Friendship Heights Sector Plan Update

A sector plan is a type of master plan that covers an area that is: adjacent to transit; or a central business district; or another small defined area. Typical elements of sector plans include land use, zoning, urban design, transportation, parks, trails, and open space, the economy, the environment, historic resources and schools.

The last sector plan for Friendship Heights was adopted in 1998, and the neighborhood has changed a lot since then. The downtown was once a regional retail destination with significant residential and commercial development activity, but recent years have seen rising retail and office vacancies, and new development has slowed to a trickle. Building on the 2024 Friendship Heights Urban Design Study, this update to the Friendship Heights Sector Plan looks closely at current trends and residents’ needs and views, and considers what the future holds for Friendship Heights, and how this downtown may better serve its stakeholders.

The plan boundary was approved by the Montgomery County Planning Board on February 6, 2025. View the plan boundary.

At a regularly scheduled Planning Board public hearing on July 30, the Planning Board approved four applications for Friendship Commons to redevelop the former GEICO headquarters site. Read the staff report and accompanying materials on the Planning Board’s website under Item 10.   To view the application materials, please visit www.montgomeryplanning.org/development and search under the application numbers in the staff report.

If you have questions, please reach out to Elza Hisel-McCoy, Chief of the West County Planning Division, at elza.hisel-mccoy@montgomeryplanning.org, or Amy Lindsey, Regulatory Supervisor of the Environment and Climate Division, at amy.lindsey@montgomeryplanning.org.

The building demolition and associated site work are currently underway. Forest Conservation Plan F20260070, approved in March 2026, addresses environmental impacts associated with external demolition work. The Montgomery County Department of Permitting Services issued an interior demolition permit in early 2026 and that work is underway.

The regulatory applications and the sector plan are separate, parallel processes, with different scopes and different timelines.

The approved regulatory applications cover just the redevelopment of the GEICO site and review and approval took approximately four months. The multi-agency review ensured that the proposed redevelopment of the GEICO site met all current applicable standards, including for transportation, stormwater management, forest conservation, and more, and substantially conforms to the recommendations of the 1998 Friendship Heights Sector Plan.

The ongoing Friendship Heights Sector Plan update will have a 20-year vision for the entire plan area and is more than halfway through a multi-year master planning process.  Any future development in the plan area, which includes the former GEICO headquarters site, will be reviewed under the new sector plan.

As with all Montgomery Planning efforts, there are multiple opportunities for interested stakeholders to participate in the plan. A stakeholder is anyone who is interested in the future of Friendship Heights, even if you do not live or work in the plan area. In August 2026 the Public Hearing Draft of the plan was posted for public comment. There will be a public hearing in September. Information about the hearing and opportunities to provide testimony is on the plan website. Sign up to testify at the public hearing. Sign up for the e-letter to receive regular updates about opportunities to participate in the plan.

Thrive Montgomery 2050 is a general framework that sets broad policy goals for the county, which sector plans like this use to guide specific practical work in their respective plan areas while actively responding to more concentrated local stakeholder values and concerns.

Both agencies have complementary goals and have identified similar needs and opportunities on each side of the Maryland–DC border. Staff from Montgomery Planning and Washington, DC Office of Planning (DCOP) meet on a regular basis to coordinate planning efforts in neighborhoods that cross jurisdictions, including this one. DCOP recently completed the Wisconsin Avenue Development Framework, focused on opportunities for housing (especially multifamily buildings) and other development along DC side of the Wisconsin Avenue corridor.