The Montgomery County Planning Board concluded work sessions on the Gaithersburg West master plan last week and is finalizing its version of the blueprint for a mixed-use, "urban village" research campus in Shady Grove.

The board's draft will be sent to the County Executive next month, then to the County Council in the fall for final review.

During its fourth work session on Gaithersburg West —which encompasses a 4,300-acre area west of Interstate 270 but focuses on a 900-acre area around the Shady Grove Life Sciences Center — the Planning Board:

*rebuffed a request by the two firms behind of the two largest biotech proposals in the county — Johns Hopkins University at Gaithersburg West and Percontee Inc. at the White Oak consolidation of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration — to "ease the burden" of county requirements to purchase development rights.

*Laid out a series of milestones to ensure that construction of 9.5 million square feet of research, office and retail space does not outpace infrastructure improvements and construction of a proposed mass transit line that would stop in the Life Sciences Center.

*Decided that deed restrictions on the 107-acre Belward Farm in Gaithersburg — the prime research space in the plan — should be settled by Hopkins, descendents of the siblings that sold it to the university 20 years ago and the courts.

Because a number of factors can't be predicted, planners will revisit the master plan after six years — rather than the usual 15 to 20 years — to review the status of the mass transit line, the Corridor Cities Transitway, and where the county stands in relocating the Public Safety Training Academy to the Webb Tract near Montgomery Village. The PSTA's current 52-acre site, off Great Seneca Highway and Key West Avenue, is where 2,000 residences, a school, fire station, park and CCT stop are planned.

Nearly the entire area will be rezoned under a revised "Life Sciences Center Zone," which would allow for a mix of research, office, retail and housing and require developers to provide green spaces and moderately priced and workforce housing. What worried Hopkins and Percontee the most is the new zone's inclusion of the "Building Lot Termination program," or BLT, which requires developers to buy from a pool of limited "development rights" transferred from the county's Agricultural Reserve. A report that Hopkins and Percontee commissioned jointly found that the requirements would add between $77,000 and $154,000 in development costs per acre, depending on density.

Citing the higher costs of biotech construction, a chronic shortage of venture capital and a likelihood that other jurisdictions will ease their building restrictions, the report argues that the requirements "severely jeopardize" the likelihood that developers and research institutions will deem Gaithersburg West and White Oak more attractive than the growing number of regional and national competitors.

Cutting BLT requirements "may be the investment the county needs to make in order to multiply many times over the leverage to brand Montgomery County as a place for the life sciences to come, and to market it, not just, ‘Don't go to Frederick… or Howard County,'" Jonathan Genn, executive vice president and general counsel for Percontee, told the board.

With planning staff having called such relief "a clumsy form of economic development incentive," commissioners blasted Hopkins' and Percontee's request.

Planners set the following requirements for phases of development of Gaithersburg West.

-Stage 1: The Shady Grove Life Sciences Center has 5.5 million square feet already built and 2.7 million square feet approved. Stage 1 will allow another 400,000 square feet.

-Stage 2: Before allowing an additional 2.8 million square feet, a mass transit line must be funded for construction from the Shady Grove metro to Metropolitan Grove; relocation of the PSTA must be programmed; a network of walking trails and green spaces be funded; and planners must document a 5 percent increase in trips not taken by a driver.

-Stage 3: Before can build another 1.8 million square feet, the transit line must be under construction from the Shady Grove metro to Belward and be fully funded through Clarksburg; fund construction of two highway interchanges (at Sam Eig and Great Seneca highways; and at Great Seneca Highway and Key West Avenue); determine the need for (and fund) an elementary school at PSTA; and planners must document a 10 percent increase in non-driver trips.

-Stage 4: Precursors to the final 4.5 million square feet of construction envisioned in the master plan are: the transit line must be operating for its entire length; the widening of Key West Avenue must be funded; two of the highway interchanges must be finished and three others funded; planners must document a 15 percent increase in non-driver trips.

Source: M-NCPPC