Montgomery County Director of Economic Development Steve Silverman sent the following letter to members of the business community explaining Maryland's failure to land Northrop Grumman.
April 29, 2010
Dear [Name]:
I am sure that there will be many articles written about Northrop Grumman’s decision to locate in Virginia, and I also assume that the facts and speculations surrounding the deal will be rehashed and debated. Given my day-to-day involvement in the County’s efforts to secure Northrop Grumman, I wanted to provide you with my personal perspective on this effort.
Rest assured that Montgomery County and the State of Maryland put forth an extremely competitive offer to Northrop Grumman. During this five month process, Maryland and the County worked collaboratively to attract this high profile prospect, and did so by involving high ranking leaders in our business and public sectors.
There are two important factors I would like you to know about this particular recruitment. One is that all of the elected decision-makers, who were required to sign off on our offer, starting with County Executive Ike Leggett and the Governor, did so with a thorough acknowledgement that we needed to be extremely aggressive, and aggressive in an unprecedented fashion. The second point I would like to convey is that Maryland and the County were complimented by many involved in the selection process on our attractive offer and welcoming nature. It appears that we surprised the site selection community with our proactive competitiveness, and in the process, hopefully changed the perception that Maryland and Montgomery County are not always willing to be real players in such high-stake recruiting activities – because we were and will continue to be.
At the end of the day, Northrop Grumman made a business decision involving real estate and unfortunately this time, that decision did not go our way. As we have previously noted, the glut of office space in Northern Virginia will remain a challenge for us, no matter what type of aggressive incentives we propose. While we are clearly disappointed, the County, the State and our respective economic development agencies are proud of our efforts.
I would like to thank you and your colleagues for your support of our corporate recruitment activities and ask that you continue your efforts to make Montgomery County a great place to live, work, learn, and play.
Sincerely,
Steven A. Silverman
Friday, April 30, 2010
Silverman Explains Northrop Loss
Monday, April 26, 2010
Leggett Reacts to Northrop Grumman Decision
Following is a statement by County Executive Ike Leggett on Northrop Grumman's decision to locate its headquarters in Virginia instead of in Maryland.
Statement by County Executive Isiah Leggett on Northrop Grumman Decision
April 26, 2010
I am disappointed that Northrop Grumman, one of the world's leading technology and security companies, did not choose to relocate its headquarters to Montgomery County.
Montgomery County, led by our Department of Economic Development, worked closely with Governor O'Malley's office, the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development, and our commercial real estate sector to attract Northrop Grumman and help them realize that a Montgomery County location was indeed the best East Coast location for them to grow and prosper.
Unfortunately, we were not successful, but Montgomery County remains the economic engine of Maryland and a leading contributor to the region's economic vitality. We remain steadfast in our resolve to support and grow our nearly 3,000 IT/telecom companies and nearly 300 biotech companies and will continue to market and position Montgomery County as a location of choice for new and expanding companies. Recent initiatives like the County's decision to move ahead with The Great Seneca Science Corridor Plan and recent passage of a local biotech investment tax credit are just some of the innovative, progressive steps the County is pursuing to remain a regional economic driver now and into the future.
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Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Sleeping Giant Stays in Bed
Last month, we ran a four-part series on the policy and political implications of the Gaithersburg West Master Plan. We asked whether the issue was a “sleeping giant” and speculated about its impact on the 2010 at-large County Council race. The recent approval of a compromise master plan on an 8-1 vote changes things considerably.
The final weeks leading to the vote were pressure-packed. The City Councils of Rockville and Gaithersburg came out against the plan and opponents threatened dire consequences if it was passed. But supporters picked up their game and flooded the council with emails in the last days before the vote. Looming over everything was the budget, which threatened to push the issue to the back burner.
Just before the vote, six Council Members broadly favored the provisions in the plan: at-large members Nancy Floreen, George Leventhal and Duchy Trachtenberg and district Council Members Mike Knapp (who is the Planning, Housing and Economic Development Committee Chair), Valerie Ervin and Nancy Navarro. They could have jammed it through over the objections of the remaining three. But that risked creating an election issue and damaging the council’s ability to work together on the budget. So Knapp began exploring ways to pick up more votes – and most critically, earning the support of Phil Andrews, who represented the area. Could the six supporters move enough to get Andrews on board?
One new piece of information that made a difference was a council staff memo on potential build-out under the plan. The original plan allowed 20 million square feet of commercial space provided that all of the supporting infrastructure (including the Corridor Cities Transitway) was built. County Executive Ike Leggett proposed allowing 18 million square feet and several Council Members shared that view. But developers seldom max out every square foot on their properties because of financing constraints, problems with securing tenants and issues with architecture and engineering. The staff found that if the limit was set at 20 million square feet, developers were likely to actually build only 14.7-16.2 million square feet. The existing master plan from 1990 allowed 13 million square feet with no staging tied to infrastructure. This information gave the council flexibility to adjust the density since neither 18 million nor 20 million square feet would have actually been built under any circumstance. So the ultimate compromise provided for 17.5 million square feet plus concessions on allowable congestion and improved staging – just enough to get Andrews and Roger Berliner to come on board. Only Marc Elrich refused to go along.
Andrews did what all good legislators do. He staked out his position, accumulated some leverage, won some concessions, struck a deal and defended it. Knapp did what all good committee chairs do. He provided lots of opportunities for input, negotiated patiently, and built a consensus to win as many votes as possible. And Council President Nancy Floreen did what all good presiding officers do: clear out one contentious issue before moving on to an even more contentious issue (that being the budget). For all the criticism of its dysfunction, here is an instance when the County Council worked well together and arrived at a fair solution.
OK, maybe we should not overdo it. Council Member Duchy Trachtenberg put out a press release claiming credit for the deal hours after the vote even though she had little role in working it out. Welcome to election season, folks.
Given the lopsided vote and the support of Phil Andrews, it’s hard to see where the opponents go from here. The plan is done. It is not going to be repealed or modified in any major way. No amount of electoral activism will change that. Marc Elrich will pick up some votes in the Gaithersburg precincts and perhaps win a few of them. But because the County Council was able to find a compromise, the sleeping giant rubbed his eyes, yawned, rolled over and went back to bed – probably through the election.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
A New White Flint
By Council Member Roger Berliner.
Today, the Council approved the White Flint Sector Plan by a unanimous vote. It is a plan that will transform the White Flint community -- from the southern tip at White Flint Mall to the northern border at Montrose and Randolph Roads -- into a more vibrant, walkable, bikeable, livable place.
I was excited about this plan from the very beginning, one that over many years will transform a significant portion of the Council District that I represent. Nonetheless, I was also well-aware that the compact, dense mixed-use development proposed represented a paradigm shift for our County, and especially for the neighborhoods adjacent to the sector plan. While many residents were excited by this vision of the future of their community, others were, and some remain, deeply skeptical and fearful of the changes that will occur.
For that reason, I made a commitment early on to protect the surrounding communities to the maximum extent possible and have worked hard to make sure that the new White Flint will improve the quality of life not just for the new people drawn to this vibrant place, but for those who already live in the immediate area. Our goal was to create a distinct "sense of place" for White Flint, and I believe the plan achieves that goal. Those who live in and around White Flint will be able to take advantage of the numerous public spaces, bike trails, and walking paths as well as the public amenities that make a neighborhood feel like a neighborhood -- a library, a recreation center, a new school, and a beautiful, substantial civic green that will serve as a meeting place for the community.
Our vision for White Flint emanates from the growing understanding that we can no longer afford to perpetuate suburban sprawl. There is an environmental imperative for us to grow smarter, to grow more compactly and with less reliance on the automobile in order to reduce our carbon footprint. And I am excited about the potential the White Flint Sector Plan has to achieve these goals. In fact, one of EPA's senior officials has praised the White Flint plan for that very reason. The new White Flint will allow people to live and play closer to where they work, to spend less time in their cars and more time enjoying recreational activities and time with family.
When you look at the area today, it is hard not be struck by the large amount of asphalt found in the strip malls and surface parking lots. Asphalt is not the highest and best use of this incredibly important real estate. We need less "impervious surfaces" and more trees. The White Flint Sector Plan will provide both. It will transform the proliferation of surface parking lots into a greener, more vibrant network of mixed use development that will produce vast improvements in stormwater management and overall water quality to the benefit of our local watersheds like Rock Creek. Streetscaping and street trees, along with other environmental incentives in the Commercial/Residential Zone (CR Zone) will also help to reduce CO2 emissions and absorb some of the heat produced in urban areas. In fact, it is the goal of the plan to double the tree canopy.
The White Flint Sector Plan is also predicated upon a deepening commitment to mass transit and calls for a new MARC station on Nicholson Court and the transformation of Rockville Pike into a lovely grand boulevard that will include state-of-the-art bus rapid transit. The plan calls for significant parking restrictions and aggressive mode share goals that will help take cars off the roads; a new street grid which should help diffuse traffic and make it easier to get around the area; and protective measures that will be put in place to prevent cut-through traffic into the neighborhoods surrounding White Flint.
My colleagues and I are committed to the proper implementation and careful monitoring of this sector plan. Throughout the course of the Council's deliberations regarding the plan, right up to and including today, I offered numerous amendments to ensure that our Planning Board keeps a close eye on traffic conditions that are the source of so much understandable consternation. Under an amendment I proposed today, the Planning Board will be required to do a comprehensive analysis of road conditions every two years, and to recommend to the Council specific projects that will uphold our obligation to provide adequate transportation services.
More broadly, I believe the new White Flint can and will serve as a model of sustainable growth for our county and perhaps for the nation as a whole. My goal has been to try to link what we are doing in White Flint to our need to take cars off the road around the new, enlarged National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, and launch Rockville Pike/Wisconsin Ave. as a pilot "Sustainable Transportation Corridor." We need to look at this corridor, arguably the single most important economic corridor in the state, in a holistic manner, not focusing too narrowly on one segment or a single neighborhood, but rather on the entire length of the Pike. And the state of the art transit system that we envision for White Flint is as important to Friendship Heights and Bethesda as it is to Rockville.
While the redevelopment of the White Flint area will do much to create a new type of sustainable community, it will also benefit the County from an economic development perspective. It will be an attractive place for new businesses which will help sustain and enhance the County's vitality and competitiveness in the region. Significantly, the White Flint Sector Plan is expected to generate between six and seven billion dollars in new revenue for the County over the life of the plan -- not a shabby figure in any economy, let alone our current one.
Arguably the most important aspect of the White Flint plan, given its scale and scope, is the degree of consensus that was reached, consensus reflected in our own Council's unanimous support. And this was not just a happy coincidence, but rather the result of years of ongoing collaboration between the private sector, neighbors, and government. Differing priorities and perspectives came together around a shared goal -- to make the White Flint Sector Plan a strong, viable blueprint that will guide the successful transformation of the area for current and future generations of Montgomery County residents.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Is Gaithersburg West a Sleeping Giant? Part Four
The Gaithersburg West Master Plan has become a much more potent political issue than most master plans have been in the past. So is it the sleeping giant of 2010?
To see which way public sentiment is headed, look no further than the City Councils of Gaithersburg and Rockville. Both councils recently sent critical resolutions on the plan to the County Council. Few politicians are closer to their constituents than municipal officials, and every one of them in the two municipalities has grave doubts about the master plan. That opposition is the product of hundreds of emails sent by opponents, which have hugely outnumbered emails backing the plan. One elected source claims to have not received a single supportive email and states, “I have been surprised by the lack of emails from supporters.” Another said the email count ran “95 to 5 against.” Yet another said, “Percentage of emails from opponents was virtually 100%.” Putting aside the policy arguments – and both sides have legitimate ones – we give the opponents the political edge based on their numbers, intensity and appetite for combat. If a master plan is passed that contains close to the maximum 20 million square feet of commercial space in the current proposal, we believe the opponents will man the barricades and set loose the dogs of war.
That said, the issue’s potential electoral impact is limited by circumstance. The plan will have no impact on the Council District 3 race since incumbent Phil Andrews – who is the plan’s fiercest opponent – has no challenger. If he does get a rival, we believe he will win easily. Since the plan is not a state issue, it should have little impact on the District 17 or District 39 legislative contests, though some candidates (like Delegate Saqib Ali) will no doubt try to earn brownie points by taking a position. That leaves the County Council at-large race, in which all four incumbents plus three declared challengers are running.
Incumbent Marc Elrich, who is aligned with Andrews against the plan, will be a clear beneficiary of any opposition movement. Supporters regard incumbents Nancy Floreen, George Leventhal and Duchy Trachtenberg as allies. Floreen and Leventhal are two-time winners with good financing and probable access to MCEA’s Apple Ballot. Floreen, one of the county’s more tenacious campaigners, has won twice without the Apple. Trachtenberg has lots of money and no Apple. We believe that no one should take her vote on the master plan for granted. None of the three challengers has taken a public position on Gaithersburg West, but Action Committee for Transit (of which Hans Riemer is Vice-President) is opposed.
Another potential factor in the at-large race is Phil Andrews, who is not inclined to sit idly by and allow the master plan to pass without a fight. Andrews sent us this statement:If the County Council approves a Gaithersburg West Master Plan that would harm my constituents and many other people in the County by allowing unbearable traffic congestion in Gaithersburg, Rockville, and North Potomac, I will do what is necessary to protect my constituents by working to ensure that the next Council is committed to amending the Plan to prevent intolerable traffic congestion.
Read into that what you will, folks.
What impact could Gaithersburg West have on the at-large race? To answer that question, we turn to data on the 2006 at-large Democratic primary. Our goal is to quantify the number of Democratic votes in play near the plan area. We counted actual at-large votes cast in the Life Sciences Center (LSC) precinct itself, within one mile of that precinct and within two miles. Neither the precinct counts nor the total count to which we compare them include absentee votes as the county Board of Elections website does not break out absentee votes by precinct.
In 2006, voters in the LSC precinct cast 456 votes in the at-large primary. Additional voters within one mile cast 12,201 votes. Additional voters within two miles cast 8,028 votes. Those three groups together accounted for 20,685 at-large votes, or seven percent of the county’s precinct total of 293,685.
The raw vote counts in these precincts vastly overstate the reach of the issue for two reasons. First, the majority of voters in these areas will not vote on this issue alone. Second, at least a few voters may support the master plan, thereby washing out an uncertain percentage of the opponent votes. But if the opponents can rally a net five percent of these primary voters to focus on this issue, they will be able to steer at least a thousand votes. If they can muster a greater intensity and geographic reach, they could influence more than that. And if the 2010 primary has lower turnout than 2006 – and it very well may due to the lack of competitive County Executive and Congressional races – the Gaithersburg West issue will be accordingly magnified.
One thousand votes is a potentially significant amount in a County Council at-large primary. On election night in 1998, Steve Silverman edged out Pat Baptiste for the fourth seat by 640 votes. In 2002, George Leventhal won the fourth seat over Blair Ewing by 1,140 votes. In 2006, Nancy Floreen won the fourth seat over Mike Subin by 5,684 votes, but Subin had been badly injured in a bicycle accident and did not campaign hard. Based on this history, no one can rule out that the 2010 at-large election could be decided by a couple thousand votes or less. One large, organized single-interest group could make a difference.
So, to answer our own question: is Gaithersburg West a sleeping giant in 2010? It’s too early to say for sure, but it will certainly be a factor.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Is Gaithersburg West a Sleeping Giant? Part Three
The problem with the Gaithersburg West Master Plan is not its density or its jobs. Both represent part of Montgomery County’s future whether nervous neighbors want them or not. Rather, the plan’s greatest flaw is its reliance on a set of transportation projects that may never be built.
The plan’s density increases are tied to a series of new transportation projects through a “staging” process. As progress is made on funding, building and completing these projects, the plan will allow more commercial square footage in a series of steps. The most expensive transportation projects called for by the plan include:
1. A realigned Corridor Cities Transitway (CCT) that is one mile longer, looks like an “S” and contains five stations in the Life Sciences Center (LSC). The original alignment contained three stations on a more direct route along the LSC’s northern edge.
2. Seven grade-separated interchange projects:
Sam Eig Highway at Diamondback Drive
Sam Eig Highway at Great Seneca Highway
Great Seneca Highway at Key West Avenue
I-270 at Watkins Mill Road
Key West Avenue at Shady Grove Road
Great Seneca Highway at Muddy Branch Road
Quince Orchard Road at Great Seneca Highway
The first four projects were proposed by the 1990 Shady Grove Study Area Master Plan. Twenty years later, they are still unbuilt. After the draft Gaithersburg West Master Plan was released, the planning staff decided that the Great Seneca/Key West interchange project was unnecessary, leaving six projects still proposed.
It is extremely unlikely that all of these projects will be constructed for the following reasons.
CCT
In a recent analysis, the General Assembly’s Department of Legislative Services (DLS) described the condition of the state’s Transportation Trust Fund (TTF) as so emaciated that the state would have to pick just one of its three proposed transit lines to fund. In 2008, the Governor signaled his rank order of preference among the projects by cutting planning funding by 7% for the Red Line, 19% for the Purple Line and 47% for the CCT. Furthermore, the lead planner for the Maryland Transit Administration was formerly on the payroll of the Greater Baltimore Committee for the explicit purpose of advocating for a light-rail Red Line.
The Red Line serves two important jurisdictions – Baltimore City and Baltimore County. The Purple Line serves two other important jurisdictions – Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties. The CCT serves just Montgomery County in its current form as a link between Clarksburg and Shady Grove. It could conceivably be extended someday to Frederick, but the circuitous route recommended by the Gaithersburg West plan may make it less attractive to Frederick transit riders than a rapid bus route straight down I-270. The greater density contained in the Gaithersburg West plan helps the CCT’s federal cost-effectiveness ratings, but the politics rank it as third in line. That means it could take a long, LONG time to get built.
Transportation Funding
Your author has written again and again and again and again about the utter failure of Annapolis to adequately fund transportation. Now, the General Assembly’s staff openly admits that the state will have trouble affording any new projects. And yet the Gaithersburg West Master Plan relies on six new grade-separated interchanges. Former Secretary of Transportation John Porcari once told your author that each new interchange project costs an average $150 million, meaning that the density staged in the plan will require hundreds of millions of dollars of state road construction money that are not there.
MoCo’s Existing Needs
Let’s put aside the inexcusable indolence of the Lazy Lords of Annapolis for a moment and imagine that they someday raise revenues for transportation. Montgomery County already has tremendous needs above and beyond the improvements in the Gaithersburg West plan that are crying out for funding. First, the county is the recipient of the ICC, a subject of some jealousy by other jurisdictions. Second, the county wants both the Purple Line and the CCT. Third, the county has a long wish-list of other smaller, but worthy improvements that run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. (Just one of them is an interchange in the Gaithersburg West plan.) Fourth, the county wants the state to rebuild Rockville Pike as an “urban boulevard” as part of its White Flint Sector Plan. Fifth, the county wants Beltway widening between the I-270 Spur and Virginia. And sixth, the county is asking for the mother of all widening projects: the $4+ billion I-270 lane additions. Will all of this give way to Gaithersburg West? And will the rest of the state roll over so that only MoCo’s transportation needs are met?
The Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT) became so alarmed by the expense of the Gaithersburg West improvements – which of course will require state financing – that they sent an unusual letter to the county decrying them. MDOT estimated the total cost of the new Gaithersburg West infrastructure at $1.3 billion and the total cost of MoCo’s existing requests at more than $7 billion. MDOT said, “Given the current economic and fiscal climate, we suggest that a financial feasibility analysis be added as part of this document to fully demonstrate the viability of the proposed development program.” Translation: we can’t afford it. Council President Nancy Floreen, who is a former Planning Board Member and is the current Chair of the council’s transportation committee, remarked on Facebook, “This is the first time that I can recall that the State has weighed in at this level on a master plan.”
All of the above makes plain that the plan’s potential depends on transportation projects that may never be built. That means that the jobs desired by supporters and the high-rises detested by opponents may never materialize. But this applies only so long as the plan’s staging requirements are retained and there is the problem. A future County Council could very well be tempted to abandon the staging and proceed with more density anyway. (The current council just did that in Germantown.) That would be a mistake in Gaithersburg West as no one believes that the area’s current transportation capacity is adequate to handle the additional density called for by the new plan. No current council can ever make commitments on behalf of a future council so the possibility cannot be ruled out.
The county is justifiably interested in allowing more job creation throughout its land area outside of the Agricultural Reserve. But rather than planning jobs near hypothetical – if not imaginary – infrastructure, the county should focus dense development in locations with existing infrastructure, publicly-owned land and already-programmed capital projects. White Flint, which has an existing Metro station and is near the impending Rockville Pike-Montrose interchange project, is one example. Downtown Wheaton, which also has a Metro station plus a WMATA lot, a county-owned services center building and a large county-owned parking lot – all of which can be redeveloped – is another. Glenmont, which is near a Metro station, the impending Georgia Avenue-Randolph Road interchange project and a new county-financed parking garage project, is yet another example. All of them have substantial real-life assets to offer in the cause of transit-oriented development.
Gaithersburg West should have more jobs, but only in line with a realistic view of what its transportation capacity is likely to be in the future. Realism about state transportation funding is nowhere to be found in the current plan. The master plan needs a big dose of that prior to County Council approval.
We will conclude with the politics of this issue in Part Four.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Is Gaithersburg West a Sleeping Giant? Part Two
The Gaithersburg West Master Plan has provoked strong views in support and in opposition. Let’s examine both sides.
The supporters’ principal case for the plan can be summarized in one word: jobs. The Life Sciences Center (LSC) is currently allowed to have enough space to hold 38,000 jobs, of which 21,200 already exist and another 9,350 would be created under approved site plans. The new plan would allow enough commercial space to create 60,000 jobs. The county has an undeniable interest in creating jobs, and not just because of the current recession. The hard fact is that without job creation over the long run, the county will not be able to afford good schools and high-quality services. Over time, a county without job growth will turn into a county without a future.
Furthermore, Johns Hopkins has argued in an MPW guest blog that the plan’s diversification of uses will be good for existing and future residents. Hopkins states, “The new Gaithersburg West Master Plan would transform this single-use, commercial area, filled with low-rise office parks and acres of surface parking lots, into a vibrant town center that feels more like a community.” They state that 45% of the Belward Farm lot will be set aside for parks and open space, which they say is an improvement over the current plan’s set-aside of 25%. Finally, they say that building on the science-based community already in the plan area will help the county “remain competitive as a global center for scientific research.”
The opponents fall into two camps. First, some smart growth advocates such as Action Committee for Transit argue that the plan is not transit-oriented development and is in fact equivalent to sprawl. They say that the plan’s failure to explicitly call for a light-rail CCT means that transit options in the area will be little better than bus service. They believe that the plan’s assumptions of carpool and transit use are overly optimistic. Finally, they criticize the plan’s street network as focused on moving cars at high speeds at the expense of pedestrians. The Sierra Club agrees and has announced its intention to score County Council votes on the plan in its endorsement process.
The second group of opponents is far larger: the neighbors. Many nearby civic groups have formed the Gaithersburg-North Potomac-Rockville Coalition, better known as “Scale it Back,” an organization with a simple goal of reducing plan density. They have submitted two guest blogs to MPW saying that the plan calls for “monstrous high rises” and “hopelessly clogged” traffic. The neighbors were able to mobilize hundreds of people to attend a March 9 community meeting with the four at-large County Council Members. Delegate Saqib Ali (D-39), a plan skeptic, took this photo of the meeting.
The opponents are carrying the day in the eyes of two important groups of elected officials: the City Councils of Gaithersburg and Rockville. Each wrote a letter to the County Council criticizing many aspects of the master plan, with Gaithersburg’s measured but pointed comments looking moderate compared to Rockville’s naked call for the plan to be shelved.
But that is not all. The two City Councils held an unprecedented joint meeting with the County Council on March 1 that did not go well. In fact, one plan supporter went so far as to call it an “ambush.” One City Council Member after another attacked the plan, feeding on both each other and the masses of opponents in attendance. One attendee described a “tremendous sense of tension in the room” characterized by a “hostility between the cities and the county.” Another attendee described the county’s reaction to municipal concerns as, “Screw the facts, screw the numbers, screw your sorry little traffic problem... talk to staff about it. Left us with a pretty bad taste.” County Council Members Phil Andrews and Marc Elrich condemned the plan on multiple grounds and were not challenged by any of their colleagues who are more receptive to it.
We have our own opinion on the Gaithersburg West Master Plan. We will offer it tomorrow.
Monday, March 15, 2010
How Not to Do Advocacy
Do you want to advocate on a zoning issue? Don’t do what these people did.
First, your author and several readers across the county received a mailing inside this envelope.
It says, “Important Tax Information Enclosed.” Well, as the income tax deadline is approaching, of course we will all open it.
Then this notice appears inside.
Note the complete anonymity and lack of explanation for this issue. It turns out that there is a zoning issue in Germantown scheduled for the time mentioned on the notice. “Important Tax Information,” indeed!
Days later, we received this postcard.
Now there is a name to go with these folks: Germantown Residents for Smart Growth. But there is still no contact info and no explanation of the issue.
Furthermore, the notice and postcard urge us to email Council President Floreen. Of course, off-the-record communications on zoning issues are forbidden by the county’s ex parte rule. So now we have two anonymous notes sent all over the county urging citizens to break the law.
Here is our message to the fools who have been spraying around this drivel. The next time you want to waste your money, just set fire to it instead.
Is Gaithersburg West a Sleeping Giant? Part One
The dispute over the Planning Department’s new Master Plan for Gaithersburg West has gone on for nearly a year and may be heading for a resolution. Or maybe not. Whatever the case, it is turning into a potent political issue that may have consequences for the 2010 at-large County Council race.
In the summer of 2009, the Planning Department released its draft Gaithersburg West Master Plan, which is an amendment to several earlier master plans covering a number of unincorporated areas near the Cities of Rockville and Gaithersburg. The focus of most of the discussion on the plan covers the “Life Sciences Center” (LSC), an area sandwiched between the City of Gaithersburg to the north, the City of Rockville to the east and the unincorporated areas of North Potomac to the south and west. The two city governments control land use decisions within their boundaries, but the county government controls land use in all unincorporated areas (and in many incorporated ones as well). Because the LSC area borders both cities’ limits, their residents and officials are understandably interested in what the county is considering there.
The LSC area currently contains a number of science-based and academic employers including Johns Hopkins University, the Universities at Shady Grove, Shady Grove Adventist Hospital, Human Genome Sciences, BioReliance and the J. Craig Venter Institute. This is no accident since the county encouraged these employers to come to this area and excluded residential and retail uses from much of this zone. The Planning Department’s proposed Master Plan intends to take advantage of the Corridor Cities Transitway (CCT), which passes through the LSC, to locate additional density near its stations. The major features of the plan are:
More Commercial Space and Employment
The 1990 Master Plan allows 13 million square feet of commercial space, of which 6.94 million square feet has been built and 3.76 additional square feet has been approved. The new plan would allow 20 million square feet in the LSC. The 1990 Master Plan allows enough space to support 38,000 jobs, of which 21,200 already exist and another 9,350 would be created under approved site plans. The new plan would allow enough commercial space to create 60,000 jobs.
More Dwelling Units
The 1990 Master Plan allows 3,800 dwelling units, of which 3,300 exist and no more have been approved. The new plan would allow 9,000 dwelling units.
More CCT Stations and a Different Alignment
The original CCT alignment called for three CCT stations in or near the LSC. The new plan calls for five CCT stations. Instead of skirting the northern edge of the LSC, the CCT would swoop down through the heart of the LSC in an “S” shape under the new plan. This would lengthen the CCT by about a mile. The additional stations are intended to support additional density and would therefore add ridership. In the graphic below, the original alignment is marked in black and the new alignment is marked in red.
More Grade-Separated Interchanges
The 1990 Master Plan recommends grade-separated interchanges at four intersections: Sam Eig Highway at Diamondback Drive, Sam Eig Highway at Great Seneca Highway, Great Seneca Highway at Key West Avenue and I-270 at Watkins Mill Road. The new plan retains those recommendations and adds three more intersections for grade separation: Key West Avenue at Shady Grove Road, Great Seneca Highway at Muddy Branch Road and Quince Orchard Road at Great Seneca Highway. If all of these improvements were completed, most of the major intersections in and near the LSC would be grade-separated.
Staging
The new plan is structured to allow increases in density only when infrastructure milestones are met. Some of these milestones include full funding, construction and operation of the CCT, full funding and construction of specific grade-separated interchanges and percentage targets for commuters using non-auto modes. Unless the milestones are met, the density increases are not supposed to be allowed.
The proposed Gaithersburg West Master Plan has provoked some debate. We’ll get into that in Part Two.
Friday, January 15, 2010
County Considers $4 Million Subsidy to Bring Costco to Wheaton
The Leggett administration is secretly considering a $4 million subsidy to lure Costco to Westfield Wheaton. When – or if – it plans to make the subsidy available for public review and comment is unclear.
Details on the plan are murky at best. The administration briefed the County Council about it in closed session on Tuesday. Westfield has indicated its intent to the county to attract Costco to its mall site adjacent to the Wheaton Central Business District, but it has a problem: the cost of preparing the site for Costco’s occupancy is high enough that the return on investment falls short of other development opportunities Westfield has elsewhere. But Westfield has told the county that a four million dollar subsidy would boost the return on investment to the point where the project would be worthwhile. The Executive Branch is now considering disbursing the subsidy to Westfield in Fiscal Year 2012. While the administration is keeping the proposal officially secret, its representatives are reaching out to selected individuals in an effort to build support for the project. It is unclear whether the proposal will ever be available for public input prior to any signed commitment with Westfield.
The subsidy would raise a number of issues if its details were ever to become public. Here are just a few of them.
1. What does this mean for the county’s vision of Wheaton?
The county has convened numerous groups of stakeholders and devoted significant staff time to redeveloping the Central Business District (CBD) for nearly twenty years. The Planning Department is currently developing a sector plan amendment for the CBD. The preliminary staff report contains this statement describing “Wheaton Tomorrow.”Wheaton is envisioned as a compact, mixed-use residential and retail community with an ethnic flavor and significant retail, entertainment and services. The greatest activity occurs in a dense, transit-oriented environment in the immediate environs of the [Metro] station (within a ¼ mile and to a lesser extent, within ½ mile) so that walking eventually becomes the predominant access mode for Metrorail. Increasing the commercial and residential density around the station and improving pedestrian connectivity and facilities are central to achieving this goal. The Core (bounded by Georgia Avenue, University Boulevard and Veirs Mill Road) is envisioned as a compact, high-density area with a variety of building heights, meeting and performance space, art galleries and artist studios, restaurants, retail and entertainment venues. The civic focus of the community will be a major public space on Parking Lot #13.
A Costco complex is totally antithetical to this vision of Wheaton. Costco customers drive in, sometimes from areas many miles away, to buy in bulk and leave. They do not travel by Metro or bus. They require a giant parking lot. They do not walk from the Costco site to engage in nearby pedestrian activities. The Costco on Route 1 in Beltsville is a perfect example of the company’s business model: a giant big-box on an auto-dominated strip. While one part of the county government is planning to make Wheaton a mixed-use, transit-oriented community, another part of the government is offering a subsidy for car-oriented sprawl. Does this make sense?
2. What does this mean for the existing businesses?
Wheaton’s CBD is home to a large number of small businesses, many of them owned by immigrants and/or minorities. Wheaton is known for its restaurants, but it also contains bakeries, grocery stores and specialty retail stores – all product lines in which Costco is active. Many of these small businesses are struggling to survive and some have closed. The administration’s Costco plan would divert a portion of their property taxes to subsidize a competitor that would undercut them and drive many of them out of business. Why should these existing small businesses be expected to pay for their own destruction?
3. What does this say about the county’s economic development strategy?
Costco offers starting wages of $10.00-10.50 per hour, and the administration estimates that its average wage in Wheaton would be $18.00. No employee earning those rates could afford to live in Montgomery County free of poverty, yet the county is considering attracting those jobs with a $4 million subsidy. In contrast, the county only offered $150,000 to attract the Hilton International headquarters, which offered over 300 executive-level, high-paying jobs. Of course, those jobs went to Virginia instead.
Montgomery County is known for its excellent public schools and well-educated workforce. Its population expects good jobs. Has proud MoCo now been reduced to offering million-dollar subsidies for the sort of low-wage retail jobs that nearby jurisdictions like Prince George’s County acquire for free? And if MoCo empties its meager vault for Costco, can it afford to compete for Northrop Grumman? What does it say about us if we pay dearly for cashier jobs but abandon prestigious headquarters jobs to Virginia? And what will the other malls in the county begin demanding if Westfield gets a special deal?
4. What will the unions think?
Five of the county’s six public employee unions are negotiating new contracts with the school system and the Executive Branch. They will clearly not be as generous as the old contracts and may in fact contain no cost-of-living adjustments this year at all. Furthermore, the County Executive announced that he is laying off 44 people through mid-year cuts, most of whom are unionized bus drivers. Yet this same administration plans to use $4 million to create low-wage private-sector jobs which will very likely be non-union. (Only 13,500 of Costco’s 142,000 employees are union members.) Why should the unions make concessions when they will be used to finance low-wage non-union employment?
These are the questions the Executive Branch must answer prior to giving any subsidy to Costco and Westfield. Now that the secret is out, let the answers begin.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
B-CC Chamber to Schools: Drop Dead
The incoming chair of the B-CC Chamber thinks it is unfair to prioritize schools over development. The temporary development moratorium in Bethesda due to overcrowded schools was wrong and "sent a bad message:"It's not clear how much new development was held up by the ban, because the economic slowdown had stymied the construction industry and slowed development applications across the region. Patrick O'Neil, incoming chairman of the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Chamber of Commerce, said the moratorium, nonetheless, "sent a bad message."
So even though (1) the policy didn't do any harm--surely, the Chamber would have let us know if it had, and (2) it provided badly needed school infrastructure--presumably, good for growth in a County built on the foundation of education excellence, the policy is a mistake because because it is "elevating by law one public policy over another" (translation: schools over our development interests).
"It really was elevating by law one public policy over another, school capacity over smart growth and transit-oriented development," he said. He lauded the decision by political leaders to tweak the calculations for school construction to end the moratorium.
Seems to me it would be a shame to eliminate a law that provides such valuable political pressure to keep the schools up to par. After all, funding was magically discovered once the moratorium kicked in but not earlier. It would be great to know if candidates for the County Council support the current law linking school infrastructure to development.
Thursday, January 07, 2010
What to Watch for in 2010, Part Two
By Marc Korman.
Last time we looked at three of the five items on my list of things to watch for in 2010. Here are the last two.
4. How are Those Deficit Projections?
If you follow the County or State government, you may have noticed a familiar pattern. The Board of Revenue Estimates or the County Office of Management and Budget will announce a projected deficit. Cuts ensue. A few months later, they come out with new numbers and the cutting begins anew. At the state level, that has left the Board of Public Works to do a lot of heavy lifting because the legislature is not in session year round. The current projections for 2010 are $2 billion and $600 million shortfalls at the state and county respectively.
The general consensus is that the worst is behind us and the projections are becoming more accurate as the economy stabilizes. If that is true, deficits will recede as an emergency issue and budget cuts will not crowd out all other action. However, we will likely still hear about structural deficits requiring longer term budget reform (sorry Robin Ficker, that will include the revenue side too). But if the economy double dips into a recession or the recovery is particularly slow, we could continue to face budget shortfalls larger than expected and an increased need for cuts.
5. What is Going on with the Unions?
There are lots of interesting issues with the unions in 2010. Will they be willing to offer contract concessions to help the budget situation, as they did this year by giving up cost of living adjustments? How effective will the teachers be in lobbying on the maintenance of effort issue and the threat of shifting pensions to the counties? Will the Career Firefighters be able to help overcome the Volunteer Fire-Rescue Association’s resistance to an ambulance transport fee? Will the Apple Ballot maintain what Adam Pagnucco calls its status as the WMD of Montgomery County politics by reprising its 2006 success rate? Love them or hate them, and I talk to a surprising amount of Democrats on both sides, the unions have a huge impact on the County and its direction in 2010.
A Few Runner-Ups to Keep an Eye On:
1. What is Frank Kratovil doing? I think the guy is in real political trouble. The question is does he spend the next year trying to hang on to his political life or trying to advance the issues he ran on? Are those two mutually exclusive?
2. Any progress on transportation? Are the Purple Line and Red Line proceeding smoothly through the federal funding process? Have lawsuits begun? Is anyone driving on the ICC, Segment A (I-270/I-370 to MD 97) of which should open in 2010? Is Bethesda getting its fair share of the recently passed $300 million for BRAC (to be split with Fairfax County)?
3. Is Ike Leggett doing anything on Policy Area Mobility Review (PAMR)? The County Executive dodged serious growth policy discussions this year by punting on PAMR. His recommendations are due to the Council by the end of March of 2010 and could lead to a reopening of the growth policy. My bet is the recommendations will be stuck in a drawer until 2011 when the biennial policy is to be reviewed anyway.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Marc Elrich on Growth Policy
Following is an op-ed on the county's Growth Policy by County Council Member Marc Elrich that appeared in the Gazette earlier this week.
The Montgomery County Council is engaged in its biannual evaluation of the growth policy and the Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance. The APFO determines if public facilities can handle new development — whether schools can handle more capacity or roads more traffic. Road capacity is determined by assessing vehicle speed during rush hour.
It is now measured by a deeply flawed test that allows new development based on two factors: if auto speed remains above 14 mph (in a 35 mph zone) during rush hour and if transit maintains 50 to 60 percent of auto speed. Actual speeds in the peak direction can be less than 14 mph because speed is an average of both directions. Supporters of a lower standard claim that the current one supports free flowing highways, but I suspect you'd agree that 14 mph is a hardly free-flowing.
The Planning Board's new growth policy would lower the permissible speed to an average of 8 mph as long as the average transit speed is 75 percent of auto speed. Because this is an average of both directions and we tend to have heavy one-way congestion during rush hours, an 8 mph average could mean cars going as slow as 4 mph in peak directions. The proposal, rejected by the County Council, calls this Level of Service E, but all professionals call this an "F." If you were sitting in it, you would surely call this an "F," too.
The test is a travesty. The development community says it's worse than the old test — you can't tell what's broken or what's required to fix it. Activists find it incomprehensible. Board members can't explain how it works, nor can most council members, and the county executive wants it replaced. The highly regarded Florida Department of Transportation refers to this kind of test as lacking professional acceptance or scientific validity — it tells you nothing about whether roads or transit are "adequate." The proposed changes to this flawed policy are to accommodate one project — White Flint. Its only supporters seem to be either people who want White Flint exempted from any standards and don't care about the impact on thousands of people who use Rockville Pike, or some Smart Growth advocates who support it because it mentions transit and autos in the same breath.
The county needs tools that accurately assess transportation capacity. I have no argument with multi-modalism, requiring a shift to more transit (that is the reason behind my countywide bus rapid transit proposal), and focusing development in areas that can be served by transit. But Smart Growth is more than tall buildings and dense development —it still has to fit within real world constraints. Even if 50 percent arrive without cars, 50 percent arrive in cars. If we want fewer drivers, we have to provide a viable, cost-effective and rapid alternative. We can't turn roads into parking lots and then hope, as the board proposes, that people will give up cars to ride transit. That transition requires planning and investment for a viable alternative, not simply a plan to make commuting hell.
Smart Growth advocates and White Flint supporters fear that looking at other standards will return us (as if we ever left) to an auto-centric focus. The truth is there are nationally accepted standards that apply to both auto and transit. Others are doing it, while we insist on rare, inscrutable tests. We continue to change the rules to redefine failing roads as adequate, and we've been doing it for years. The time for these games is over.
Good tests illuminate problems and direct toward solutions. Smart Growth advocates have argued that the tests automatically lead to more road construction, but tests only indicate the problems. We must choose solutions that address congestion by reducing trips, rather than adding concrete. There is no doubt that transit must increasingly become the solution because we can't keep building roads. It's time to start focusing on transportation solutions that create transit capacity and viable alternatives to driving.
Marc Elrich, Takoma Park
The writer is an at-large member of the Montgomery County Council.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Council Explains Growth Policy Changes
This press release is a good explanation of the relatively minor changes the County Council made to the existing growth policy. Our compliments to council press officer Neil Greenberger, who did a good job of explaining some complicated issues.
Contact: Neil H. Greenberger 240-777-7939 / Jean Arthur 240-777-7934 / Delphine Harriston 240-777-7931
Montgomery Council Approves 2009-11 Growth Policy; Rejects Major Changes
County’s Planning Board Had Proposed Changes to Relax School Overcrowding and Traffic Congestion Tests
ROCKVILLE, Md., November 12, 2009—The Montgomery County Council on Nov. 10 gave final approval to the 2009-11 County Growth Policy, the purpose of which is to attempt to ensure that public infrastructure is adequate to handle the impact of new development. In approving the policy, the Council rejected major recommendations suggested by the Montgomery County Planning Board to relax or weaken a number of school overcrowding and traffic congestion standards.
Density and the type of development in particular areas such as White Flint and Gaithersburg West are established in master plans and zoning laws, not in the Growth Policy, which deals almost exclusively with the timing of development in relation to needed infrastructure. The Council is currently considering the proposed White Flint Sector Plan and the Gaithersburg West Mast Plan, but has not taken any action on either.
Regarding school capacity, the Council rejected the Planning Board’s proposal to raise the threshold to require school facilities payments by developers from 105 percent of capacity in a high school cluster to 110 percent. Had the Council approved the change, which was opposed by the Montgomery County Council of PTAs, it would have been possible for a majority of the elementary schools in a cluster to be substantially overcrowded, but for the average for the elementary school cluster overall to fall below the 110 percent threshold. [For example, three elementary schools at 115 percent and two at 98 percent would produce an average of 108 percent.]
Under the test maintained by the Council, a school facilities payment of approximately $20,000 per additional student would be triggered because the average school capacity would exceed 105 percent. Under the Planning Board proposal that was rejected, a school facilities payment would not have been triggered.
The Council also rejected a proposal by the Planning Board to allow capacity to be transferred from an approved project to a proposed project within a cluster. That proposed change would have enabled a developer to go forward with a project that otherwise could not be built—or not be built without paying a schools facilities payment.
Regarding transportation capacity, the Council rejected the Planning Board’s recommendation to substantially weaken traffic mitigation requirements by changing Policy Area Mobility Review (PAMR) standards. The Council deferred any major changes to the PAMR standards until the Council has the opportunity to review recommendations by the County Executive that are expected by March 31, 2010.
The Council also sharply scaled back a Planning Board recommendation to establish an alternative review procedure to PAMR standards that would have lowered traffic mitigation requirements for mixed-use and energy-efficient buildings. The Planning Board recommended allowing such an alternative approach in Metro Station Policy Areas and in areas within one-half mile of where transit service runs at least every 15 minutes during peak periods. The Council was concerned that too much of the downcounty, and many other parts of the County, would have qualified under this definition for the alternative review procedure. Councilmembers restricted the use of the new test to Metro Station areas and a few other discrete areas, including Germantown Town Center and Kensington.
“Essentially, the Council maintained tougher tests for school overcrowding and traffic congestion mitigation than proposed by the Planning Board,” said Council President Phil Andrews. “The changes that the Council did approve to the Growth Policy were modest expansions of the current policy of encouraging development at Metro Stations and in other areas well-served by transit. In a primarily suburban County, the Council recognizes that most residents are going to continue to get around by car and is striving to maintain acceptable average travel times on our roads. The Council also is committed to providing more transit service, which benefits transit users directly, and drivers indirectly, by freeing up capacity on existing roads.”
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Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Rollin Stanley: Problem and Potential, Part Two
Rollin Stanley, Montgomery County’s star planning director, favors channeling growth to walkable downtowns, encouraging mixed-use development with significant density and even using congestion to force people onto transit. Furthermore, he is not a patient man when pursuing his goals. Both his philosophy and his tactics are drawing resistance.
Few county residents will agree with Stanley’s statement that “congestion is a good thing.” Voters here will never accept an approach that gives up on congestion relief. Only seven years ago, a County Council slate called “End Gridlock” won a majority by promising to build the ICC and other transportation improvements. There are a variety of proposals for easing congestion circulating in the county, including the Purple Line and the CCT, widening I-270 and Marc Elrich’s BRT system proposal. Advocates of some of these projects may disagree with each other, but all of them are marketed to some extent as congestion relief. No serious county politician will ever echo Stanley’s position in public.
But Stanley’s bigger problem is that he shows no respect for the county’s system of dealing with development and growth. For decades, the county’s politics have revolved around a tension between prosperity and quality of life. Prosperity furthers economic well-being, but it also creates traffic, density and change. Quality of life depends in part on prosperity, but it erodes when the externalities of excessive growth gridlock roads and crowd schools. Small battles between developers and neighbors over individual projects have fueled opposing political ideologies, creating a swinging pendulum over many election cycles.
For all the debate over growth, the county has kept a lid on all-out civil war by fashioning a system to balance competing interests at the project level and the macro level (especially on growth policy). That system involves abundant input from all sides, intense analysis of issues by planning staff and hearing examiners, avoidance of any appearance of impropriety and, above all, the impartial enforcement of lots and lots of rules. Stanley, a smart man in a hurry, cares nothing about any of this.
Our sources are quick to elaborate. One spy says, “He’s a bull in a china shop. He has a get it done attitude (a good thing) and little patience for rules, regulations and process that get in his way (not such a good thing in this county). He has some great ideas but an even greater ego.” Another informant complains, “Most arrogant man on the planet. Has pulled projects from staff when they wouldn’t write it his way, and wrote reports himself. Told staffers not to attend meetings so they couldn’t be questioned, hates citizen groups and constructed Master Plan committees to minimize citizen input and maximize developer input. Convenes citizen groups to use them as paper dressing, then ignores their input… Views residents as obstacles to the planners’ efforts to build the perfect world which will resolve all our ills.”
Still another observer says, “Attitude is everything and Rollin’s sucks. If he weren’t condescending and dismissive, including to elected officials and his staff, he could probably get stuff done. Seriously, personality and relationships is 95% of success, and he just doesn’t care.” And one more informant claims that Stanley gets involved in the aesthetic details of projects, an activity that goes far beyond the bounds of his job. “He’s like a developer with no money and he imposes his personal preferences on what you should build.” This source claims that Stanley will go so far as to draw building sketches on napkins to instruct developers on what they should do. “They don’t know their roles. They don’t follow the rules and they don’t stay within the boundaries of their roles.”
And one of the county’s most knowledgeable growth experts said this:My personal view is that he’s an arrogant egotist and apparently, based on what the Post and Examiner reported, he thinks he’s above the rules. Unfortunately, if he considers himself and his staff above the rules established for internal M-NCPPC audit investigations, then I hold out little hope that he will aid in transitioning the Planning Department and Board toward what residents hoped would be a more transparent and citizen-inclusive process. And [Planning Board Chairman Royce] Hanson appears to be shielding Stanley, which is probably encouraging his bad behavior.
Not all our sources are so hard on Stanley. One says he is “Extremely sharp and forward thinking . Probably frustrated with the lack of political will to adopt new ideas and think as creatively as he does.” Another says:I think he is very talented and can provide some really good ideas. Royce is kind of running interference for him which is hurting him. It doesn’t allow him to hear what people are saying, he’s not getting a good feel for the community, and he’s not learning how to deal with all of the different factions in the County. As a result, I don’t think he is getting as rooted in the community as he needs to be to be successful. I also think this makes him a little tone deaf to issues. All solvable issues which is the good thing.
Stanley’s methods were on full display during the Bethesda Metro Center 4 controversy last year. A developer wanted to build a new 16-story office tower on top of the Bethesda Metro Station in close proximity to two other buildings. The problem with the proposal was that the floor area ratio for the tract contained in the area’s Master Plan did not permit enough density to allow the project to go forward. Stanley favored the project anyway, criticized its opponents in public and reversed a recommendation by his staff to oppose it. The problem was that Stanley advocated changing how floor area ratio is calculated to get this one project through, a sweeping alteration that would have allowed more density on sprawl projects everywhere else in the county. The Planning Board unanimously denied approval.
These sorts of activities are generating considerable pushback in both the development and civic communities. They may also be creating tensions within the planning staff, who are the likely sources for Post reporter Miranda Spivack’s long series of negative articles about Stanley’s credit card issues. Ethical questions can hurt in process-obsessed Montgomery County.
It’s not too late for Rollin Stanley to turn around his fortunes and nudge the county towards its smart growth future. Here are a few things he should do.
1. Don’t get too involved in individual projects. It’s beneath the role of the planning director. Leave the little stuff to the staff. It’s their job to deal with it.
2. Focus on a few big priorities. How about redeveloping Wheaton, updating the other central business district master plans and laying out a framework for building a truly countywide transit system?
3. Go out and listen. Stanley is known to be a great speaker, but the county is full of speakers who are tired of hearing each other talk. The people who have lived and operated businesses in the county know more about our transportation and growth challenges than any planner with less than three years residency. And who knows? Some of them may be able to show Stanley a good idea or two he has yet to see in his travels.
4. Settle down and build relationships. This is the most important skill for a politician, and it is also extremely important for an administrator. This means engaging in give-and-take, admitting when you’re wrong and occasionally cutting your losses for the benefit of better relations down the road.
If Stanley can do these things, he will realize his potential and the county will be better off. If not, he won’t last. We’ll probably know which way this is going by the summer of 2011, a year after Planning Board Chairman Royce Hanson’s successor takes office and determines whether Stanley should stay or go.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Rollin Stanley: Problem and Potential, Part One
Montgomery County Planning Director Rollin Stanley is starting to hit a wall. That’s a problem – not only for him, but also for the county that depends on him.
Rollin Stanley is not an ordinary public servant. He is the choice of legendary Montgomery County Planning Chairman Royce Hanson to be the leader of the county’s planning staff. That is a hugely important position given the fact that the staff writes master plans that guide future development, drafts revisions to the growth policy every two years and reviews individual development projects for conformance with the county’s tests and standards. When Hanson hired Stanley in December 2007, many believed he was a visionary super star. And maybe he is.
Stanley is not a bureaucrat or administrator. He is a big thinker and a change agent in a county that says it values those qualities but does not reward them. In his prior positions as a staffer in Toronto’s planning department and as the chief planner in St. Louis for six years, Stanley worked for the ideal of walkable, interesting and revitalized urban neighborhoods.
The River Front Times wrote a lengthy profile of Stanley in 2004, more than two years into his tenure as the planning head in St. Louis. The Times summarized Stanley’s goals this way:Rollin Stanley has bold plans for St. Louis. If he had his way, downtown’s one-way streets would be eliminated, buildings would have to retrofit their basements to include showers for bicyclists, and bike lanes would meander alongside major thoroughfares. Stanley envisions a pedestrian paradise where workers, residents and visitors can window-shop and run errands. He also wants more teeth put in Missouri’s planning and zoning laws; currently, his department isn't required by law to examine, approve -- or see -- any proposed deviation from the zoning guidelines and comprehensive land-use plan.
The Times said this about Stanley’s advocacy for mixed-use redevelopment in downtowns:Then Stanley moves on to the future of residential downtown developments, in crumbling districts and in thriving areas like the Central West End. He stresses the importance of mixed-use developments, buildings with ground-level retail and residential above. His favorite residential development is the Louderman Lofts on Locust. His office is across the street. “I can walk out and, within two blocks, I can go to the hardware store, I can have lunch, I can go to the dry cleaners; just down the street I can go to the pharmacy. I can go to a restaurant. I can go to Famous-Barr. I can go to a men’s clothing store, and the list goes on and on. I can do all those things because that’s such an urban building.”
Montgomery County has an influential and growing smart growth community that would agree with Stanley’s outlook. Downtown Bethesda, Downtown Silver Spring and Rockville Town Square are all popular residential, retail and employment locations. But while quite a few people may want to see more transit-oriented development in flourishing downtowns, Stanley has advocated some provocative ways to get there.
New high-rises, he said, should offer a wide range of units that are affordable, not only to empty-nesters with money to burn, but to twentysomethings with a craving to live in the city.
“When I first came here,” he says, “I couldn’t believe the size of the units people were building. What created a market in places like Denver or Toronto was smaller units -- first-home buyers. And nobody’s hitting that market. Nobody.” Developers tend to balk, he says, at middle-income condos. “They say, ‘Well, I’m not sure. They’re only making $40,000.’ But they’re buying a unit from you! What are they going to do, go upstairs and steal somebody’s TV? No. They’re going to be vested in the property. And that’s going to be a wonderful thing for the city, because instead of living in O’Fallon in a townhome, they’ll be able to walk to work.”
“All those things are baby steps to success,” Stanley concludes. “Now you’ve got bikes downtown, and you’ve got people walking, you start to see people thinking differently about the street patterns. But there’s tremendous resistance down there.”
“Congestion is a good thing,” Stanley once told a planning forum in St. Louis. “Some people might not believe that. But think about any city that you like and compare it to here. Chicago is congested. Boston, Seattle, they’re all congested. You’ve got to look at the street patterns, and one-way streets are a disaster. They kill retail… density, to some people in St. Louis, is a four-letter word.”
Stanley later told a planning forum in Montgomery County a similar message according to the Washington Business Journal: “We’ve added 195,000 people since 1988 and they took up 40,000 acres of land. We don't have that for the next 195,000 people,” Stanley said, adding that the only land the county has left is 8,000 acres of surface parking lots, 14,000 acres of non-continuous vacant land, and 10,500 acres of land around Metro stations.
The idea of using congestion to push people towards transit is shared by some in the smart growth community. To be fair, Stanley’s recommended growth policy does not merely do that. The policy combined relieving developers of some traffic mitigation requirements, relaxing congestion standards, encouraging development in town centers (some of which are far from transit) and encouraging more density near strip malls to enable shorter car trips. Your author questioned whether all of these recommendations were really smart growth – especially those allowing more development away from transit – and the County Council expressed its reservations by defeating or deferring most of them.
Pointing to a decline in two parent homes in Montgomery County - from 50 percent in 1970 to 26 percent in 2006 - Stanley said there is less of a need for 3,000-square-foot homes. “People don’t think kids can live in high-rises, but they can and they do. Not everyone wants to live in a single family home with a lawn to mow,” he said.
“In Montgomery County, two factors influence development - schools and road capacity,” Stanley said. “That pushes development to where there is no congestion, but it should go the other way, because congestion will force people onto public transportation.”
Despite Stanley’s visionary capacity – or perhaps, because of it – he faces some stiff challenges in Montgomery County. We’ll explore them in Part Two.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
O'Malley: State Agencies Should Prioritize Transit-Oriented Development
Governor Martin O'Malley has just issued an Executive Order directing state agencies to consider proximity to transit stations as a criterion in planning their office space. In Maryland, land-use planning is a function of county governments and local agencies like M-NCPPC, so the state's ability to influence development is limited. But the Governor's action is an important way to promote transit use because state agencies can serve as anchors for bigger projects. We reprint his press release and a copy of his order below.
GOVERNOR O’MALLEY ANNOUNCES EXECUTIVE ORDER PROMOTING TRANSIT ORIENTED DEVELOPMENT
State agencies directed to consider the proximity of transit as a key factor when determining placement of State office space and laboratories
ANNAPOLIS, MD (October 27, 2009) – Governor Martin O’Malley today announced the issuance of an Executive Order designed to focus future development around the state’s transit facilities. The order directs state agencies to formally evaluate the potential of locating state office space and laboratories in developments adjacent to transit stations when seeking space in the future. The order outlines specific criteria that must be considered as part of the selection process.
“Transit Oriented Development is a critical component of our Smart, Green and Growing initiative aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions, sprawl development and traffic congestion, while fostering economic growth,” said Governor O’Malley. “State government must lead by example. When building or leasing space for offices in the future, we will be prioritizing sites that are within walking distance of transit stations.”
Under the Executive Order, it is now a policy of the state to locate state office or laboratory space within a half-mile radius of transit stations at a TOD whenever appropriate and feasible. The order also directs the Department of General Services and the Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT) to include a transit evaluation factor in all requests for proposal to lease or purchase office or lab space. The Executive Order does include exceptions if it is determined that locating state office space or labs near transit is not appropriate.
Transit Oriented Development creates compact, walkable neighborhoods around transit stations. TOD increases transit ridership by creating destinations within a short walk of stations. It also offers residents a convenient commute to jobs, shopping and entertainment in the region. MDOT is currently focused on six TOD projects located in Baltimore City, Owings Mills, Savage, Odenton, Laurel and Wheaton. MDOT is also working with the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority to promote TOD at its stations.
Governor O’Malley’s Executive Order is the latest step taken by the state to make TOD a reality in Maryland. During the 2009 legislative session, the General Assembly granted local governments greater authority to use tax increment financing and special taxing districts at TODs to enable the financing of critical infrastructure for TOD projects. In 2008, the legislature declared TOD as a formal “transportation purpose.” The measure removes legal road blocks to TOD, giving MDOT greater flexibility to use its capital budget and property to support TOD projects.
A copy of Governor O’Malley’s Executive Order is attached. Additional information on the O’Malley-Brown administration’s TOD initiative can be found at the following link: http://www.mdot-realestate.org/tod.asp
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Sunday, September 20, 2009
County Executive Comments on Growth Policy
Jim Humphrey, Chair of the Montgomery County Civic Federation's Land Use Committee, wrote this column in reference to the County Executive's comments on the new growth policy.
"Federation Corner" column
The Montgomery Sentinel - September 17, 2009
County Executive comments on growth policy
by Jim Humphrey, Chair, MCCF Planning and Land Use Committee
This week's Federation Corner is a follow-up to the column published last week ("County Executive silent on plans to improve traffic tests," Montgomery Sentinel--September 10, 2009). In that column, I asked why County Executive Ike Leggett had been so slow to weigh in on making improvements to the transportation test approved by the County Council as part of the growth policy two years ago, since at that time he declared it was not effective, reliable or easily understood.
This past Tuesday, September 15, Mr. Leggett transmitted a memo to Council containing his comments on the new round of changes to the growth policy being proposed by the Planning Board, and in that memo he reiterates his concern about the transportation test adopted in 2007.
"A key concern that I raised two years ago is that the test for transportation capacity, 'Policy Area Mobility Review' or 'PAMR,' is fundamentally flawed," Leggett states in his September 15 memo. "Despite Planning Board review of PAMR, they did not recommend an alternative to PAMR."
"Montgomery County needs a Growth Policy that results in achieving balance in the timing of private development and public infrastructure to avoid failure of our transportation system, overburdening of schools or economic stagnation through moratoria," the County Executive continued. "The importance of a sound Growth Policy is even more compelling with the recent action of the Council removing staging from the Germantown Employment Center Sector Plan. If staging of development is not to be included in Master Plans, then the role of the Growth Policy remains a key mechanism to ensure that there will be adequate public facilities to support new development."
Now that sounds like the same County Executive who summed up his concerns with the growth policy transportation test in a 2007 Washington Post editorial by stating "We need a new traffic test to ensure that adequate road and transit capacity is in place before development goes forward. Tests are not tests if everyone gets a passing grade. What we put on paper should reflect the reality that county residents experience on the roads every day. We should not adopt a policy that claims there is adequate transportation infrastructure to accommodate growth in any area where the traffic stacks up regularly."
I am still puzzled that Mr. Leggett has taken two years to work on an alternative to PAMR, something he said could and should be done by mid-2008. Still, I am pleased to note his resolve in completing that effort in the next six to nine months, and offering an improved transportation test to Council for their consideration by the middle of next year.
"We need an alternative to PAMR," Mr. Leggett forcefully states in his memo submitted to Council this week. "I have directed the Department of Transportation to hire a consultant who will work to develop a workable alternative to PAMR. Through that effort, which will include outreach to Planning Board and Council staffs, specific stakeholders and the general public, I expect we will have a series of policy discussions that should lead to a more transparent and easily understood Policy Area (Transportation) Review."
I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the Council and Planning Board staff will work in earnest with the Executive Branch in crafting reliable, effective and easily understood tests for traffic and transit capacity to ensure there is adequate infrastructure before allowing new development projects to go forward. After all, that's the law in Montgomery County--the Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance. And the key purpose of the growth policy, as Mr. Leggett notes, is in implementing that law by staging the pace of growth to match the ability of the county government to provide supportive infrastructure to accommodate that growth.
In his September 15 memo, the County Executive included comments on several other changes to the Growth Policy which the Planning Board has recommended to the County Council. And a great many of those comments are in line with the Growth Policy position which the delegates to the Montgomery County Civic Federation adopted at our September 14 monthly meeting. We can only hope that the County Council will pay close attention to the County Executive, the Civic Federation, and county residents concerned about increasing traffic congestion, inadequate transit and overburdened schools, when they hold their hearing on the Growth Policy the evening of September 22.
The views expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect formal positions adopted by the Federation. To submit an 800-1000 word column for consideration, send as an email attachment to theelms518@earthlink.net
