Use over Veteran's Plaza and the Silver Spring Civic Building is still in question. (Photo: TBD Staff)

Fellow TBD-er Ryan Kearney has an excellent piece today about The Fillmore, the 2,000-person capacity rock club set to open next year on Colesville Road in Silver Spring.

Ryan examines what Montgomery County residents get — or rather, don’t get — from the deal. The county is kicking in $4 million and the state another $4 million to make the music hall happen. As part of the deal, Live Nation has to provide some free uses to the county and to charity, including 30 discounted community uses per year.

Community groups renting space at free or discounted rates is a sticky issue of late in Silver Spring. The Silver Spring Civic Building, where rooms are also available at discounted rates to community groups and nonprofits, has been open for a little over a month. Yet there are still more questions than answers as to who gets priority in renting the building’s many rooms, who makes those calls, and who exactly has already rented space. In fact, there are so many questions that after a July meeting on the matter (which more than 120 people attended), a website launched dedicated to continuing the conversation on the many, still unresolved, issues surrounding public and community use of the building and Veteran’s Plaza. Unlike The Fillmore deal, in which Live Nation has to pay for the operating costs of the building, the livelihood of the civic building is dependant upon renting space; the cost of operating the building is not in the county budget and rentals pay for electricity bills, the lights, the air conditioning, etc.

Both the county and Live Nation would be wise to take note of what’s happening over at the civic building and iron out these seemingly small details before The Fillmore’s ribbon cutting.