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Town adopts church zoning limits

Washington Grove rule also can restrict schools, nonprofits

Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2005

Washington Grove leaders approved a zoning ordinance Monday night that will restrict the development of churches, schools and nonprofits to stave off increased traffic in a town defined largely by its appeal among pedestrians.

The unanimous vote caps more than two years of debate that at times frayed relations among residents and church leaders and put at odds the founding tenets of the quiet, wooded town near Gaithersburg, long regarded as both a religious haven and a refuge from urban sprawl.

‘‘We believe that it was not intended to impede what anyone, what any of these uses, do,” Washington Grove Mayor John Compton said Tuesday.

‘‘It was implemented to require that the town evaluate” these uses’ impact, Compton said.

The ordinance gives the town’s planning commission and board of zoning appeals power to modify development plans by religious, educational and nonprofit groups that could draw increased traffic into the town, connected via a network of narrow roads and paths.

The measure was proposed in November 2004 and addressed consternation among residents over an ultimately abandoned plan by the Washington Grove United Methodist Church to build a school for up to 50 students on its property in the center of town in 2003, which some feared would draw too much traffic.

The proposal upset church leaders, who said it would unjustly hinder their mission in a town whose roots were planted more than 100 years ago as a Methodist ‘‘camp meeting,” where people could at once find likeminded churchgoers and escape the bustle of Washington, D.C.

Town leaders maintained the ordinance wasn’t designed to restrict the mission of the church, whose Sunday congregation has diminished to about 30 people, but was only meant to ward off any negative impact the church’s activities might exact on the town’s quality of life.

At first vociferous in its opposition, the church, led by the Rev. Patrick Malone, eventually fell silent, lacking the resources to fight a measure it felt would inevitably pass.

Malone was not available Tuesday to comment.

With the measure’s most formidable opposition gone, leaders pushed ahead and had expected to vote on it in October.

But they instead held the record open for language adjustments that would offer the board of zoning appeals more guidelines in approving or denying special exception applications.

Cheers of ‘‘hallelujah!” rang through the small council room at McCathran Hall in the moments after the vote, which came during a more than five-hour meeting at which a bevy of other topics were debated.

Just before the vote, Compton asked if further discussion of the ordinance was necessary.

‘‘We’ve had plenty,” Councilman Darrell Anderson said.

Bruce Rothrock, mounds of dry leaves crackling under his feet as he stood outside the council room during a brief closed session later that night, said it’s been very quiet since the church stopped fighting the law.

But he also recalled what it was like before that happened.

‘‘It was a very heated concern when it was first announced,” said Rothrock, who has lived in Washington Grove for 14 years.

‘‘There were a lot of citizens who were just shocked by the thought that there was going to be a very active organization or a school going on,” he said.