All images courtesy of Robert and Colleen Morgenthau, i.e., Akbi Khan. If. the non/fiction hybrid of it all is too much for you, well, then I can’t help you. Also it totally is for me, too! 🙂
I’m not going to lie to you, HoCo readers, I was having some, shall we say, personal issues when I went to meet George and Holly Stone at the Clarksville Commons (TCC) to talk about their community-nurturing, in-it-for-the-long-haul, forward-looking-and-thinking business called Clarksville Commons. Up until five minutes prior to meeting with them, I was on my cell phone hearing, essentially, “Here’s some stuff to stress you out, Dad.” Me and Colleen’s daughter, Rachel, was having some work drama. Just because she’s 40 and the oldest of three, it doesn’t mean she’s not my little girl. I had left it until right then to ask George exactly where his office was, because I figured we shouldn’t tempt the testy, climate-change-y weather of late and chat outside as we’d originally planned, even though his and Holly’s beautiful business, TCC, is so much about honoring the out-of-doors.
“I texted George simply, ‘Hi…'” and then I got distracted by Rachel drama again and forgot to finish my thought.
“Hi!,” he replied. “In a meeting. We’re still on for 1:00, right?”
“Yes. Sorry. I meant to say I don’t know where your office is.”
Then back to Rachel drama. At three minutes before 1:00 p.m., I told her we’d have to pick up this wonderful (NOT!) conversation after I chatted with George and Holly. I called them, and George answered. I said hello and how I didn’t know where his office was and…
“We’re walking right toward you,” a tranquil voice said in front of me. I love it when physical reality snaps me out of a digital interaction anyway, but looking up to see George and Holly Stone walking toward me was honestly like having a vision of two holy figures. I felt my mouth widen into a huge grin. We greeted each other–with me stifling the urge to reach out and hug them–and we decided to throw caution to the wind and sit down on some of the outdoor furniture at TCC and gab about that lovely place.
The Rolling Stones
I couldn’t resist that pun. But the Stones really do have a rolling-with-the-punches energy.
Speaking of wind, though, as we chatted it was pretty windy, with strong breezes sweeping by and about us, lifting up the pages of my notebook, strands of Holly’s curly white tendrils of hair, and frankly, not doing much to George, because he had nothing loose to be whipped all over the place like Holly and I did!
“I always feel like nothing is finite unless one of us bites the dust,” Holly said when I expressed my anxiety about Rachel and made my usual comment about needing to record the interview but never knowing with 100 percent certainty if I’d be able to hear the recording afterward (even with the peaks and valleys of the Voice Memos text app moving up and down). That was just what I needed to hear. Relax, Robert–you got this…I hoped.
“Also, it’s not an investigation,” George said. Yeah, it really isn’t, I thought. I loved these people and their wisely relaxed attitude right off the bat. Before I could even ask it, they told me they were from the area. They’ve lived here in Howard County for thirty years, and Holly grew up in Silver Spring. Yet they have a love of nature, progressive living, and as I said, being chill, that’s decidedly West Coast. It turns out the California livin’ vibe I was getting was half-accurate, as George is originally from California. But the Stones also emit a “beautiful children of the 1960s” vibe, as I put it to them then. They both laughed, bashfully. I noticed they each of them has such an unusual eye color. George has a rich sea blue and Holly’s eyes are a deep, arboreal green. Water and earth are also two things they cherish and looked to honor when the County issued a Request for Proposals for the old Gateway School property that’s now TCC.
Former County Council member Ken Ulman (D-4) was a friend and told them Holly’s original idea, so charming a concept that I clapped my hands together in glee when they told me about it, was to turn the school edifice into a multi-tier, multi-purpose space.
“We drove by The Gateway School all the time because our kids went to Clarksville Elementary and River Hill,” Holly told me when I asked how they got the idea for this vanguard business. Years of passing by the structure and Holly’s family’s background in development, not to mention her being the visionary of the couple sparked an idea. They would buy the school edifice and turn it into a multi-floor community space meets business incubator meets multi-purpose gymnasium and kitchen areas. Alas, it wasn’t to be. Ulman gave them the bad news that the building was in terrible condition, filled with kerosene, asbestos, and beyond repair. It would be demolished.
And That’s How It’s Done
Still, the seven acres of the property were there, and the County had issued that RFP for what to do with it. Holly declined to be “judge-y” about some of the submissions, but I’m under no obligation to join her. So I’ll say it: some of them were horrific, including putting a Best Buy on the plot! Thankfully, because it’s HoCo, the County stipulated that whatever ended up on the land would have to be eco-friendly and community-based, so the chain, big-box store was a no-go. A NoGoInHoCo.
Holly then had the unusual notion to do a green flip of the property. Of the two, Holly’s the visionary and George is the pragmatist who figures out how to realize her inspired ideas. They also own a camp for adults and families in Maine called Camp Medomac. Let’s be honest–that’s uncommonly adorable.
George told me he and Holly really wanted to make whatever they proposed to the county as community-oriented as possible, moving beyond the traditional business model of trying to wrest from a property as much profit as possible with little regard to how it affects the land and plays out in the future. It’s already happening, due in no small part to the Stones’ trailblazer attitudes.
The Common Kitchen, on the property of TCC. for example, gives incubator restaurant businesses a kitchen and a space to share. Incubator businesses are, as defined by entrepreneur.com, “organizations geared toward speeding up the growth and success of startup and early-stage companies.” Most of the food-service businesses in The Common Kitchen would have a tough time being able to afford rent on the expensive retail property on their own. With a shared–common–kitchen, they use the same space for all the reasons that it’s wise to do so. From the spicy, savory, and downright tastebud-tickling scents traveling over to us from that restaurant, delicious food is one of those things, I can report confidently. And get this: you can get Egyptian and Indian street food there, without the risk of spending the next three days on the toilet, looking like a ghost, and never wanting to eat again–always a plus!
Another philosophically pioneering way the Stones crafted the unusual, community-nurturing business model of The Clarksville Commons is to factor themselves into it. They didn’t buy it and split. They’re as vested in it like as any other business there.
“Our offices are right up there,” George said with a proud smile, a dash of excitement thrown in, because he–rightly–knew I’d be so heartened to know this. And he probably knew 30 minutes into talking to me, that I’d gush profusely about it. because let’s face it, that’s how Colleen and I are.
“We’re trying to give local people wings,” Holly said. They watch over their charges whose dreams they’re nurturing from above the space, like real estate angels. Come on, what else can you do but gush?
Allow me to pause for a second to note that both George and Holly have these rich, hearty laughs that will make you remember why yukking it up is contagious. Too cute. They’re so in love–with each other and life–and you can’t help having a good time with them. In the case of this conversation, we sure did. They’ve been together so long and so happily, the Stones, that they’ve become a part of each other. Take for example the Mayan antique ring George wears. Holly originally bought it at an antique store in London when she was 16. Upon meeting her, George told her he wanted to wear it. They had their friend, Rick Everett, who owns and runs Everett Jewelers, also on the TCC property, to spruce it up
Now, the ring’s essentially fused with the flesh of George’s left pinkie, and he can only remove it enough to show the deep imprint its made in his skin.
I told them a story of a telemarketing job I took at one time when even mine and Colleen’s salaries combined weren’t cutting it back in Manhattan. They laughed when I told them I’d quit in three days, because I didn’t like selling people stuff I wasn’t sure they needed. Their goal as the proprietors of TCC is very different.
“Our mission was to create to sustainable mixed-use center that’s community-based and allows the community to flourish,” Holly told me in slow, methodical tones. George quietly reiterated, “…community-based…” Like all madly in love, young couples they complete each other’s sentences.
A friend of theirs, Roger Caplan, concurred.
“George and Holly built Clarksville Commons to be sustainable and serve the community as a place to gather. Their goals have been met, but they’re continuing to work towards enhancing those goals,” Caplan, a local communications consultant at The Caplan Group, told me.
Sign Language
The Stones’ focus on protecting the natural world, combined with my wife’s interest in astrology spurred a thought in me. Just as in astrology, in which your sun sign is said to be the you that you present to the world; your moon sign is those influences that occupy a quieter, back-stage role in influencing your personality; and your rising sign is how others experience it all, so George and Holly are a unit, an almost celestial one, made up of three primary influences. The “solar” one is George, whose angular features and practical know-how impart a decidedly “sunny” feel to them. Then there’s Holly, the “lunar” one whose rounded, full features and dreamy idealism give her a moon-y feeling. Their four kids, so much a part of what drives their choices in life, the deciding factor in how they interact with the world, are the rising sign that makes up the unit that is The Stones. Ironically, their last name is, of course, homonymous with a terrestrial, not a sky-related term.
“We’re involved in a number of different ways with solar [energy], both on the East Coast and West Coast,” George said, citing that clean energy source as an important part of their professional pursuits.
There’s lots sky-and-Earthy stuff going on at TCC, too. There are solar panels harnessing the energy of the sun in the middle of the courtyard around which the retail spaces sit. A water reclamation tank somehow manages to be a comely feature of the design in addition to a place to collect and use the heavenly Eau that falls there. And a green wall, on which plants grow, greets visitors as they park their cars and make their way into the Commons.
Pain Makes You Beautiful
That’s a song that our son, David, listened to ad nauseaum when he was a maudlin teenager in the 1990s, and it’s by The Judy Bats.
“When you’re on the cutting edge, sometimes you bleed,” Holly told me when talk turned to some of what can be challenging about their pioneering role in HoCo. She said this without bitterness, with more of a light, reflective tone, made all the more poignant by the breeze that came and made a wind-sweeping sound as it passed us. She added that they’re sticking to their principles, and they hoped that in the future people look at TCC as a model for how to do business in HoCo.
“That’s what makes this all worthwhile and makes us not throw our hands up and go, ‘We give up,'” George said.
The Family That Serves Together, Stays Together
The Stones are businesspeople, sure, but what they’re doing is a service to the community as much as it is as a profit-making venture. It requires working together in addition to living together. I wondered how this was for them. Familiarity does, after all, breed contempt, as the old saying goes. I expected one of them to say they spent a lot of time apart, which other couple friends of my and Colleen’s have said is the secret to long-lasting partnerships. But, no, that’s not it for the Stones.
“Here’s the thing: it’s because we have very different strengths. When we go and see something or experience something, Holly is the one who goes, ‘You know what we should do..?’ She’s up there at 3,000 feet and she flies up there a lot,” he said of her adventurous, abstract thought processes. “Then we refine the idea together.”
If it meets their “internal checklist,” that of Holly, the visionary, and George, the pragmatist, then they pursue it.
“Also we haven’t done this forever,” George added, grinning, folding his arms into a decisive position on the tabletop in front of him. They’ve both had separate careers. Holly worked in environmental consciousness-raising, and George was a neuroscientist at NIH before they moved into real-estate development, business, and sustainability pursuits.
Show Don’t Tell
That’s advice that writing teachers often give. Don’t tell me someone was tired, they say, show me how they behaved tired. In a similar vein, the Stones don’t tell people to be environmentally conscious, they show them how to. This includes showing them why. This is why TCC is peppered with info-plaques on the solar panels, water reclamation tank, green wall, and other sustainable features there.
“It warms my heart amazingly to see what looks like a grandparent with a little kid stop to read about solar. It’s the same with our camp. People have a great time, and then we’ve shown them about living sustainably,” George said.
Holly smiled in said they call it “subversive persuasion” in mock conspiratorial tones and with a jokingly sly look.
I’ve named this tactic of theirs “pilot lighting.” While “gaslighting” is what we call a variety of intellectually manipulative argumentative tactics, “pilot lighting” a la the Stones guides people to sanguine knowledge. It leads them there, by honoring their agency and respecting their dignity. And before we know it, we’re acting more wisely.
“We’re about to go have some food at The Kitchen,” George told me. We bid each other farewell, and it wasn’t until I was in my car and noticed my stomach grumbling, craving some variety of Eastern fare that I thought…good gracious, Pilot Lighting works! The Stones hadn’t told me to go to TCC, but I did then, because of their chaperon-esque example.
My phone rang while I was enjoying my Indian street food a few minutes later. It was Rachel again.
“Daddy–I think I might have to quit my job,” she said.
Thanks for reading! Check back with us here at rocoinhoco.com every week as Robert, Colleen (and pup, Moses) get to know the many facets—one each week–of this prismatic place called Howard County. We want to take you along with us, so follow us on Twitter at @rocoinhoco, join our Facebook group, and follow us on Instagram at @rocoinhoco.