Gaithersburg West waits until next year

Planning delay impacts timetable for Johns Hopkins’ research campus

Hopkins wants the Life Sciences Center to be transformed into a mixed-use hub where tens of thousands of residents would live, work and play without having to drive.

The university’s plan — dubbed Vision2030 –- calls for more than 10 million square feet of laboratory and office space, more than 10,000 housing units and more than 300,000 square feet of retail space, said David McDonough, senior director of development oversight in Hopkins’ real estate division.

The 107-acre Belward farm on Darnestown and Muddy Branch roads is the centerpiece of the plan.

Before the vision can be implemented, county planners must determine exactly how much development the area can handle. The area’s master plan was last revised in 1990.

Earlier this year, the County Council delayed all pending master plan updates — Germantown, White Flint and the Gaithersburg plan, which does not include the city proper. Planners decided last year to break the Gaithersburg Vicinity Master Plan into two areas, roughly along Interstate 270.

‘‘We hope to have our next Planning Board briefing in September,” said community planner Nancy Sturgeon, who has been working on the update for several years. ‘‘Certainly by November, we need to have a draft pulled together.”

The first public hearing with the Planning Board would follow in early December, she said, meaning the County Council would take it up in March.

Hopkins representatives had begun a series of community meetings to discuss the university’s plans. But without the more detailed information in a master plan, continuing those community talks is premature, McDonough said.

‘‘We think it’s sort of a waste of time for the community if we have meetings before we have progressed” on details of the plan, he said. ‘‘Otherwise, things are quite half-baked and really not that informative.”

County planners have run two scenarios through traffic and density modeling programs — high- and medium-land use — which indicate that the Corridor Cities Transitway would need to be realigned to make stops in the Belward area and at the Life Sciences Center if Hopkins is to have its vision fulfilled, Sturgeon said.

A stop planned for Decoverly Drive would move south to Broschart and Blackwell roads, near Medical Center Drive. The CCT would then turn west across Great Seneca Highway for a stop at the current Public Safety Training Academy site before crossing Key West Avenue to stop at Belward. It would then rejoin the original path at Great Seneca Highway and Muddy Branch Road.

The Planning Board is set to discuss the CCT with state transit officials on Thursday. The state will have final say on the alignment. A decision on light rail versus rapid bus is scheduled by next spring.

Much of the planning area’s anticipated housing would be at the 52-acre training academy, which the Planning Board told planning staff in February to assume would be moved to make room for redevelopment.

‘‘I think everybody feels... this is a prime location here in the Life Sciences Center for growth, particularly if we move the PSTA. But what the level of growth is and how it’s phased is stuff we’re still looking at,” Sturgeon said. ‘‘Our feeling is we have very few places [for housing]. The PSTA seems like a logical place to create a community — housing, retail, maybe a school, civic space. I don’t want to go so far as to call it a town center, but along those lines.”