Montgomery Hills’ leafy neighborhoods contrast with busy Georgia Ave.
Cars stream off the Beltway onto Georgia Avenue in Silver Spring, Maryland, where traffic is inching past stoplights and attempting to turn from shopping centers, gas stations and churches. Sidewalks have no buffer with the road, but there are few pedestrians and even fewer trees or plants. Horns blare when confused drivers travel the wrong way in reversible lanes.Subscribe for unlimited access to The PostYou can cancel anytime.SubscribeBut the five leafy neighborhoods that abut either side of this mile-long stretch of Georgia Avenue belie the cacophony of traffic noise and endless concrete. And while residents prize the peaceful communities on their streets once they leave Georgia Avenue, they find it difficult to traverse the retail hub they center on.“There’s no relief from the traffic, no median, no trees. There are utility poles popping up in the middle of the sidewalk. It’s extremely inconvenient and ugly,” said Gus Bauman, who has lived in a Dutch Colonial house a few blocks to the west of Georgia Avenue for 48 years. Bauman was head of the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission from 1989 to 1993 and is an attorney focusing on land use and related environmental issues.The commercial area of Georgia Avenue from the Beltway south to Spring Street just north of downtown Silver Spring is known as Montgomery Hills. Most of the neighborhoods that border it all start with Woodside: Woodside Forest, Woodside Park, North Woodside and Woodside itself. Linden, itself the name of a tree, is the fifth community. At one point they all carried the name Montgomery Hills as well, but as resident Geoff Gerhardt notes, “it just became too much of a mouthful to say North Woodside Montgomery Hills.” Gerhardt has lived in a 1928 Craftsman bungalow in the neighborhood since 2011. The neighborhoods were established from the 1920s through the 1950s and have a diverse range of single-family houses and some newer townhouses.“I think the heart of the issue is Montgomery Hills really being ignored for years and years. It’s that when you look at the civic associations in the residential neighborhoods surrounding it, nobody really claims that as their own,” said Michelle Foster, who lives in Woodside Park and founded the group Friends of Montgomery Hills about a decade ago.Foster, who had been an urban planner in New York City, first moved to Reston, Virginia, but felt more at home in Silver Spring, moving into her center-hall Colonial house in 1994.“The opportunity to have a single-family home but be able to be in downtown Silver Spring really easily, to be able to walk and have community resources super close by, was important,” she said. “It was really diverse, and I mean that from all perspectives, from income and race and housing styles, it kind of had it all. So I’ve always said I think this is the absolute perfect place, and I just can’t imagine living anywhere else.”However, that doesn’t mean the perfection doesn’t have problems. Foster discovered that the neighborhood elementary school, Woodlin, is across Georgia Avenue, meaning it wasn’t really walkable for her son, and inconvenient for friends he made just across the road.In addition to an Aldi grocery store and CVS, mainly small, independently owned restaurants and businesses line both sides of Georgia, including Lime & Cilantro, which opened last year and quickly claimed a spot on Post restaurant critic Tom Sietsema’s 40 best area restaurants list. But even though some businesses are just a few blocks away, many people end up driving. “And when you’re already in your car, you often decide to just leave the neighborhood altogether,” Foster notes.At the same time, transportation options in the community are a bonus, said RLAH real estate agent Cari Jordan, who lives in another Silver Spring neighborhood. “It’s a commuter’s dream, with the Beltway right there as well as the Forest Glen Metro station,” she said. The Purple Line train under construction will have a station at the far edge of the North Woodside neighborhood.But help for Georgia Avenue is in the works. Friends of Montgomery Hills primarily focuses on working with the Maryland State Highway Administration for improvements. The state’s Georgia Avenue Safety and Accessibility Project has been planned for years but has moved slowly. In fact, Bauman remembers holding meetings in his living room back in the 1970s to help sketch out ideas.The project focuses on the road from just a block north of the Beltway by the Forest Glen Metro station down to 16th Street, a stretch of about three-quarters of a mile that carries about 71,500 vehicles a day. Improvements now in the works call for removing the center reversible lane, replacing it with a landscaped median and new left turn lanes. A two-way bike lane will be added to the west side of Georgia, continuing onto 16th Street to the end of the neighborhood at Second Avenue. The Beltway exit and entrance areas on Georgia Avenue will be improved, and new or upgraded sidewalks on both sides of Georgia will be added, as well as a pedestrian crossing with a signal.As a first step, the State Highway Administration is now working on relocating utility poles. A Shell gas station was demolished, and the Montgomery Hills car wash, which operated for 51 years, was closed in March and will be removed to make way for planned improvements. Actual road construction is expected to begin in 2028.“The partnership with the community has been critical to moving this project forward, and we look forward to coming back to celebrate its completion,” State Highway Administrator Will Pines said during a Sept. 4 event held on Georgia Avene to announce full funding of the project. The draft fiscal year 2026-2031 transportation budget allocates $50.8 million for the project.While having the project move ahead is a win, coalescing the community is also an accomplishment, said Gerhardt. He is also vice president of Friends of Montgomery Hills and helps coordinate the community’s Street Fest every one to two years, which draws more than 1,000 residents. The event includes tables for community organizations, food from local restaurants, and remarks by area elected officials. The next Street Fest will take place in spring 2026.“It’s a fun event. It’s placemaking, but for us it’s also an important advocacy function,” he said.For Bauman, Snider’s, the independent grocery store that has been in Montgomery Hills since 1946, proximity to the Metro and tree-lined streets with diverse housing are all important attributes to the community.“I have found over the half-century I’ve been here, people say to me, ‘Aren’t you going to move to Bethesda or Potomac?’ I say: ‘Why would I do that? It’s so easy living here.’ What people do here, they don’t move. They just build additions.”Home sales: From Sept. 1, 2024, to Sept. 1, 2025, 60 houses sold, ranging from a three-bedroom, three-bathroom home that needed extensive renovation for $465,000 to a five-bedroom, four-bathroom Colonial built in 1900 on nearly one acre for $1.65 million. Four houses are now on the market, ranging from a three-bedroom, two-bathroom rambler for $711,000 to a five-bedroom, three-bath split level for $1.115 million.Schools: Woodlin Elementary, Sligo Middle, Einstein High School (part of the Downcounty Consortium)Parks: Montgomery Hills Neighborhood Park with basketball and tennis courts and a playground; Woodside Urban Park with a playground, skateboard area and indoor handball and volleyball courts; Sligo Creek Park, which forms the eastern border of the community.
Where We Live | Five communities share the benefits and challenges of suburban life near an urban thoroughfare.
Cars stream off the Beltway onto Georgia Avenue in Silver Spring, Maryland, where traffic is inching past stoplights and attempting to turn from shopping centers, gas stations and churches. Sidewalks have no buffer with the road, but there are few pedestrians and even fewer trees or plants. Horns blare when confused drivers travel the wrong way in reversible lanes.
But the five leafy neighborhoods that abut either side of this mile-long stretch of Georgia Avenue belie the cacophony of traffic noise and endless concrete. And while residents prize the peaceful communities on their streets once they leave Georgia Avenue, they find it difficult to traverse the retail hub they center on.
“There’s no relief from the traffic, no median, no trees. There are utility poles popping up in the middle of the sidewalk. It’s extremely inconvenient and ugly,” said Gus Bauman, who has lived in a Dutch Colonial house a few blocks to the west of Georgia Avenue for 48 years. Bauman was head of the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission from 1989 to 1993 and is an attorney focusing on land use and related environmental issues.
The commercial area of Georgia Avenue from the Beltway south to Spring Street just north of downtown Silver Spring is known as Montgomery Hills. Most of the neighborhoods that border it all start with Woodside: Woodside Forest, Woodside Park, North Woodside and Woodside itself. Linden, itself the name of a tree, is the fifth community. At one point they all carried the name Montgomery Hills as well, but as resident Geoff Gerhardt notes, “it just became too much of a mouthful to say North Woodside Montgomery Hills.” Gerhardt has lived in a 1928 Craftsman bungalow in the neighborhood since 2011. The neighborhoods were established from the 1920s through the 1950s and have a diverse range of single-family houses and some newer townhouses.
“I think the heart of the issue is Montgomery Hills really being ignored for years and years. It’s that when you look at the civic associations in the residential neighborhoods surrounding it, nobody really claims that as their own,” said Michelle Foster, who lives in Woodside Park and founded the group Friends of Montgomery Hills about a decade ago.
Foster, who had been an urban planner in New York City, first moved to Reston, Virginia, but felt more at home in Silver Spring, moving into her center-hall Colonial house in 1994.
“The opportunity to have a single-family home but be able to be in downtown Silver Spring really easily, to be able to walk and have community resources super close by, was important,” she said. “It was really diverse, and I mean that from all perspectives, from income and race and housing styles, it kind of had it all. So I’ve always said I think this is the absolute perfect place, and I just can’t imagine living anywhere else.”
However, that doesn’t mean the perfection doesn’t have problems. Foster discovered that the neighborhood elementary school, Woodlin, is across Georgia Avenue, meaning it wasn’t really walkable for her son, and inconvenient for friends he made just across the road.
In addition to an Aldi grocery store and CVS, mainly small, independently owned restaurants and businesses line both sides of Georgia, including Lime & Cilantro, which opened last year and quickly claimed a spot on Post restaurant critic Tom Sietsema’s 40 best area restaurants list. But even though some businesses are just a few blocks away, many people end up driving. “And when you’re already in your car, you often decide to just leave the neighborhood altogether,” Foster notes.
At the same time, transportation options in the community are a bonus, said RLAH real estate agent Cari Jordan, who lives in another Silver Spring neighborhood. “It’s a commuter’s dream, with the Beltway right there as well as the Forest Glen Metro station,” she said. The Purple Line train under construction will have a station at the far edge of the North Woodside neighborhood.
But help for Georgia Avenue is in the works. Friends of Montgomery Hills primarily focuses on working with the Maryland State Highway Administration for improvements. The state’s Georgia Avenue Safety and Accessibility Project has been planned for years but has moved slowly. In fact, Bauman remembers holding meetings in his living room back in the 1970s to help sketch out ideas.
The project focuses on the road from just a block north of the Beltway by the Forest Glen Metro station down to 16th Street, a stretch of about three-quarters of a mile that carries about 71,500 vehicles a day. Improvements now in the works call for removing the center reversible lane, replacing it with a landscaped median and new left turn lanes. A two-way bike lane will be added to the west side of Georgia, continuing onto 16th Street to the end of the neighborhood at Second Avenue. The Beltway exit and entrance areas on Georgia Avenue will be improved, and new or upgraded sidewalks on both sides of Georgia will be added, as well as a pedestrian crossing with a signal.
As a first step, the State Highway Administration is now working on relocating utility poles. A Shell gas station was demolished, and the Montgomery Hills car wash, which operated for 51 years, was closed in March and will be removed to make way for planned improvements. Actual road construction is expected to begin in 2028.
“The partnership with the community has been critical to moving this project forward, and we look forward to coming back to celebrate its completion,” State Highway Administrator Will Pines said during a Sept. 4 event held on Georgia Avene to announce full funding of the project. The draft fiscal year 2026-2031 transportation budget allocates $50.8 million for the project.
While having the project move ahead is a win, coalescing the community is also an accomplishment, said Gerhardt. He is also vice president of Friends of Montgomery Hills and helps coordinate the community’s Street Fest every one to two years, which draws more than 1,000 residents. The event includes tables for community organizations, food from local restaurants, and remarks by area elected officials. The next Street Fest will take place in spring 2026.
“It’s a fun event. It’s placemaking, but for us it’s also an important advocacy function,” he said.
For Bauman, Snider’s, the independent grocery store that has been in Montgomery Hills since 1946, proximity to the Metro and tree-lined streets with diverse housing are all important attributes to the community.
“I have found over the half-century I’ve been here, people say to me, ‘Aren’t you going to move to Bethesda or Potomac?’ I say: ‘Why would I do that? It’s so easy living here.’ What people do here, they don’t move. They just build additions.”
Home sales: From Sept. 1, 2024, to Sept. 1, 2025, 60 houses sold, ranging from a three-bedroom, three-bathroom home that needed extensive renovation for $465,000 to a five-bedroom, four-bathroom Colonial built in 1900 on nearly one acre for $1.65 million. Four houses are now on the market, ranging from a three-bedroom, two-bathroom rambler for $711,000 to a five-bedroom, three-bath split level for $1.115 million.
Schools: Woodlin Elementary, Sligo Middle, Einstein High School (part of the Downcounty Consortium)
Parks: Montgomery Hills Neighborhood Park with basketball and tennis courts and a playground; Woodside Urban Park with a playground, skateboard area and indoor handball and volleyball courts; Sligo Creek Park, which forms the eastern border of the community.