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County planners said they will propose a large hotel and increased parking near the Equestrian Center in Upper Marlboro, mixed commercial and residential development in the surrounding area and other changes as part of their long-range recommendations to guide development in southern Prince George's County.

At a public workshop Monday, staff from the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission gave residents a preview of their suggestions at the last of a year-long series of workshops at the Marlboro Moose Lodge in Upper Marlboro.

The plan will not recommend zoning changes that would allow mixed commercial and residential development in the center of Upper Marlboro, along Main Street, a departure from planners' suggestions at previous workshops, said Betty Carlson-Jameson, the project leader for M-NCPPC.

Carlson-Jameson said county planners could help Upper Marlboro's government and local residents change zoning in the future, but she said that process would not begin until after the plan they are working on now is finished.

"With the master plan process, we have just not had enough time to establish design standards [for the town]," she said. "We're saying that should happen in the next year or two, but we're not proposing any design changes right now."

Joseph Hourclé, a commissioner for Upper Marlboro, said he had hoped the process would begin sooner.

"I thought that we could start the [re-zoning] process faster," he said after the workshop. "From what they were saying, it sounds like we have to come up with the guidelines."

The plan will call for a large hotel to be built near the Equestrian Center, as well as additional parking and a four-story garage that would add 600 parking spaces to the facility just outside of town, Carlson-Jameson said.

The final plan will be released to the public in December, and the County Council is expected to approve it as early as June 2009.

Planners said they will also propose re-zoning a site north of Upper Marlboro, west of the intersection of Route 301 and Peerless Road, to allow mixed-use zoning that would allow homes and businesses to be built. Teri Bond, the project's facilitator, said the developed site would serve as a gateway that would draw visitors into town.

"There's tremendous interest by developers in the site," Bond said. "Right now, we don't have an attractive gateway."

Planners identified a second site, an industrial area off Route 301 north of Route 4, as a potential location for further development but said they will not make any recommendations in the current plan.

"It may just be revitalization," said Bond. "It might be redevelopment. We're not sure."

The only other large area where planners are recommending re-zoning is an undeveloped, 80-acre industrial site in Marlton, SalmÛn said. M-NCPPC's plan will suggest allowing residential development there, he said.

M-NCPPC members said they are recommending few other zoning changes in the area. The other changes would be on 12 small lots, most of which will affect individual homes or businesses, planners said.

"We're recommending very few changes to the zoning," Carlson-Jameson said. "Most of them, we feel, are more or less corrections."

Planners said they also envision the construction of two elementary schools, one of which is already under construction on Brooke Lane in Upper Marlboro, and a middle school in the Beechtree development north of Upper Marlboro. The plan also calls for construction of two more elementary schools and a high school in Cheltenham over the next 20 years, they said. Planners said they set the 20-year timeframe in light of Maryland's budget crisis.

Planners said they will also call for a new community center to serve Rosaryville, Marlton and Melwood.

Other recommendations will include improvements to "key roads," including eight additional interchanges on Route 301 and Route 4 and the addition of sidewalks and bike trails, planners said.

Some residents at the meeting said they were worried the county will not have money for the improvements.

"Building roads is expensive, it takes time and it's difficult," said Clive Graham, the senior planner for Environmental Resources Management, an Annapolis-based consulting firm helping to draft the plan. "Much of it revolves around the county, who's going to have to ante up."

Glenn Burton, a transportation planner for M-NCPPC, pointed out that the master plan would allow for long-term development of roads over the coming decades.

"All master plan roads are driven by future traffic demands," Burton said.

Planners said their recommendations include trails, sidewalks and bicycle paths to link future developments in an effort to keep communities connected with each other and also connect historically and environmentally significant areas.

Some residents said they were concerned that the plan would not do enough to make sure infrastructure keeps pace with development.

"They don't have any ideas for making the infrastructure better," said Belinda Ellerbe, a Melwood Springs resident, who said she worried about traffic congestion, the availability of electricity and other strains on the local infrastructure.

"We have power outages once a month," she said. "We can't get in and out of our community [because of traffic]."