More News

The Gaithersburg West master plan is heading into its first public hearing Thursday with growing skepticism over some of its pivotal assumptions on transit and density.

For more than a year, the prospect of turning the Shady Grove Life Sciences Center into an 800-acre "Science City" over the next 30-plus years — an eventual home to 20 million square feet of research and office space, 8,000 residences and 60,000 jobs — has stoked the loftiest hopes of the business and biotech communities. Johns Hopkins University, which owns more than 130 acres, says it will create $11 billion a year in sales and add $10 million a year to the county's tax base.

But the immensity needed to bring that vision to fruition has put neighbors in Gaithersburg, North Potomac and Rockville on edge, mostly over the congestion many see as inevitable.

On Friday, county planners released the master plan's "traffic appendix," which details a transit infrastructure with an urban feel —a light-rail or rapid-bus transit line with three stops in the area, multiple parking garages in a tightly controlled "transportation management district," and a redefined street network that will make the area more pedestrian friendly but add miles of concrete and build five highway interchanges.

Presuming that state transit officials agree to shift the proposed Corridor Cities Transitway through the heart of the area, most of the 800-plus-acre area would be within a five-minute walk to the CCT. With a tighter street grid, county planners believe that they can get 32 percent of travelers out from behind the wheel.

County Council President Philip M. Andrews has been incredulous of that figure from the outset, as well as planners' calculation that 16 percent of people travelling through the area today are not driving.

He also sees it as "unlikely" that the funding will come "on a timely basis" to widen and extend several roads and build the five interchanges at: Sam Eig Highway at Diamondback Drive; Sam Eig Highway and Great Seneca Highway; Great Seneca Highway and Key West Avenue; Key West Avenue at Shady Grove Road; and Great Seneca Highway at Muddy Branch Road.

"I haven't been persuaded that their outline of this is realistic," Andrews (D-Dist. 2) of Gaithersburg said. "But let's see if they can make the case."

The council is scheduled to rule on the master plan in the fall.

Resident alternatives

Residents opposed to the size of the proposal focus mostly on Belward, a 107-acre farm at Muddy Branch and Darnestown roads that Hopkins wants to turn into a research campus anchored by federal agencies.

Hopkins is pursuing a density that would allow up to 6.5 million square feet of construction. Both of Gaithersburg West's drafts have kept the development to 4.6 million square feet.

Residents for Reasonable Development, a civic group that has emerged out of concerns over Science City, will unveil elements of its alternative at Thursday's hearing. Its version of the plan pulls development away from the thousands of homes surrounding the Life Sciences Center, but calls for more density around Shady Grove Adventist Hospital. Its alternative would have more housing but less research and commercial space.

Last week, Andrews called on planners to do a comprehensive analysis of the group's alternative and any other lower-density proposals.

A key to the vision is that the county's police and fire rescue training academy will move from a 52-acre triangle of land. That land would hold the largest chunk of new housing, plus a CCT stop in an "urban park" with an elementary school, a fire station and retail shops.

But County Councilman Michael J. Knapp is not convinced that the Public Safety Training Academy needs to move. (A separate proposal would build a PSTA at the Webb Tract near Montgomery Village). Knapp (D-Dist. 2) of Germantown would rather renovate the PSTA where it is. The PSTA is 10 years overdue for renovation, Knapp said, and the weak economy could mean it will be another 10 years before the 52 acres is needed for housing.

"Given as it exists right now, given what I know today, I don't see how the numbers work," Knapp said.