How does Silver Spring compare to Reston, VA? (Columbia, Bethesda: rental, condo)

[lindseybmoore]

Can anyone comment on the schools in Silver Spring? Specific recommendations/cautions? I am also relocating to the area with small children.

[dkf747]

Reston does not even come close to SS. I can't believe I'm reading this. Reston Town Center feels so... what's the word... fake. It just feels like it is out of place. YMMV, but that's how I see it.

[Bigbluelandrover]

Lindsey
Check the 20910 area in Silver Spring. The schools --elementary tend to be better on that side. However, know that MoCo has good schools throughout. There may be a few bad kids here and there but that is going to be a across the board thing. There are many on-line sources. The school district does list scores for all its schools online.

I live in the 20904 area north of Colesville and New Hampshire (White Oak/Springbrook subdivision). My neighbors are nice, a mixture of cultures, I feel safe and I feel like I live in mayberry. There ARE some rough spots--namely anyplace near apartments--just check the weekly Gazette. Some apartments take vouchers and attract idiots. Being that I don't like sterile suburbs, I think SS is more urban but has more personality. There are independent stores, a downtown, a Trader Joe's, we have Starbucks, Movie Theatres, Ray's the Classics and more. If civic involvement is your thing, then there are neighborhood associations.

[lindseybmoore]

Thank you. It's nice to hear positive things about Springbrook. One of my favorite houses is over there. I've also been looking at Northwood and Woodmore.

[Bigbluelandrover]

Good choices!. They are nice communities as well. Use common sense. Being more urban in nature-there are more car break-ins but I like my area a lot!.

[Avtomat Kalashnikova]

lol

Silver Spring is a very diverse area in its entirety, in all aspects. With that said some neighborhoods are better than others. I'll even do you a favor and point all of the bad areas:

20904
-Windsor Courts and Tower apartments on Castle Blvd in Briggs Chaney
-Montgomery White Oak and Montgomery Paint Branch Apts Lockwood Drive/Stewart Lane in White Oak

20903:
-The apartments on Quebec Terrace, 8700-9100 Piney Branch Road, some of University blvd, Carroll ave, Flower Ave, and Houston ave.

I'll throw in some parts of Takoma Park as well:

20912:

-Hampshire Towers on New Hampshire Ave
-Park Richie Apartments on Maple Ave

Most of SS and TK is safe, theres good and bad parts everywhere and if I recall not all of Reston is as oh so great as some people are making it seem.

Plus Silver Spring borders D.C. which mean shorter commute times and has multiple public transit options. Reston on the other hand won't be getting a metro station until 2013 when the first segment of the Silver line is finished.

[JD984]

Originally Posted by dkf747

Reston does not even come close to SS. I can't believe I'm reading this. Reston Town Center feels so... what's the word... fake. It just feels like it is out of place. YMMV, but that's how I see it.

They offer pretty different experiences. I wouldn't call Reston fake, but it's a mix of the very planned and the unplanned suburban sprawl that's pretty common in NoVa. It ultimately seems very suburban to me, even though it was one of the "new towns" of the 1960s.

I was in Wheaton and Silver Spring today for the first time in years. Given some of the posts I was expecting Silver Spring to have been spruced up a bit more. It looked like there were some good restaurants, but it wasn't really clear where to park. Overall, the downtown area with so many Spanish language storefronts reminded me of the nicer parts of Newark, except without the Portuguese/Brazilian presence you find in the Ironbound district of that city. [Reston Runner, if he reads the Maryland sub-forum, would be amused to know that a Macaroni Grill appears to be one of the big attractions of one of the revitalized Art Deco strip malls.] I think SS would appeal more to someone wanting to live in a more urban area who wasn't put off by vacant storefronts and a mix of nice and not-so-great residential areas (it actually was nice to see some really well tended garden apartment complexes on, or right off of, Georgia Avenue, but some weren't so appealing).

[SteelCityRising]

Originally Posted by dkf747

Reston does not even come close to SS. I can't believe I'm reading this. Reston Town Center feels so... what's the word... fake. It just feels like it is out of place. YMMV, but that's how I see it.

You're quite correct. I live in Reston's Uplands neighborhood, a lengthy (yet doable) walk to the town center, and it feels like an open-air shopping mall plopped into the middle of a field with a lot of floors added to the top to give it a skyline and the appearance of being "urban." It's not. Trust me. It's the place where spoiled poseurs from Loudoun County come to in order to feel like they're "in the city." The vast majority of the place is home to corporate chains. We have an "urban" area surrounded on four sides by wide high-speed arterials (267, 7100, Reston Parkway, and New Dominion Pkwy.) and that doesn't flow well with the rest of town. There are surface parking lots and 3-story townhomes adjacent to it. It was really not thought out all too well.

Originally Posted by Avtomat Kalashnikova

lol
Most of SS and TK is safe, theres good and bad parts everywhere and if I recall not all of Reston is as oh so great as some people are making it seem.

Reston is odd in that it's a place that can dupe nearly everyone into thinking it is "Stepford" when in reality it has quite a few flaws. I'm personally rather unhappy living here because it all feels so "fake" (not to mention being outrageously expensive with a decent 1-BR rental pushing $1,350/month without utilities), but I still try to remain as objective as possible when advising others who are seeking information on the community.

Originally Posted by JEB77

They offer pretty different experiences. I wouldn't call Reston fake, but it's a mix of the very planned and the unplanned suburban sprawl that's pretty common in NoVa. It ultimately seems very suburban to me, even though it was one of the "new towns" of the 1960s.

I was in Wheaton and Silver Spring today for the first time in years. Given some of the posts I was expecting Silver Spring to have been spruced up a bit more. It looked like there were some good restaurants, but it wasn't really clear where to park. Overall, the downtown area with so many Spanish language storefronts reminded me of the nicer parts of Newark, except without the Portuguese/Brazilian presence you find in the Ironbound district of that city. [Reston Runner, if he reads the Maryland sub-forum, would be amused to know that a Macaroni Grill appears to be one of the big attractions of one of the revitalized Art Deco strip malls.] I think SS would appeal more to someone wanting to live in a more urban area who wasn't put off by vacant storefronts and a mix of nice and not-so-great residential areas (it actually was nice to see some really well tended garden apartment complexes on, or right off of, Georgia Avenue, but some weren't so appealing).

I'm actually long overdue to explore Silver Spring myself. I've been to Bethesda, Rockville, and Bowie, but I've never before been here. Maybe I'll see if it lives up to the "hype." I have a feeling that just as how Reston is unapologetically overhyped on this forum Silver Spring is the same way. I don't have any aversion to a chain restaurant or retailer being used as a catalyst or a "magnet" to lure people in to patronize other independent businesses; it is when a community relies upon chains and chains alone (i.e. Reston) that I get disillusioned.

[BillH]

What is your motivation to move to Silver Spring? A shorter commute? A more interesting area?

My parents live in Northern Silver Spring. Much of the area is still quite undeveloped relative to VA. It's quite rural in some parts, but just a 10-15 minute drive on Randolph to the heart of Rockville. It's also much closer to DC. To me, Randolph Rd is the dividing line.

To be honest, downtown Silver Spring is very, very different from Reston. And Takoma Park as well, which is very liberal.

[inatizzy]

As a 20 something, white female I can tell you that when people say my neighborhood is ghetto it's because they are racist.

I live one the northern reaches of Silver Spring near Rockville. It's not as bright and shiny as Reston but it has a lot of other things to offer. I agree with the above posters who said that you need to spend some time in the neighborhoods that you are considering