Alternate
vision for Ashton center ready for debut
Gazette Newspapers by Liza
Gutierrez
Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
A group of residents who
favor a smaller development than the proposed
Ashton Meeting
Place
mixed-use center will unveil a design they have been working on for months at a
community meeting on Thursday.
The Sandy Spring Ashton
Rural Preserve Consortium will give a three-dimensional, virtual tour of its
proposed plan, which it says follows master plan guidelines. The meeting is set
for 7
p.m. in the Sandy Spring
Friends Meeting House on Meeting House
Road.
The virtual ‘‘walk
through” will help give people a sense of the size, layout and design of the
buildings. A computer simulation of the Ashton Meeting
Place project,
a 97,000-square-foot retail, office and residential development at routes 108
and 650, will be presented for comparison.
Town planning expert
Stuart Sirota, of TND Planning Group in Baltimore, was hired by the consortium in April to help bring
its vision for a village center with rural character to life.
Consortium member Brooke
Farquhar calls Sirota a ‘‘consensus builder” who was able to formulate a concept
that features smaller buildings, active storefronts on routes 108 and 650 and
green space that complies with the master plan and zoning ordinance.
Ashton Meeting
Place
developer Fred Nichols has consistently disagreed with the consortium’s
assertion that his project does not follow the master plan.
‘‘Our development plans
for Ashton
Meeting Place
were prepared in complete accordance with the Sandy Spring-Ashton Master Plan
and current zoning,” Nichols said earlier this year. ‘‘We have shared them
openly and honestly through many meetings with the entire community.”
The consortium’s lawyer,
David Brown, who also represents Clarksburg Town Center residents in Clarksburg, will explain how the Nichols plan does not comply
with the Sandy Spring⁄Ashton rural village overlay zone, Farquhar said.
Brown and the consortium
have forwarded an analysis detailing the Nichols plan’s violations to Park and
Planning staff and the development team, Farquhar said.
The design changes
Nichols has made are not ‘‘meaningful revisions,” Farquhar said.
Reducing tower heights
and placing ‘‘fake” fronts on the back of a grocery store that would face Route
108 does not address the elements that make the Nichols project just another
suburban, car-oriented design, she said.
‘‘These things don’t make
a really walkable village center, which is what the master plan envisions for
Ashton and Sandy Spring,” Farquhar said.
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SSARPC - PreserveAshton.net NOTE: Community meeting: June 22nd -
7PM- Sandy Spring Friends Meeting House - Meeting House Road - All
Welcome
