 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
The new Gaithersburg West Master Plan was being drafted behind closed doors with heavy input from one of the area's landowners. This was another plan that was touted as smart growth even though there is no existing mass transit to serve the new development.
The Sierra Club successfully pressed for public meetings. We also organized citizens in the neighborhood and worked with them to develop an alternate master plan (the Reasonable Plan) that would limit the amount of development, better balance housing and jobs, and preserve much of the one remaining farm. The Reasonalbe Plan has received a lot of attention and the County Council has requested the Planning Board analyze it along with the planning staff's draft plan.
Sierra Club advocacy greatly improved the staging requirements of the Germantown Master Plan—the requirements that condition development on the provision of public facilities. Although this was advertised as a smart growth plan, the staging was based on road, not transit, construction.
An outdated county zoning law requires excessive construction of parking spaces in new developments around Metro stations. At the same time, County planners proposed requiring that Twinbrook developers purchase "Transferable Development Rights" (TDRs) from property owners in the Agriculture Reserve if they wanted to build higher-density projects around Twinbrook metro. The sale of TDRs compensates rural property owners for the restrictions the County has placed on development in the Agricultural Reserve. Developers argued that the cost of buying TDRs would ruin the economics of their projects.
Sierra Club analyzed the cost of building garage parking versus the cost of buying TDRs and showed lawmakers that the money saved by reducing parking requirements would be greater than the cost of TDRs. The County Council adopted this strategy—less required parking, more TDR purchases—for the Twinbrook master plan.
