friendship Heights area and a pedestrian trail that winds along the property’s border with Brookdale, according to planning documents.

Elrich criticizes Planning Board

Among the 60 people who testified in person and virtually during the public hearing portion of the meeting was Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich (D). In his testimony, Elrich criticized the planning board, saying the board bypassed legal processes to approve the development project.

“I’m profoundly concerned about planning staff’s decision and planning board’s acquiescence to move forward with this plan before addressing some fundamental process legally,” Elrich said.

Elrich was referring to a lawsuit filed by the Village of Friendship Heights and the Brookdale Citizens Association against the Montgomery County Council and Planning Board regarding the development project. The complaint argues that EYA’s new plans for the property do not adhere to binding elements for the redevelopment project agreed upon in 1998. The suit is not yet resolved.

Plans for redeveloping the GEICO site have been in the works since the 1990s. In 1999, the Planning Board approved a preliminary plan that outlined a large-scale redevelopment project similar to the plans proposed by Friendship Commons Partners. Those plans called for development of more than 800,000 square feet of office space in three buildings, 500 multifamily units in apartments along Willard Avenue, 200 townhouses, a sports field and park, according to planning documents.

In October, the Planning Board approved an amended preliminary plan for Friendship Commons that removed all office space previously approved for the site. In June, residents of the neighborhood held a protest against the redevelopment, citing the changes to the new project plans, like taller building heights.

Geico's corporate campus in Friendship Heights — Geico’s corporate campus in Friendship Heights. Photo credit: Elia Griffin

Elrich also criticized the planning department and board’s approach to the redevelopment project, which he described as “top-down, predetermined and dismissive of community concerns where input is limited to Post-it notes on a board.”

While generally supportive of redeveloping the property, Elrich said that the agreements that GEICO negotiated with the community for the redevelopment project in 1998 should remain.

Those agreements “reflect the hard work of both sides working together and finding compromise,” Elrich said. “Now the developer proposes substantial changes that not only disregard standing agreements but seek to alter the established process used to craft them.”

“The property is by far the largest, most important parcel within the sector plan boundary and beyond,” Elrich added. “How the process is handled is critical to preserving the rights of residents to be involved in planning for the future of their town.”

Applause and cheers broke out in the Planning Board auditorium following Elrich’s testimony.

Developer responds to change of plans, tree removal

Aside from the removal of trees and environmental implications, many who testified also expressed frustration with the recent planning process and the new plans’ deviation from the 1998 plan. One main concern brought up by numerous residents was the elimination of a baseball diamond at the corner of Friendship Boulevard and Western Avenue and a central active recreation space that were part of the 1998 plans.

EYA President McLean Quinn told the board that while there are no longer plans to build a baseball diamond in the development, developers have designated the space for “active recreation.”

Specific plans for the active recreation space are still being worked out and will be part of a Phase 2 plan for the development, according to Quinn. The space could include a futsal court or splash park, he said.

The second phase of the plan, which focuses on rectangular-shaped parcels fronting Friendship Boulevard, is not expected to be ready until after the Friendship Heights Sector Plan is complete, Quinn said. In addition to more housing, the second phase will likely have more ground-floor retail space.

Still, a central green space in the original 1998 plans was eliminated from EYA’s current plans in place of townhomes.

Developers defended their open space plans, noting Thursday that they are proposing “double the open space required” by the county.

In his presentation to the board, Quinn showed there are several pocket parks planned throughout the community, as well as a pedestrian promenade designed for walkers and cyclists and an ADA accessible “greenway” that developers aim to be a buffer between the property and Brookdale neighborhood.

In response to concerns about tree removal, Quinn said that developers “don’t want to cut down a single tree on this site that we don’t have to” and have been working to preserve as many trees as possible. However, trees would need to be removed to make the greenway ADA accessible.

Quinn added that many trees proposed for removal are due to the demolition of the GEICO building itself. He said that the root systems of the trees will be “impaired” by the work and keeping those trees would be unsafe and challenging.

“We are very committed to doing everything we can during construction to walk that site with county staff to try and preserve every single tree that we can during construction to make extra efforts to do so,” Quinn said. “But there are real constraints about saving those trees, and I just want to be real with our community and our neighborhood about those challenges.”

Support for more housing

A handful of people did testify in full support of the plans, focusing on how the project would bring much-needed housing, especially affordable housing, to the area.

Two of those were Friendship Heights residents Zara Ahmed, 18, and Addison Huntley, who are members of the area’s Youth Advisory Council.

“I worry this kind of community won’t be available to me in the future due to a lack of housing being built,” Huntley told the board. “This development offers hundreds of new homes, homes that let people become a part of the community that built Friendship Heights. Chipping away at that number, cutting a few units here and there, doesn’t protect this neighborhood. It shuts more people out of it.”

Ahmed, who said she lived in an apartment building across from the GEICO campus, supported the project because she hoped to live there one day.

“My generation is the one that will inherit Friendship Heights, and in 10 to 20 years, I hope I can still afford to live in a walkable, transit-accessible community,” she said.

With a similar sentiment, P.A. Brown, a 17-year resident of Friendship Heights, said it was “unfortunate” to see the legal challenges with the development, noting the shortage of housing in the county.

“The 1998 sector plan does not reflect today’s world,” Brown said. “Binding conditions from 1998 may or may not still be relevant today, but the balance today should prioritize as much housing as possible.”

Brown added housing development was a “personal” issue to him.

“I don’t know if our daughters are going to be able to afford housing in Montgomery County on their minimum wage jobs,” Brown said. “But I know the new projects, like this one, with [moderately priced dwelling units] would provide some hope for them. And hope is important.”

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Originally published at Bethesdamagazine