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Neighbor News

Finding Nimo ... and the office of TMGA, Inc. Look for PRECISION LABS

Finding our HOA's property management office is difficult. Poor signage. It's at the back in an office park maze. GoogleMaps may freeze.

The Property Management Company, TMGA, Inc. is located at 20440 Century Blvd, Germantown, MD, 20874, Suite #100. Thousands of HOA homeowners in Montgomery County rely on clear communications with this property management company. Yet ...
Two Quail Valley HOA residents (Dory and Marie) said they each tried to drive to the office of TMGA, Inc. hoping to resolve an alleged "property violation" by speaking with the property manager, but they had to turn around and return home! Each of them could not find the office. I thought their stories were strange, until it happened to me ... and I had visited the office two weeks before! It took me 30 minutes of driving around in circles to find the place again. A lesson in humility for sure.
Here are the directions, provided as a public service. DO NOT rely on Google Maps to get you there. Your phone could freeze up as you near this location, and for good reason. The story continues below ...

*** DRIVING DIRECTIONS TO TMGA, Inc. ***
From Gaithersburg travel north on Rt. 355 (or 270).
Turn left onto Germantown Road, Rt. 118 (from 270, take exit for 118 West)
Very soon, turn right onto Aircraft Drive.
Turn right onto Century Blvd, which soon curves to the left (curving east to north).
Travel 1 mile along Century Blvd (heading north).
Turn left into the parking lot where the bldg. sign reads, "PRECISION LABS"
(If you travel under the Father Hurlely overpass, you have gone too far. Turn around.)
Go up the short drive, turn left, and park behind 20440 Century Blvd, which is a brick building,
much like all the other brick buildings all along the western side of the boulevard).

If you miss that Aircraft Drive turn (it comes up pretty fast), then ...
Turn right at the very next road: Crystal Rock Drive.
Turn right onto Aircraft Drive, and then left onto Century Blvd.
Then proceed 1 mile as stated above. You are heading north.

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Do not look for the building number (20440 Century Blvd) from your car as you drive. It is way up in the air, along the top edge along one side of the building, black numbers on dark red brick. Do not look for the name "TMGA, Inc." on any sign. It is totally absent. Before you travel, study the photos 1 and 2 of the approach to the building from the south (per directions above) and from the north (if you try a more complex Father Hurley Blvd approach), respectively. The sign "PRECISION LABS" is the key to your arrival.
As you enter this general area on Earth, your phone might freeze, as mine has done twice, perhaps due to the enormous and secretive facility that is directly across the street from 20440 Century Blvd. The folks over there may be squelching all phone signals, especially if you are driving around and around in frustrating circles. Causality is hard to pin down.
We will ask TMGA, Inc. to provide decent signage, out on the boulevard, at the building where they do business. But if the motivation is to make it difficult for the homeowner to defend themselves from an alleged property violation by human-to-human, face-to-face communication with property management, then the status quo is Hunky Dory.


We advise homeowners to use email for all communications with any property management company. Phone conversations are often lost; your conversation at the office will not be recorded and is thus no proof of your good efforts; and your messaging at an online "Portal" may or may not be saved and/or retrievable by you when you most need it. If you use email, you have a printable record of your efforts. You may not need to go to the office at all, and the directions above would be moot. Save the gasoline. That's the happiest ending to Dory's story. (Photo 3)

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Steven Sellers Lapham is a 24-year resident of Quail Valley HOA
and author of the blogs at tinyurl.com/CuckooCourt

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?