The houses around 11904 Brent Road are the kind of polished estates Potomac is known for. Nearly every house on the quiet block curving gently away from Brickyard Road is worth $1 million or more, according to county tax assessments.
But 11904 is an anomaly, a dream house that went wrong somewhere and has turned into a junkyard — beer cans and construction debris strewn about the foot-tall grass. The shell of a would-be mansion occupies the lot, but its windows are smashed and boarded up.
The Montgomery County Department of Permitting Services issued a permit to construct a new home on the lot on Sept. 22, 2000, and a second permit for an addition two months later.
Permitting Services regularly sends inspectors to check up on construction being conducted under such permits.
“On new homes there’s more than one inspection,” said Reggie Jeffer, a specialist at Permitting Services, “We will inspect as long as work is being done.”
But when work stops, so do the inspections; the agency’s inspectors are already spread thin. So when work trailed off on the new mansion, so did Permitting Services’ visits. The permits expired and the unfinished site began its decline.
ABRUPT AND LONG-TERM suspensions of development work are sometimes the result of a financial crisis for the builder, a death, or a disaster such as a fire.
Such situations are not uncommon said Ed Hengerer, who runs a general contracting business out of a home on Brent. He said that development on a nearby house stalled, and then the house "mysteriously" caught fire.
Other abandoned developments are scattered about Potomac, usually the result of bankruptcy.
"There are a couple over on MacArthur that are just sitting there that have the windows in. There was one just around the corner," Hengerer said. "The only way that makes economic sense is if you're in bankruptcy."
But the reason work stopped on Brent isn't clear.
Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Spokesman Pete Piringer and other Fire and Rescue officials said that they have no record of responding to a fire at that address.
Oversight responsibilities for such properties — where the exterior is built but the home is never completed — falls to the Department of Housing and Community Affairs. If the structure becomes unstable, infested, or otherwise hazardous, Housing and Community Affairs’ Housing Code Enforcement Unit has powers to order corrective actions and ultimately to condemn the house.
But according to Housing Code Enforcement Manager Linda Bird, “As long as they maintain the outside and keep it secure and keep it from casual injury we don’t do anything until it becomes a major problem.”
According to Bird, Housing and Community Affairs has responded to only one complaint about the property at 11904 Brent — a July, 2004 request to take care of the overgrown grass.
“It was vacant and unsecure so we had them board it up and cut the grass and we closed the complaint at that point,” Bird said. “We just didn’t go into it that deeply.”
The owner of the property according to tax records, is Yu-Dee Chang of North Potomac. Chang has fully paid all taxes on the property and responded to the DHCA request.
With Housing and Community Affairs requests satisfied, the house went back into development limbo, where it’s been for more than four years with no other oversight and no endgame.
That may be because with new windows and a few days worth of clearing in the yard, the house would be unmistakable from its neighbors.
“Take the boards off the windows and make sure the windows are glass and he can occupy it,” Bird said.