INSIDE Fight over Costco gas station in Wheaton nears end. A-4
SCHOOLS: James Hubert Blake (above) and Wheaton high schools celebrate graduates. A-3
The Gazette
SILVER SPRING | TAKOMA PARK | WHEATON | BURTONSVILLE
SPORTS: Springbrook boys’ basketball using state semifinal loss as fuel this summer. B-1
DA I LY U P DAT E S AT G A Z E T T E . N E T
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
25 cents
Council: Focus White Oak on jobs, not housing
A sea of decisions
Planner says ‘traffic challenges’ are likely
n
BY
KEVIN JAMES SHAY STAFF WRITER
BILL RYAN/THE GAZETTE
Elizabeth Leca, 9, of Silver Spring follows her mother, Karen Schofield-Leca, into the early voting location at the Silver Spring Civic Center on Friday. Voting for the 2014 Maryland primary elections began on Thursday. After five days, 9,672 people in Montgomery County and more than 71,000 people across the state had voted early. The early-voting period will continue through Thursday. On Tuesday — Primary Day — polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. For stories about candidates for county, state and federal office, visit The Gazette’s voters’ guide at www.gazette.net/section/vg2014.
Updated master plans for the White Oak and Fairland areas of Silver Spring need to focus on jobs more than housing, several Montgomery County Council members said Tuesday during a briefing on the proposal. The plans are designed to allow for development that advocates say could transform the region into a rival of the Interstate 270 biotech corridor. “This could just as easily turn into a housing project as a business project,” said Councilman Marc Elrich (D-At Large) of Takoma Park. “If offices don’t go there ... it could be a major problem.” Planners have been work-
ing on the proposal for several years, driven by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration moving its headquarters to White Oak and the potential relocation of Washington Adventist Hospital there from Takoma Park. They envision new mixeduse projects along U.S. 29 and the Hillandale Shopping Center near the Beltway and New Hampshire Avenue, with new office complexes, retail stores, restaurants, tens of thousands of jobs, and thousands of housing units. Current shopping centers in White Oak are “very well patronized,” while the neighborhoods are “well established” with homes of $500,000 and up, noted Councilwoman Nancy Navarro (D-Dist. 4) of Silver Spring. But many people go to Howard County when they want
See WHITE OAK, Page A-13
School prank leads to music career, honor Silver Spring mecca Silver Spring native to receive $100,000 prize for theater work
n
BY
KEVIN JAMES SHAY STAFF WRITER
If not for a mild-mannered prank in middle school, Arthur Perlman might not have started his musical theater career at such an early age. While attending Sligo Middle School in Silver Spring, Perlman and friend Jeffrey Lunden told a substitute teacher they were working on a musical and needed to be excused from class. “It worked,” said Perlman, 55, now living in New York. “As we walked down the hallway, we kind of looked at each other and said, ‘Now, what do we do?’ So we decided to go ahead and start working on an actual musical.”
On Monday, Perlman will receive the 24th annual Kleban Prize for being considered by an expert panel as the most promising musical theater librettist in the country. The honor, which includes a $100,000 award payPerlman able over two years, was established under the will of Edward Kleban, the Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winning lyricist of “A Chorus Line.” The program also awards the most promising lyricist, won this year by Nathan Tysen, also of New York. “The Kleban Prize is unique in that it is bestowed not just for an artist’s previous achievements, but for the promise of creativity to come,” Richard Maltby Jr., president of the Kleban Foundation and a Tony
Award-winner, said in a statement. With Perlman writing the lyrics and book and Lunden the music, they went on to finish that initial musical at Sligo. They called it “The Dark Side of the Sun” and produced it at the middle school. “It was set in New York City and had some whimsical songs, such as ‘It’s a Beautiful Day to be Mugged,’” Perlman said. “We did more musicals at Northwood High School and started to get more serious about the craft.” The duo — friends since kindergarten at Forest Knolls Elementary — continued to collaborate, even as they attended different colleges. They were reunited in the graduate musical theater program at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, where they both received fellowships. The pair had an early critical success
See PRANK, Page A-13
AFI festival brings documentaries to Silver Spring More than 80 screenings on tap; new documentary on 1971 burglary of FBI office among films n
BY
KEVIN JAMES SHAY STAFF WRITER
About a year before the Watergate burglary, a small group of antiwar activists who called themselves the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI broke into a tiny FBI office near Philadelphia. The group confiscated about 1,000 files of documents and an autographed photo of former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover in the 1971 burglary, which resulted in exposing the agency’s Cointelpro program. The FBI’s covert and sometimes illegal program
NEWS Automotive Calendar Classified Entertainment Homes Opinion Sports
B-13 A-2 B-9 B-5 B-2 A-14 B-1
IF YOU GO n When: Wednesday-Sunday n Where: AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center, 8633 Colesville Rd., Silver Spring. Other venues in Washington, D.C., including the Naval Heritage Center, National Portrait Gallery and GoetheInstitut. n Schedule and more information: afi. com/afidocs
of spying on and intimidating antiwar and other mostly left-wing political organizations, which also targeted civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., was shelved soon after many of the documents were published in the media.
See FESTIVAL, Page A-13
ON-THE-GO DINING JUST GOT BETTER New rules allow mobile vendors to operate daily in Takoma Park, among other options.
A-6
1910275
The FBI closed its investigation into the burglary in 1976 without identifying those involved, following a massive investigation. The group’s identity largely remained a secret until this year, when a book by Betty Medsger, the first journalist to report on the stolen documents when she wrote for The Washington Post, was released. The perpetrators included the late math and physics professor William C. Davidon, religious studies professor John Raines and his wife, Bonnie, a day-care director. That burglary is the subject of “1971,” one of the documentaries playing in the 12th annual AFI Docs, the international film festival formerly known as AFI Silverdocs. Some 84 feature and short films will be shown between Wednesday and Sun-
Volume 22, No. 25, Two sections, 32 Pages Copyright © 2014 The Gazette Please
RECYCLE
of music set to close n
Dale Music going out of business June 30, after 64 years BY
ALINE BARROS STAFF WRITER
There comes a time when the music must turn off. For Dale Music, store in Silver Spring, the farewell will be June 30. Owner Carol Warden is selling everything: sheet music for Mozart, Broadway selections, wedding collections, top 40 artists and anything else on display — even the empty file cabinets. The store is best known for its collection of sheet music, but also sells or rent musical instruments. “One of the things that
makes us so unusual in this store is the vast quantity of sheet music that we’ve carried. ... The other thing is the museum collection of musical instruments that in the store,” Warden said. Her parents, David and Rhoda Burchuk, opened Dale Music in 1950. David was a music educator, conductor and musicologist who moved to Maryland from Philadelphia. Warden recalled: “My mother one day said, ‘Why don’t you start your music store?’ Kind of as a joke. And six months later, he said, ‘Were you serious about starting a music store?’” Diamondback Investors LLC, a Besthesda company, bought the property from Warden for $1.7 million.
See MUSIC, Page A-13
TOM FEDOR/THE GAZETTE
Dale Music owner Carol Warden (left) at her Silver Spring store with 41-year employee Ed Hardy of Hyattsville. Warden is closing the business on June 30 after 64 years.