County leaders are moving to exempt science-focused construction from agricultural impact fees as they rewrite Montgomery's Life Sciences Center zone to include retail, housing and general office space alongside biotech development.

The revamped zone would set the groundwork for the multidecade makeover of the 300-acre Shady Grove Life Sciences Center into the 900-acre "Science City" laid out in the Gaithersburg West Master Plan. Nearly half of that acreage would fall under the new LSC zone, according to the county Planning Board's draft of Gaithersburg West.

When pioneered in the 1980s, the zone was hailed as a linchpin of the Shady Grove Life Sciences Center's success as it grew into one of the world's largest biotech nodes. In the decades since, life science hotbeds around the world have evolved that car-centric, suburban model into a paradigm for mixed-use, transit-based research hubs, said Steven Silverman, director of the county's Department of Economic Development. On its face alone, a reworked LSC zone will give business and biotech leaders a "buzzword" to help market Montgomery County over the competition.

"We have been outpaced by other jurisdictions," he said. "What we have to do is get the zone and the zoning down so we can move on to the real issue, which is how we can attract life science to Montgomery County as other jurisdictions have done."

For three hours on Thursday, the council's Planning, Housing and Economic Development (PHED) committee tried to strike a balance between allowing a breadth of scientific and supporting uses without straying too far from a focus on life science.

Committee members settled on a 30 percent minimum dedicated for life science use. That would leave 50 percent for office space and 20 percent for housing, retail and entertainment.

"What I don't want to have happen is a situation where 10 percent is actually a lab and all the rest of it is office and retail," County Councilman Michael J. Knapp, PHED committee chairman, said in an interview. "... We want to create a science core. How do we make sure it's actually science?"

The committee is expected to shore up the zone's details before taking up its broader discussion of Gaithersburg West at sessions set for Monday and Nov. 12.

Less of a sticking point has been exempting the square footage dedicated for research and manufacturing in an LSC zone development from the county's Building Lot Termination program, which requires denser projects to buy development rights from landowners in the county's 93,000-acre Agricultural Reserve so that the farms are not sold off for development.

In June, developers of the county's two largest biotech proposals — Johns Hopkins University in Gaithersburg West and Percontee Inc. at the White Oak consolidation of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration — called for BLT fees to be excluded from the LSC zone, saying it would add, per acre, between $77,000 and $154,000 in development costs.

The planning board rejected that request on the grounds that developers did not prove any undue burden.

County Executive Isiah Leggett (D) and the County Council are showing no such reluctance. With the zone expected to apply only in Gaithersburg West, White Oak and possibly the biotech cluster at Montgomery College's Germantown campus, the exemption is not expected to impair the BLT program's funding stream.

Landowners in the Agricultural Reserve understand the trade-off of encouraging a biotech boom to the slight detriment of farmland preservation, said Knapp (D-Dist. 2) of Germantown, whose district includes most of the reserve.

"At some point, preservation of the Ag Reserve is not the only policy of Montgomery County land use," he said. "Most rational people get that."