Campus growth without growing pains?

Neighbors anxiously wait for Montgomery College to announce long-term expansion plans for its Takoma Park⁄Silver Spring campus

After a $5.8 million renovation that will take roughly a year, the Commons will be used as classroom space for the English Department, said David Capp, chief facilities officer for the college.

The college also plans to build a parking garage near the performance arts center, but Capp said more parking might be needed in the future. The campus currently leases spaces from a county-owned garage on Bonifant Street.

‘‘We’re totally out of parking where we are now,” he said.

That construction will come amid work to update the college’s 10-year master plan for the Takoma Park⁄Silver Spring campus and continued construction of a 500-seat fine arts pavilion near Georgia and Burlington avenues that officials hope will be open in fall 2009.

Officials from the college’s three-campus network have been working with architects and consultants and conducting community outreach to determine where else on the Takoma Park⁄Silver Spring campus they can build structures. Increased enrollment and the growth of some subject areas, such as health sciences, have created a need to expand, they have said.

Neighbors near the Takoma Park⁄Silver Spring campus have been awaiting the college’s announcement of those plans, and in February a Takoma Park committee released its own recommendations for where and how the college could grow without infringing on the surrounding neighborhood of single-family homes.

‘‘If you live together, you have to work these things out,” said Frances Phipps, the committee’s interim chairwoman.

College officials met with the Takoma Park City Council April 28 to discuss their potential recommendations, which Capp said could be announced within the next few months before a final option is decided on in ‘‘late fall, early winter.”

Capp said the college will not rule out any options but assured the council the college is not going to try to buy any part of nearby Jesup Blair Park for expansion.

Takoma Park council members told officials to avoid further expansion in block 69, the square created by Philadelphia, Chicago, New York and Takoma avenues, which Mayor Bruce Williams said ‘‘can be the biggest point of contention with our residents.”

Refraining from more construction in block 69, where the college already has several buildings, was also among the recommendations from the report by the Montgomery College Neighbors Advisory Committee.

‘‘There are many opportunities for them to create a truly marquee type of campus,” Phipps said, ‘‘but the one place that opportunity, the committee believes, does not exist is along Chicago Avenue [block 69],” she said.

Lorraine Pearsall, whose backyard borders the college, said she disagreed with the committee’s proposal that the college sell some land to a private developer because of the unknown effect that could have on the area. But she did agree with the recommendation that the college try to purchase the self-storage businesses along Fenton Street that are surrounded by college property. However, officials have told residents they have no plans to buy those buildings, an announcement Phipps called ‘‘sobering.”

‘‘We need to be reasonable in our expectations,” Phipps said.

Pearsall said she wants to preserve the neighborhood’s shared history and good relations with the college, but emphasized that the college shouldn’t rule out off-site expansion locations. Takoma Park Councilman Doug Barry (Ward 6) has suggested the college consider undeveloped properties along New Hampshire Avenue as one possibility.

‘‘How the college develops in the future is very important,” Pearsall said. ‘‘... I think we have kind of a quiet equilibrium with them now. The thing to worry most about with the college is how they grow.”

Jim Evans, president of the North Takoma Citizens Association, hopes the community will play an active role as the process moves forward.

‘‘We’ve had a good relationship with them,” he said. ‘‘And we’re hoping that will continue.”

Montgomery College has asked for roughly $215 million from the County Council in the 2009 budget year for hiring faculty, opening the performing arts center and starting a bus line between the Takoma Park and Rockville campuses. The request still needs to be approved by the full council.