The Planning Board has posted its revised agenda for its November 15th meeting.
At 7PM, a public hearing is scheduled on revisions to the Twinbrook Sector Plan. The major proposed revision is a mixed-use community called the Avalon by the Twinbrook Metro Station. The written submissions received so far by the Planning Board do not indicate major objections to the proposed change.
At 1PM, Legacy Open Space Director Brenda Sandberg will present her recommendations on the Legacy Open Space program. The program makes properties eligible for purchase should they come on the market. It does not commit the County to purchasing the properties (and certainly does not initiate any sort of condemnation proceeding or force a sale) though it does make them eligible for purchase through the Legacy Open Space program if they come on the market. Sandberg is recommending seven new sites for the Legacy Open Space program:
1) Beverly Property, Broad Run Watershed, Poolesville
2) Wild Acres/Grosvenor Mansion Property, Bethesda
3) Milton Property, Capitol View Park
4) Hickey and Offut, Bethesda
5) Ireland Drive/National Park Seminary Carriage Trails, Silver Spring
6) National 4H Council Headquarters, Chevy Chase
7) Montgomery College of Art and Design, Wheaton
Sandberg is also recommending against Legacy Open Space designation for several sites:
8) Selden Island/Walker Village Site
9) Edson Lane Forest
10) Woodmont East Phase II
The negative decision on Edson Lane Forest includes a rather passionate set of paragraphs calling for preservation of the forest and relocation of a proposed workforce housing project to another location in the same general area. Yet the memo to the Board also states:
Despite the value of retaining forest in urban areas, staff does not believe this site meets the overall Legacy Open Space criteria of “best of the best”. In addition, the isolated site is not appropriate for park ownership due to use and management concerns.More detail would help justify these statements. As written, they appear idiosyncratic and vague.
Here is what the memo to the Planning Board states on Woodmont East:
A nomination was very recently received for the Woodmont East development site in downtown Bethesda. The site is at the corner of Bethesda and Woodmont Avenues and the Capital Crescent Trail runs through the site, making the site a potentially important urban open space. An initial evaluation of the site was included in the staff memo on the Preliminary Plan/Development Plan that was reviewed by the Planning Board on November 8, 2007. That Preliminary/Development Plan was deferred at the request of the applicant. Legacy Open Space staff will continue to review the application and bring a staff recommendation to the Planning Board in the future, as appropriate.I was pleasantly surprised to read that staff will continue to review the application for LOS since Brenda Sandberg was the most emphatic in her opposition to open space at this site in my meeting with her and other members of planning staff. She insisted it would have to be entirely hardscape with some plantings, though it appears that this decision is being revisited as well in favor of a more sensible view of a mix of hard surface paths around and among green spaces and plantings.
The Board may want to question Sandberg about the LOS process. Before recommending against LOS for Woodmont East, Sandberg met with developers and planning staffers who had already recommended approval of the preliminary plan (which the developers ultimately withdrew under pressure from the Planning Board) but not with members of the community. The staff of the LOS program was under unreasonable pressure to produce a decision quickly--in less than eight days I am told even though the developers had requested an extension which had two more months to run.
It strikes me that this matter was badly handled and the process should be reformed to be more inclusive of the community. Placing blame is far less important than fixing the process so that community trust, already badly shaken, can be restored. After the staff presents its report on LOS, members of the public can testify and should do so to encourage reform in this area. Again, the problem may be not so much with the ultimate decisions but with a process which undermines confidence in them.
