Time and Change

The sunlight woke me up this morning. I knew right away that it meant I had I overslept. My internal body clock has been waking me at around 5:45 this summer and today I slipped by an hour. Yikes. I know it is summer vacation but I may need to start setting an alarm. On the other hand, vacation will be over soon enough and I’ll be compelled to follow a work day schedule. Why rush it?

I’ve been driving my daughter to work every morning, which means daily trips to the Wilde Lake Village Center. It’s definitely one of those “life comes full circle” experiences as she is now a counselor at the camp where she spent many happy summers of her childhood. As you might expect, she has changed a lot over the years.

So has the Wilde Lake Village Center.

For many summers the trip to camp involved navigating what felt like a vast wasteland of empty parking lots. Now it is a hub of activity, both a neighborhood center and a neighborhood unto itself. I imagine that long time residents may have differing views but I like it. It’s definitely alive.

There was a lot neighborhood pushback on the Wilde Lake project, most notably against adding a residential component. There seems to be the same sort of objection in Hickory Ridge. I am certainly in no position to tell residents in other villages what to think, but I wonder if all the protest is warranted. The Wilde Lake Village Center is most certainly not what Old Columbia wanted but it may be okay anyway. And the mix of retail and residential may very well be the only way that redevelopment could have been financially feasible.

My summer commute in recent years has taken me to Bethesda. I’ve written about that, too. Now I’m back to hopping across town for morning drop off and my only challenge is finding a parking space at the wildly popular Starbucks. There are worse problems to have.