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Officials seek longer reservation of school site

Park and Planning officials say county needs more time to consider fate of Shady Grove Sector property

Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2007

Montgomery County Park and Planning staff want to extend the reservation on a proposed elementary school site within the Shady Grove Sector for an additional amount of time to allow for more time to consider the fate of the property.

The two-year reservation on using the site at Piedmont Crossing, which is also known as Casey at Mill Creek in the Shady Grove Sector Plan, officially expired on Dec. 23.

However, Park and Planning officials have been in discussions with Toll Brothers, the owner of the site, to see if the reservation could be extended for an additional amount of time.

An extension on the reservation would give the county’s Board of Education and the County Council more time to decide if they would like to obtain the property for a school.

The site is located between the community of Washington Grove and Shady Grove Road.

However, members of the Shady Grove Advisory Committee, a group of nearby residents appointed by the Planning Board to monitor implementation of the Shady Grove Sector Plan, have expressed support for using the Piedmont Crossing site for a school to serve students that come to the area with the additional housing approved in the plan.

On Nov. 20, the County Council received a letter from former Board of Education President Charles Haughey of Rockville requesting direction from the council regarding the site.

In his letter, Haughey suggested that the most prudent course of action was to let the school reservation on the Piedmont Crossing site expire, noting that the need for the school site is dependent on the pace of development in the Shady Grove Sector, including whether the County Service Park is moved to another site and that land is redeveloped into housing.

At the request of County Councilman George L. Leventhal (D-At large) of Takoma Park, who was then council president, council staff drafted a resolution on Nov. 27 — the day before a County Council meeting — expressing support for allowing the school reservation at Piedmont Crossing to expire and reiterating its support for the Jeremiah Park site, another site that has been proposed as a location for the school.

Jeremiah Park is located within the County Service Park in the southeast corner of Shady Grove Road and Crabbs Branch Way.

However, due to the quick pace at which the procedure had taken place, Councilman Philip M. Andrews (D-Dist. 3) of Gaithersburg said the council decided to delay taking action on the matter to allow for more consideration and public suggestions.

There was a possibility that the matter would be taken up on either Dec. 5 or Dec. 12 — the last two meetings before the council’s December recess — but that did not occur. Instead, Park and Planning officials decided to contact Toll Brothers to see if the reservation could be extended beyond the Dec. 23 expiration date.

Nkosi Yearwood, one of the lead planners on the Shady Grove Sector Plan, said a meeting with Toll Brothers was held Dec. 21 and the owners expressed interest in working with the county to extend the reservation. At this time, he said, Toll Brothers has written a letter to the Planning Board requesting that the reservation be extended to Jan. 22.

In the letter, Yearwood said, a number of reasons are identified for extending the reservation. This includes clarifying the status of the acquisition, identifying a timeline of steps needed to secure the site and identifying which governmental entity would be acquiring the site.

‘‘We will be working with Toll Brothers to extend the reservation beyond Jan. 22,” he said.

The matter will be discussed before the Planning Board on Thursday morning during its regular weekly session.

Yearwood said it is Park and Planning’s hope that extending the reservation would give everyone involved more time to consider the future of the property.

Another hindrance has been the price tag on the site, which is estimated to cost between $8 million and $10 million.

Janice Turpin, real estate management team leader for Montgomery County Public Schools, said by the time a decision needed to be made, funding was not available from the county for the site’s purchase.

She noted that the school system could acquire the site for free, but a land swap would have to take place for that to occur,.

‘‘The plan was to relocate the school off-site of the County Service Park area and have it over at Piedmont Crossing,” Turpin said, adding that in the sector plan, it is recommended that the school go on the Jeremiah Park site. ‘‘That would give the developer more density at the County Service Park site and would have allowed us to acquire the [Piedmont Crossing] site at no cost.”

However, since no action has taken place to move the County Service Park and no developer has become involved in the project, she said, the Board of Education has not been able to take action.

Turpin said once the council is back in session and as progress on the Shady Grove Sector Plan moves forward, the Board of Education hopes to make a decision about the Piedmont Crossing site, provided that the reservation is extended.

If that site were not chosen, she said, the school system would look for other alternative properties within the planning area for the future placement of an elementary school.

Meanwhile, Pamela T. Lindstrom, chair of the Shady Grove Advisory Committee, submitted a letter on Dec. 11 to the County Council on behalf of the committee, stating members felt the Piedmont Crossing site was the best choice for the proposed elementary school.

‘‘It has been a year since the council approved the master plan,” the letter states, referring to the Shady Grove Sector Plan. ‘‘Previous council actions already make it more difficult to find alternate sites for the CSP [County Service Park] facilities and reach agreement with a developer. The lack of progress on moving the CSP, or even releasing a Request for Proposals, stalled the most promising source of funds for purchasing the Mill Creek school site. Nevertheless, we were assured that funds could be found for the purchase either in the county budget or in the ALARF [Advanced Land Acquisition Revolving Funds].

The letter adds: ‘‘We on this committee support the vision of the Shady Grove plan, and we want that vision implemented. If this school site is lost, each subsequent step in fulfilling the vision becomes more difficult and less certain. We call on the county agencies to do this critical task in one way or another.”