More News

Group rejects latest sector plan version

Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2005

See also: Pollution concerns flagged in bus depot debate

Residents living near the Shady Grove Metro Station took advantage of a Montgomery County Council voting delay to cast their own ballots against a plan that would allow the buildup of as many as 6,340 new housing units in their area.

Saying local roads, schools and other infrastructure cannot handle such a buildup, members of the Shady Grove Civic Alliance rejected the latest version of the Shady Grove Sector Plan by a vote of 27-5 last week.

Originally, the group supported the concept of a 4,000-unit ‘‘smart growth” buildup around the Metro station but has disagreed with additional density recommended by the Planning Board and County Council’s Planning Housing and Economic Development Committee.

‘‘The politicians have gotten a hold of it,” alliance co-president Kay Guinane said.

The sector plan is in the hands of the full council, which has delayed voting on it until November as it waits to review an expected Office of Legislative Oversight report detailing how hundreds of Clarksburg homes were allowed to be built too tall and too close to streets.

During their monthly meeting at Mill Creek Towne Elementary School, alliance members and area residents questioned whether enough public facilities and infrastructure would be built to accommodate the population increase.

Multiplying the number of residents around the Metro station can only mean more congested roadways and schools for residents who already live in the area, longtime resident and former state delegate Raymond Beck (R-Dist. 39) of Derwood said.

Washington Grove resident Shelley Winkler criticized the current plan to relocate all or some of the public facilities in the County Service Park at no cost to the taxpayers.

The county should not engage in half measures by exclusively requiring private developers to foot the bill in exchange for denser buildup on the Metro-friendly site, she said.

The council has ‘‘got to lose the revenue-neutral concept and realize they have to do it right this time,” Winkler said.

County Councilman Philip M. Andrews (D-Dist. 3) of Gaithersburg agreed, saying the policy advocated by the county executive and agreed to in the PHED Committee’s draft drives up density limits.

Speaking at the meeting, Andrews criticized the ‘‘significant difference” between the initial density level supported by the community and later increases.

‘‘Transportation and traffic impact is the weakest part of this plan,” he added. ‘‘There is an air of unreality in the traffic part of this plan.”

In 2003, the council rolled back standards that once considered traffic impacts outside of the neighborhoods immediately surrounding development, Andrews said later. And ‘‘no one has ever accounted for the impact on interstates.”

Park and Planning’s lead project planner, Karen Kumm, defended the smart growth shift from industrial zoning to mixed-use residential development.

The plan provides a new library, elementary school and park facilities while implementing unusually strict staging requirements upon developers, she said.

‘‘The community needs to understand the ramifications of their vote,” she said after the meeting.

If the County Council does not approve the proposed sector plan, she said, the community would not get a new school at either the Casey at Mill Creek property south of Washington Grove or near the Metro station. Instead, a new school could be built, as stated in the current sector plan, on a section of Blueberry Hill Park.

In the most vocal opposition to date, dozens of residents living around the park came out against such a plan during the first PHED worksession on the sector plan. The committee quickly promised not to build a school on the park property.