On weekday mornings at 8804 Old Georgetown Road, a Silver & Sons BBQ trailer opens at 7:30 a.m. Behind it stands the white-sided Bethesda Community Store, at the signalized corner of Greentree Road and directly across from the National Institutes of Health campus. The building has not operated as a store since May 2016.
For most of the past decade, the parking lot has done the work the building couldn't. Barbecue, bagels and barbecue again kept the corner going while the store itself was too small, too worn out and too costly to bring back. That has now changed. The building was rebuilt from its foundation up and grew from 350 square feet to 1,901. In September 2026 a Bethesda resident bought it with plans to open a general store and café.
What's at the Corner This Week
As of late October, the Silver & Sons schedule lists its Community Store food truck at 8804 Old Georgetown Road on these hours:
- Tuesday through Friday: 7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.
- Weekends: no hours posted for this stop
That is a shorter week than the launch plan. When MoCo Show announced the truck in March, the plan included Friday dinner until 7:30 p.m. plus Saturday and Sunday service. The trailer soft-launched on Sunday, April 12, 2026.
The Community Store menu, marked Summer 2026, puts breakfast first. It lists egg-and-cheese, beef-bacon, sausage and pastrami sandwiches, salmon and sausage pitas, muffins, and rotating filled croissants. Later in the day come smoked chicken, brisket, pastrami, lamb, beef back ribs and pastrami-spiced mushrooms, along with sandwiches, sides, dips and platters. Chef and owner Jarrad Silver mixes regional American barbecue with Jewish and Mediterranean influences. He has run a truck in the D.C. area since 2020 and opened the Silver and Sons BBQ restaurant at 5362 Westbard Ave. in 2025. He was also a 2026 RAMMY semifinalist for Rising Culinary Star of the Year.
The corner has seen barbecue before. A decade ago, a different smoker sat in the same spot.
The Store That Closed in 2016 Was Barely Bigger Than a Truck
The business is old. Local historian Jerome Collins traced it to around 1892, and the current building went up around 1924. A historical record on Clio names a long run of proprietors: Mr. Owens, Ernest Brown, the Fergusons, Ernest and Margaret Caudill, the Hendersons starting in 1984, and finally Arnie Fainman. Montgomery County's Historic Preservation Commission designated the site in 1986 as one of the few surviving early-20th-century commercial buildings in Bethesda. According to Bethesda Magazine, that designation prevents the property from being developed or significantly altered.
Fainman took over just before September 2001 and ran the store for 15 years. Bethesda Magazine reported in May 2016 that the deli inside the 350-square-foot store served grilled cheese, hamburgers, breakfast and French fries. In winter, Christmas trees were sold on the lot. A barbecue trailer had been smoking at the corner for five years, and it closed along with the store that May.
Then-owner Stan Smith, who also owns the Strosniders hardware stores, told the magazine that week that he planned an addition. It would take the building to about 1,000 square feet and add a basement. He wanted a tenant with a similar use, "such as another community market or coffee shop," and one the community would embrace. That addition never got built. A December 2024 permit application noted that much of the work approved over the years, including a shed and a rear addition, had not been carried out.
Bagels on the Lot, Costs on the Building
Over the next stretch, the lot again did what the building could not. Call Your Mother brought a bagel trolley to the site in July 2020 and swapped it for a pink-and-blue trailer in September 2023. The chain moved that "Lil' Deli" out in February 2025.
Call Your Mother had thought about moving into the building. Co-owner Andrew Dana told Bethesda Today that the chain looked at the vacant 350-square-foot store, but renovation costs were "too high," according to Bethesda Magazine's June 2025 report. A tenant with a working business and a following was willing to come in. The building was what stopped it.
The Owners Who Paid to Fix the Building
Bethesda residents Mimi Brodsky Kress and Phil Leibovitz, owners of Sandy Spring Builders, had bought the property the previous October after hearing that Call Your Mother was leaving, Bethesda Magazine reported in June 2025. Kress said the project was separate from their building company. The Historic Preservation Commission approved their revised work permit on December 18, 2024. That approval let them complete and revise the permits issued years earlier.
When Bethesda Today visited in June 2025, as described in that same Bethesda Magazine report, the porch, one wall and the roof were standing on wooden stilts so a new foundation could go in underneath. "There was no insulation, it was a dirt floor," Kress told the outlet. She added that they would save whatever original wood they could and match the rest. Working with Bethesda-based GTM Architects, they designed a glass breezeway connecting the old building to a new rear addition, which could hold seating, with a sub-basement under it. The parking lot and picnic area would stay as they were.
In the same report, Kress also described what the county's historic commission wanted from the project:
"They want to see something that's viable and has long-term life. They don't want the building to go into disrepair and be empty again."
By April 2026, MoCo Show described the building as fully renovated and preserved. The newer extension has updated HVAC, plumbing and electrical. The whole building measures 1,901 square feet and was being delivered as a "warm lit shell" for the next user to finish. The site is zoned R-60, yet a zoning text amendment and a circuit court order give it commercial rights for food and beverage, retail, office and clinic uses. Food truck operations are allowed on the site.
Here is how the building has changed, measured by the problems that stopped earlier plans:
| When the store closed, 2016 | After renovation, 2026 | |
|---|---|---|
| Interior space | 350 sq ft deli | 1,901 sq ft including addition |
| Foundation and floor | Dirt floor, no insulation | New foundation |
| Systems | Original building | Updated HVAC, plumbing, electrical |
| Addition | Approved, never built | Built, linked by glass breezeway |
A Resident Takes On the Shopkeeper's Role
The renovated property went on the market in April 2026 at $2.1 million. In September, the Washington Business Journal reported that Bethesda resident Craig Hillman had bought it for $1.899 million. Bethesda Magazine reported his plan for a general store and café, and quoted his statement:
"I'm excited to bring the community into the process of reviving the local general store, and I hope it sparks imitators across Montgomery County."
That is almost exactly what Stan Smith described in 2016: a community market, embraced by the neighborhood. The difference now is that the building no longer stands in the way. Smith's plan needed an addition nobody built, and Call Your Mother's interest ended at the renovation bill. Hillman starts with a building that already has a foundation, working systems and enough room for shelves, a counter and seating.
Several things haven't been announced yet. Hillman has not made public a store name, a product list, an opening date or how he plans to involve the community. Nobody has said publicly whether the Silver & Sons truck stays once work on the general store begins. For now, the truck's weekday hours are the reliable reason to stop at the corner. Hillman has asked for community involvement, so the next update will likely come straight from him.
Reopening this corner took a historic permit, a rebuilt foundation and a buyer ready to finish the shell. If you own an older property, or you're weighing a mixed-use or renovation project and want help coordinating architects, permits and the deal itself, Payam Bakhaje has spent more than two decades managing these complex transactions across DC, Maryland and Northern Virginia. Let's Connect.
