The Planning Board approves sketch plans, preliminary plans, site plans and Bethesda Overlay Zone (BOZ) Density allocation requests for new development in the Bethesda Downtown Sector Plan area. As of July 2023, a total of 40 projects have been received since plan approval in 2017. The overlay zone specifies time frames in which permits must be applied for and obtained. Projects not meeting these deadlines lose Site Plan approvals and associated BOZ allocations and must reapply for site plan approval.
Status of Available Bethesda Overlay Zone (BOZ) Density
The Bethesda Overlay Zone (BOZ) sets a cap on development, limiting the total density of existing, approved and new development to 32.4 million square feet of gross floor area. As of May 2024, The Monitoring and Tracking Program identifies the current existing, approved and new development at 30,571,511 square feet with the remaining available BOZ Density in downtown Bethesda as of May 2024 as 1,828,489 square feet. BOZ Density will fluctuate based upon projects submitted and approved as well as projects whose adequate public facilities (APF) finding expires.
Existing on the Ground Development
During the development of the 2017 Bethesda Downtown Plan, Planning staff analyzed available data—primarily the Maryland State Department of Assessments and Taxation (SDAT) database—to determine the square footage of all buildings that were fully constructed and occupied in the Plan Area, as well as approved projects from the February 2017 development pipeline that were under construction at the time of the analysis. For existing buildings for which no data was available, staff approximated the square footage based on professional judgment. The analysis showed that as of August 2017, Bethesda had 23.3 million square feet of “existing on the ground development.”
As part of the 2022 Annual Monitoring Report, Planning staff revisited the 2017 Existing on the Ground Development data against improved or newly available SDAT data. This review identified a small number of sites that had inadvertently been counted twice, as both under construction and fully constructed. Based on the updated numbers, the amount of development Existing on the Ground Development in August 2017 was reduced by 205,094 square feet, to 23,140,020 (23.1 million) square feet.
Monitoring and Tracking BOZ Density
All development with an approved Preliminary Plan of Subdivision (if a Site Plan is not required) and/or Site Plan that is not constructed is sometimes referred to as the “development pipeline.” These projects are listed in the table below in the ‘Tracking’ section. Development proposals with only sketch or preliminary plan approval are listed in the ‘Monitoring’ section.
The table also includes information about the number of dwelling units (DUs) and Moderately Priced Dwelling Units (MPDUs) per project. It also includes the BOZ Density and the Park Impact Payment (PIP), which is a payment into a fund to help implement the recommendations for new parks in Downtown Bethesda. The payment is at a rate of $12.49 per square foot of approved BOZ Density. If a project provides at least 25% MPDUs, a Park Impact Payment is not required for residential gross floor area.
Note: The monitoring chart above may include projects with previously approved development that was not built. These projects will have a preliminary and/or site plan approval for proposed development that predates the 2017 Bethesda Downtown Sector Plan. These projects may be amended under the current Sector Plan. The development square footage associated with any prior approval will be accounted for in the “Approved Unbuilt” column.