John Coe 00:00:09  Hi, I'm John Coe and welcome to icons at DC Area Real Estate. A one on one interview show highlighting the backgrounds and career trajectory of leading luminaries in the Washington, DC area real estate market. The purpose of the show is to highlight their backgrounds and their experiences, and some interesting stories about their current business as well as their past, and to cite some things that you might take away both from educational standpoint as well as lessons learned in the industry, and some amusing and sometimes interesting background stories. So I'm hoping that you will enjoy the show. Before I introduce my guest, I'd like to share that both this podcast and the community I started in 2021 called The Iconic Journey, and CRA is now part of a new non-profit organization with that same name. The new company will offer opportunities for sponsorship to grow the community, both in membership and in programs. It also allows you as listeners to show your appreciation for this podcast, which has delivered episodes twice monthly since August 2019, with a charitable contribution. Transitioning the community and podcast into the nonprofit organization is underway.

John Coe 00:01:35  The community, which is open to commercial real estate professionals between the ages of 25 and 40 years old, is currently up to 65 members and growing. If you would like to learn more about either joining the community or contributing to the podcast, please reach out directly to me at John at Cole Enterprises CEO enterprise SES. Com separately. My private company Co Enterprises now will focus only on advisory work for early stage real estate firms and career counseling. If you have interest in learning more about its services, please review my website at Co enterprises.com. Thank you for listening. Thank you for joining me for another episode of icons of DC Area Real Estate. I'm so pleased to introduce my guests for today's show. Who is Gwen Wright? Gwen. Recently I should say 2022 left Montgomery County as the planning director, for the county, controversially. And she talks a little bit about that upfront as I record this. Gwen has just been appointed to the DC Zoning Commission for a three year term by Mayor Bowser and it's accepted it and is now in place.

John Coe 00:02:59  This is a political appointment. So Gwen grew up in suburban Pittsburgh, and she talks about her family. Her father was a merchant and her mom took care of the family. She was a fourth of four, and she was 18 years younger than her oldest siblings. So she was more or less a solo child growing up, inspired early on in art and architecture all the way through high school. Then she decided to go to Yale University's architectural school. Was inspired to do that, but her real passion was historical preservation, and that's really what she focused on in architecture school and became a historical preservationist and went to Galveston, Texas, for her first job and was down there for about five years, had some personal issues that happened to her while there, but she said it was both good and bad, and she had a really good, interesting experience there in Galveston and then became an opportunity to come back to the East Coast and came to Montgomery County. And she did that here in the, in the, in the historic area starting there.

John Coe 00:04:12  And Preservations became the temporary planning director for a while. She was then attracted to go over to the city of Alexandria, which she spent five years, and then she returned as the planning director. And our last job, which she began in 2013 and 2022. When I talked quite a bit about her philosophy in planning or passion for preservation or guidance towards the Montgomery's 2050 initiatives that are being talked about now, her emphasis about housing She has some very interesting philosophies about what she wants to see done. She's very dynamic in her thought process and willing to work with the private sector interestingly. So without further ado, please enjoy this wide ranging conversation with Gwen Wright. So welcome, Gwen. I've never viewed your background in the introduction. You left Montgomery County Planning as its director in late 2022, in a controversial departure after over 30 years of public service. I will ask you about these circumstances a bit later, but please share your thoughts at a high level about your current situation and where you would like to focus your energies in the latter part of your career.

Gwen Wright 00:05:40  Well, thank you John. I am really delighted to be here and to talk about some of the things that I've learned over those 30 years. You know, right now I am technically retired. However, I am doing some consulting. I've set up a small company called Over Fields Planning and Preservation, and I'm. It's sort of fun because I get to work only on projects that I find interesting or compelling in some way. And so I'm working on a few small projects. I'm also getting back to my first love, which was historic preservation. And I'm working on a conference panel that we're going to present in August at the National Alliance of Preservation Commissions. It's about how in the field of affordable housing, historic preservation can be an asset and a tool, not an impediment. And so I'm very excited about doing that. I have another conference in September in Northern Virginia. That is about sort of Charles Goodman, but it's not just. He was a very visionary, mid-century modern architect who did work throughout the Washington region.

Gwen Wright 00:07:03  But he, you know, he really created neighborhoods that were architecturally compelling and had a strong relationship to the natural environment. But we're really for middle class families. And so we're going to be talking a little bit. I'm on a panel with Rachel Flynn and John Carter. Oh, great. To talk a little bit about not just Charles Goodman and his history, but sort of how some of his ideas on creating middle class housing might be applicable in today's market in today's world. So I'm I'm having a lot of fun with those activities, and I'm doing a few things that are just fun for me, like taking classes at Georgetown University on things like an environmental history of the Middle East and North Africa, and the history of Alexander the Great, and things that have nothing to do with what I did in my career. That's great. Just intellectually stimulating and a lot of fun.

John Coe 00:08:06  Awesome. Okay, well, as I usually do, I'd like to turn back the clock. You don't mind and tell me a little bit about your origins, youth, and parental experiences.

John Coe 00:08:17  From my research, I gathered, you grew up in suburban Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is that correct?

Gwen Wright 00:08:21  Well, we lived in a suburb called Mount Lebanon from the time I was about 10 or 11. But before that I was born in western Pennsylvania in essentially a very small coal mining town. my father owned the local hardware and paint store on the main street. And when I was about one year old, we moved to a steel mill town called McKeesport, Pennsylvania. Oh, sure. Yeah. And my dad again owned a local store, and I spent most of my elementary school years in McKeesport. Then we, you know, maybe saw the writing on the wall that McKeesport was really headed for some tough times. Which which it is. It's sort of a famous example of a, a steel mill city that essentially died after the steel mills closed. But we moved from there to Mount Lebanon, which was a very nice suburb outside of Pittsburgh. It was sort of the Chevy Chase of Pittsburgh in some ways.

Gwen Wright 00:09:33  And I went through middle school and high school there, graduating from Mount Lebanon Senior High.

John Coe 00:09:42  So your dad was a store owner. What? Your mom. What did she do?

Gwen Wright 00:09:46  My dad was a merchant. My mom was a stay at home mom. But she helped. You know, she helped my dad a lot with the the business, particularly doing all the accounts. She was very, very, very smart woman. She did a lot of volunteering. You know, my parents had four children in sort of rapid succession and then waited 11 years and had me. So, my oldest sister was 18 years older than. Wow. And although people, you know, find that surprising, I think my mother had a had a subconscious plan because I was born about two weeks before my older sister left for college. And I think letting her first little baby bird leave the nest, she liked having a new baby bird to take care of, but I feel like it was a great situation because I had all of the advantages, really, of being an only child.

Gwen Wright 00:10:49  I had my parents attention, but I also had parents who were very experienced, competent parents. They had seen everything. By the time I came along. And so they weren't, you know, nervous new parents, they, you know, they they had seen it all. And I had these older siblings who thought I was just, you know, like a little doll they could play with and that I was adorable. So I sort of had all the advantages of being an only child and of having siblings. So I felt very fortunate.

John Coe 00:11:22  So did you work in your dad's store growing up?

Gwen Wright 00:11:25  No, no, I mean, I, I have to say I was pretty I was pretty academically minded. Most of my high school career. I, you know, was one of those kids who took all the AP classes, And I was, you know, one of the editors of the yearbook. And I hung out with all of the sort of student leaders. But I was also very, very as as I say, I virtually and actually, in reality would run around in sort of dungarees and a and a like a beret.

Gwen Wright 00:12:07  I was, I was this, you know, very artsy, a rebel, rebel. Yeah. I, you know, I spent a lot of time, studying German and reading German books like Siddartha in German and, you know, having, conversations with others about the themes in those books. So I was a little bit of, you know, little I was, I was probably pretty intolerable, basically.

John Coe 00:12:37  So where did your where did your love of, architecture and history come into the equation?

Gwen Wright 00:12:43  Well, that that's actually interesting. You know, from an early, early, early age, I was interested in places and spaces. I remember as a very small child going to one of the big, you know, banking, you know, palaces in downtown McKeesport. And they had these great marble steps in the bank. And I remember while my mother was doing her banking, playing on those marble steps and just being completely entranced with, I'm sorry, being completely entranced with the place. And, you know, it really, really had a strong effect on me.

Gwen Wright 00:13:27  I was a I was a child that was fascinated with architecture. I don't know if you have this memory at all, but in the newspapers there was a weekly house plan or house design, and I would clip those and look at them and keep them in a notebook. And then I would draw. This is when I was eight years old, you know, 8 or 9 years old. I would flip them and I would, you know, do my own drawings and create my own little house designs. And when I was in middle school, I went we had career Day. And I remember very clearly going to the career day presentation. That was a local architect who came in and talked to us, and there were three girls in the entire room. The room was full and there were three girls, and we all sat in the very back row and the architect gave his presentation. And then one of the girls, who I still remember her name, I was sitting next to me, raised her hand and asked about, you know, well, what about girls in the role of architects? And he said very kindly but very firmly, you know, girls are not cut out to be architects.

Gwen Wright 00:14:47  They are much better as interior designers. And we all listened and you know, and I and I was, you know, I was 12 years old. I was like, oh, okay, maybe I should look at doing that, or maybe I should look at at one point I thought I should be like a theatrical set designer. And it took until I went into that rebellious phase for me to realise that I could be anything that I wanted. I didn't need to be an interior designer. Interestingly, the girl who asked the question and I both went on to go to school and study architecture and, you know, so whatever that gentleman had to say, it did not dissuade us. And then I was pretty sure I was interested in architecture. I went to a summer program after my junior year of high school at Cornell, where you sort of studied, you sort of had architecture 101. You know, what you would have had as a freshman in college. And I learned a lot from that, and I enjoyed it.

Gwen Wright 00:15:52  And then I, I knew that I wanted to study architecture. So Yale was one of the places that I, I was particularly interested in because they were they had a lot of very exciting people in the realm of architecture, teaching at Yale at that time. Charles Moore had recently been the chair of the Or the the dean of the architecture school says our Pelli was was the dean of the architecture school while I was there. Wow. A lot of great people. And and then when I got in and I went there, I also became entranced with architectural history Because there is a man named Vincent Scully who's a very famous architectural historian. And I took his class freshman year, and I just was completely entranced. And so, I mean, he taught people like Robert Stern and Paul Goldberger and, I mean, he's really quite, quite famous in architectural circles in the 20th century. And I said, I'm going to double major and I'm going to study architectural history and architecture.

John Coe 00:17:01  So what what what what particularly intrigued you about architectural history? And am I I'm going to be kind of a layman's, you know, viewpoint here a little bit.

John Coe 00:17:14  I, I'm really into mental models. And one of the things that intrigues me is kind of first principles about things. So what are the first principles about thought process. And then from what I'm gathering, architectural history is basically, you know, looking at not only form structure, the foundation of things, but also, you know, how the the actual design is conceived. So it's a combination of the physical side that has to work and the imaginary side of what's the vision and how do you put that together. So how do you you know why? What is the distinction between studying the architecture and the history behind it? If you can get into that?

Gwen Wright 00:17:58  Well, you know, I, I guess I always came at it not so much from the, the history perspective. Not that I'm uninterested in history, but I really was more interested in, you know, the form and how certain buildings create psychological and emotional reactions in people. Okay. My, my thesis in architectural history was really on what I called a morphological evaluation of the work of a specific architect.

Gwen Wright 00:18:34  And this went back to, you know, Edmund Burke and the idea of, you know, you know, beauty and you know what is sublime. And, wow, there's.

John Coe 00:18:48  A philosophy that's exactly.

Gwen Wright 00:18:50  There's a book by Gaston Bachelard called The Poetics of Space. And I was always very, very interested in how places like that early bank I was describing to you could have such a strong, you know, emotional impact on me that, you know, 60 years later, I can still, you know, sort of viscerally remember it. And I think that it made me realize that great spaces, great places can have a huge Impact on people's life experiences and when we deal with historic preservation is. Preserving some of those places and some of those communities that have, you know, such a strong impact on people and on how they feel. And I you know, I also love new buildings. I always I really loved the intersection of where you could take a historic building and marry it with new architecture.

Gwen Wright 00:20:04  I also, you know, was in school at the time of Robert Venturi and his whole move of saying, you know, take elements of classical buildings and use them in new design to help Recall and make allusion to those buildings. And it brings back, you know, a memory again. I'm getting a little too into the weeds here, but my my advisor in architecture had been a partner of Charles Moore, and they wrote together a book called Body Memory and Architecture. And it really is about how spaces evoke these kinds of reactions. His name was Kent Bloomer. And you know, I, you know, I so I studied architecture, but not in, you know, a very traditional kind of way. I for me, it was really more as I think you put the philosophy of architecture and the philosophy of architectural history.

John Coe 00:21:14  Interesting. So I had David Kitchens as a guest a few years ago, and I asked him the question and it actually I infused a an essay by Paul Graham called About taste and I and he had a very clear definition, actually.

John Coe 00:21:34  It was he cited about 20 elements of taste. And David reacted to each one of those. And it strikes me as you'd you'd be fascinated with that subject, what taste means in architecture. So it was it was quite insightful. We don't get to get into that now, but I just thought I'd cite that as a reference. So why Yale and why not other schools, as you said, that there was extraordinary. Was it just the extraordinary teachers that were there and.

Gwen Wright 00:22:04  And that I.

John Coe 00:22:06  Apply elsewhere?

Gwen Wright 00:22:07  Yeah, I did, and, you know, I got in to other schools as well. But I, I think one thing that influenced me, my brother had gone to Yale. He was 11 years older than I was. My brother in law, who had married my oldest sister, had also gone to Yale, you know, so there was a little bit of familiarity in that was nice. But I, you know, I was I was intrigued with there. Again, it was it was a pretty hopping place in terms of architecture.

Gwen Wright 00:22:39  In those days. The Art and architecture building had opened a few years earlier, had been designed by Paul Rudolph. It was very controversial. You know, walking through the Yale campus literally was like walking through a museum of architecture. They were buildings by, you know, modern buildings by Saarinen, and, you know, Rudolph. And oh, my brain is Louis Kahn. He had designed the recently when I had just gotten there, the the Museum of British Art. And, you know, there were just there was a lot going on. It was an exciting time.

John Coe 00:23:16  That's great. But it's interesting that you said you didn't study the traditional realm of architecture. He kind of looked at it a little differently, which I guess Yale allowed you to do a little bit. I'm sure you had to complete all the basic criteria to, you know, the all the physical aspects of drawing and all those things. But.

Gwen Wright 00:23:36  Right, so that way through engineering and physics and, you know, the classes I had to take.

Gwen Wright 00:23:43  But I really and truly, you know, I always knew I was really more interested in design and design theory than in actually, you know, there were there were students in my class who in the summers would literally go work to, to help or to help build buildings, you know, out there with a hammer. And that was not my thing. You know, I was really more into the design theory.

John Coe 00:24:10  So you did not go from there and right into the architectural profession. So talk about why and what you did and why you did it. Sure.

Gwen Wright 00:24:23  Well, one summer while I was in college, I did some work for the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation as a summer job. And when I was, as a senior looking for work, I got a list from them of preservation groups around the country, and I sent off all my resumes, which back in those days was no easy task because you had to type each cover letter individually, you know. No, no, you know, whiteout and correction and no word processing.

Gwen Wright 00:24:57  Right, exactly. And so I sent out like 40 letters and I got, you know, I got some responses. Not a whole lot. As I was nearing the time of my graduation, I did get a interview with an architectural firm. Not historic, but Skidmore, Owings and Merrill was opening an office in Houston. And so I got an interview there. So I had a brother who lived in Houston who was teaching at rice, and I was planning to fly down. In fact, I was planning to fly down that afternoon and my phone was going to be cut off at 12 noon. And and then I had a, you know, a ride to the airport at two, 2 p.m., but I got a call at like 11:30 a.m.. And it was from a man named Peter Brink, who was the director of the Galveston Historical Foundation. And he said, you know, we got a letter from you several months ago. We now have had a job come up. And I said, well, isn't that convenient? I'm flying to Houston this afternoon to look at a job in Houston, and I will come down to Galveston and talk with you as well.

Gwen Wright 00:26:13  So I, I again I through much of my career, honestly I feel like there's been a lot of just fate leading me in different directions. So I did fly down. I talked to the folks at Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. I could see that it was not a good fit for me. It was a place for people who were very technically oriented, not very design oriented. I went down to Galveston and they were really just starting this new program where they were working to focus on revitalizing some of the residential neighborhoods. They had done a lot of work on the commercial neighborhood in downtown Galveston called the strand, but they wanted to work on revitalizing residential neighborhoods. And so I was I they offered me a job, and I jumped at it. I just knew I would be a lot, lot happier in Galveston, and I thought I would do it for a year or two, and then I would go back to the East Coast. And as it turns out, I ended up staying there for eight years and having a really, really wonderful experience.

Gwen Wright 00:27:27  You know, I was like this kid in my 20s, and they handed me a quarter of $1 million, which at that time was a lot of money and said, go out and do a residential revolving fund, buy houses, fix them up and, you know, and then resell them. And while you're fixing them up, you're going to do classes for people on renovation techniques. And I did that, and it was great. It was in, again, the era of that TV show, This Old House. And people were really into that kind of education and had our own little version of this old house.

John Coe 00:28:08  Talk about what Galveston looked like when you got there and why they decided to set up this historic foundation. And what really turned you on to this, this philosophical background that you had in architecture kind of hits you over the head when you saw this. I mean, what what was it that really inspired you to take this opportunity?

Gwen Wright 00:28:29  Well, you know, Galveston had been one of the largest cities in Texas in the 19th century, and it had been much bigger than Houston or Dallas.

Gwen Wright 00:28:41  And it was the major port on the Gulf. And one of the big things that happened is in 1900, there was a huge hurricane, still the greatest natural disaster in US history, right? I think over 3000 people were killed. And the 1900 storm really transformed Galveston. But what Galveston did that was quite inspiring, rather than like some other communities that have been devastated by a natural disaster, which end up essentially, you know, disappearing. The community just disappears. They fought back by deciding to build a very enormous seawall, like 17ft tall, and then raise the level of the island hind, the seawall. So they dredged dirt, mud, soil from the bay and filled in. And the buildings that had not been destroyed in the hurricane, many of them, they literally raised up and filled in underneath. And people in Galveston lived for, you know, a number of years walking on catwalks to get to the front door of their house. Wow. You know, it was it was an amazing.

Gwen Wright 00:30:02  You know, we talk about sort of bold visions, bold efforts. It was amazing. And, you know, it succeeded, and Galveston had had been a very popular beach and gambling resort area in the 50s and 60s, had been a major cotton port. by the 70s, things had started to fall into disarray. And it was, you know, there was a lot of benign neglect of buildings, especially on the strand, which had been the old warehouse commercial area. and a number of years before I arrived, there were people in Galveston, a collection of, both, long time residents, but also some more recent residents. It's it's the home of the University of Texas Medical Branch. And so there are a lot of people who have come to Galveston to do medical training and or stage work in the hospitals that are in in Galveston, there are several large hospitals, and a Shriners burn hospital. And it has a whole medical complex on the east end of the city. And people came together both, you know, long time old families.

Gwen Wright 00:31:22  And there are a number of very, very prominent older families in Galveston and new new residents to sort of, sort of reinvigorate the Galveston Historical Foundation that had been around for a long time and to start working on the strand. And they had a lot of success with the strand, both with a revolving fund that they used to purchase buildings on the strand, renovating some buildings, finding people to step in and do renovation, starting to have events to invigorate the strand. There was a Christmas festival they called Dickens Evening on the strand. And, you know, really those were in place when I arrived. And then I was very fortunate to be there at a time when the organization and the, the city sort of went into a real, you know, Renaissance period. It was one of the projects that the Galveston Historical Foundation did was to bring a old, tall masted ship, which didn't have masts when they found it. It was an 1877 iron barque and had to save it from a, you know, shipping slot in Greece and bring it back to Galveston and restore it and bring people together from South Street Seaport.

Gwen Wright 00:32:47  And a lot of, you know, and from mystic and from places that knew a lot about restoration of coal masted ships. And I was there while it was being restored. And that got a lot of interest back into the waterfront, which was right next to the strand. And as we all know, waterfronts are, you know, magical places for development and for creating, you know, places that people want to be. And that helped the strand grow as well. Now, today, and this happened after I left. They have also done a cruise ship terminal in that area as well. And that has, you know, again, brought even a lot more people into Galveston and into the strand area. But there were it was a great, sort of exciting period. There were artists, there were these sort of crafts people from South Street Seaport, you know, who were in Galveston to work on, you know, creating all of the fittings and, you know, carving the new figurehead for the Elissa.

Gwen Wright 00:34:01  I mean, it was a sort of exciting time. And I my part of it was to work on the residential neighborhoods. Some of them had were in great shape and had had had a lot of investment, but some of them were had great architecture but were pretty, pretty disinvested. And we tried to do some of our, what we call demonstration houses or little sort of this old house spin offs in those neighborhoods and get people interested in reinvesting and renovating houses that were in some of the less recognized neighborhoods in town. And we worked in some neighborhoods that were historically African American. And we we did a lot of exciting projects. It was it was very hands on. It was fun, you know? So even though in my academic life I had been very focused on sort of architectural theory. In my first job. I was very hands on, you know, like I ran this revolving fund. I, you know, picked houses to purchase. I picked out the paint colors for the houses. You know, I organized the curriculum for the classes that we would have in the houses.

Gwen Wright 00:35:19  And, you know, it was fun. It was a lot of fun.

John Coe 00:35:22  So you were young. So adapting to a completely different culture probably didn't really shock you as much as it would have. If you're a little older, I'm guessing. So moving from New Haven, Connecticut to Galveston, Texas had to have been quite a change. And then even growing up in suburban Pittsburgh, that's that's a big cultural change. What did you learn about the Texas people and, and that in that area, or was it just unique because of, you know, what, where you were in Texas, you know, in Galveston?

Gwen Wright 00:35:55  Yeah, I think Galveston was unique. I mean, the people. There were, again, a very interesting combination of very smart people who had come down to either go to med school or to teach at University of Texas Medical Branch, as well as a very strong arts population. And there was, I always say Galveston was like a cross between Charleston and Key West. And, you know, it had a lot of advantages, but I didn't I wasn't always in Galveston.

Gwen Wright 00:36:29  I remember going up to Houston, where my brother still was and was teaching at rice, and I had been set up on a blind date with a fellow who was, I think, a resident at one of the hospitals in Houston, and we went to a a chain kind of restaurant. I can't remember even what it was. It was like a T.G.I. Friday kind of place. And we were looking at the menu and he looked, you know, somewhat perplexed. And I said, you know what? What's up? He said, well, what's this? This they have this ravioli on the menu. What is ravioli? And I was like, what is ravioli? Have you ever heard of Chef Boyardee?

John Coe 00:37:15  Yeah.

Gwen Wright 00:37:16  And I mean, even though this was a very well educated, you know, guy, he was like really unsophisticated. And I that was one of those dates where, you know, I developed a headache on the drive out of the restaurant and had to cut the evening short. But, you know, I guess there were a lot of very, very kind, good, well-meaning people, but who hadn't been exposed to other places, other ideas.

Gwen Wright 00:37:51  One of our administrative staff at the Galveston Historical Foundation very proudly told me she had never, not only had never left Texas, but had never gone farther from Galveston than to Beaumont, which is, you know, like a two hour drive away and, you know, had never really experienced any other place. So again, that wasn't true of the majority of people who I worked with or who I dealt with in Galveston. Again, there was a, you know, there was and is a very well educated, sophisticated group of people in Galveston. And I think it made Galveston sort of unique that, you know, there were people there who were Ivy League educated, well-traveled, had a vision for what they saw happening in their community. And I. It was. I got swept up in that I was very engaged.

John Coe 00:38:58  My son served in the US Navy as a helicopter pilot. And one of his training places was Corpus Christi, which is not this is, I don't know, maybe 100 miles south of there on the Gulf Coast.

John Coe 00:39:13  And I have to tell you that right next to the beach there was a was a refinery, and the smell of oil and gas was evident. Yeah. And on North Padre Island, where he was and yeah, it was like, oh my God, this is a different lifestyle.

Gwen Wright 00:39:31  Yeah. Environmental issues were not high on anyone's list in Texas.

John Coe 00:39:37  Yeah. For sure. Yeah. So anyway, it's like, whoa, this is an interesting culture here. Yeah. So yeah. So you were there for eight years? Yes. And was there any other unusual experiences that you had while you were there that you know. And then why did you leave? I guess it's the next step.

Gwen Wright 00:39:57  Well, you know, I had all sorts of experiences while I was there. It was, you know, the best of times, the worst of times in many ways. Again, on a personal level, during the time I was there. My mom passed away. I was engaged to a fellow who was a marine biologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch.

Gwen Wright 00:40:19  He passed away from leukemia. Oh, you know, I well, in.

John Coe 00:40:23  Your engagement during your engagement.

Gwen Wright 00:40:25  Yes, yes.

John Coe 00:40:25  Oh my goodness.

Gwen Wright 00:40:27  After we had been together like three years. Oh. and, you know, I bought my first house on the positive side, which I renovated. I made lifelong friends, you know, again, there was the best of times. The worst of times. I it made me grow up very quickly. I remember going to my fifth college reunion, and a lot of my friends from college were, you know, still in grad school, just getting out of grad school, thinking about, you know, moving out of college housing into their first real apartment, you know, that kind of thing. And I was like, guys, I, you know, how can I express this? Like, I own a lawn mower? You know, I own a picnic table. You know, it was it was like I my my 20s were a time when I did a, I did a lot of things that many people don't go through or don't experience until they're well into their 30s, you know, loss of a parent, loss of a partner, buying a house, you know, ultimately changing jobs and moving.

Gwen Wright 00:41:38  You know, I went through a lot of those kinds of activities. Sure.

John Coe 00:41:43  So what attracted you to move to Maryland from?

Gwen Wright 00:41:48  Well, as I was getting close. Yeah, I was getting close to 30 and my fiance had been dead for a couple of years at that point, and I sort of said, well, you know, I really want to end up back on the East Coast. My dad was still, in Pittsburgh, in Mount Lebanon, and I had a sister who was in upstate New York, and I was ready to move back to the East Coast. I always thought of myself as an Easterner, and I have to admit, I wasn't doing a lot to actively look for jobs. A friend of mine, who was the planning director for the city of Galveston, saw a job advertised in planning magazine for a historic preservation planner at the Maryland National Capital Park and Planning Commission in Silver Spring. And he said, this is a really, you know, well-known agency, and they have a good reputation.

Gwen Wright 00:42:45  And, you know, this might be a good job for you. So I said, well, I, I'm doubtful because I am not a planner. I've taken a total of two planning courses in my life, but what the heck, I'll send in my materials. So I did, and they contacted me and said, come up for an interview and we'll actually pay for your airfare to come up. This was again in the days when there was money flowing, so I flew up. I stayed with a friend in Washington. It was like in July, horrible hot weather. Like like now. Yeah, yeah. And I took the, metro to Silver Spring, of course. Got turned around and found myself running late. And there was no cell phone at that point where I could call them and say, I'm running late. And I remember, you know, in a tizzy Climbing the hill for Metro to the MRO building on George Avenue in my little power suit with my, you know, silk blouse with the the the bow tie, you know.

Gwen Wright 00:43:57  And sure, wearing stockings and high heels in July heat. I mean, you can imagine. So I arrive and I'm a mess. I'm just a mess. And I'm very upset because I'm late and I'm completely flustered. And I was thinking to myself, you know, I'm not going to get this job. I'm arriving late for the interview. I'm not going to get this job. But, you know, free trip to Washington. What the heck? And so I was interviewed by two, two people and who became good friends ultimately. And to my amazement, two weeks later, they called and offered me the job and not only offered me the job, but again, in the days when money was flowing, they offered to pay my moving expenses from Texas to D.C.. And you have to. I had a house, you know, so I was moving like a house full of stuff. It wasn't just a couple of suitcases. And so I was like, great, this is my way to get back to the East Coast.

Gwen Wright 00:45:01  And, you know, I'll work the whatever, I think, two year commitment, you know, and they pay your moving expenses, you commit for two years and then I can go anywhere I want, do anything I want. Talk about your.

John Coe 00:45:13  Job. What was your job? What was the offer?

Gwen Wright 00:45:15  Well, I was hired to be the historic preservation planner in the community planning division at the Montgomery County Planning Department. And I was a literally a one person operation. Person I was replacing had no historic preservation background, but had sort of, you know, fallen into the role because she was a planner and she was sort of interested in preservation. And what the job was, was primarily looking at and evaluating individual properties. There had been an inventory in 1976, as part of the Bicentennial, there had been an inventory about potential historic sites around Montgomery County, and was going through that inventory, usually in conjunction with a master plan and deciding which sites merited actual designation. So I and there was separately, a one person operation in the Department of Housing and Community Affairs who staffed the Historic Preservation Commission after we in planning, designated a site the Historic Preservation Commission would review changes, and I always thought that was a little odd, that there wasn't more of a connection, because a lot of times the reasons the sites designated have an impact on what you do in terms of making decisions about changes.

Gwen Wright 00:46:59  Some sites are more important for their architecture, some are more important for their history. You know, there's there's there's a connection between why something is designated and reviewing changes to that building. So we I took the job and you know, again, I, I didn't expect to be there for more than two years, but I, I just like in Galveston, I sort of got involved, you know, I got intrigued by some of the issues. It was during the time when a lot of the controversy regarding the Silver Theater and Shopping Center in Silver Spring was going on. I was really interested in that because I saw that, and it turned out to be that I, you know, I'll give myself credit that I was right, that that Silver theater and shopping center could be a great gathering place. It could be, you know, a true center for a new downtown Silver Spring. And, you know, there was a lot of controversy about that. There was a lot of discussion about preservation in general at that time, and how it connected with some of the planning goals.

John Coe 00:48:12  Before you get into the the nitty gritty of what you were doing contextually coming from a historical foundation in, in Galveston, which was, I'm guessing, privately funded, although maybe it was a public private venture, I don't know.

Gwen Wright 00:48:29  Yeah, it was private.

John Coe 00:48:30  So you go in from all private, which is a kind of a Texas thing, you know, Into, you know, a very government centric market which Montgomery County and the Washington, D.C. area is. How did that feel, and did that make a difference in the way things were done and thought through a little bit, just out of curiosity?

Gwen Wright 00:48:55  Well, you know, I think that's actually a great point, because sometimes you've seen those green cards that say everything I ever needed to learn, I learned in kindergarten or, you know, something like that. I say everything I ever needed to learn about my career, I learned in historic preservation, and it really had to do with things that have have sort of carried through to this day.

Gwen Wright 00:49:21  The idea that you look for creative solutions to problems, that you have to collaborate, that you have to have a strong, bold vision that you're willing to sort of follow through on. You have to think outside the box. You can't go with, you know, normal, traditional solutions. You have to build alliances. working in a private nonprofit. You know, what was key was building alliances with the community, building alliances with donors, building alliances with the city government in Galveston. You can't, you know, dictate the way things are going to be. You have to bring everyone along together to come up with, you know, the best possible solutions, and then celebrate everyone together. You can't, you know, again, as a private nonprofit, you have to celebrate your donors, celebrate the people who brought you there, and you have to figure out how really, you know, again, you know, sort of key takeaways. You know, you have to work together. You have to be bold.

Gwen Wright 00:50:40  You have to be clear. You have to have a really clear message. You can't be wishy washy. You have to think outside the box. You have to collaborate. And so, you know, all of those were lessons I learned working in the private nonprofit sector in preservation. And I found them very, very applicable working in Montgomery County. And I think it's surprised. It definitely was a different modus operandi than normal in Montgomery County. Montgomery County was, and in many ways is very bureaucratic. And I was very much saying, you know, as a bureaucracy, we can't just, you know, sit at our desks and dictate. We have to go out and and and meet and convince people. So at at one point, I think it was like in 1991, we figured out a way to merge that office that had been in the Department of Housing and Community Affairs and have our office in planning become the staff to the Historic Preservation Commission. That in of itself was an outside the box idea, because the Historic Preservation Commission was an executive branch appointed commission, and to have planning staff and executive branch commission was very unusual.

Gwen Wright 00:52:17  But we figured out we did a literally did a contract between the executive branch and McPeak to for us to provide services to the executive branch to staff the Historic Preservation Commission. and one of the first things I did when I started staffing the commission is that I knew we needed to make the case for why preservation was important, and we did with the Montgomery Community Television. We did a video called Our Living Heritage, and I ran around and I got people who were involved in preservation from all around the county, from Poolesville to Kensington to Takoma Park, you know, to sort of go on camera and talk about why preservation was important to them, why it was important to their community. And, you know, and that it wasn't just little old ladies in tennis shoes telling people what to do. It was it was as as one woman in Cedar Grove, which is halfway to Damascus, said on the video she doesn't see it as a government control. She saw it as a protection. A way of protecting what was special about her, her community.

Gwen Wright 00:53:39  And so we did this, you know, video. And then I ran around showing the video to everyone I could get to, to, you know, to listen to sort of, again, build a constituency for preservation, which is hard in a county as big as Washington, as big as Montgomery County. And then I decided, you know, one of the problems we were having is the Department of Permitting Services kept accidentally giving out permits to properties in historic neighborhoods to do bad things, including demolition in one case. And so I talked to the person who was then the director of DPS, and he hooked me up with, his front line staff. And I did a series of educational sessions for them, the first of which was to show this video. To show them what we were trying to do and why we were trying to do it. And then I emphasized you all, each and every one of you are a part and important part of this whole program. And if you will just look when you get in a permit at the database as to see whether it's a historic site or not, that is a key part of the process, you know.

Gwen Wright 00:55:00  So and it worked. It helped a whole lot. You know, you go to people, including front line people who a lot of times people just ignore and look down upon and you explain they're an important part of this much bigger process. And they, you know, what they do matters and, you know, sort of get their excitement and their buy in to participate. So what else? What I'm hearing. It's sort of like that's like part of my my thing. And it's also something I felt very strongly about in my roles at both the planning department and in Alexandria when I worked in Alexandria was you need to inspire staff to do their best to help them understand you know, why what they do is important and to get them, you know, motivated. Try their best to really, you know, focus on the best possible outcomes.

John Coe 00:56:09  Kind of what I'm hearing, what you're saying is that there's almost a spiritual nature to preserving, you know, historic vocations. And it gets back maybe to your philosophical base from your education at Yale.

John Coe 00:56:26  Talk a little bit more about why you think it's so important, and you know what aspects of it are really critical, and other aspects really don't matter that much, because some of it probably doesn't really make any, you know, historic relevance or need. But other parts of it are really critical and other people may not realize, you know, that's important. And this is why. Could you explain what what that means or what it is?

Gwen Wright 00:56:52  I mean, you know, I always ask people think about where you choose to travel to. I mean, when you think about great places that you want to go, Paris or London or even, you know, in the US, places like Charleston or Savannah, Washington, D.C., or Washington, D.C., those are places that have A sense of history. It's not that there aren't new buildings in modern buildings, but you really see the the sense of place of where these communities started and how they have evolved. And those are the most successful places and communities where you really you see their past, their present and their future all mixed together.

Gwen Wright 00:57:55  And so, you know, I've always believed that historic buildings in a community help create that sense of place, help ground that community. So, for example, when we were working on development of the milestone community in Germantown, I went out to milestone when it was literally farm fields, and there was one house sitting in the middle of the farm field, and that was called the waters House. And it had been the property had been the water's property before it had been bought by milestone. And we worked with Rodgers and Associates to lay out a community. And, you know, we went through several variations, and ultimately we came up with the idea that, you know, there would really be a civic realm within this suburban, single family home community that people in the single family homes could still walk to. And it would include the swim center, a elementary school site, and the waters House. And the waters House would become a community facility. And there was a park like a ball field behind the waters house, which then let led on into a larger park system, part of the Greenbelt around Germantown.

Gwen Wright 00:59:24  And when I was working with Dave Agar, who was at Rogers at that time, you know, I talked about how you wanted the single family houses to be on streets that ended in a vista that would include the waters house. So when you're growing up, this house full of single, this street full of single family houses at the end of the street, across the street, you would see the waters house. And I said, you know, that's what sort of makes a community think of little kids growing up in these houses, these new houses. And they can walk down the street and they'll ask their mom, you know, what is that old house? And there will be interpretive materials that explain it. It's right next to what will be the elementary school. There is an opportunity for it to be that great old landmark in a new neighborhood that, you know, gives people a sense of what came before. And you know that this wasn't just a neighborhood that sprung up out of nothing. That it came about because of a family named waters who had had a farm.

Gwen Wright 01:00:43  And the is very grand house. So, you know, that is an example to me of how you you do preservation. It's not just about fixing up the old house. It's about how is that old house going to become part of a new community and part of the future life of that new community. It's sort of like, well, I was talking about you have to deal with the past, the present and the future. And you know, you can integrate these kinds of older buildings into newer communities so that, you know, it creates a dynamic neighborhood. I mean, honestly, like, who would want to take a vacation in? I mean, nothing against downtown Germantown, but who would want to take a vacation in downtown Germantown? But there are people who go to downtown Frederick because they want to experience downtown Frederick. And, you know, they're building on that sense of place as an asset and creating, you know, frankly, creating some dynamic economic development because they're creating a place that people want to be.

Gwen Wright 01:02:05  And again, Germantown, lest their hearts have thrown a lot at downtown Germantown. You know, money for black Rock, money for parks. You know, they've done a lot of things right, but they haven't been able to capture. You know, I hate to be overly melodramatic, but, you know, the soul of a place, right? And so I think, like milestone, we were able to put a little soul into that residential neighborhood by creating this community landmark, by focusing sort of a civic quarter, a civic area that people could walk to. And anyway, so, you know, those are things that are all interrelated.

John Coe 01:02:59  In other words, that I use when I in an area that, you know, is unusually interesting is character. And when I see a community That has some historic relevance to it. Character comes to mind. So try to bring that word into into an area and lie a little bit if you can, just out of curiosity. Well, you know, if you agree with me.

Gwen Wright 01:03:25  Yeah. No, I do agree. And character, you know, what is character? What is a place that has character or has soul? I think it's a place that has both a sense of history, but also a dynamic feeling that it's also part of the modern world. I, you know, I, you know, I love places like Williamsburg, but I don't think a lot of people want to live in the colonial village of Williamsburg. They might live nearby in the suburbs, but you need a place that is, filled with character that touches people emotionally. You know, back to my again, my college thesis about how spaces can have an emotional and psychological reaction. the why you need a place that has that but also has a certain dynamism. And that's probably what, you know, makes me a little different than most people in historic preservation, is that I have never sort of seen historic preservation as the end in and of itself. I have seen it as an element to create dynamic, beautiful, exciting places.

Gwen Wright 01:04:54  And I think that, you know, for some people, preservation is an end in and of itself. But to me, it really is an element, a very important element that gives some of that character and that soul to a place, but it's just a part of creating, you know, a dynamic, exciting place.

John Coe 01:05:22  Well it's interesting, I, I look around Montgomery County, I lived here for 38 years myself, and I live in a 100 year old neighborhood called Chevy Chase view, which is adjacent to an even older neighborhood called the Town of Kensington, which is one of the original real towns in the county. That goes back to probably early 1800s, and settlement, which is an interesting mix of what I call, you know, deep character with regard to Antique Row. And then I look at some of the buildings that have been built around in the perimeter that are, let's say, less than aesthetic Inequality that's being changed now with some residential buildings that are just completed recently. And then I go to the Bethesda, Maryland, when I first moved to Washington, the first that the town center, the I'm sorry, the Metro Center just completed the first two buildings there.

John Coe 01:06:27  And the Clark Building, which were Clark Enterprises was built, was had just I mean, it was the early 80s when I got here. And that really was kind of the new, you know, thought process, you know around the metro stations which were fairly new then that was less than ten years old. Metro had opened at that point. So it was a different dynamic. And and then historically, I learned that why the Capital Beltway was built the way it was, was because of Rock Creek Park and preserving, you know, Rock Creek and, you know, Probably one of the most dangerous stretches of interstate in the United States is between, you know, Georgia Avenue and, and and Rockville Pike on the Beltway. And it was done because of preservation of Rock Creek Park and the whole, you know, area there, which I enjoy daily when I walk. So, anyway, there's a lot of interesting metaphorical changes that have happened over this 30, 40 years I've been here. And you've been participating and involved and planning all that ever since.

John Coe 01:07:38  You know that almost all that time you came here two years after I moved here. So you've seen all what I'm talking about. Now, let's transition your your historic perspective into your more broader role and why a why you were chosen to do it, why you were interested in expanding your role and what how did that evolve? And then 19 years you did this role. So talk about all that thought process and some of your accomplishments throughout that period of time. So.

Gwen Wright 01:08:10  So before I forget it, one of you mentioned Kensington. And, you know, one of the things that I spent a lot of time talking about when I became planning director in 2013 is what I call the new suburban ism, which is learning from some of our wonderful, very successful 19th century suburbs that Montgomery County has. I mean, we have some amazingly successful 19th century suburbs, places like Kensington, like Chevy Chase village, like Somerset. And, you know, what are the elements that made these 19th century suburbs successful, and how can we use those elements to learn about creating 21st century suburbs? And I sort of specified that there were 5 or 6 themes that we have in our older, successful suburbs that we need to carry through into our new suburbs.

Gwen Wright 01:09:23  And those included access to transit. We have to remember. Kensington was built around the railroad station. Chevy Chase was built around a trolley. Takoma Park was built around both a station and a trolley.

John Coe 01:09:43  So Silver spring?

Gwen Wright 01:09:45  Yes, Silver Spring. And so access to to transit of some sort. Walkability. A lot of these communities had early sidewalks. People could get to that transit and or just walk around the neighborhood. A mix of uses. Even in Chevy Chase, you have the little commercial strip along Brookville Road. You know, there was walkability to some other kinds of a mix of uses so that you could not be just trapped in your house. Focus on the landscape, the public realm, you know, creating great boulevards or creating. And in the case of Kensington, you know, the Warner Circle in the in the middle of the community, you know, so that there was sort of a major landscape vision in all in all of these communities, if you look deeply enough, there was that that existed.

Gwen Wright 01:10:49  And finally, focus on design and on design excellence in many of these communities. There were, you know, great architects actually building some of the earliest buildings. And it gave, you know, a sense that this was a special place. Not that every single house or every single building needed to be a landmark, but they had a number of prominent buildings that sort of set the tone. So, you know, I believe there's a lot that we can learn in building 21st century communities, that we can learn from 19th century communities about access to transit, mixed use, walkability, great design, great public realm. And so when I, I became planning director in 2013, I tried to promote that. And I'm jumping ahead a bit, but that's also sort of a big message of Thrive Montgomery 2050, but we'll get to that. So in terms of you, I can tell you again, happenstance. I was doing the historic preservation thing. I was building a little historic preservation program within Montgomery County.

Gwen Wright 01:12:13  We got the contract to staff the Historic Preservation Commission in the mid 90s under Bill Hussman, who was then the planning board chair. We combined the Parks Department and the planning department. There was a period of about five, six, seven years when planning and parks were joined together. When that happened, all the the staff working on parks, historic sites came into my group as well. So at one point we had a historic preservation office of about nine people, and I was very aggressive in having us acquire more historic sites for parks. I worked with a great guy, Bill Griess, who was the real estate person for parks during the time when I was in charge of parks, as well as planning historic preservation, we acquired the Riley Plantation, also known as the Josiah Henson Property, also known as Uncle Tom's Cabin. We acquired Warner Circle in Kensington. We acquired what was had been known as the Red door Store up in Sandy spring. We acquired the Derby store and house in Beltsville. And all of these have, you know, moved forward in one way or another to become major park assets before.

John Coe 01:13:44  Before we jump into a lot of these projects in that, can we step back one more time to theory and Philosophy in planning in the county. So you talked a lot about the historic pieces of the, you know, the train corridors and also the trolley corridors, the other planning thesis, and this comes from California, which was the the words wedges and corridors were used. Okay. And wedges and corridors and, you know, correct me if I'm wrong was major arterial roads. And this is based because on automobile growth and suburban sprawl, basically suburban growth in California was, you know, probably the the classic you look at Orange County and, you know, very much designed around the the automobile and its growth. And planners in this county, probably before you were here, thought that way back going back probably the 1950s, even when the automobile became evident. So they looked at Montgomery County in this pattern of wedges and corridors. Looking at Rockville Pike, going from basically the Georgetown, you know, Wisconsin Avenue all the way to Pennsylvania, basically goes all the way through Frederick County, even.

John Coe 01:15:06  Yeah, all the way up as a major, as kind of the major center, Main Street, Montgomery County, in essence, all the way up, because there are literally five regional malls from Georgetown Park all the way to, Frederick. You know, when you look at and it was basically these major arterial road. Connecticut Avenue is very similar to that. And Georgia Avenue, which had more traffic probably than any other, any of those three built basically from the district, you know, Howard University all the way out to basically Aldi and beyond, you know, Gettysburg. Gettysburg, basically. Yeah. So that was the philosophy in the county probably before you were here. Yeah. And so how did. Yeah. Go ahead, go ahead. I'll let you expand on.

Gwen Wright 01:15:57  The original general plan from like 1964 was subtitled on wedges and corridors. And Montgomery County fit well into that because our streams tended to run north south, not just, you know, Rock Creek, but also Paint Branch northwest, Sligo.

Gwen Wright 01:16:22  They they all sort of ran north south and created opportunities for these, you know, green areas that would then create these opportunities for corridors of development. Interestingly, you know, that concept was set out in the the first general plan, but the only real corridor that was identified in that first general plan was 355. Right. And it had corridor cities along 355 that included, you know, Bethesda and Rockville and Gaithersburg and Germantown and Clarksburg. And that was, you know, with the assumption to 70 was, you know, going to be built as the major transportation route. It implied a corridor along 29 that would be connected with a denser I-95 corridor. And the wedges and corridors included both Prince George's and Montgomery County. It was what was called the regional District, and that was both Prince George's and Montgomery County. And there were other corridors again in Montgomery, in Prince George's County. So but it didn't create all the corridors that you mentioned. It really focused on some of these more mega sized corridors.

Gwen Wright 01:17:50  So when we took up doing the, thrive 2050 and updating the general plan, there was certainly a choice at the outset of saying, you know, okay, that's an outdated mode. We have to have, you know, more development in those green wedges. We have to develop within the agricultural reserve, for example, you know, there there was a an opportunity to go a different way, but we actively decided not to go a different way, but rather to double down on the idea of wedges and corridors and say, you know, in the 21st century, what we have are really a web of sort of centers and Boulevards, and that we have the idea of wedges and corridors, except at a much finer grain level, where we've added the corridors like Connecticut Avenue, like Georgia Avenue, like New Hampshire Avenue. We and we have some East-West ones like Randolph Road. Right. And that along each of these we've added more transit. So we have opportunities for centers that aren't big corridor cities like Rockville or Gaithersburg or Germantown, but smaller centers like Chevy Chase, like, you know, that become on a different scale with a different kind of transit, and that we we're creating again, we're not stepping away from wedges and corridors.

Gwen Wright 01:19:41  We're actually just seeing where there's an corridors mature into the finer grain set of centers along boulevards, and that that's the future for the county not to, you know, abandon first principles, as it were, but in a way almost to double down on those first principles and to say future development is going to happen along these boulevards, along these corridors. Sure. And the small, smaller scale centers, you know, that are going to develop along these boulevards are going to have the same elements of sort of, you know, a mix of uses and a mix of building types and a focus on transit and, and walkability, because we recognize that vast areas of Montgomery County are and will remain single family neighborhoods. But as a single family neighborhood, you can still and you you actually should still demand, you know, walkability and convenience and being able to get to transit and being able to get to shops. I mean, I, I live in Cleveland Park, I'm sitting in Cleveland Park in DC right now, and I'm in a completely single family neighborhood.

Gwen Wright 01:21:07  I have a, you know, nice big backyard. I have all of my neighbors or single family houses, but I can walk quickly and easily to three different grocery stores, to a post office, to a library, you know, to shops, to restaurants. And, you know, that's that's should be, I think, the ideal that you have great single family neighborhoods that are in between vibrant corridors that have a mix of uses that have housing, that have shops that have employment even. and that you you can have both.

John Coe 01:21:50  let me step back again to structure with regard to the planning departments in the county when I was first moved here. It it seemed confusing to me because there was what's known as Maryland National Park and Planning Commission, which under its auspices, had Montgomery County planning and Prince George's County planning, with two different offices and parks.

Gwen Wright 01:22:15  On both sides. Right.

John Coe 01:22:16  And parks. And yet, you know, that had a correlation with the Montgomery County government and the Prince George's County government.

John Coe 01:22:25  And I was trying to understand what did that how does how do these all people, these people work together? Who has say over what and why? Is there a bi county commission, which is totally unique in the in the state of Maryland, to my knowledge. I don't know if there's another two county commission like that that exists, and it's because obviously it surrounds the the national capital, D.C., to some extent. But there had to have been a reason for it.

Gwen Wright 01:22:55  So we well, you know, it was created in 1927 and it was it was created to have a sort of orderly development in the suburbs around Washington, D.C. there had been the group, the National Capital Planning Commission, and it was in some ways modeled on that and the which actually just had its 100th anniversary. And, you know, the goal was for the sort of orderly planning of the areas in Maryland surrounding Washington, D.C., in both Prince George's and Montgomery County. Both of those were very, very rural, rural counties at the time.

Gwen Wright 01:23:42  They did not have strong governments. You know, even places like Rockville and Gaithersburg were little farm villages. You know, they were very disparate. And there were a few, again, I think, fairly visionary leaders who decided that, you know, change was coming and that they needed to put in place a structure to deal with that change. And with all the different smaller municipalities and the organizations in each of these two counties, and a lot of it had to do also with the creation of WSC and how you were going to create infrastructure to provide water and sewer for these. You know, it was a it was a bold vision. Some people now look back very cynically and say, well, it was developers setting up an organization so that they could end up making money developing. But I actually believe that it was it certainly there was an element of that. But there was also an element of wanting to see, again, an orderly kind of transition and an orderly development in this region and to provide, you know, the infrastructure to again.

Gwen Wright 01:25:07  There's always two sides to every story to protect some of the stream valleys. Some folks say, well, they wanted to protect those stream valleys so they could run sewer pipes up and down the stream valleys with wssc. You know, there's there's there's two sides to every to every story. But, you know, there was an effort to prove those stream valleys and to again create what ultimately did, in a way become the beginnings of the wedges and corridors plan. But, you know, it evolved into an organization which was a state organization. And NPCC is chartered by the state of Maryland. But in each of the two counties, as those counties grew and developed, you know, stronger autonomy and governance of their own, they've had to sort of work out what the relationship will be in Montgomery County, which is what I can speak to the planning department and the Parks Department very clearly, I think reported to and report to the county council. The county council points the commissioners, and they make the final decisions on master plans and, you know, and on the Park Capital Improvement program.

Gwen Wright 01:26:36  So, you know, they are they are reporting to the county council. They don't report to the county executive. Now, that's very different than other places where I've worked, like the city of Alexandria, which had, you know, a strong mayor, city manager kind of government, where everyone reported to the city manager in Montgomery County, the planning and Parks department really report to the county council. And that has led to problems. Really, it depends on some degree to the personality of the county executive. You know, under most of the time I worked there, there was actually a good relationship with the county executive, whoever it might be, and lots of collaboration. In some cases, it's been more difficult.

John Coe 01:27:32  Okay, so what you're saying is you didn't really report to the county executive to report it to the council itself?

Gwen Wright 01:27:37  Yeah, completely to the council.

John Coe 01:27:40  That's interesting. And I assume that is Prince George's very similar to that. Or do you know.

Gwen Wright 01:27:46  I don't know, I mean, I've heard that the county executive has more influence.

Gwen Wright 01:27:51  I mean, it's the same structure. The commissioners are appointed by the council. But, you know, it's the relationship between the county executive and the council. And sometimes the county executive has a lot of influence on the council, in which case they have more influence on the planning Commission. I mean, I honestly don't know the situation in Prince George's County. Really. Comment.

John Coe 01:28:19  Okay. So you within two years after your movement into the chief of county wide planning, you became the acting planning director. Talk about the difference in the roles that you had between those two positions. And, you know.

Gwen Wright 01:28:35  Yeah, I mean, the planning department went through a very tough time. I think, you know, you've probably heard about the whole Clarksburg. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And, you know, that was a very difficult period. I have a.

John Coe 01:28:50  Story about that just quickly.

Gwen Wright 01:28:52  Yeah, please.

John Coe 01:28:53  About Clarksburg.

Gwen Wright 01:28:55  Yeah.

John Coe 01:28:55  So I was engaged by a fellow by the name of Steve Clyburn of.

Gwen Wright 01:29:02  Who I remember well, all.

John Coe 01:29:03  The land there. And he acquired the as not raw land. It might have been raw, pretty raw at that point. It was a, a series of.

Gwen Wright 01:29:11  Farmers through the field together looking for the John Clark headstones. Okay. And he got poison ivy.

John Coe 01:29:21  Wow. That's a.

Gwen Wright 01:29:22  Memory. He did, but he did. Yeah.

John Coe 01:29:25  So I was hired by him, our company. I was at Blake Mason to market that land to. You know, he got it through planning. I think it was entitled to some extent at that point, but it was not subdivided at that time. It was it was master planned, as I recall. So we had to find a master plan developer to buy it. And so I talked to, I don't know, 50 or so people. It was not the easiest time to find a master plan developer, but this plan was pretty well set out. And I also my next door neighbor when I first moved here in Chevy Chase view was Bob Metz, who and Bob Metz worked for Joe Blocker and basically formulating a lot of the code of Montgomery County.

John Coe 01:30:21  He was an attorney and would let us in. Blocker.

Gwen Wright 01:30:23  Yeah, I knew him well.

John Coe 01:30:25  And he's retired.

Gwen Wright 01:30:26  But Bob and his wife, Demet, who was very involved in Bethesda. Yeah, there.

John Coe 01:30:30  Are there are more neighbors. So Bob and I, you know, I they invited me to a Christmas party at the bloggers annual Christmas event, which at that year was held at Congressional Country Club. And I remember Bob grabbing the Clarksburg master plan, which was probably about 400 pages thick or so, and he threw it on the table in front of there. He said, this is a mess. And I just, you know, this was before I took on this assignment, but I thought, you know, this is this is interesting. So I went on. So then I had to dig into it because I'm going to sell this parcel and it was 236 acres. So I had to figure out what am I going to do here. So I talked a lot with the county government and with the, you know what the market was for land of this nature, etc., etc. so I ended up finding a group called Terra Brook, which was a division of Westbrook Partners, which is a private equity firm.

John Coe 01:31:35  And ironically, the guy who ran this region is Nancy Pelosi's brother.

Gwen Wright 01:31:42  Oh my gosh, Tom D'Alesandro.

John Coe 01:31:46  So he grew up in Baltimore, as did Nancy Pelosi. And their father was the mayor of Baltimore. Wow. Bill Sandro senior. So Tom had a lot of, you know, master planning because he works in master planning. Before, he was a brook as well and has since been a master planner around the country. He's not no longer in the Washington area, but Tara Brook took over Reston Town Center as well. So they had Reston, and they were looking for more than just Reston. They wanted to look at other parts. So they found I helped them find this site and we negotiated the sale of the property. Subsequently, they went out of business because Tara Brook Westbrook decided to sell them to a company out of California known as Newlands Communities. Newlands ended up acquiring that entity, and Tom left that role. And I don't remember who took over after Tom, but they were starting to listen to the community and figuring out what needed to be done.

John Coe 01:32:54  But they had a plan they thought was appropriate and started this plan and built it out or started building it out. One assignment subsequent to this is I was trying to sell the retail parcel there, so I also had the opportunity with with Newlands to sell that parcel. And I had a a large write under letter of intent. He went through my friend there, Taylor Chess, who was also a podcast guest of mine. We're now working for the Peterson Company, went through three different rounds of planning with that community, with the community, believed that they wanted to build a community like Bethesda there. And I said, well, this is not Bethesda, the different marketplace. And he had a real struggle with the people because Newlands apparently painted it as if it's going to be another Bethesda. So I'm sorry to build all this story, but I think it's relevant to maybe the theme you're talking about. So I'll let you take it from there.

Gwen Wright 01:33:55  Yeah. No, I you know, everything I lived through, everything you've just described.

Gwen Wright 01:34:02  And, you know, when there were problems identified by the community in some of the construction, one of the huge mistakes that, again, you have to remember, I was just doing my preservation thing at this time. Sure, I don't think I was even chief of countywide planning yet. the planning folks, including the the the people who were in the leadership roles, didn't listen carefully enough, and they brushed off some of the community complaints as being just troublemakers. and rather than vigorously and immediately investigating and responding to the complaints the community made, they tried to just brush it off. And that did not work. And the community, who was a very determined group, dug deeper and deeper and deeper, and they found significant problems. And I, I do not at all disagree with the problems that they found. That was a point where the county was booming in terms of construction, and the development review staff was overwhelmed, and people were absolutely proving things on a staff level that they should not have approved on a staff level changes, you know, to prove plans that they thought were minor, but that the community did not think were minor.

Gwen Wright 01:35:44  And in any case, the whole planning department came under attack and ultimately it caused the retirement of the then planning director, who was a great guy, Charlie Loehr. And ultimately Derek Furlong, who was the chair of the planning board, did not get reappointed for another term and it was a period not unlike the situation in 2022, where everything was, you know, falling apart. And this was in like 2006 maybe. Yeah. And Derek was still playing board chair at that point. And he, he brought a. Acting planning director after Charlie Law left. He brought an acting planning director over. I mean, a lot of things were happening at the same time. My boss, who was Jeff Zients, who was chief of county wide planning, left to go work for the county council. I got promoted up into his position. He had he had been chief of that division for quite a while. The planning director, Charlie Lau, departed. Derek brought Farrell Hammer from Prince George's County over to become acting planning director.

Gwen Wright 01:37:20  Farrell was great, but things were a mess. Derek didn't get reappointed for another term and Royce Hansen was brought back to help try to clean up this mess, you know, help resolve things.

John Coe 01:37:37  How did you learn planning and that? I mean, you said you you weren't a planner. It was just osmosis and being on the job, being.

Gwen Wright 01:37:45  Involved in a lot of different master plans over the years and again, in historic preservation, I ended up touching many, many different master plans. So I got to see different master plans, how different master planners worked. I mean, I still today do not consider myself a planner per se, but I learned a lot about the master planning Process.

John Coe 01:38:10  What was your best mentor?

Gwen Wright 01:38:12  Who was my best mentor? Oh my gosh. Good question. I learned a lot in early in my career from a woman named Melissa Bannock, who was chief of Community Planning North, and who is the one who hired me. I learned a lot from dictation. I learned a lot from Gus Bauman, who was chair of the planning board for a period of time.

Gwen Wright 01:38:43  I learned a lot from Gus, actually.

John Coe 01:38:45  When voicing Gus was a big he was a big influence. I remember.

Gwen Wright 01:38:50  Yeah, when Royce came in, you know, I learned from Royce. I always viewed that I, whoever I worked with, I was going to learn something from them. You know, I wanted to work with all sorts of different people and just absorb everything I could and learn everything I could from them. In any case. Pharrell. So Derrick left. Royce became chair. Farrell was hired as the planning director in Alexandria, Virginia. I was asked to step up into her spot and become acting planning director. I was very clear with Royce that I was not going to apply for the full position, which made me sort of a perfect candidate to be acting because my kids were quite young at that point. I had they were like eight and ten, and I was already working hard enough, and I didn't want to take on that kind of responsibility. So I worked with Royce for about a year as acting planning director, and we hired a fellow named Rollin Stanley, who came from Saint Louis to be the planning director.

Gwen Wright 01:40:05  And I was very involved with Royce in sort of taking him around the county and getting to know him. And, you know, I wasn't on the interview panel per se, but, you know, I consulted a whole lot with Royce and I thought, what.

John Coe 01:40:19  What more responsibilities would you have had to take on had you become planning director as opposed to what you were doing before?

Gwen Wright 01:40:27  Well, you know, I've talked with Jason Sartori since he became planning director, and he has said to me he can't believe how he's constantly having papers thrust in his face saying, sign this, sign this. You know, it's a staff of 150 people. You have a huge number of administrative, human resource budget issues that happen in addition to being involved in planning. And as much as you say, you can delegate that and offload that, you cannot. And I got into a lot of those issues and I didn't, I you know, that's not what I really wanted to do. What I also did during the time I was acting playing director is I tried with Clarksburg.

Gwen Wright 01:41:15  Honestly, everything in the organization had come to a complete standstill. Stop and master plans had stopped. We were barely keeping up with the regulatory stuff it had. It was just a a wounded warrior as an organization. And so my job and Farrell's job had been to try to solve that. And Farrell had focused a lot on the development review side of things, because that should come from development review in Prince George's County. I focused a lot on the master plan side of things about how we could get our master plans going again. I was so happy that in during my time there, we finally delivered the twin Brook masterplan to the county council. We hadn't like delivered a master plan in several years. And so, you know, and and a big part of it was trying to restore staff confidence, you know, after all of this had happened. So anyway, Roland came in very, very visionary guy. He did get a lot of people very excited, but he wasn't easy to work with. And so several senior people, Karl Morris, myself and several others decided to leave.

Gwen Wright 01:42:39  And I called up Farrow, who I had worked very happily with, and I said, do you have any jobs in Alexandria? And she said, yes, please come to Alexandria. I want you to be chief of the Development Division. And so in eight I went to Alexandria. I had five of the best years in my professional career, working not in historic preservation, but as chief of the development division on super exciting projects in Potomac Yard in Eisenhower East and Carlisle in Old Town North. I mean really fun projects. I got to work with some great architects. I got to work with Robert Ames Stern on a new chapel at Episcopal Academy. I got to work with a group called fowl on a property in Carlisle who did some amazing architectural work. I was having a good old time and it really got me. I only had a staff of nine. It got me out of a lot of the administrative issues and the HR issues and budget issues and and back into design, which I was.

John Coe 01:43:55  So it was less bureaucratic than Montgomery County.

Gwen Wright 01:43:57  Yeah. Well, and and my role I wasn't the director, I was a division chief, and it was all smaller. I mean, you know, Alexandria is 150,000 people, while Montgomery County is like 1.1 million, right? Yeah. So they were doing the waterfront plan. Super exciting. We were designing, you know, working with developers to design buildings for the waterfront, doing super exciting affordable housing projects with Ikea like Old Town Commons. Seeing when I arrived, Potomac Yard was literally a dirt school bus parking lot with one building, the fire station. And, you know, really like seeing that all develop in the time I was there. So I was having a grand old time. I heard that Rollin was left after four years and that they were looking for a new planning director. I did not apply. I was really, really interested in what I was doing in Alexandria. I was having a great time. They the board was not finding candidates who they wanted to hire, and they had had quite a few people apply, quite a few interviews.

Gwen Wright 01:45:12  They just hadn't found the right person. So and I remind him of this to this day, Norman Dreyfus, who was a good friend of mine who was with a developer with i-D, he essentially.

John Coe 01:45:25  Checked his company.

Gwen Wright 01:45:27  Right. Well, he Norman's essentially developed the usual world right back in the day. Yeah. And he was a good friend. And he called me up and he said, Gwen, why have you not applied for this position? And I said, well, really and truly, because I'm very happy in Alexandria and I, you know, I don't want to do all of the air and budget and the this and the that, he said. Norman, who was a great salesman, said, when you'll be the planning director. You can delegate all of that. You can. You know, you you can focus. You know, you like design. You can focus on design. You'll be able to, you know, set the stage. And so I said, well, you, you, you know, you're very convincing.

Gwen Wright 01:46:14  And so what the heck, I'll throw my hat in the ring. And again, like I said, for this original job as the historic preservation person, I didn't really expect that they would hire me. I mean, because honestly, you know, I, you know, I always envisioned that they would want to hire someone of national, you know, prominence or whatever. But again, to my amazement, they hired me. And I think one of the things they liked was that I knew Montgomery County well. I knew all of the players. I had strong connections, both in the community, with residents and also in the development community. A lot of the developers that I've worked with in Alexandria were also doing projects in Montgomery County. And, you know, I had both sort of the, you know, the vision, but also the sort of deep background knowledge of Montgomery County and all the players in Montgomery County to hopefully execute that vision. I think Rollin had had a strong vision, but he didn't know all the players and he stepped on a lot of toes.

Gwen Wright 01:47:29  And so, you know, I think they saw in me both someone who could be visionary but could be practical and could actually implement some of these visions. And I feel like I did I feel like I was very successful at that. I think you can see that master plans that we did sometimes with great, you know. angst have been implemented in our fantastic. You know, I I'm happy every time I drive through downtown Bethesda. I feel like the new buildings in downtown Bethesda are the quality of architecture that Bethesda deserves, and are creating a new kind of Bethesda. I was very happy to see Westford building out. The Westford plan was extremely difficult. Lots of controversy with the community, but now that I see it building out, I think it's going to be fantastic. I was happy with Chevy Chase Lake. That was one of the first plans that we had approved when I first arrived. There were even some great things happening in Montgomery Village. You know, I mean, we did plans and those plans got implemented, which was one of my mantras, which is we don't do plans to just have them sit on the shelf.

Gwen Wright 01:48:50  We have that can be actually implemented.

John Coe 01:48:54  So how did the initiative Montgomery 2050 start? And who initiated it and what was the overall thought process.

Gwen Wright 01:49:04  Right. So you know, we did again, over the course of my tenure, Francoise Carrier was the planning board chair at the beginning of my tenure. And then it became KC Anderson and KC. And I had a lot of the same vision for Montgomery County, which focused on creating these walkable, bikeable communities with a mix of uses with, you know, strong housing components. And I promoted my idea about this new suburban ism. And I also created within the planning department a design excellence initiative. And, you know, one of the things that I had learned in Alexandria. Honestly, is how much design matters, how much detail counts, how you can have new development in an area that already has lots of neighbors, and the neighbors can accept that new development. If it's a high quality design and that it it feels like it works with and is compatible with the with the existing community.

Gwen Wright 01:50:16  And I felt like Montgomery County for too long had been willing to I mean, I, I my analogy had always been that Montgomery County was like a 16 year old, didn't quite know if they were an adolescent or grown up. I didn't really know if they were still bedroom suburb community or if they were moving into becoming, you know, more urban and and just like a 16 year old, sometimes they're willing to accept whatever, attention gets thrown at them because they are so unsure of themselves. And like I would say to my 16 year old daughter, honey, if you don't love yourself, no one else is going to love you. And so one of the things I learned in Alexandria was Alexandria loved itself, I think, because it was an old established community for hundreds of years. And basically anyone who came in to build something in Alexandria was implicitly told, you know, this is a special place. You better come in and bring your A game. We don't accept the B game or the C game.

Gwen Wright 01:51:30  You better come in and bring your A game because like Georgetown same thing. This is a special place. And the problem with Montgomery County was frequently they weren't demanding enough. They weren't saying you know we are a special place. Bring your A game. They were just happy that someone would bring their B game or their C game and say thank you. And what I wanted to emphasize was that Montgomery County was a special place. Well educated, wealthy people, incredible resources, incredible infrastructure, and it deserved every developer's A-game. And when we first saw the car building in Bethesda, it was essentially a big solid glass box. And I remember sitting in the room with the folks from car development and saying, well, this is a denial. If you take this forward, staff is going to be recommending denial. And I think that blew them away because here was this major new building in downtown Bethesda. How could you recommend denial? Luckily, they had a great architect, Roberts bond seller with Shalom Barons who who got it and said, you know, I basically said, this is the first major new building in the new Bethesda.

Gwen Wright 01:52:47  It has got to be extraordinary. And he got it. And I think they did build a building that is extraordinary. And I love that the building that Saul is building next to it is also extraordinary in a completely different architectural style. I mean, the thing that first emerged did across the street is extraordinary in a completely different architectural style, and each of them is unique. So, you know, I, I felt very, very strongly that if we're going to have major new development in Bethesda and big, big new buildings, they had to be of the highest quality design. They had to be unique. They had to create sets.

John Coe 01:53:35  Let's contrast Bethesda with Silver Spring for a moment. And I interviewed Both John Peterson and Taylor Chess with Peterson and also Brian Fulcher of Fulcher Pratt. Yeah, those two companies came together in response to Doug Duncan's request after the debacle with the Canadian Development Company, and we told that whole story, which I'm sure you're familiar with, because you were in the. You're in the right position through that whole thing.

Gwen Wright 01:54:06  And involved in historic preservation, which was integral to all of it. Yeah.

John Coe 01:54:11  So the Silver String story, you know, Bryant, both Bryant and John both said, and Milt, of course, it was not able to. He was right before he passed away actually, unfortunately. But Milt was a big part of it at the time. You know, Milton and and Milton and Bryant said, we need to listen to the community. And that's what the Canadians did not do. I mean, they came in, they wanted to build this massive shopping center that really wasn't going to fit. And entertainment and all that, I remember. Yeah, yeah. And so Brian said we wanted to listen to the community. So we did. And we want to build a hardware store and all these different things that the community wanted, which they did, apparently. And it started very successful.

Gwen Wright 01:55:00  Yeah.

John Coe 01:55:00  Initially.

Gwen Wright 01:55:00  Yeah.

John Coe 01:55:02  Unfortunately the the office market, of course, never really got off the ground after.

John Coe 01:55:09  And then of course, just recently Discovery Communications decided to leave downtown Silver Spring. So I think the last five years and that I think has had a really dampening effect on that market. And, you know, it just it's been it's never really gotten to where it could have gotten. So I'll just set that stage. Tell me why why Silver Spring hasn't matured in a way that Bethesda has. Because from your.

Gwen Wright 01:55:36  Perspective, I think Silver Spring is a wonderful place and it's a different place than Bethesda. I remember being in. You have to remember, I when I came to Silver Spring in 1987, there was closed up, boarded up buildings. There was an old jcpenney's that looked like it had been in 1965. And that was, you know, the big retail in downtown Silver Spring. There there was no momentum there. You know, there was an old red brick government office building where the Discovery Channel building was built. Silver spring? Yeah. Again, this is this is such a Montgomery County thing.

Gwen Wright 01:56:24  Always looking at sort of the glass half empty. Montgomery Silver Spring was a huge success. It took an area that was absolutely Desolate, and it's created an area that even today, is an incredible place. I was in Silver Spring on a, I don't know, a Thursday evening, and I was walking down the you know what? What was Ellsworth Street now is, you know, a pedestrian area. And there are people everywhere. There are skateboarders, there are people going to the movie theater, there are people going to the restaurants. There are people sitting outside. There is, you know, this great community building. There's the ice skating rink, which is always filled with people. There are people lined up, literally can't get a parking space to shop at Whole Foods. I mean it, and I love the fact that Folger Pratt called it downtown Silver Spring. Not some, you know, Silver Spring Town Center, you know, I mean, it it became functioning downtown and it still is to this day, although it is now experience.

Gwen Wright 01:57:48  It's gone. It's gone. Like on it's it's on the cycle of of urban places, you know, places that have been incredibly successful, that are now struggling with some of the urban success. You know, they've become they're experiencing some of the urban problems. Right? It's the same thing honestly. You know, think about think about, you know, the area near the Capital One Arena. I mean, I remember when the Capital One Arena didn't exist and that was Chinatown, and you could sit on an empty parking lot where the Capital One Arena is now. And it was desolate and it went through this incredible, you know, renaissance and place. Right? Everyone was there. That was the place you would go. The bars, the restaurants, it was the place. And now it's suffering from some of the problems of being a successful urban place and some of the bigger problems, I think, which is true for Silver Spring, is that we're having as a society, which it's hard to control, you know, homelessness, drug use, you know, etc., etc..

Gwen Wright 01:59:02  And, you know, I just I just would argue that Silver Spring was an enormous success and that it's still very strong. Although you're right, the office market is a challenge. And filling and using that Discovery Channel building is is critical because the workers from that building helped, you know, provide customers for all the restaurants and shops and so on and so forth. But, you know, there are shops that are there that have been able to stay open for, you know, much more than a decade, and that's a success. You know, that Whole Foods has been opened. I can't remember, it's probably been 15 years now. So, you know, I can't remember exactly why we got on this tangent, but just.

John Coe 02:00:01  I brought it up.

Gwen Wright 02:00:02  That, you know, Silver Springs.

John Coe 02:00:04  Just contrasting it with Bethesda. That's all the same extent.

Gwen Wright 02:00:07  I mean, Bethesda has a different vibe and it always has had a different vibe. And I think Bethesda, you know, you could argue, oh, Bethesda is unsuccessful because Barnes and Noble closes closed and Anthropologie went in.

Gwen Wright 02:00:25  Well, I just don't think that is true. I think I agree with that. Yeah, the Bethesda is still a wonderful, vibrant place. And if you go to Silver Spring and walk around, it's a wonderful and vibrant place. It's a different socioeconomic group, but it's a wonderful and vibrant place to someday.

John Coe 02:00:47  The Purple Line will open. Yeah. And when that happens, you might see a little more cross-pollination between Silver Spring, Bethesda and then going east of maybe eventually to College Park. Yeah. So the culturally, you know, cross-pollination there could be interesting. The question is, will it happen in this decade or will be in 2030 before it starts? You know, is the question, you know, well, it's.

Gwen Wright 02:01:15  One of the things that's very frustrating. You know, again, I contrast this with Northern Virginia. I worked in Northern Virginia for five years. They got the idea that they wanted to have, you know, a BRT connection between Crystal city and the Braddock Road Metro.

Gwen Wright 02:01:34  In the five years I was there, it was conceived of and it was built. I mean, you can argue that the it's called Metro way. You can argue whether it's successful or not. But, you know, it was conceived of and it was built with a mix of dedicated lanes and, you know, mix mixed in with regular traffic. Alexandria had a hand do mindset, you know, they had a waterfront plan. They were going to implement that waterfront plan even though it involved, you know, huge things like removing the, the boat club at the foot of King Street and replacing it, another spot, building open space, dealing with some of the water issues. They just they just did it, you know, Montgomery County struggles. You know, you've always you've heard about, paralysis by analysis. And I think there is definitely an element of that in Montgomery County is that people are afraid to simply be bold. Be clear. Move forward with the vision that has been, you know, documented and voted on.

Gwen Wright 02:02:50  And I think the purple line is too bad because it's a great vision. It's an important vision. We need those East-West connections. Montgomery County has always had the north south connections, but not the east west connections. And you know it's going to benefit. I mean, both sides. I don't know if you've been to College Park recently, but University of Maryland is booming, and the University of Maryland is now like a top public university in which, you know, when I was growing up, it was not. And it is now up. I mean, like up there with University of Virginia and, you know, University of Michigan and stuff like that. And, you know, to connect to that, to be able to cross pollinate with that. Yeah. it's incredible.

John Coe 02:03:42  Phenomenal. It'll be phenomenal. So let me get back to 2050 a little bit. And then also two other things that are happening in the county that are interesting. one is what's known as ADUs and the legislation there, which is the accessory dwelling unit.

John Coe 02:04:00  And the other is the eradication, potentially, of single family zoning in Montgomery County, which is either is already been passed or certainly strongly being considered. and so talk about the evolution of those ideas. And then, you know, is that a is that part of the big picture vision of 2050 or is it something else?

Gwen Wright 02:04:24  Well, I mean, I thrive 2050 really talks about the housing challenge. And there is an enormous housing challenge in Montgomery County. You know, our children are not going to be able to live in Montgomery County. My my daughter, who, is 26 and just graduated from Cornell with a master's in public administration, probably couldn't live in Montgomery County.

John Coe 02:04:52  Even rent.

Gwen Wright 02:04:54  Or it would be challenging. It would be challenging. She could rent an MDU if she could get an MDU. But, you know, and there's lots of debate about what's going to solve that housing challenge. And my answer, and I think the answer in thrive 2050 is we need to do everything, anything and everything.

Gwen Wright 02:05:20  It's not one action that is going to solve the housing issue. We need to build as many moderately priced dwelling units and PDAs as possible, which are regulated, affordable units in the county. You have to do any development. Over 20 units has to provide 12.5 moderately priced dwelling units in many parts of the county. We've kicked that number up to 15%. We've provided incentives. If you do an even higher number, like 20 or 25% in Bethesda, from the time the master plan was approved in 2017 till the time I left, and there probably are even more now, we created in new buildings, over 400 MPD, and those were on sites that had never had houses housing before. It's not like they were right getting rid of older stock. These are on sites that never had had housing. We created, you know, over 400 moderately priced dwelling units. So we need to keep doing that. That's really that's one strategy and one thing that's really important. We have to build more market rate housing so that, you know, so that we can provide it's a supply demand issue.

Gwen Wright 02:06:49  We have to have enough supply to meet the demand. So we have to keep doing that. We have to do innovative projects like ADUs. And that's an accessory dwelling unit that was approved several years ago. And it allows people to add a dwelling unit on their single family property. Again, that's great. It's not going to solve the housing problem. It will provide, you know. Probably hundreds, not thousands of accessory dwelling units, which both benefit the person who gets to live there, as well as the person who owns the house because it brings in income. And particularly, as you know, perhaps they get older and move into a fixed income situation, that additional income from an accessory dwelling unit is really helpful to them. We need to. And what thrive 2050 emphasizes, because, as I said, it's the wedges and corridors plan, except refined at a more fine grained scale for the 21st century. So we need to look at all of the corridors, whether it be Georgia Avenue, Connecticut Avenue, viewers, Mill Road, River road, frankly, I mean, we have to look at the corridors and put as much housing as we can along those corridors.

Gwen Wright 02:08:17  And to me, that's where the density needs to go, because that's where you have transit. That's where you have walkability. That also serves as a way to buffer the single family houses, from the busy corridors that have all of the transit and the traffic and so on. We need to offer opportunities for more flexibility in our single family neighborhoods so that if someone wants to build a duplex or if someone wants to build a triplex, they have the ability to do that. I personally believe that's a great idea, but it's not going to have tons of takers and isn't going to be the solution for our housing problem. But like I said, we need anything and everything. We don't need to just focus on one tool or one way of addressing housing need. We need to do it all again. In Cleveland Park, where I live on Porter Street, which is a block from where I live. We have duplexes, small apartment buildings, and single family homes nixed cheek by jowl up and down Porter Street, and it's very successful.

Gwen Wright 02:09:30  I can literally look out my backyard and see a wonderful duplex next to a single family house designed by I.M. Pei. You know, you can have a mix of, of uses and a mix of building types if they're well designed. I mean, one of the things that scares a lot of single family residents, and probably appropriately, is they see some of the pop ups in the District of Columbia, which are, not compatible and are a detriment to their surrounding neighborhood if they were able to see good Design in new small multifamily efforts within neighborhoods. People wouldn't be as afraid of it.

John Coe 02:10:24  Well, that's the question there. You know, from a regulatory standpoint, how do you do that without having architectural covenants? Basically, overland, which again, gets into, you know, imposing on mature neighborhoods like that, if you were starting from scratch with a neighbor with raw land and you're building with those covenants, that's one thing like Andreas Duany did up in Kent Lyons and that that whole thought process, but taking a mature neighborhood and converting it, there's the that's the what we.

Gwen Wright 02:10:59  Talked about within the planning department was creating what we called a toolkit. It's essentially a set of guidelines for, you know, duplexes or triplexes within a single family neighborhood, and if someone wanted to build that, they would either. Adhere to the guidelines which would assure a level of compatibility, or they would have to go through the site plan process and through a design review process. So there would be a choice. You know, you could follow certain guidelines in a in a toolkit and build duplexes and triplexes that are compatible, like the ones I mentioned on Porter Street in Cleveland Park. Or you can go through a more detailed site plan process, working with the community and the planning staff and come up with a different solution. Okay.

John Coe 02:11:57  So basically anything and everything that's interesting.

Gwen Wright 02:12:01  Housing. I think that is sadly the situation because the housing crisis is so severe.

John Coe 02:12:12  So let's shift the focus a little bit to the, you know, the region a little bit and kind of what you're seeing from a regional standpoint.

John Coe 02:12:21  You know, I participated in Reality Check in 2007, which I don't know if you participated in or not, which was a regional planning exercise. And it was an interesting day because we had this was down, I think we were not mistaken. It was either the Reagan building or the convention Center. I think it was a Reagan building. Maybe we had a great big Roman. We had, I don't know, 30 tables, and they had Legos in the center, and we had the map of the district or the map to the metropolitan area in the region. And we had to lay the density out on the region and, you know, the existing using existing statistics and then looking at the future of what the vision was. And it was fascinating, and it was fascinating because of who was in the room. And who is there among, you know, these tables were allocated where we had community people, we had government officials, we had developers. We had, you know, planning people. We had the whole mix of the of the process at these tables and a lot of there's a lot of excitement around it.

John Coe 02:13:28  And, you know, people were open, their minds were open to new ideas and thought processes. But unfortunately, except for a couple of things that have happened since then, the distress with Metro funding HQ2 with in, you know, you know, National landing, the Amazon thing and the Olympics, which was another thrust that happened. You know, there was you know, those were regional efforts to try to do something for each one of those things. But other than those things, we haven't really changed that much since 2007. That thought the original thought process. What do you think about the future? You know, will we eventually get there, or is it, you know, going to have the continual divisions and challenges?

Gwen Wright 02:14:15  We'll have continual divisions and challenge. I mean, I think that we have to remember that every jurisdiction is is sort of motivated by self-interest. And as they should be, they have to they have to respond to their constituents, to their residents, to the people who've elected them.

Gwen Wright 02:14:39  And there is inherently a lot of competition between jurisdictions and sometimes conflict between jurisdictions. I think that the kinds of things that we should focus on as regional efforts are some of the things you've mentioned infrastructure. You know, whether it be transportation or environmental, those are regional Issues that we should think about focusing on. We had a big housing discussion. I was co-chair of the Planning Directors advisory group for Cog, the Council of Government. Yes. And we had a big housing discussion to talk about housing need and to try to quantify what each jurisdiction really needed to do in terms of housing. Some jurisdictions took that very seriously. I know the District of Columbia did. I think Montgomery County has been trying to take it very seriously. The council, county council at least. And, you know, so those are big regional issues that can have big regional discussions in terms of, you know, allocating density regionally. I don't think that's ever going to work because everyone, you know, has their own self-interest at heart.

Gwen Wright 02:16:02  I think that what will come naturally is where you have transportation infrastructure. You will have density. And so if people, you know, argue for a new metro line or for, improvement to existing metro service, you know, whether it be like a second entrance at White Flint or a second entrance at forest Glen, you know, you'll get those things and then you'll be able to have more density and more development. But I honestly have a hard time seeing all the jurisdictions coming together. As much as it would be nice to say, well, you get this much density and you get that much density. Not going to happen, but transportation, environment, water and sewer. I mean, I think we don't talk enough about water and sewer as infrastructure and how it's a regional issue. Those Things. We should come together, we should be working on, we should be thinking about, and they will result in more development and more density in individual jurisdictions.

John Coe 02:17:16  Pivoting to social issues that affect us thinking how do we change the mindsets to accentuate differences among people, highlighting their strengths as continuing contributing people both in business and society?

Gwen Wright 02:17:30  Well, one of the things that I initiated in Montgomery County was a placemaking initiative, and the placemaking initiative went in to different communities and created opportunities for events, for artwork, for festivals, for things that were special to that community.

Gwen Wright 02:17:54  So, you know, one example I gave is we did a major mural on our building in Wheaton that really recognized all the different cultures and the different people who live in Wheaton. And it was, I think, something that excited people was a beautiful mural and sort of brings people together. we do a major placemaking effort in Long Branch, which is, you know, a community that's very diverse and, you know, it brings together older, longtime residents and newer residents. And there is an understanding of some of the great, you know, businesses that have come in in those communities that everyone makes use of and enjoys different restaurants, different kinds of, you know, businesses that have a cultural component. You know, I think that, you know, one of the things that is is hard that ever since the, pandemic, people are more isolated. They're sitting like, we're sitting in our houses talking on a computer rather than talking to each other in person. People need places to come together and see and talk to each other in person.

Gwen Wright 02:19:17  And that's an important role both for government and for private development, to create those places, whether they be civic institutions like libraries or public squares in new development, they need to. People need an opportunity to come together. As much as we have suffered from the pandemic and people have gotten used to isolation, I think people really want to be with other people. And that's why placemaking initiatives, public art, you know, a great public realm across from our Wheaton building. There's a great public plaza and Wheaton town Square. They have concerts. I've been to some of them. It's a great place for people to come together. The Wheaton Art parade, which was created by a group of citizens, residents in Wheaton that has become a huge annual event, and it gets people excited about art and art that represents different cultural histories and traditions. So I think there are things like that that can pull people together, and I think we need it now, honestly, more than ever. And one thing in that regard about housing that I wanted to mention that ties a little bit to something you and I were discussing before.

Gwen Wright 02:20:46  The before our conversation started is, you know, one of the great things that the public that the government has is access to public land and public land, which is underutilized for whatever reason, either because it's underutilized office or it's just parking garages or it's, you know, empty parking lots. Whatever underutilized public land we have should be the first place that we look to create the things that we need in this vision of our new suburban home, with the places we need to create parks and open space, the places we need to create housing, the places we need to create those third places where people can come together. I'm very excited, for example, in Bethesda, with the idea that some of the parking lots kind the farm Women's market may become parks and the parking may be and be located below grade. and the land above grade becomes open space and becomes, you know, a major public park, which Bethesda really needs. I think the fact that, you know, Silver Spring was a frontrunner in this, in the wonderful civic building and plaza and ice skating rink that they created, that has become a great public space.

Gwen Wright 02:22:18  They do, you know, Saturday Farmer's Market, every Saturday they have, you know, great activities in the winter, ice skating and concerts in the summer. You know, those are the kinds of things that pull together and create the community that is essential for us to have as a society.

John Coe 02:22:40  How do you see the private sector getting involved in the planning process?

Gwen Wright 02:22:46  Well, I have always believed and I've always said my, my, my mantra is that the private sector developers and the public sector planners are actually coming from the same mindset. We all are in our heart of hearts do gooders who want to improve the built environment. That's right. We all have, you know, this vision that we're going to create a great place now. Private sector developers would like to make money doing that. That's and that's very legitimate because they're also taking the major financial risk to do it. But you know, we have more in common than sometimes I think we realise or are given credit for having in terms of a goal of creating a great built environment and creating great communities.

Gwen Wright 02:23:43  And I think sometimes when you recognise that and say, you know, this is an opportunity with a new master plan or a new development, to work together, to realize that vision, to create something that will be a special new place. And I think we've been successful in Montgomery County. Silver spring is an example. Bethesda is an example. You know, all of Bethesda Row didn't exist, you know, 25 years ago. We're doing things in, you know, the Strathmore Square, you know, which is up near the Strathmore Metro station and that is becoming developed and is going to be a great place and a great community. So, you know, my big sort of mantra, the things that I always in fact, I said this in like my first all staff meeting when I became planning director is I believe in collaboration, Creativity and integrity. That's great. And those are the key elements.

John Coe 02:24:58  That's great. As a female leader. What challenges have you faced in your career? How have you been able to make your voice heard and achieve the success you've had?

Gwen Wright 02:25:10  You know, one of my favorite stories is, again, when I was doing preservation, I was sitting in the the planning board meeting room in the old building on Georgia Avenue in Silver Spring.

Gwen Wright 02:25:21  And I don't know if you knew Chuck Dalrymple, who was Bob Dalrymple, father, who worked at oh.

John Coe 02:25:26  Bob, I don't know. Chuck.

Gwen Wright 02:25:28  Yeah. Chuck was his father, and he was another partner at Lynas and Blocker. Neal, around the same time as Bob Metz, maybe a little earlier, and we'd been working on some project that involved a historic property. It was a little controversial, but we worked everything out and that case was coming to the planning board, and I was sitting in the audience in the auditorium, and Chuck came in to testify or talk. And as he walked down the middle aisle to talk, he reached over and he literally patted me on the head. And, you know, I remember thinking to myself, I could take offense of this. I could say, you know, male chauvinist pig, you know, terrible thing. Or I could take it as here is an older man who, through our negotiations, has become fond of me, you know, like like a daughter kind of, you know, fond and was expressing that fondness and that, you know, like a parent.

Gwen Wright 02:26:39  Yeah. And, you know, I said so rather than get angry and say, this is a male chauvinist pig. I'm trying to take it as. I succeeded in having an adversary. Someone who I'm usually in an adversarial, you know, argument with has become fond of me, as, you know, like like one of his kids.

John Coe 02:27:03  Or maybe a mentor.

Gwen Wright 02:27:05  Yeah. And so, you know, I would say so that's one of my messages as a woman in development is that you have to. Not get pissed off when people do things that they honestly aren't trying to do to offend you, but you also have to stand up and assert yourself when you feel like you are being pushed to the side. I mean, at another meeting in Alexandria, I remember we were all sitting at a development review meeting, and this developer needed copies of something and asked me if I would go get copies. And I basically said, you know, I'll call my administrative aide and ask them to come make copies.

Gwen Wright 02:27:57  And, you know, you have to, you have to assert yourself. And this is when I was chief of the division. I mean, you have to make sure that no one takes advantage of you and that you are you know that you are a strong leader, but you also listen. You're flexible. You understand that when you come in with one point of view, that point of view may change after you've listened to all sides of the argument. And, you know, one of the things that I think actually women are pretty good at is or is the ability to listen, to coalesce a lot of these ideas and to come up with solutions that maybe others haven't thought about. Women are very good at problem solving and, you know, thinking about different, different ways to think outside the box, get to the solution that is satisfactory to everyone. So, you know, I think as a woman leader, you have to be strong and assertive. But there's lots of ways to be, you know, to be able to disagree without being disagreeable.

Gwen Wright 02:29:21  And you have to, you know, be problem solver.

John Coe 02:29:27  Adaptability is the word I seem to think comes in there.

Gwen Wright 02:29:33  Yeah. Mold things. Yeah, yeah.

John Coe 02:29:38  So what were your biggest wins, losses and surprising events in your career.

Gwen Wright 02:29:44  When?

Gwen Wright 02:29:46  Well, in my whole career. That's. That's interesting. Some of my biggest wins. Back in my historic preservation day was being able to see a building that was on the verge of being demolished, not only retained, but actually renovated and become, you know, a an important asset, an important part of the community. So I think about that, honestly, with the Josiah Henson property, you know, someone had to have the vision when it came on the market that this was a property of not just local, but really regional and national significance and that we needed to acquire it and do something special with it, which the Parks Department has done the implementation. I feel like I was sort of the one who was the.

Gwen Wright 02:30:38  The.

Gwen Wright 02:30:38  The.

Gwen Wright 02:30:38  Vision.

Gwen Wright 02:30:39  But you know, they've they've done an amazing job at implementation. And it's an incredible part of not just the county's history, but our national history that is now retained. And so I feel like that was that was a big win in terms of big losses. Well, you know. Maybe that relates a little bit to what I was saying earlier about how one of my goals was to help Montgomery County understand, you know, or make that transition from being an adolescent to an adult and to get them to a point where they could say, you know, we have to love ourselves before anyone else is going to love us. I don't feel like I've really was able to accomplish that completely. I think I made progress. I worry that some of that progress is backsliding. And that we are getting back to, you know, a little bit too much of, you know, we'll accept what, what is offered to us rather than demanding excellence. And, you know, so again, it's not a complete loss because I feel like I made progress and I feel like we had some really good projects come out because of that, and that we've had some incredibly excellent new projects added in the county and that the quality of design has gone up and so forth.

Gwen Wright 02:32:17  But I guess I feel like I haven't fully been able to sort of, I don't know what institutionalize that, that thought, institutionalize that belief. You know, one of the things I'm very proud of and again, a win is thrive 2050. in words, institutionalize that belief and in words sets out a vision for a dynamic, exciting. County in the 21st century. We just have to figure out how to implement it. You know, and again, when there are economic downturns, no one wants to try anything risky. And, you know, it's it's it's it's sort of tough.

Gwen Wright 02:33:05  You know. Well.

John Coe 02:33:07  Visions can ebb and flow as you learn.

Gwen Wright 02:33:11  Yeah. Exactly, exactly.

John Coe 02:33:15  So what about a surprise? Any surprises? Anything that kind of came out of left field that you said? Whoa.

Gwen Wright 02:33:21  Well.

Gwen Wright 02:33:22  Being fired, being fired.

Gwen Wright 02:33:25  After.

Gwen Wright 02:33:26  30 plus years of working for Montgomery County, you know, just briefly, That was also a big disappointment. There was a lot of discord amongst the, planning board members.

Gwen Wright 02:33:45  In 2022, I had announced my retirement in like, June of 2022. My son, who's my youngest child, was graduating from college in May of 2023. I was writing my last tuition check in December of 2022, and I knew that I was ready to retire after I wrote that last tuition check. And, you know, I was, again, very much hoping to, you know, leave the department in a good situation. I had some wonderful deputies and division chiefs. I mean, one of the things I felt best about was that I had hired a great, great team in the planning department. Excellent. You know, deputies and division chiefs.

Gwen Wright 02:34:31  Just.

Gwen Wright 02:34:32  A wealth of talent. And I felt really, really good about that, that I was leaving a strong organization. But there was discord amongst the planning board members themselves, and I decided that it was, you know, not fair that a lot of the allegations that were being made against the chairman were being made. And so I spoke up to defend him.

Gwen Wright 02:35:00  And within 24 hours after speaking up to defend him, I was fired. And in a very, you know, dramatic way, one of those kinds of firings where you're like literally told gather your things and leave the building. Right. And so I, I was not happy about that. I felt that the county council, who were obviously not happy either, because within two business days after I was fired, they asked for the entire planning board to resign. I think my firing was part of it. It was like sort of the straw that broke the camel's back. But I think they were tired of the discord that was happening within the planning, the planning board. But I felt, you know, like it really didn't allow me to leave this job in the orderly way that I had planned to leave. And, you know, I had hoped to that the board would have selected the new planning director before I left so that I could do some knowledge transfer and that there could be, you know, a good transition.

Gwen Wright 02:36:11  I mean, there was none of that. People were thrown into a tizzy. And luckily, again, because I had wonderful staff in the planning department, although they were thrown into a tizzy, they were able to quickly get it together and keep carrying on. Which, you know, I give them so much credit for doing that. All of the senior staff banded together and they, you know, were able to keep the development review work going, keep the master plans going. They did a fantastic job. And, you know, ultimately through lots and lots of discussion and negotiation, the current planning board did issue a statement saying that they regretted how my departure had happened and they recognized the things I had accomplished, particularly in the realm of design excellence. And they're actually very kindly naming our Design Excellence Award, which we do every other year with the Potomac Valley chapter of the American Institute of Architects. They're naming it the Gwen Wright Design Excellence Award. So I.

Gwen Wright 02:37:28  Was.

Gwen Wright 02:37:29  Very touched by that because that, again, was one of my, you know, my signature efforts.

Gwen Wright 02:37:37  So anyway, I would say that was a surprise, an unpleasant surprise, but actually it's all worked out quite well.

John Coe 02:37:47  Well, not only that, what's interesting is your legacy was there and you were already planning to retire in your mind, so it wasn't as if this came up. It did come out of left field and the way it happened. Right. But it really didn't. You know, it wasn't as if, oh my God, now what am I going to do kind of thing. Exactly. You were pretty much already set what you were going to do. Exactly. Which I guess, you know, in the long run turned out well, hopefully. Yeah.

Gwen Wright 02:38:15  So yeah.

Gwen Wright 02:38:16  And, you know, honestly, people have been very, very kind since my departure. I have gotten some wonderful recognition from Uli Washington. I got a leadership award from Naomi from the Affordable Housing Coalition. I mean, I've gotten some wonderful, wonderful recognition. I have a little shelf in my house with all my awards lined up.

Gwen Wright 02:38:43  And so, you know, that's very meaningful to me that that, you know, my colleagues in many different areas, whether it be the development realm, the affordable housing realm, you know, my staff colleagues, you know that that that there's been recognition from the people who really matter. So that's been really nice.

Gwen Wright 02:39:10  That's great.

John Coe 02:39:12  So, Gwen, what are your life priorities among family work and giving back?

Gwen Wright 02:39:17  So good question. I you know, I have two children, but they are grown and sort of semi-independent at this point, although I still step in to help my daughters moving from Ithaca to Albany, where she's going to be working, and I'm going to go up and help her with move. So I'm still, you know, I'm still a mom and my husband is an attorney in Alexandria. And so I still he's working more than full time. And I still, you know, I'm very supportive of him, but I have wanted to sort of keep my hand in professionally. And that's why my little consulting practice has been helpful, because it keeps me really energized and intellectually stimulated.

Gwen Wright 02:40:06  And I am potentially going to, serve on some different boards and commissions. I actually just joined the board of the Montgomery History Group, which is fun. And I'm potentially going to to join a commission in the District of Columbia. And, you know, I feel like that is, again, one of the ways I can use my knowledge and my experience and all of the things I've learned over the last 30 years of my professional life, to try to give back to my community.

Gwen Wright 02:40:42  That's great.

John Coe 02:40:43  What advice would you give your 25 year old self, Gwen?

Gwen Wright 02:40:47  I would say less and listen more.

John Coe 02:40:51  That's great.

Gwen Wright 02:40:52  Advice. Yeah. Yeah.

John Coe 02:40:55  Okay, my final question. If you could post a statement on a billboard on the Capitol Beltway, which they don't have, there are no billboards in the Capital Beltway. But let's just say you had the only one. What would it say?

Gwen Wright 02:41:09  Well, maybe.

Gwen Wright 02:41:09  I could spray paint it on that bridge near the. Where it's surrender. Dorothy. Right.

Gwen Wright 02:41:16  I would, I would say, and again, sometimes I sort of think in bullet points, I would say number one place matters. Number two, community matters. Number three, working together matters. And number four and sort of overarching everything you need to strive for excellence in everything. And that would be sort of that would be my billboard.

Gwen Wright 02:41:49  That's awesome.

John Coe 02:41:50  Well, Gwen, thank you very much for your time and your explanation of all your phenomenal career. And I really appreciate you sitting down and doing this.

Gwen Wright 02:42:01  I apologize for all the phone calls and so forth in the background, which maybe you can edit out, but, you know, it goes to show I'm busy. I'm staying busy.

Gwen Wright 02:42:12  Thank you.