Sandy Spring-Ashton Rural Preservation Consortium

The SSARPC (PreserveAshton.net)

supports development in Ashton that conforms to the Master Plan.

We are pro-Master Plan, not anti-development.

June 18th Town Meeting Summary

Planning Staff Recommends Denial of Latest AMP Plan

Let Your Voice Be Heard

June 18th Town Meeting Summary

The Sandy Spring/Ashton Master Plan, originally written in 1980 and updated in 1989, defines Ashton as a rural area containing a number of historic homes.  The Master Plan specifies how development is to occur in order to maintain and preserve the rural atmosphere.  The Master Plan is designed to help preserve the rural character of the 280 year-old area as new development occurs.

On April 12th the Planning Board had a public hearing about the January 15th AMP plan.  At that time, because of the amount of public testimony, the Planning Board decided that deliberations would be deferred to a later date.  The Board asked the Staff to address several issues, including the definition of a rural village and more information about encroachment on the wetlands and wetlands buffer. 

On May 29th, the AMP developers formally submitted a new plan to Park and Planning. This is now the only plan under consideration; it supersedes all other plans previously submitted.  Since changes in the plan were substantial, it was decided that there will be one hour of testimony allowed at the public hearing on June 28th.

There are two SSARPC resources available online:  the presentation used at the Town Meeting and a handout that was prepared to help educate the community by answering a number of questions.  The following is a summary of the presentation.

AMP’s current design (see the presentation)

The current plan moves buildings and parking off the wetlands and wetlands buffers.  There are still two other major problems with the plan:  it does not support a number of elements of the Master Plan, and there are legal problems with the parking configuration.

Master Plan Concerns

• The active fronts have been removed from Route 108 and replaced with a long wall with fake windows.  At each end of the wall is a single store or office.  “Active store front” means you can enter a building from the front, right off the street. 
• Pedestrian access is limited.  To get to the stores, pedestrians will have to walk along Route 108 or New Hampshire Avenue to an entrance that either crosses one or more drive aisles or a loading dock area.  The green space at the corner of Route 108 and New Hampshire Avenue is now very small and will no longer serve as a welcoming area for pedestrians. 
• The stores are not compatible in size to stores in the neighboring area.  The proposed anchor store is several times larger than the Alloway Building on the other side of New Hampshire Avenue.  The presentation shows the size of neighboring stores along with the current design, and the compatibility issue is very obvious.
• The size of the development is too much for the space available.  The AMP developers have asked for a waiver for 26 out of 335 parking places, which would otherwise occupy approximately 10,000 square feet.  The Planning Board can approve the waiver, but, in order to do so, it must rule that it would improve safety or reduce congestion. 

Legal Issues – Parking

• R-60:  There is a zoning regulation that parking for commercial areas is not allowed in an area that is zoned R-60 (a type of residential zoning).  The current plan has parking throughout the R-60 area of the site, 120 parking spaces altogether.
• Structured parking in C-1:  The plan has an underground garage for 51 cars.  The C-1 commercial zoning prohibits this type of parking.

SSARPC’s Plan (see the presentation)

Some features of the SSARPC plan are:

• No parking in the R-60 zone.  The SSARPC attorney concurs with the Planning Staff that it is not permitted.
• Active store fronts on both New Hampshire Avenue and Route 108 (no blank wall).
• Village green at the corner of Route 108 and New Hampshire Avenue, with the Sandy Spring Bank building prominently placed at the end of the green.  An interconnected system of walkways links the green to the interior of the site via a set of steps.  There could be a nice coffee shop facing the village green that would be a social gathering point.  But, most of all, it is an inviting place for pedestrians to enter the area.
• Bank drive through is hidden by the village green.
• Parallel parking on both Route 108 and New Hampshire Avenue.
• Two homes in the R-60 area.  The zoning allows for the houses to include a professional office and associated parking, with permits through the special exception process.
• An anchor store of approximately 15,000 square feet.  The AMP plan calls for a grocery store of approximately 30,000 square feet.
• Size, mass and details supportive of a rural village environment.
• Parking garage for 30 cars.

Discussion

1.      How does the overall square footage of the two plans compare?  The AMP plan is slightly more than 97,000 square feet, while the SSARPC plan is about 75% that size, or 72,000 square feet.  In particular, the anchor stores are about 30,000 square feet in the AMP design (designated as a grocery store), and 15,000 square feet in the SSARPC design.  For comparison, the Giant in Olney is approximately 40,000 square feet and Roots in Clarksville is approximately 11,000 square feet.

2.      Will it be difficult to get in and out of the parallel parking on the street, particularly when there is a lot of traffic?  The parallel parking will be in indented areas, not right in the flow of traffic, and this will make a difference for people getting in and out.  Both Park and Planning traffic experts and the State Highway Administration say that the parallel parking will create no safety issues.

3.      Will the traffic speed present problems for parallel parking?  The speed limit is currently 30 MPH.  Research has shown that having streetscaping typical of a mixed use town center (e.g., sidewalks, special paving at sidewalks, trees, street lamps, on-street parking, and active store fronts) causes drivers to slow down.  This should limit any possible problems with the parallel parking.

4.      Will there be changes that focus on pedestrian traffic?  There will be crosswalks with push-button walk/don’t walk signals and sidewalks all along the area.  As for sidewalks on the other side of the street, we don’t know the current plans, but it is a goal of the County to have sidewalks everywhere.  There will be sidewalks from Sandy Spring to the Ashton crossroads.

5.      Will the entrance on New Hampshire Avenue be safe and useful, since so many cars line up on New Hampshire Avenue?  At times it will most likely be difficult to turn left.

6.      Comment:  It is difficult to increase the size of the development given the parking constraints.

7.      What about the northeast corner?  While the southeast corner is being worked on, little work is being done on the northeast corner.  Redevelopment of the  northeast corner depends on the road work that is needed for the southeast corner.  The plans for the northeast corner include a gas station, car wash, convenience store, and offices, and have not changed.  SSARPC has commented on the plans and will continue to review and comment as the project proceeds.

8.      Comment:  We want to consider all four corners of the crossroads.  What is decided about the AMP project will set the tone for the other corners.  It is unclear what incentives the owner of Ashton Village Center (on the northwest corner) will have to redesign that small area to better support the Master Plan.

9.      How many tries does the AMP developer have to submit different plans?  We don’t know of a limit.  Just because the Planning Staff recommends denial does not mean that the Planning Board will vote for denial.  If the Board is moving towards denial, the developer might ask for the decision to be deferred to a later date to allow time to modify the plan.  If there is a denial, a legal opinion covering the reasons for denial will be written for the record.

Planning Staff Recommends Denial of Latest AMP Plan

The Planning Staff recommends that the Planning Board deny approval for the Ashton Meeting Place (AMP) development.  You can read the Executive Summary, written by the Development Review Division, recommending denial of both the Preliminary Plan and Site Plan.  There are four main issues that support the case for denial:

• Non-compliance with Section 59-C-18.18 of the Zoning Ordinance:  parking for C-1 uses in the adjacent residential zones
• Non-compliance with Section 59-C-4.2: parking garage in the C-1 zone
• Non-conformance with the design guidelines of the Master Plan and incompatibility with all of the Master Plan recommendations
• Inadequate safety and inefficiency of the locations of buildings, structures, and pedestrian and vehicular circulation systems

The Staff also made some recommendations for the site.

The first 18 pages (all but the appendices) of the staff report are available online.  You can also read the full staff report.  But beware; it is very large (171 pages, 22 MB of scanned text which will take a very long time to access without a high speed Internet connection).  You can also obtain a copy of the staff report and review the complete application file in the Development Review Division (8787 Georgia Avenue, Silver Spring) between 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m.

Let Your Voice Be Heard

It is important for the Planning Board to know the community concerns about the Ashton Meeting Place development.  The methods of providing your ideas to the Planning Board are either to write a letter or testify at the June 28th hearing.

Write to the Planning Board at:

Royce Hanson, Chairman

MNCPPC Planning Board

ATTN:  AMP Development

8787 Georgia Ave.

Silver Spring, MD 20910

Email:  mcp-chairman@mncppc-mc.org

Testify at the Public Hearing on June 28, at approximately 9 AM:

Sign up to testify at the public hearing by calling (301) 495-4605.  Testimony is limited to three minutes.  You should bring 10 copies of any written testimony.  Call the number above to verify the time.

Include the following numbers on correspondence to Park and Planning:

Preliminary Plan Number:  120050060

Site Plan File Number:  820070100

Write to the Gazette to let your views be known to the community:

The Gazette

Editorial Department

1200 Quince Orchard Road

Gaithersburg, MD 20878

Email: gmacdonald@gazette.net

Letters to the Gazette should be limited to 200 words, and include your name and address.  Letters received by Friday at noon will be considered for the publication the following week.