Activists: Clarksburg mess was a scheme

Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2005

The developer of the Clarksburg Town Center engaged in a deliberate scheme to ignore approved plans, activists told the Planning Board on Tuesday.

‘‘What we found was the developer solution was to abandon the approved plan in favor of their own plan,” said Amy Presley, co-founder of the Clarksburg Town Center Advisory Committee.

Probing by Presley and other residents of the new Clarksburg Town Center this summer revealed that a planner falsified key documents to cover up building height violations there.

Planner Wynn Witthans, who has resigned, admitted lying about when she changed the documents but has said that she did so as a ‘‘housekeeping” matter. She has not commented publicly since resigning.

Presley told the board that the developer systematically abused the power the Planning Board gave planners to approve minor changes.

‘‘They determine what they are going to do, they assume approval, they put it in their map, and they push on,” Presley charged in a hearing on alleged violations. ‘‘This has to do with a process that in itself is in violation.”

Stephen Kaufman, a lawyer representing San Diego-based Newland Communities which bought the project from local developers, disagreed.

The Planning Board acted within its rights when it gave planners the authority to approve the kinds of changes that were made to Clarksburg plans, he said.

Kaufman contends it was legitimate for developers to seek and gain approval for a wide range of amendments from planning staff.

‘‘If there’s a problem here, it’s a problem with a process clearly in place at the time,” Kaufman said, adding that all changes that residents claim violate approved plans are ‘‘covered” or made legitimate by planner approvals.

What’s next Newland Communities and various builders will respond to the allegations at a hearing Nov. 3. The board will set dates for further deliberations, including findings and any compliance measures and sanctions, after the public record closes Nov. 18. Tuesday’s hearing was videotaped and is slated to be telecast on county cable Channel 6 at 8 p.m. on Oct. 29 and Nov. 1.

CTCAC said Newland’s application in May for changes to the Town Center plans is an ‘‘attempt to paper over existing violations [and] an obvious abuse of the amendment process.”

The Department of Park and Planning, which is overseen by the Planning Board, recently admitted that its records are spotty in some cases. The department has agreed to improve control over its records which recent tests showed remain vulnerable to alteration or removal.

Presley said the system has allowed the developer to operate without fear of detection, adding that the developer covers the trail by incorporating alterations into previously approved documents, then applies them by a reference to the altered documents.

In other cases, the developer confused matters by creating subphases after approval, Presley said.

She also said some blocks were revised so extensively that they are unrecognizable and renamed from the original approved plan.

At one site where plans called for four single-family houses, the developer built six, creating a sideyard that was too small and a narrower than allowed street.

CTCAC co-founder Kim Shiley told the board that her Miller & Smith-built townhouse, shown to have a detached garage, was sold to her in January 2003. Instead of going on the front of the townhouses, as shown in the plan, the developer and builder built rear-garage home, assuming that they would get approval to move garages.

Putting garages in the rear was approved in May 2003 — four months later, Shiley said.

CTCAC told the board that research showed that the developer platted lots and built and sold dozens of homes before a site plan enforcement agreement was executed in October 2004.

In one case where townhouse blocks were moved from facing a courtyard to facing the street, the Planning Board never got a chance to consider whether such a change was less conducive to creating a sense of community, a key element and selling point of the Town Center plan, said David Brown , a lawyer for CTCAC.

CTCAC said it has found that some already-built, single-family detached houses meet, not the established combined sideyard width minimum of eight feet, but a six-foot minimum that Newland has proposed.

But the group told the board that it still lacks information from planners and from Newland that would enable it to determine whether plats, yards, roads, parking, grading and buildings, as well as placing and spacing, comply with legal requirements.

But CTCAC said its own sampling and analysis suggests that violations are widespread.

In addition to the height and setback violations that the board found in July, CTCAC contends that the developer created undersized lots to squeeze in more homes, built roads too narrow, provided inadequate parking, graded up to 15 feet too high, eliminated about a quarter of planned green space and provided poorly situated, low-quality amenities.