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Germantown: A great place to live, but where are the jobs?

Master plan update expected to focus on the need for employment

Friday, June 16, 2006

With housing in Germantown almost at capacity as prescribed in the community’s 1989 master plan, county planners are turning their attention to employment options for Montgomery County’s most populous non-incorporated locale.

Current projections are that in 24 years, Germantown will have reached only 57 percent of the employment capacity outlined in the 1989 master plan.

Discussion of an update to the Germantown Master Plan, a blueprint for the long-term future of the area, kicked off last week at BlackRock Center for the Arts. Several of the approximately 60 residents in attendance offered their suggestions for the plan that will shape Germantown’s future.

The plan will identify what kind of roads, schools and other public facilities will be needed in the next 20 years and how land should be developed.

‘‘Rarely can you move to a place like Germantown where you can have as much of a say in the future of the area as you do here,” said County Councilman Michael J. Knapp (D-Dist. 2) of Germantown. ‘‘Engaging in this process is part of it.”

As currently scheduled, planners will create a purpose and outreach report by October and submit a draft of the new master plan to the Planning Board in November 2007. The Planning Board will then forward a draft master plan to the County Council for discussion and public hearings in May 2008.

Germantown’s population has more than doubled since the 1989 master plan was written, when it was a community of 35,000 people. It’s now pushing upward of 85,000 people, according to the 2003 Census Update Survey.

The challenge for the new master plan will be to address lagging employment options, with emphasis on the properties along the Interstate 270 corridor.

Researchers with the Department of Park and Planning project that by 2030 Germantown will have less than 60 percent of the employment capacity planned for the area in the 1989 master plan. Yet it will be at 93 percent of its housing capacity, the research shows.

‘‘The focus has to be how to go about increasing jobs in light of all the housing we have,” said Planning Board Commissioner Allison Bryant. He noted that in the past six years, 17 percent of housing built in the county was built in Germantown, and two-thirds of the approved construction projects in Germantown are for multifamily housing units.

One thing that will help is a new economic development specialist that is devoted specifically to Germantown, Knapp said. The position was approved in the county’s fiscal 2007 budget, which is effective July 1.

‘‘We’re going to be able to reinvent the I-270 corridor in the next few years,” said John Carter, community-based planning division chief with Park and Planning who was a panelist at Wednesday’s discussion. The focus should be on increasing the use of existing transit options and reducing the need for cross-country trips to jobs, he said. He also urged that the new master plan include the Corridor City Transitway, a light-rail line or other dedicated transit, which is planned from the Shady Grove area to Clarksburg.

‘‘We’re going to see a different face of high-tech employment centers than there were in the past,” said Royce Hanson, former chairman of the Planning Board. The change will be driven by energy costs and the need to have more face-to-face or virtual communications.

Some say that can’t come soon enough.

Mark E. Friis, president and CEO of Rodgers Consulting, which is headquartered in Germantown’s Town Center, told the panel that it’s difficult to attract employees to Germantown. About half of his 70 employees don’t live in Montgomery County, and some live in Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

‘‘We have to do something special,” he said. ‘‘I can’t hire people because I can’t get them here. I’d hire another dozen people here, but I can’t get them here.”