Real Estate / Neighborhoods

Rockville

Rockville is a pleasant suburban community that's always had trouble knowing what to do with its downtown.

Downtown Rockville has a beautiful old courthouse -- it's the Montgomery County seat -- and high-rise office buildings for county government and other workers.

In 1972, the city tore down the modest commercial buildings from the turn of the century and built Rockville Mall, which Rockville's mayor called a grand, failed experiment after it was ripped down in 1995.

But Rockville residents are excited about the new Rockville Town Square, built in its stead. It's designed to look like a traditional downtown, with midrise buildings along sidewalks, a grassy central square and parking tucked away in a garage. There's a beautiful new library, apartments and condos you can rent-to-own and lots of restaurants, although a few closed in the first year after the launch. The architecture is an attractive mix of contemporary and neo-Victorian buildings. The city hosts movies and concerts in the square in the summer, as well as a farmer's market. Tax dollars paid for $100 million of the project, including the parking garages and library.

In addition to the town center, Rockville has a major cultural asset at Strathmore, a large concert hall that hosts classical music, world music, bluegrass, jazz and artists that appeal to baby boomers, a dominant Rockville demographic.

Rockville, an incorporated city of a little more than 53,000, has a greater proportion of elderly residents than the region as a whole, but also has lots of families with children, drawn to Montgomery County's strong schools. There are also nearby neighborhoods with Rockville addresses that are outside the formal city limits.

There are several public high schools that serve Rockville -- Walter Johnson, Col. Zadok Magruder, Richard Montgomery, Rockville, Thomas S. Wootton. According to Newsweek's 2009 Challenge Index, which judges high schools on how many of the students take Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate exams, Richard Montgomery is 38th in the nation, Wootton is 58th and Johnson is 109th.

Rockville has a higher proportion of college-educated adults than neighboring Gaithersburg, but fewer than Bethesda, and has incomes that are solidly middle class, with very few poor residents.

Rockville's Interstate 270 corridor hosts many federal contractors and federal agency offices, as well as biotech labs. However, plenty of residents also commute to the District, Northern Virginia or Bethesda. Rockville has a downtown Metro station, as well as other Red Line stations at Grosvenor, Shady Grove, White Flint and Twinbrook. There's lots of parking at all those stops. About 18 percent of Rockville residents use public transit to commute.