Chevy Chase, Maryland - A Rich Neighborhood

Chevy Chase, Maryland is home to the Number 10 Richest Place in America, according to the Forbes.com analysts that worked with US Census2010 data and related surveys containing the needed information. One part of this group of communities collectively known as Chevy Chase is Number 10 Richest and it is called SECTION FIVE of the Village of Chevy Chase. This section is an incorporated village located just northwest of Washington DC, but inside the I-495 Beltway. Traveling to this areas approximately every five years, I enjoy driving around the entire Beltway to look at the scenery and visit communities surrounding it. Every visit brings new sights.

SECTION FIVE of the village is home to 225 homes and a single upscale restaurant called La Ferme (see link below).

This portion of Chevy Chase became a Washington DC residential suburb outbound via Connecticut Avenue at the end of a streetcar line during the second half of the 19th Century. This is a historic time and place in Maryland as well as in many American communities. The setting is one that created memories, movie ideas, background material for some of the short stories of Ray Bradbury, and ideas for NBC's 2010 - 2011 first season of the action show The Cape.

As with many trolley lines in America, the streetcar company in the DC area built an amusement area with a carousel, ballroom, park, and other features at Chevy Chase Lake. Riders happily rode to the lake for a day of fishing and relaxation, dance in a ballroom, and opportunities to listen to the current tunes of Eubie Blake and John Phillip Sousa.

Chevy Chase Lake, like my local Clintonville Olentangy Amusement Park in Central Ohio, is part of a commercial complex now. The former is an area near a high rise business at a traffic circle off Connecticut Avenue and the latter is an upscale apartment complex north of The Ohio State University on High Street in Columbus, Ohio.

In Columbus long before my birth, the passenger trains operated up from Downtown's Union Station and straight into the huge back gate of the well laid-out Olentangy Park. It had many of NYC's Coney Island rides and amusements.

Today, the Half Price Books shop a bit farther north includes a hallway hung with enlarged postcards of the park and a full mapped layout. Disney attempted to purchase the former park and lands from the old park to thirty miles north of it and all the way to the Scioto River, 10 miles to the west, but was unable to purchase all the homes and properties in the early 1970s that stood on that 300 square miles.

The term "Chevy Chase" encompasses a number of villages, an incorporated town, and one residential unincorporated place (CDP) in Maryland, northwest of Washington DC along Connecticut and Wisconsin Avenues. In the 2010s, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts has lived here, as well wealthy business people, Senators, Congressmen and others.

From Sperling's Best Places: Median Home Cost = $900,000+. Population in 2010 = 2754.

Just 5 miles from the middle of Downtown DC, all of Chevy Chase is walkable and accessible by train, light rail rapids, bus, limousine, car rental, and airports.

• The Connecticut Avenue Corridor is one of over a dozen historical neighborhoods in the DC downtown metro area. Other features are the National Zoo of the Smiithsonian, and the National Cathedral, which offers a number of organ recitals around the calendar year. The Shoreham Hotel has stood here since 1930 and I have enjoyed my stays in it for conferences and international martial arts tournaments.
• The Howard Hughes Medical Insitute is very near the Village of Chevy Chase. Its website at www.hhmi.org/ includes employment listings and an educational unit called Cool Science. Its current research efforts revolve around HIV, TB, imaging technology, genomics,neuronal circuits, and many others. The institute maintains a research campus of nearly 700 acres of green space surrounding laboratories on the Potamac River as well.
• Friendship Heights is known best as a shopping district in NW Washington DC. 

Job Listings declines at the middle of January to February 2001, when a small increase occurred once more. Nearly 183,000 job listings are available within 25 miles of Chevy Chase (in the Greater Washington DC Area of DC, Maryland, and Virginia) as of the end of February 2011. The most frequently listed job titles are involved in Information Technology and Healthcare industries as listed below.

1. Software Engineers
2. Project Managers
3. Physical Therapists and Assistants; Travel PTs (see Travel Nursing in #7, below)
4. Occupational Therapists
5. IT Systems Engineers
6. Network Engineers
7. Registered Nurses (RNs) - included Travel Nursing and other medical travelers (see Travel Nursing)
8. Program Managers
9. Java Developers
10. Web Developers

Additional Frequently-Listed Positions:

1. Administrative Assistants
2. Network Engineers
3. Sales Representatives
4. IT Systems Administrators
5. Business Analysts
6. Senior Software Engineers
7. Program Analysts
8. .Net Developers
9. Technical Writers

Companies with 1,000 to over 5,000 job listings in this market area:

1. Oracle
2. Booz Allen Hamilton
3. Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC)
4. Cross Country TravCorps
5. Lockheed Martin
6. General Dynamics
7. Dentalworkers Inc.
8. Marriott
9. BAE Systems
10. SAIC

Other Major Companies Hiring Workers Now

• Deloitte
• General Dynamics IT
• Northrop Grumman
• IBM
• INOVA Health System
• Cybercoders
• Raytheon
• Kaiser Permanente

The data provides comes from by the US Census Bureau and US Census2010. Data for based median household incomes is found in these surveys administered from 2005 - 2009.

All of these median incomes are higher than competing publications' findings from other sources.

1. Westlake TX
2. Kenilworth III
3. Mission Hills KS
4. Popponesset Island MA (ties with Mission Hills)
5. Plandome NY
6. Hewlett Neck NY
7. Munsey Park NY
8. Plandome Manor NY
9. North Beach FL
10. Village of Chevy Chase Section Five, MD (ties with North Beach)

Reference Link:

• America's Most Affluent Neighborhoods - Forbes.com