Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Morning, everyone. It's May 7th, and we're starting our planning board meeting. Our first item this morning is approval of minutes, the minutes of April 23rd, 2026. Do I have a motion for approval of these minutes?

I move to approve the minutes.

I second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye, Commissioner Lynn. That's 4-0. Thank you so much. Next, we have record plats. We have one this morning, the subdivision plat number 220-26-07-00, West Chevy Chase Heights. Do I have a motion for approval of this record plat?

I move to approve the record plat.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye. The ayes have it. 4-0. We have four regulatory extension requests. this morning where staff is recommending extending all four. The first is Old Anglers Cove Preliminary Plan Amendment, extension request number one. The second one is the Hussein Residence Preliminary Plan, extension request number eight. The third is Temple Row Administrative Subdivision, Plan and Forest Conservation Plan, extension request number six. And the last is Wheaton Lane Subdivision Preliminary Plan, Forest Conservation Plan, extension request number two. Do I have a motion to approve these four extensions?

I move to approve these four extensions.

I second. All in favor?

Aye.

Aye. The ayes have it, 4-0. And next, we have a roundtable discussion with our parks director, Director Figueredo. Good morning.

Good morning. Thank you. Dominique is going to cycle through some photos here for the next minute or so because we want to document for you and share with you images from Sligo Creek Fest. As you know, this is our third year of doing this event, and every year it gets bigger and better. This year we had about a mile's worth of entertainments. We had three stages. We had music. We have more food trucks and beer vendors than ever, and we had 15,000 attendees this year. If you recall, the first year, we were kind of in the rain and cold, and we had about 4,000 to 5,000 attendees. Last year, we doubled that. This year, we tripled it. It was an incredible crowd. I want to thank all of the, I mean, basically every division in Montgomery Parks helps out with this event, but primarily this is the hard work of our activation team led by Mike Coppersmith. And, of course, he is supported by other folks in our HEFI division. They did just an outstanding job. And I think you can see here people were having just a wonderful time. And there were a number of elected officials we saw who attended. And, of course, the chair was there. It was a great day for everybody. And I think this... This shows you what we can do and the role that parks play in the community. I mean, here we are bringing people together to have a wonderful time outdoors. We also take the opportunity to share with them the work we do so they can appreciate all of the effort and expertise that goes into running a park system like this one. And then across the county, because the first Saturday in May is a very busy day everywhere. I'm told it's, I think, the most popular day for hosting events in the calendar. So just across the county, we had the Archaeology Day, which is hosted by our Cultural Resources section. This was held at Needwood Mansion. They had over 600 attendees. You can see there some of the activities they were doing, including some hands-on demonstrations. And folks basically got to do simulated digs. And I think this was fun for everybody who was there. And we celebrated the groundbreaking for Centronia last week, the daycare that's coming to Wheaton headquarters, much anticipated. We were joined by some county officials for the celebration, including former county council member Nancy Navarro, who was instrumental in this effort, and of course our former planning director, Gwen Wright, as well. I didn't get a chance, I don't think, to... yet update the board on the results of our efforts to secure additional funding from the state during the legislative session. We've been doing this for a number of years now, trying to supplement the capital funding sources we receive through the county with some state money as well. It never supplants county funding because the amounts we usually receive through legislative bond initiatives are often, in fact most of the time, would not be enough to cover the full cost of a project. But they really help us complete more projects and prioritize certain projects. So this year we received over $6.5 million. for eight different projects, including, you can see there at the bottom, over $2.5 million that we received to implement our solar initiative, which, as you may recall, our goal is by 2030 to double the amount of solar we produce on parkland for parks' uses. And so we want to thank all the legislators, and we've been thanking them, who helped us secure this much-needed funding. And I'm proud to share that we were selected, again, as an NRPA gold medal finalist in the class one category. That's kind of like the big boys and girls. It's areas with a population of over 400,000 people. Again, we're the only agency ever to have received the gold medal. six times, and we will be up against some of these other parks departments that you can see. They're Baltimore City, Hillsborough County, that's Tampa, and Palm Beach County Parks and Recreation. They're going to announce the winner this September in Philadelphia at the conference. And while we're on the subject of awards, we had staff recently who attended the Maryland Recreation and Parks Association and represented us there. And a number of them received awards. We, I think, kind of swept the place. which is wonderful because we love to see our staff celebrated for the work they do. So this one, I mean, if I were giving out the award for best social media, this is certainly the campaign I would have picked. I just thought it was genius and so delightful. This was the Dear Vehicle Collision Awareness Campaign. And, of course, the idea is to get people to pay attention to their driving, particularly during the rut, so they don't strike a deer. It's bad for the deer, and it's bad for the driver. And so we won an award for this. We won a Landscape Site Award. If you all recall, we have a beautiful new platform at Brookside Gardens overlooking the – Goody Garden, which is kind of a Japanese style garden. It's fully ADA accessible and it's kind of cantilevered over the pond. So that won an award. We also won a Best Website Award specifically for our Birding in Montgomery Parks webpage. They said it was very comprehensive and user-friendly. Birdwatching is growing in popularity, and the idea is that this website should serve as a resource for people, you know, from all, like people who are bird watchers and people who are just starting out. And then we also received some other awards. We received a Therapeutic Recreation Branch Innovative Program Award for our Adaptive Mountain Biking Clinic. We received a Therapeutic Recreation Branch Committee Work of the Year Award for our ADA and Inclusion Summit. Janine Blakely, who's our Program Access Manager, and Ashlyn Thompson, who's our Inclusion and Community Outreach Specialist, received the MRPA Presidential Award. Janine Blakely was also the MRPA Member of the Quarter. And Rachel Solomon, who is our Montgomery Parks Workforce Diversity and Outreach Partner, received the Operations University Founders Award. So congratulations to all these outstanding staff for the work that they do. And in addition to that, we're also over there. Oh, wait. First, I want to say this is our outgoing MRPA president, who is Josh Van Dyken, and he is the athletic field construction manager for Montgomery Parks in our park development division. So we want to thank him for his service to MRPA. And then finally, we also go to MRPA to share our knowledge and expertise in And these were all the conference sessions. I won't read them all, but they're there for you to see. All of the different conference sessions in which park staff participated at MRPA. So I talk a lot about the importance of maintaining a state of good repair in parks, and I wanted to share a little bit about how our operations team, these are, of course, the people who work behind the scenes, are continuing to work to maintain a state of good repair in parks. You all know right now we're in the middle of budget, and we made a very modest budget request. It was the same services request the county executive funded more or less only our compensation, left us a $3.2 million gap. We don't yet know what might be restored by the county council during the reconciliation process. We're nervous about it, to be honest, a little bit on tenterhooks here, because we are very focused on making sure that our parks are safe clean, beautiful for county residents. So I do want to share with you over the next couple of slides some of the work that actually goes into making our parks safe, clean, and beautiful. This is our playgrounds team. They work to make sure that our playgrounds are safe, and enjoyable. Recently, we replaced about a mile's worth of playground borders that were kind of, you know, rotting and not in good shape. And they were removed and then reinstalled here. We also have maintenance teams who work all the time to make sure that our athletic fields are in good shape. And these are images of Calverton Galway and Capitol View Homewood and some of the recent improvements that we did at those fields. We also do a lot of grounds maintenance, and some of that means cutting back. We have so many non-native invasives and weeds, and we have to trim them back, particularly in areas where we want to make sure there are clean sight lines, where there are natural areas that we're trying to maintain corridors. This here is a picture of a meadow and a trail. And our custodial services, this is the work we do to make sure that our park facilities are attractive and clean. And sign installation, you know, the signs are, that sign there on the left, if you see that sign, you're just kind of like sad. You feel a little deflated looking at that sign. And then on the right, you think, oh, this must be a nice park because it's got this beautiful sign. It is not a small thing. It's really a visual sort of manifestation of how we care about our parks and our sort of recognition that they're special to people. So we want to treat them that way. And then finally, I want to flag... that our Ovid Hayes and Wells Park ribbon cutting is coming up next Saturday. So Saturday, May 16th, it's from 2 to 4 p.m. If you didn't already see it, I hope you did because I was really proud of my acting, but also the chairs as well. We did a little video out at Ovid Hayes and Wells to highlight the skate park, and it should be a great event. We're going to have skateboarding demonstrations. There's going to be a band. There's going to be free carol rides, so I encourage you all to attend. Oh, and I think that Are you going to play the video? Oh.

Whoa, sick. Who is that? Is that Montgomery Park's director, Mitty Figueredo?

Hey, dudes. Have you tried the new Ovid-Hazenwell skate park? It's gnarly.

Wait a minute. Who is that?

Is that Montgomery planning board chair, Artie Harris?

How do you do, fellow kids?

Show us your best tricks. However you bike, skate, roller skate, or wheel, tag Montgomery Parks in clips of your best tricks.

One winner will be chosen by our skate park design work group and earn bragging rights and cool prizes.

Find more details on how to enter in the caption.

I, I, um, yeah, can't you tell that I was doing all this skateboarding? Yeah, that's more of the work of our incredible social media team. That's all I have.

Thank you so much. Isn't it gnarly? It was so gnarly. Yeah, this is wonderful. Thanks for the great work. The Sligo Fest was amazing. Many of my fellow board members went. The crowds were just out of this world. There was something for every age groups. People were really enjoying themselves. The music was so lovely, the kids' activities. So thank you for that. And Parks had their pop-up booth, you know, and planning, too, which they're featuring their new pop-up booth, so that was great. Thank you for the, I mean, congratulations on all the bond awards that we got through the state. It's so needed. I love them all, but especially the one for the solar goals that we're trying to double our solar production in the in the parks department and like that you featured what's required for maintenance in our parks to keep them up. And that's really, really lovely. So do we have any other comments or questions from the board members?

Yes, I do. Well, I always really enjoy this. It's so funny and so interesting to see like Ovid Hazen that we started a long time ago. And now, I'm fortunate enough. that I can see it. I'll be there next week, definitely. And yeah, I'm really delighted to see the six and a half million. I know especially by losing some of the POS funding, how much this money can be used and help us to upgrade or renovate or build new capital improvement for the parks. For our parks in Montgomery County, $6.5 million goes a long way, and thank you to all the delegation that helped us to achieve that. The Brookside Garden Overlook, Brookside Garden is still, as you know, is one of my favorites. I go there all the time, and I'm always there with Stephanie, and I see all the staff. And the overlook, I saw it during the construction, and now it's been Jane Roanoke, if I remember. The same person that I work very closely, unfortunately she has passed away now, that helped us to do the maintenance yard as Brookside Gardens. So that's another one that she made us to... to build and it's beautiful. A lot of people go there. I have a few pictures right there. I know that we're going to be the gold winner next year. I know it because we deserve it. Thank you.

Thank you, Mitty, for your presentation. I'm a big fan of parks and I always have to say this and reiterate it. I appreciate your fight and the other delegates' fights for the budget. In a county that is focused on equity, the most equitable thing we have is our free public parks. And for there to be a budget deficit or an unwillingness to fully fund the parks is unconscionable. And if anyone is listening who is in control of the budget and funding of the parks, please fund our parks. They deserve it. They deliver every day unlike any other service in the county. And I'd like to commend you on your hard work in opening the parks and making them accessible, especially with the new opportunity for skateboarding. I'd love to try it sometime, but my wife probably says I'm too old and too risky, and she needs me at home. But again, you do an outstanding job, and we must fully fund our parks and keep them open and accessible to all of our citizens. Thank you.

Amen, and thank you.

Well, thanks so much, and we'll just take a quick break and then start out with item number five, which is the Montgomery Parks Foundation Board of Trustees new nominee for 2026. Thank you. Good morning and welcome back. We're on item number five, the Montgomery Parks Foundation Board of Trustees new nominee 2026, where the staff is recommending approval of Elizabeth Rogers for the nominee for this year. We have Katie Richter online this morning presenting this item.

My name is Katie Richter. I'm the Executive Director of the Parks Foundation, and I'm pleased to present Elizabeth Liz Rogers for your approval as nominee to the Board of Trustees of the Montgomery Parks Foundation. As you'll see, Liz brings more than a decade of experience as a land use attorney and principal at Lurch Early and Brewer. where she's guided complex development projects across Montgomery County from early feasibility through approvals and construction. Her work has consistently incorporated thoughtful community benefits, including park space, trail connections, and contributions to public amenities. She's been directly involved in major projects that integrate open space, affordable housing, and transit-oriented development. priorities that closely align with the foundation's mission to enhance and support our park system. Liz is also widely recognized in her field, earning distinctions from Chambers USA, Best Lawyers, and Maryland Super Lawyers. Well, beyond her credentials, Liz understands the critical partnership between development, planning, and parks, and she'll bring a strategic, informed, and collaborative perspective to the foundation's board. So I respectfully ask for your approval of Liz Rogers as a trustee of the Montgomery Parks Foundation. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Richter, for your presentation. Yes, I've worked with Ms. Rogers on several fronts, a great candidate. Do I have any other comments or questions from my fellow board members?

Well, I am really happy to see Liz part of our park foundation. When I saw her name, I was really ecstatic. I have worked with Liz, and I should say that I don't know how she can find time, but she's a super lady, and I'm sure that she can do that. And thank you, and I'm very happy that she's going to be part of our park foundation. Thank you, Liz, and thank you, Katie. Thank you.

Any other questions or comments?

I'll make a comment. There's no finer profession to be a part of a board than a lawyer. And I would like to commend Liz Rogers on volunteering her time to be a part of that board. And I know that the board will be more highly efficient and effective with her inclusion.

Thanks.

Thank you for those kind comments. So hearing no other comments or questions, do I have a motion to approve Liz Rogers, nominee for the Montgomery Parks Foundation Board of Trustees?

I will be more than happy to move to approve Ms. Liz Rogers to be part of the Park Foundation.

Second. All in favor?

Aye.

Aye. I have it 4-0. Thank you so much, and welcome, Ms. Rogers. We're going to take a one-minute break and start with our next item, the Glen Road Bridge replacement over Sandy Branch. Thank you. Good morning again. Before we get started with our item number six, I just wanted to announce that we have four commissioners this morning, three in person, and one commissioner or vice chair, Lyndon, is virtual. So we're therefore here this morning. So our item number six is the Glen Road bridge replacement over Sandy Branch, where staff is recommending approval with comments. And this morning we have Sophia Aldridge and Molly Stamans presenting. Thank you.

The record, Sophia Aldridge from the Transportation Planning Division, Molly Stamets from the Environmental and Climate Division is here today as well. The applicant is also in attendance, and they can come up and speak if you have any detailed questions. Brian Copley, who is the head of the bridge section at Montgomery County DOT, Haiyan Zhang, who is the project manager, and Doug Lee, their consultant. All right, so this mandatory referral on actually what is a very nice bridge project I think will go pretty smoothly. A lot of work has been put into this, and especially coordination with the adjacent property owners to develop a bridge and, I guess, forest conservation easement stormwater system that can work really well through this area. The project is located in Potomac along Glen Road. And there's an existing two-lane bridge. It's a very short bridge over Sandy Branch. This is probably one of the few projects where Parks is not here with us because the Sandy Branch, the land is not owned by Montgomery Parks. It is also one of the few rustic roads that carries such a large amount of traffic, over 5,000 vehicles per day. So certainly, closure of this bridge, and especially in a place like Potomac where the street network is not as developed, is going to cause some pretty large delays that people are going to have to plan for. And we can talk about that. So this is a photo of the existing bridge. And it does have some guardrail that wraps around to an adjacent private driveway. It's a little bit more than 20 feet long. And the current bridge is something short of 27 feet wide. There are no shoulders, as you can see. And there's guardrail on both sides. Bridge is in poor condition, and there has been flooding, especially at the nearby driveway that has occurred at this location, all of which will be mitigated by the proposed design. The proposed bridge replacement will maintain the same width. And I'm going to use a lot of bridge engineering terms or technical terms. which if you have any questions about it, I can explain it. But what's proposed on this bridge are the construction of two new cell box culverts. They're just kind of like, instead of circles, they're boxes. And they're reinforced concrete. And they channel the water through them. And then on the outsides of that, there's something called wing walls, which look like wings, and they provide a lot of the structural support for the bridge and the bridge deck. They then will cast in place an overlay, which is like the deck of the bridge, and include riprap protection as well. And as you can see on the graphic, there's a lot of There's a lot of stream restoration upstream, and a lot of work has been done on that. The extent of the project includes the project approaches, and as I mentioned, you can see the private driveway that's right adjacent and includes some drainage improvements there as well, which will hopefully deal with the flooding adequately. These are the box culverts. This is a lateral section from the side. And so you can see that, I guess if you're not a bridge engineer, you might say, these are culverts, not a bridge. But this is actually a bridge. So the two box culverts will be, I believe, laid in. And then the bridge deck, which is the part on the top, will be poured. This is a view from the road, a cross-section. And so you can see the bridge that's proposed is on the top, and the culverts and the channel flow through there is shown below. You can see then the riprap from the stream. The side to the left is upstream, and the side to the right is downstream. The road widths here are rather narrow. Existing road widths across the bridge are rather narrow, and they're basically maintaining what's there as is. This is the plan view of the section. Very compact and actually a very nice bridge. So as I mentioned, this bridge is located on Glen Road I'm just going to say somewhere between Piney Meeting House and Trevillo Roads. The detour that's been set up is eight miles long, and it uses Glen Road, Piney Meeting House, River Road, and Trevillo Road. There are no closer routes. There is a neighborhood street here, but the the detour is being kept on pretty much master plan of highways level roads. So as part of this, we looked at master plan consistency. And we have two areas that we looked at here. First is because it's a rustic road, we compared to the rustic roads functional master plan update that was completed a couple of years ago. And what we found is that the proposed bridge and stream restoration process will not negatively affect the character of the rustic road. Staff believes that the project substantially conforms to the recommendations of the rustic roads functional master plan update. The master plan is the 2002 Potomac sub-region master plan. And again, we took a look at some of the transportation and environmental goals within that master plan. And again, the staff feels that the proposed project substantially conforms with the Potomac sub-region master plan. So on a lot of bridge projects, sometimes we would come back with a lot of design review comparing it to complete streets and different sections and whether it has adequate shoulder and whether the width meet standards. Because it's a rustic road, it's subject to Chapter 49, Section 49-79 and also the county code regulations. No separate bike facilities are proposed. or required, so essentially the bridge is being kept as is, which these days, especially with transportation funding, that can be a challenge. The project was reviewed by the Historic Preservation Division. They concluded that the project would not impact any sites or districts listed on the Montgomery County Master Plan for Historic Preservation, or the locational atlas, and index of historic sites. No further historic preservation review is therefore required. Molly's going to take us through this slide.

Hi, good morning. Molly Sammons for the record with the Environment and Climate Division. So for this project, the applicant is not subject to Chapter 22A Forest Conservation Law. They did receive a forest conservation exemption back in October 2025. This project occurs within an existing conservation easement, but this conservation easement was enacted at a with a preliminary plan and does not have an associated forest conservation plan. And this project will restore the impacted area of the easement, which is required in all conservation easements. So with the stream restoration that they'll be doing, they'll be restoring the easement to the standard that it needs to be.

We conclude with eight comments that are provided really as part of the forest conservation exemption process. We have no specific comments related to the design. As I said, the design has been very well done. And I will mention that the applicant met several times with... the adjacent property owner or Glenstone Foundation to work on something that would work. And the result of design is quite good. So these comments, I don't necessarily need to read them. These are standard comments that we provide as part of a forest conservation easement exemption. But we have eight comments in the staff report. If you have any questions, we can answer them. That's it.

Great. Would the applicant like to make a presentation, or the applicant is good? OK. The applicant's good. OK. The hands waving is good. OK. So thank you for your presentation. I feel it's great that we're going to replace bridges that are failing, but need replacing, and there's a process. I just had a, just for curiosity, you show in the stream valley this meandering pattern at the base. I don't know if you could go back to that. Why couldn't you just have a straight shot to the, if you know what I'm trying to say, this looks like a straight shot in the air, but then if you look at the design, yeah, in the bottom, is there a reason why you want to have that meandering pattern or something?

So streams normally have this sinuosity to them where they're not normally a straight shot. The existing stream pattern, it's kind of hard to tell there, but it's in lighter gray where it's also kind of curving. This design was coordinated with Maryland Department of the Environment and the US Army Corps of Engineers. So this design was done by stream experts. This is not unusual to see this type of pattern.

Yes. Some of it relates to trying to maintain the same level of flow and reduce bridge scour and things like that.

Yeah. Okay, great. And the other question was, if you go back to the deck, the plan view of the deck, you know, there is a... Yeah, where this shows a difference, there's the widths of the... the next one, or the previous one, or whatever you just know. You have the 9 foot 3 roadway, and you have two feet space, and then you have the guardrails. How are you going to stripe that? Is the 9 foot 3 striped, or is it What's the purpose of the, I mean, why wasn't the whole piece the road? Or is there a reason why they have the two feet there just so that the cars don't get close to the guardrail? I'm just out of curiosity.

Sure. So the two foot is, that's where the white line will be striped. You need to have a buffer between the edge line and any kind of guardrail.

I see.

In terms of striping the lanes, and I'm going to go back to maybe the photos that were taken, as you can see here, it is striped. And it's likely due to the amount of volume on the road. I will say that if this was a neighborhood residential street or something like that, it probably would not be striped. But due to the volume, it needs to have the double yellow through it. The lanes are narrow, narrow then you would do in a typical project. And actually, one of the things I mentioned about keeping bridges the same width is that a lot of federal funding is contingent upon going up to our current standards. So I believe they have to qualify for special funding, or the county often pays for these kind of bridges out of county funds entirely.

Great. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Just out of curiosity. Thank you. Any other questions or comments from the board members?

Yeah, I got very ecstatic to see this, but I just realized this is not the bridge that is one lane, because you said it's the two lane, because this is like where the three sister bridges are, and there is right there next to it, if you come toward the north, there is one lane bridge that is very dangerous. It's right there. And I am wondering that at first I thought it was that bridge that you are replacing. Unfortunately, that's not the one. And it's in the same place, and that bridge is not in good shape, and it's very unsafe. I'm wondering that while you're closing this, why couldn't you do both of them? That bridge, I worked on it 20 years ago, and It's not something that could last a long time, and also it's not safe. I used that bridge plenty of time, and people come head on, and they start fighting. Someone has to back up.

We hear this complaint all the time, and... Replace at some point, and sometime we're going to have to do that. So why don't you do it now?

Because you are closing eight miles of detour. It just doesn't make sense that you do one now and then come back and do another one. Again, close it for another three or four months with eight miles detour. Because they all have the same connection. Most of them. It's the same detour. They're right next to each other.

It's pretty far away. The other bridge is a little further away from here.

Isn't it where the three sister bridges are?

It won't be on the same detour.

Yeah, but this is one of the areas that they call it three sisters, correct? This is one that goes toward Falls Road, the one that you are replacing. Glen Mill, that goes. The other one goes toward Tuckerman. If you have the map.

I also don't think we'd be able to widen that bridge. It needs to be widened, but I don't think we can legally widen it.

Why not?

The approaches are both- Isn't that the reason why the Rustic Road Committee was created?

It's unsafe.

It's dangerous. Well, maybe, so maybe they can come back to us later with any status of when that bridge could, where is it in the queue, whatever. I appreciate your comment, and I think we can move forward with this one, which I think they brought before us, but it would be nice if they could come back.

Yeah, that has the ADT that is probably the same or maybe a little bit more, and the bridge is very old and it's very unsafe. I think that should be a good reason.

I believe you're referring to the bridge on South Glen Road where it dips down and becomes a one-lane road and then it tees in. Is that the bridge that you're thinking of?

Yeah, I think they're all in the same location, aren't they? Because I just don't see the...

So on this detour map that's shown, the road on the rightmost side is Pining Meeting House Road. the bridge that you're referring to is probably several miles down Glen Road.

There are so many Glen Road, Glen Mill Road.

I do believe it's a few miles away. I'll just note that the current bridge, I think, is fully funded in the CIP. It's supposed to go under construction soon. Is that correct?

Yes, construction next summer.

Yeah. The other bridge could be looked at, but it is on a rustic road, I believe. It would have to go through a big process, and I think it would delay moving forward with this project quite a bit.

You're correct. Okay. I understand. I was just asking the question. I don't want to delay. This bridge didn't look good. The abutment had a big crack on it, so I don't think that you can wait. I was just wondering if they're not in the same location, then it makes sense, but The other bridge that is just one lane, it's the area the collectories is there. That's dangerous. I know that bridge very well. I worked on it myself. And that needs to be replaced also.

As a non-bridge engineer, I will say when I've driven the corridor, that's the first bridge that I say, something needs to be done. But it also is a significant feature of that part of Glen Road as a rustic road. So that That issue would have to be addressed through the Rustic Roads Committee.

So why don't we move forward? It'd be interesting to know, once this is under construction, I know this is the planned detour route, but I wonder what people's apps will say when it's time to, out of curiosity. We can come back two years. You could tell us what detours that the cars actually make. based on people's apps. So, you know, is it an eight-mile, or is it they take those two roads there, if their apps say take those two roads, just out of curiosity, you know? I know the detour is to be on the largest, safest routes, but I wonder what actually will happen, yeah.

That's an unfortunate aspect of...

I know, I know.

Our detours get ignored.

Yeah, yeah. But thank you. This is great. Great that you're going to replace the bridge. Great that there's funding to do it. And we look forward to it happening as soon as possible. Thank you. So there's a motion to approve sending staff's comments on the mandatory referral to the MCDOT.

I move to send the mandatory referral comments for disability replacement to DOT.

I second.

All in favor? Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye. The aye, Mr. Vice Chair. Also said aye, so it's 4-0. Thank you so much for bringing this to us. And we will take a quick break and then go to item number seven, the Wheaton Plan, Georgia Avenue Community Plan scope of work. Staff has recommended that the Bureau approve the plan boundary. Thank you. Morning, everyone. We're on item number seven, the Wheaton Plan of Georgia Avenue Community Plan Scope of Work, where staff is recommending that the board approve the scope of work and plan boundary. This morning, we have Maureen Hill with the planning department presenting along with her team. Thank you.

Good morning. Just wanted to say a few words. Carrie Sanders, for the record, East County Division Chief. We're really excited to bring the Wheaton Plan scope to the Planning Board for your review and approval. And to set the stage a bit, our general plan for the county, Thrive Montgomery 2050, really sets a strong vision for growth at our large activity centers, in particular activity centers that are at Metro Rail. So through this plan, we really look to advance that vision. But we also look to support what makes Wheaton unique as a place. And we want to just highlight today a lot of the thought and analysis that went into thinking about how we develop a scope that response to keeping Wheaton Wheaton, but also allowing Wheaton to grow in a really positive way as it's so connected to Metro, so connected to a lot of the community resources that are here. A lot of thought went into the scope and boundary that we're going to show you today. We spent a lot of time engaging with the community as well We had a very well attended open house where we shared the scope and boundary We made some edits to the scope and the boundary based on the feedback that we heard from the community So you're gonna see that today We also really put thought into a boundary that matches the amount of resources that we have for community engagement we didn't want the boundary to be so large and that we couldn't really deeply engage. And so we kept a boundary that we feel allows us to really engage thoughtfully with the community that's in that boundary. So I wanted to also commend the project team led by Maren Hill and also the communications team that developed a campaign called We Are Wheaton. And that is a storytelling campaign that allows community members to share with us what they love about Wheaton, maybe some things that they'd like to see differently. And that's really looked to inform our recommendations for the plan moving forward, as well as the scope that you're here today to review. I also wanted to recognize our University of Maryland intern, Pablo Espejo. This is Pablo's first presentation, so be easy on him. But Pablo has really been an integral member of this team and just showing our partnership with the University of Maryland as well as our development of interns. And actually, Kenneth, who's also going to be presenting, is an intern with our department a few years back and has now joined us as a full-time employee with the department's transportation division. So really excited to have both present to you today. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Marin to go over the plan scope.

Can I just ask a question? Of course. I'm not going to ask him. I'm going to ask you. What is the difference between master plan or sector plan and community plan? I was just wondering when I said community plan, I said, okay, that's a new term now. Thank you.

Oh, absolutely. So it tends to be that master plans have a wider area than sector plans. Sector plans tend to be a bit smaller in area. You'll see that... This plan area is a bit larger than a sector plan, so we have kind of tried to broaden it a bit. I do believe community plan is a rather new term that we're using, but part of the reason we're using this term is because this plan is actually going to be a series of plans that that involve communities all along the Georgia Avenue corridor. And we're going to talk a little bit more about that today. But to set the stage, we have done a lot of planning already on Georgia Avenue and Silver Spring and Forest Glen. We have recent plans in those areas. But we're looking to also look at the corridor as it's sort of Forest Glen all the way up to Olney. And we recognize that effort's going to involve many communities. And so we're really phasing that effort to start with this community. And as each of those plans move forward, we're going to be bringing scopes to you to review before those efforts start. But this is the first phase.

Thank you so much to Sanders and Martin Hill for the record with East County Master Plan Division. And I'm joined here with Pablo Espejo and Kenneth Derryberry. But we have a very large team that's working on this plan. I'm not going to name everyone now, but at the end, I do have a slide that acknowledges the folks who have already contributed to this effort, to the community engagement, and also to the scope of work. But I wanted to particularly recognize Sophie Kotzker, who is helping lead this plan but could not be here today. So we're here to present the Wheaton Plan, a Georgia Avenue community plan, and the scope of work. We'll be asking the planning board to approve the scope of work as well as the plan boundary. So the purpose of this plan is really to identify actions that support Wheaton's assets but also help the community meet the challenges that exist and deliver on a vision that the Wheaton community wants and engage people in the conversation to iterate and create that vision with the community. One thing that I think is really unique about this planning process is that we're not starting from zero in the sense that we've done a lot of work in and around Wheaton over the past decade. So this is an amendment to the Wheaton Central Business District and Vicinity Sector Plan that was adopted in 2012. But since that time, we've completed a Wheaton downtown study, as well as street state standards in 2023. and had our large placemaking event in Wheaton, the Wheels in Wheaton, that I think most of you attended. And we've also had recent adjacent master plan efforts, the 2019 Viers Mill Road corridor master plan, 2020 Forest Glen Montgomery Hills Sector Plan and the 2025 University Boulevard Plan. So we are able to build off of the conversations that we had as part of these other Wheaton efforts and also the analysis and research that went into especially the 2023 Wheaton Downtown Study to begin our plan. And those conversations that we've had in these previous works really affect why we're doing this plan. As Ms. Sanders mentioned, we are trying to sustain what makes Wheaton a unique place, what makes it Wheaton. I'm sure that whenever you talk to folks and you say you work in Wheaton or you visit Wheaton, everyone has a store that they love or a restaurant that they go to. And we want to continue to keep that energy and that sense of place and identity. But we also understand that there are struggles, and part of it is thinking of creative solutions to supporting the small businesses that are here, creating better transportation options. The Wheaton Triangle is bounded by three state highways that create connectivity and safety issues in the downtown, navigability issues. And to leverage public investments, part of the Wheaton downtown study identify the public assets that currently exist. A number of them are parking garages or surface parking lots that are owned by either WMATA or the county. And examine the transformational opportunities on large sites, possibly like the mall or the Wheaton bus loop. And identify and enhance public spaces throughout the downtown area to meet the needs of the diverse community in Wheaton. While we are looking for opportunities to implement transformational growth, we're also trying to identify ways to incrementally grow housing throughout the plan area. And then finally, to promote Wheaton as an arts and entertainment hub in its already designated district. So all of these have come out of conversations and the previous work that I've mentioned and also out of some of the outreach that we've done. This is not an exhaustive list of why we are doing the plan or what the ultimate goals will be. That will be refined over the course of our community engagement and data collection and analysis process. But we are starting from somewhere. We also, as Ms. Sanders mentioned, are taking into account the guiding policies. that like Thrive 2050, Thrive Montgomery 2050, that really dictate where we are going in terms of corridor-focused and compact growth as important elements of this plan. As Ms. Sanders mentioned, Wheaton is one of our large growth centers. It's also located on three of our growth corridors, the ones that I mentioned. Looking through the guidance from Thrive, we are aspiring to make Wheaton a place that is comfortable, that has transit options, where we locate new housing, and that is safe and vibrant. We've done some work on what that looks like. What does corridor-focused and compact growth look like, especially through our corridor typology work? This is one of the elements that was presented to the board, I'm not sure in what year, but looking at what does a segment to center transition look like? So Wheaton being a large center and the segments being the areas in between centers on our corridors. So using this as a model to think about how we concentrate growth and how we transition to other areas along the corridor and then ultimately to the areas off the corridor. As you can see, I think that this is definitely one of those pictures worth 1,000 words. This is a view of downtown Wheaton looking south. And you can see that although it has some elements of a center like our building, which is front and center in some of the recent residential developments, there is a lot of surface parking lots throughout the area. that you can see from here are underutilized. There are also many garages, so a lot of the downtown area is dedicated to parking. There are also a lot of these small structures, which we think are a real asset in Wheaton, but we want to try to figure out how we can support them and integrate growth without displacing these kind of small businesses and structures. So the community engagement aspects and also these guiding policies will help us with our data collection and analysis. form recommendations for the Wheaton plan. Throughout this process, both in our community engagement, but also as we develop recommendations, we are going to be using an equity lens, really thinking about what the impacts on people will be that our recommendations make, and also how to make the process itself inclusive and equitable. Our plan milestones. So we started work on the plan this year in January, February of this year and had our kickoff at the end of March. We are here now with the scope of work at the planning board. And these are just some of our milestones. We expect that this process We will come back to the board in winter of this year to present our existing conditions and share with the board in 2027 both our emerging ideas, which are high-level recommendations, and then our draft recommendations, both in 2027, working towards a working draft to be shared with the board in 2028, and hoping that that means that in the spring and fall of 2028, we'll be working with the planning board on developing the planning board draft and going to the council in the fall of 2028 with approval and adoption to follow in 2029. Looking at this timeline, these milestones, we've thought about how we can effectively integrate a community engagement strategy, thinking about what is appropriate at what time in the plan. We're planning to do kind of a two-part visioning with the community on community engagement, the first part happening after the approval of the scope of work. But that will be really focused on defining what the issues are in Wheaton, celebrating Wheaton's assets, and beginning to build a high-level vision for the area. Starting in January of next year, we hope to dive a little bit deeper and have people start to react to the high-level recommendations that we're making. We want to go back to the planning board and back to the community and say, okay, this is what we heard during our visioning in 2026, and this is what we're recommending. Does this sound right? What are we missing? And kind of use that iterative process to refine our recommendations. And then We hope to involve people throughout the process, ultimately having them testify in support of the plan. Our community engagement goals, as I mentioned, centering equity throughout the engagement process, but also piloting some new activities that bring different populations into the plan that reflect Wheaton's diverse population. Young area. Wheaton has a lot of Spanish speakers. And just finding ways to include folks in this plan process and get them excited about the plan, too. We're also building community partnerships with organizations and institutions and religious groups that serve Wheaton and Wheaton's community. And of course, working with community members to generate that support ultimately for the plan's recommendations. We're trying to be really thoughtful about what it means to ask people to participate in the plan. And that means that when we do an event, we have these considerations that we think of. We are offering all of our materials and events in Spanish and English with other languages upon request. We're providing either child care or child-friendly, family-friendly activities. You can see these are two kids drawing at our open house. so that there can be wider participation. We're also asking people on our RSVP forums, are there other things that would allow you to participate that we can potentially provide? And we're trying to meet people where they are, both informationally but also physically, by going out into the community and speaking to them at Metro or in parks. And then in a lot of our plans, we have done door knocking in the past, but we're trying to be sensitive to the concerns and needs of undocumented or mixed status families and communities, understanding that this can be a scary and sensitive time for a lot of those folks. So thinking about how we announce the outreach that we're doing and the engagement activities that we're doing while respecting people's space. And then, of course, thinking about accessible locations. What is a place that is easy to get to by metro, bike, walking? What are places that people feel welcome in as well? So all of our activities, we're taking these considerations. As Ms. Sanders mentioned, we're really excited that we're trying something new out. And it's our We Are Wheaton, or in Spanish, Somos Wheaton campaign. And this campaign is really a community. It's driven by community voices. And we think that it's an exciting way to bring new people into the plan and also to communicate what people are saying to us to the decision makers and other community members as well. We're taking short videos, written stories, and audio from community members. The communications department, particularly Nick Frymark, has been really helpful in helping us collect these videos and interviews. And we're using them through social media. We have a website that is wearewheaton.com that folks can visit and sign up to be part of the campaign. We're also asking folks to share their own Wheaton stories through their own social media and tag us and hashtag wearewheaton as well. And we think through this campaign, we can build awareness about the plan. It's exciting. You're getting to see your neighbors talk, your community members, folks that you know, and hearing what they love about Wheaton and what they think is important to include in the plan. So we hope that that also invites a diverse audience that may not use email or be plugged into our planning e-letters as much, but might be more of a social media crowd. We also want to highlight what community members are saying. I think that we always strive to communicate to the planning board and to the council what we are hearing from community members. But I think it can be a lot more compelling when you hear directly from them, these are their concerns, these are their daily lived experiences. So we're hoping that these videos can also help communicate that to decision makers. As Ms. Sanders mentioned, we've already done a lot of engagement to date. We've met with, I think, 12 or 13 neighborhood groups of different types or organizations. We've had our open house. We've also... had several pop-ups at the Wheaton Metro where we've handed out materials about the plan. And this has been really helpful because it's also allowed us to talk about the ideas that are going into the scope and the plan boundary. And as Ms. Sanders mentioned, led us to amend or recommend amending the plan boundary as well. We've already heard a lot from people, and we're looking forward to hearing more. We were at the Sligo Creek Fest, so we got to talk to some of those 15,000 people that were there about Wheaton. But we are hearing themes that are already emerging about people love the diversity, the walkability of Wheaton. It's transit access, and of course, it's small local businesses. But people do have concerns about navigating Wheaton, whether they're walking or biking, taking transit, or even driving. And that a lot of people have come here because of the affordability, but they are finding that a Wheaton is becoming less affordable for them. So to transition into the boundary, this is the proposed draft boundary that was included in the scope of work. It is part of the Thrive Growth Center. It also includes three of the Thrive Growth corridors, Georgia Avenue, University Boulevard, and Beers Mill Road. It, of course, includes our building, as well as the Metro, the Westfield Wheaton Mall, the library, and the rec center, as well as, I think, eight parks. And as I mentioned, we did actually amend the boundary from what we showed at the scope of work due to feedback from residents in the Kensington View area, which if you see is this area, to extend and include more of their community to keep it intact. This shows the existing master plans. I always think that this is a really helpful graphic because it kind of shows why there are some bends and nooks cut out of our plan area. And that's because we're really meeting other existing plans, like the ones that I mentioned before. So the area in pink in the center is that 2012 plan Wheaton Central Business District and vicinity sector plan boundary. You can see our boundary outlined in black. You can also see the University Boulevard in blue, Veers Mill in pink, and the Forest Glen Montgomery Hill in pink down here. Some of the older plans for Capitol View, Forest Glen, and the Forest Glen Sector Plan from the 90s. So although the plan, our recommended boundary largely overlaps with the 2012 plan, it does depart in some significant ways. And part of that is because we wanted to close the gap between some of the existing plans like Forest Glen. as well as the Kensington plan to the west to include University Boulevard and to include Georgia Avenues. There aren't gaps in our planning areas. We also wanted to include key destinations so we could look at the connectivity between the downtown and some of these areas. So for example, the library and rec center up here to the north, as well as the park. I find myself saying over and over again, and these guys have definitely heard it enough times, that developing the plan boundary is an art, not a science. We have to draw the line somewhere. And I think that through our conversations, it was very interesting to hear people say it should be bigger here or smaller here. And so this is our best effort at creating a plan boundary that incorporates a lot of these important destinations, that reflects the things that the community wants to see included in it, but that also, as Ms. Sanders said, is a plan boundary that is manageable with the resources that we have. Because of the level of community engagement that we do through our plans, extending it too far can really make it impossible to have that high quality level of community engagement. However, that being said, today we are recommending- Could you go back? Yes, of course.

This is really beautiful. I really like the way you have shown that what are the other master plans that are there. I think this is really good. Also, if you have like an eye bird view, make it a little bit bigger to see that what else is around there. and to fill the gaps. I'm just wondering if you look at on the west, the gap between, there is a section, I understand you don't want to make it bigger, but there is a section, Kensington sector plan, that section looks like it's going to be missed. It's not going to ever be studied under anything else because it's just sandwiched right between this one and Kensington. Was there any reason that, I do not know what is out there, if it is worthwhile to include it or not, but it's something that probably never, if we just leave it like that, and at one point there are some potential for development, we're going to be missing it.

Yeah, no, I think that this is the struggle that we have. I think that there are a couple sections like that in the greater area that are less likely to have a new master plan in the near future if we don't include them. At the same time, it would add a considerable number of new homes to the area. I think one thing that we tried to look at is what is kind of within a mile of metro to think about what are the areas that are close to high quality transit where there is more likely to be some change in the area and that there might be opportunities for some new incremental development. So these areas are primarily within a mile of Metro. And that's one of the ways that we thought about and limited the boundary. Because I think our team actually spent a lot of time internally with leadership and with various teams throughout the department discussing what made sense as a boundary. And what was hard is like, every time we said, OK, well, what if we included this area? And someone said, well, the same is true for this area. And then it got to this huge unmanageable boundary. And so we wanted to focus on places that we expected that there would be more likely to be change. And that could be revisited. I mean, other areas could be revisited if it seems like there are opportunities in the future in those areas, but that it doesn't seem likely in the near term. Again, that being said, we are and we'll also show another map of this as well so you can see it in context. We are actually requesting that the board amend the boundaries that we put in the scope of work to add two additional areas that would add in total about 230 something households. It is the Glenview area. So ooh, I'm having trouble with the mouse. But up here, this is the area that is south of Wyndham, between Wyndham and Dennis. And it is the area that goes over to Inwood. This is part of the Glenview Civic Association. One of their leadership is actually in the audience. And through several conversations with them and their members, They advocated for including this area in the plan. And some of the reasons are that this inwood is one of the walking routes for the Glen Haven School, and that the community has substantial concerns about the safety as it is. And that school is an only walking school. So there's no buses that go to Glen Haven. It's all walkers. but that there are existing safety concerns that could be potentially addressed through the master plan. It is also on the edge of the University Boulevard corridor plan, and there are concerns that this could be an alternate route that people might use to get to the Beltway or other locations down in Wood as well. And then also in this area, there are a number of existing small home-based businesses that could benefit from our examination of these areas outside of commercial cores and how they can be incorporated. I will just talk about this one other one and then show you the map of where these are. So this is actually in that area, Commissioner that you mentioned on the bottom. And it's the Kensington Ridge area. And similarly, people had some concerns about Bentley Lane and Jutland Road, which are also walking routes to the Oak View Terrace Elementary School, which is just below. These currently don't have sidewalks, but are major walking routes for students going to that school. It's also an area that is in close proximity to the Wheaton Westfield Mall. So if there were considerable redevelopment on the mall, that it would affect this community substantially. And we received community feedback on both of these areas asking to be included in the plan, although we did through conversations, let people know that even if your property isn't included in the plan area, that you still have a voice in the Wheaton plan, but we can only make recommendations in the areas that are included in the boundaries.

If there are issues for safety, I think they should contact them now. Because safety is going to be in the master plan. It may not happen for 20 or 30 years. The other thing is that when we include it, it could be not only safety, everything else. Because as part of this, you're going to look at the master plan. You could look at the zoning. You could look at everything. So everything would be looked at. Yes. That I understand. But if people have just concern for safety, they want to include it. I don't know if that's a good reason. I think that it should be an opportunity for development, opportunity for change. That's what I was asking you, that is there in that area that was sandwiched between Kensington and your boundary, is that area, is there any opportunity for future development or changes in regard to zoning or anything? I think if it is issues for safety, they should do other things to take care of it now when you need the kids. Because by the time this master plan goes, kids are grown up and gone. And it's going to be for future generation if anything happens. But the existing generation would miss out.

I think that's a good point. And this is for the board to decide. This area over here on the west side is within that one mile walk from Metro. The area on the east side in Inwood, I think that this area, I think that there are, we see in this area in Glenview, and the Glenview Civic Association covers a large area, But there already are some uses. There already are some small apartment buildings and condos that we don't see in some of the other neighborhoods. I think that, of course, and communicated this with community members, that if you're part of the plan, we're going to evaluate everything, not just the issue that you're bringing to our attention. I think that there could be opportunities in the Inwood area to look at, are there future opportunities for incremental zoning, like incremental housing density or other housing options? I think also they were saying, we have these small businesses that are existing, and we have but in a very limited way, that this could be an opportunity to explore whether there are potentials for having more small established buildings in residential areas that can be very serving a very close in neighborhood. And that is part of what we want to explore in this plan. But again, this is for the board to decide if these additions are appropriate.

Thank you. You can continue going, but this is a great point you brought up. How do you address issues other people may have and not have to go through a master plan? We also have these functional master plans about you know, safety and pedestrian and I don't know. But we should think through that, because you don't want to wait 10, 20 years. But how do you get stuff done now if there are specific issues? So we can talk through that. And we can keep going.

I was just going to add, I think that it's important to keep in mind, I always try to look at master plans as not the final product that we get at the end of the three-year process, but it's the process itself, too. And so it's that engagement with the community. It's that effort. Excuse me. will help draw attention to things that could be concerns, that maybe some of those things can get addressed before the master plan is completed, before the timeline and life of the sector plan. That process helps elevate and bring attention to some of the issues, and so I think it can be really helpful from that perspective. The community should continue to pursue other things that might be more immediate solutions to some of the safety concerns, but the master plan process and the ultimate product that we create is a good opportunity for us to raise some of those concerns in a very comprehensive, integrated way, too. Okay, thank you. Please continue.

Commissioner Linden? Yeah, Commissioner Linden.

Thanks, and I apologize I'm off camera, but I'm at home in a playpen at the moment with my kids, so none of you want to see that. I just had a question about if you were maybe be able to give us a bit of a preview about like where we might expect other community plans kind of as part of the Georgia corridor to be. So I'm thinking about as we extend north, for example, up to Glenmont, would we expect, for example, that a potential Glenmont community plan boundary would come down and meet approximately the northern extent of what we're talking about here and maybe include some of the neighborhoods like on the east side, for example? just as one example. And the reason I'm asking in part is because I'm looking over at Weedon Regional Park right there on the kind of upper right corner of this map that we have on the screen here. And I'm wondering if obviously it's probably not feasible to include that within this plan boundary for a lot of reasons, but it would be nice to be able to highlight and feature connectivity various parts of this planned boundary to Weedon and also, you know, the needs of the neighbors who live a little bit closer to Weedon Park and maybe even the shopping centers, they go north on Georgia. I'm looking at potential there. So I'm just wondering, so yeah, I'm wondering like where we might expect future planned boundaries. I know that's, you know, we don't want to put the cart in front of the horse there, but you know, do we think that ultimately a lot of these communities, as we had north of Georgia, will be included in future community plans? And specifically with Weedon Regional Park, is there an opportunity to still kind of really prioritize connectivity needs from this downtown area to the regional park, even though some of that might exist outside of the ultimate plan boundary?

So we do not have the boundaries for Glenmont or any of the others. But the idea is that they would build on one another so that there wouldn't be gaps along Georgia Avenue between the plans, so that the Glenmont plan would come down and meet where the Wheaton plan ends. And then the same for Aspen Hill working its way up. And I think that one of the things, we actually even have it in our scope of work document that parks and transportation divisions have, the parks department and the transportation division are aware that it's important to look at the connectivity to Wheaton. So although we wouldn't have recommendations, sorry, Wheaton Regional, although we wouldn't have recommendations that are outside the plan area, looking at like, kind of how we get to that edge of these neighborhoods, and thinking of that as a destination and an important part of our transportation connectivity network. Wood, I think there is a possibility. We've talked, we kind of, again, It was a long process discussing these boundaries. I think we did struggle with whether to include Wheaton Regional or the areas right around it and decided that, again, it would kind of expand the boundary too much, and also that it was less likely that anything was going to change in this area in the near term. I think it is possible that they could be included in the Glenmont plan, because we will be meeting. And I keep wanting to scroll up on the map. But we will be including that Wheaton Regional, as well as the area that goes down to Wheaton Regional, I'm blanking on the name, but the little mall commercial center that includes H Mart and stuff, which is just off this map, but that you can see along Georgia. So I think that there's a potential to include other residential neighborhoods in that plan boundary as well.

Let me just tell you that the Wheaton Regional Master Plan was recently done. And I know that as part of that, the connection to the neighborhood was looked at. So you already have that. So I understand when you do that. But there's no one in parks in here to explain. But I'm sure that that was looked at.

I think Henry Coppola is here, but they are working. Chuck Kynes, who did work on the Wheaton Regional Park Plan, is working on our master plan team. And we'll be bringing those recommendations in from that into the work that we're doing as well.

You can continue, please.

OK. I'm going to now turn it over to Kenneth Derryberry.

Good morning. So as a part of this plan, there's going to be a variety of elements that we're looking to explore. So up first, we'll be thinking about zoning, land use, and urban design. And part of what's guiding this theme is that, as we've seen in the Wheaton area, recent development has not fully built out to its zoned capacity. And thus, we need to consider maybe why that is and potentially if there is a better place to put different types of housing of different types or of other developments. And so as part of this discussion, Area of the plan, we propose to study alternatives to the local street grid in order to incentivize transformative development on larger properties downtown, as well as to potentially increase housing options in the Wheaton core by promoting adaptive reuse or additions to smaller existing structures. Further, the plan aims to explore removing regulatory barriers to buy-right development of existing commercial spaces in the downtown core. And additionally, there is an aim to develop new zones to allow additional housing types. And this leads into the zoning analysis. And so furthering what I mentioned before, this plan will be looking to develop a new zone or zones in order to provide the opportunity for additional housing types, both along corridors and near metro, through new or infill development, and also through home conversions or additions. Furthering off of this, housing for this plan at a high level, we'll be using the county's local housing targets as a guide for the amount of housing that we should be planning for. And so as part of that, for the broader Kensington Wheaton planning area, the established target is about 6,100 homes by 2050. And so for the Wheaton plan area specifically, as you saw before on the slide, this translates to approximately 3,200 to 3,700 new homes by 2050. And so we'll be looking at how to add both market rate and affordable housing while also preserving existing market rate affordable homes that are a key part of Wheaton's housing options. And we'll be looking at existing zoning in Wheaton and what developments have been built. And further, we'll explore where housing makes the most sense, both near transit but also in other parts of the plan area, and what role publicly owned sites like metro adjacent properties and county parking lots or garages could play. Then we'll also take a look at small businesses and economic development, and it will explore how to both spur housing and business development and leverage and maximize Wheaton's potential as both a key metro stop and transit center and the home to major recent and upcoming public investments, as mentioned. And the goal here is to build on assets, including international cuisine and the arts. Wheaton is a crossroads of state highways, emerging BRT, and high ridership bus routes with a metro rail station. And so as part of this plan, we're going to be evaluating the allocation of the existing public right-of-way and considering potential reallocation to better support multimodal trips in the planned area. Additionally, we aim to consider opportunities for new streets and connections in order to further build out Wheaton's street grid. We'll also aim to improve connectivity across state highways, as well as the comfort of pedestrian, bicycle, and micro mobility trips within Wheaton. The transportation section will also aim to further equity, safety, and accessibility for all modes throughout the planned area. We'll also be taking a look at how to support improved bus speeds and reliability for high ridership bus routes and the emerging BRT that we see on the corridors in the planned area. And additionally, we'll aim to examine both street connection and bus bay designs that could support the redevelopment of the existing Wheaton Station bus loop, which is a key site in downtown Wheaton with great transit access. Parks, trails, and open space. This plan will aim to develop a vision for the future needs of outdoor community gathering, fitness, and play spaces. And also, as mentioned, how to improve bicycle and pedestrian access to parks and park trails, including Wheaton Regional Park. And further, the plan will look to identify ways for parks and open spaces to reflect and celebrate the area's unique cultural identity.

For health and well-being, the plan will evaluate how the built environment in Wheaton shapes physical, mental, and social well-being. This includes examining how land use, transportation networks, access to parks, food systems, and environmental conditions influence health outcomes. Rather than just focusing on health care, this work will also focus on social determinants of health, meaning the everyday conditions that influence how people live, move, and interact. This analysis will use spatial data to better understand patterns related to physical inactivity, chronic disease, mental distress, social isolation, transportation insecurity, and overall health status. A key part of this effort will be identifying where mobility barriers, environmental stressors, and gaps in connectivity may be limiting access to resources and opportunities. Ultimately, this section will help inform recommendations that support a healthier and more resilient Wheaton community. Environment. This section will focus on environmental conditions and resilience across the plan area. This calls for assessing climate-related vulnerabilities such as urban heat, flood risk, impervious surfaces, and areas with limited vegetation. The plan will also explore strategies to reduce emissions and improve resilience to climate impacts, particularly as Wheaton continues to grow. Curie as a focus will include expanding tree canopy, creating greener streets, and incorporating nature-based solutions to help manage stormwater and reduce heat, so essentially integrating environmental resistance into urban design. The plan will also consider environmental equity, ensuring that improvements benefit all parts of the community, as well as opportunities to promote biodiversity through native planting and landscape design. So overall, this will help guide strategies to create greener, more resilient, and more comfortable environments. Historic resources. This section will document and contextualize historic resources within the plan area. Existing resources include sites such as the Jenkins Broadcasting Station, as well as burial sites like the Allen Chapel Church Cemetery and the Carmack Family Cemetery. This panel will focus on developing a brief history of Wheaton to better understand how the area has evolved over time. and how that history informs current conditions. Rather than pursuing new historic designations, the emphasis will be on using this historical context to support planning decisions and guide future development. So this includes understanding past land use patterns, development trends, and shifts in the community's character, particularly as Wheaton has transitioned towards a more urban and transit-oriented environment. So all this to ensure that future planning efforts are informed by Wheaton's history and contribute to maintaining a sense of place and identity. This section will evaluate how community facilities and services that support daily life in Wheaton. So we will focus on reviewing school enrollment trends, future projections, and capital improvement plans to assess whether existing school capacity can meet current and future demand. The plan will analyze how potential development could impact school enrollment and overall service demand. In addition to schools, this section will also consider broader community needs, including facilities such as childcare, senior services, and other neighborhood serving amenities. This work will involve coordination with county agencies to better understand existing service levels and identify potential gaps. So given Wheaton's role as a growing community center, as a growing activity center, this analysis will help ensure that community facilities and services are aligned with future growth and remain accessible to a very diverse population.

And so with all this, we also understand that we have to look at how these things can be implemented. Through the Wheaton downtown study, as well as other work, we already know that there are things that could be potentially costly. to implement, like undergrounding utilities or infrastructure improvements throughout Wheaton. So as part of the plan, we'll be exploring funding mechanisms for future infrastructure improvements. We'll also be coordinating with our implementing partners throughout the county and the state to examine existing funding streams and policies and work with them to really explore if there are other strategies to help with the implementation of Wheaton plan recommendations. We will also be pursuing opportunities like designating Wheaton as a transit-oriented development with the state that could unlock other potential grant funding and other financial incentives that could aid with the implementation of plan recommendations. So that will be part of the plan as well. As I mentioned, we have a large group of folks working on the Wheaton Plan who have been contributing to these efforts. And we are, as Ms. Sanders said, very excited to be working on the Wheaton Plan right in our own backyard and look forward to working with you on it. Thank you.

Great, thank you so much. Vice Chair Linden has his hand up.

Why don't you finish and then I'll have... No, I was just going to mention that as far as this presentation, we are recommending that the Planning Board approve the scope of work and the plan boundaries we are recommending with those amendments that were discussed as part of the recommendations.

Great, thank you. Thank you for this detailed presentation. Vice Chair Linden, you have your hand up.

Yeah, I think this all looks really great. My question or my comment or question, I guess, was more related to the implementation section. But and it's it's something that you all mentioned in a previous section about, you know, focusing on or sort of examining like what are the publicly owned land opportunities, whether it's parking lots or garages or other sites where we have public ownership. And I think, I know you're all thinking about it this way already too, but I think that's really critical for the implementation piece of this too. You know, early conversations and kind of consistent conversations with various public stakeholders who own different pieces of land, including obviously the state highways, but also the actual parcels themselves and potentially even including, you know, the transit station area, the bus loop, like that big lot of land because leveraging those public opportunities for implementation will be, you know, that's such an enormous opportunity. But it's obviously complicated in a lot of ways, but I think that could and probably should be a part of the focus in the implementation section. And I know you're I know you're thinking about it. I just wanted to kind of reemphasize that opportunity here, given the public ownership that exists in the area.

Let me just a couple of things. One is that this is I admire you for doing this. This could be transformational. So I really appreciate all the attention you guys are putting into this. Wheaton is evolving. I remember in the early 2000s, I was involved in several development projects here. And also when Wheaton was developed, made an arts and entertainment district. And I've seen how the library and the community center to the north of here came about, and some of the Ava building and some of these other multifamily. And then our centered headquarters here was originally thought to help spur other commercial development in the area. And I see how even. We had our announcements for some retail on the first floor recently here, and we had a daycare center here. So it's evolving. It's happening. And you're really trying to see how we can really, really do more. And so that's all wonderful. I'm thinking, because this is like a two to three year plan here, how do we, as you move along, you just created this community planning academy. As you're going through the process, can you get more folks involved in that? Because they have more time to go through the academy and know how the system works and get more involved. And there are a lot of multifamily nonprofit providers in the area, like HOC and MHP. And those residents really stay a long time. So making sure they get their voice heard and how they can participate in this. So this sounds really wonderful. I've always been interested in, we have a lot of multifamily here. What is the occupancy of these buildings here? It would be interesting to, as you do some more work, the occupancy. And also, the small businesses, we really want them to thrive. And one of the things that I had heard before, that they're we want some redevelopment of those and whatever, but we don't want displacement, but there's so many owners. Is it true that there are just so many owners of all this? It's hard to get some critical mass of owners to do things, but you'll You'll find that out. But I love how you're talking about using public facilities to leverage that. I know that one time they were trying to go out for RFPs for a lot of the garages, but I'm not sure. Because some of them were in this area, I'm not sure what happened. But as you do more of that, maybe you can find more that makes it worthwhile. A little bit of the elephant in the room is Westfield. I don't know how that's a big part of this. And I don't know if you could find out more information about how they play. I remember one time they were talking about some redevelopment. I don't know how that works into the whole piece. But this is really wonderful. And in the adding the piece, I'm fine with adding those pieces of more in the boundary as long as you feel you have the capacity to do the additional engagement. That's all great. So I'm looking forward to this. Any way the board can help out during the process, let us know. Thank you.

I believe that two things came to my mind that I didn't see the scope had included. And I can tell you why I'm saying what I'm saying. One is perception. of Wheaton. And the other one, they're both interrelated to make it a go-to place. I was the director of DPS when we moved from Rockville to Wheaton. Many of the staff were not happy. And they were saying that Why are you moving us to somewhere that is more a step down than where we are? And I try to understand more exactly what that means. It was accessibility to food. It was accessibility to walking. Accessibility people could get out and do things during the lunchtime. But a big thing that they were concerned about It was safety, not safety for transportation, not safety for walking, not safety in regard to transportation, but just safety in general, health and safety. And I'm sure that you guys were all involved. We had a lot of meetings with the police, and it ended up that Wheaton was as safe as it was in Rockwell, you know. It was as safe. But the perception was that it is not. And we couldn't really convince them. People didn't want to even walk to the parking and so on. So I think there are two things that we have to look at into this discussion. you know, community, especially that now you're calling it community. It's that not the community in Wheaton. It has to be community outside Wheaton. Because if you want to make this to be a go-to place, and it is that what people are looking for to come, you know, just something comes to my mind. I come here if we make it like ethnic place. like we have Chinatown, we have Little Italy, there are a lot of Hispanic and Latino food. So maybe we should make a special town specific for that and create it like a little, we can name it to the specific culture that we want to do it. that it has festivals, it has food, and it looks like that you are there, okay, in that place within that culture, that people would come with the music, dance, food, or whatever that we have to change the perception that Wheaton is as good as, you know, downtown Rockville or as good as downtown Bethesda or Silver Spring, we have to change the perception. And this is something that I think this community plan can do to help people to come. So when you talk to people and get community engaged, I think we should go beyond just the boundary. We should go find what it takes people to come to Wheaton. We want to invite people to come to Wheaton. That would help for the businesses. That would help for the housing. It helps also for implementation. I understand that you are looking at implementation to see what we can get involved with different fundings for government. I think that we should look at how we could encourage private developers to come and do many of these things, even though if it is a public property, public-private development, to bring it. Because the more it goes, the public money is getting more scarce. So we have to find other ways to make this thing happen. And also, I agree, Westfield Mall is a great opportunity to bring people to Wheaton. Westfield Mall needs a complete facelift. It needs it. You know, malls and this... They need to renovate and rebuild to bring people here. The Westfield Mall doesn't attract people right now. I don't think so, but that needs a lot of facelift.

Commissioner Bartley, you have it. One last thing is that the county is looking, putting a lot of investment in Wheaton. I've Got to mention the Arts and Cultural Center that's coming. That's a huge public investment that should draw folks to here to participate in not only arts and cultural activities, but also for the small businesses here that provides customers for that. And also, I think Parks is building an urban park right behind it on Amherst. So I think there's a lot of things. The nucleus is there, and I think with some of the things you're doing, I mean, Wheaton has opportunity to be a great place. And then also with, because we don't have large land pieces here, but maybe with that single-stair legislation, you can have smaller multi-opportunities and not have to have a 200-unit building, but on the smaller sites you can have maybe a 16-unit building, a 20-unit building, and so it gives more opportunities for people to develop. Well, Commissioner Lynn, did you have your hand up before we vote on this? No, it's okay.

Sorry, I had a little thought, but it's not that important. None of your thoughts. I just wanted to also just thank the team again for this. It should be a fantastic plan process. Everything you talked about with The engagement piece and kind of the visioning and working with community throughout all sounds wonderful. So I really look forward to kind of seeing what comes out of this and having various check-ins to see how it's going. So thank you. Great.

So hearing no other thoughts or comments, do I have a motion to approve the staff scope of work as amended and the preliminary, mostly it's the preliminary boundaries plan as amended and the scope of work?

I move to approve a staff-recommended scope of work and boundary as amended.

I second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye. The ayes have it, 4-0. Thank you so much. We look forward to it.

Thank you so much.

And then we're going to take just a couple-minute break and then go with our next item, which is item number 8, 495, movers at 12300 Park Lawn, local map amendment, where staff is making... recommending approval with binding elements. Thank you. Good morning and welcome back. We're on item number 8, 495, Movers at 12330 Park Lawn Local Map Amendment, number H161, with staff as recommending a rule approval with binding elements. And this morning we have Tony Lefwich with the Planning Department presenting this item. Thank you.

Troy Lefkowitz, again, for the record, presenting 495 movers at 12330 Parkland. Local map amendment H161. Staff is recommending approval of the LMA. Local map amendment, there is also expected to have a future site plan associated with the proposed self-storage. For context for the board, this slide represents the red star represents the location of the property in relation to the county. As part of the LMA, there's a defined neighborhood boundaries. To the north is Wilkins Avenue that intersects with Parkland Drive. To the south, the property, it intersects with Parkland Drive and Village Square Terrace. To the east is Village Square Terrace and also Village Square Apartments. And then to the west is the CXX tracks, which serves as a major industrial buffer. The blue represents the location of the site in relation to the neighborhood boundaries. It's also located within the 2009 Twin Book Sector Plan area. Distinct zoning is within the Twinbrook overlay, and majority of the site is located in the IL zoning within the neighborhood boundary. Outside the neighborhood boundary, as mentioned before, the Village Square, outside of Village Square Terrace to the east is the R20 zone, which facilitates the apartments. To the north is CR, and then on the opposite side of the CSX tracks is additional CR zoning. The existing conditions of the site, the property is a little bit over one acre, has two access points from Parkland Drive with an existing unbuffered sidewalk. It currently operates as a dated self-storage facility with ground floor units that essentially allow for vehicle access to those ground floor units separated within four structures and two access points off of Parkland Drive. The rezoning, the existing zoning is IL-1 with a height of 50 and the rezoning is IL-F with an increase of FAR to 2.25 with a height of 50. The floating zone request allows for the property to increase the self-storage use. The applicant is proposing 102,638 square feet, which also excludes 27,000 of cellar space of self-storage use. They are combining the access points into one access point off of Parkland Drive. They will provide 10 spaces with three loading spaces. We do expect a parking waiver at the time of site plan due to the required 13 spaces that is required for the site and the applicant proposing 10. So we would expect a parking waiver for at least three spaces at the time of site plan. The applicant is providing 16% amenity open space, which is over the 10% required open space for the site. For reference for the board at the time of site plan, this rendering represents what we expect to see or something similar. It will be a four-plus-story structure. They provide additional articulation at the corners, which combine the transparency and interior circulation. You can see that with the windows at the corner of this rendering that shows the interior self-storage access areas. alternating the colors and visual separation within the structure. So that allows to reduce the scale of the building, as you can see, between the blue and the gray, between the facade treatment that's being expected at the time of site plan. The project meets all the requirements of Chapter 59 and also 22A. They received the approval of a forest conservation plan exemption in November 21 of 2005. The subject application conforms to the recommendation of the 29 Twin Brook Sector Plan and staff is recommending approval with binding elements of the local map amendment as numerated in the staff report. Also, at this time, we have not received any correspondence for this application, and the applicant has met all submittal requirements and noticing for this application. Staff recommends to transmit comments to the hearing examiner at this time.

All done? All good? Thank you. Sorry. That concludes my presentation. Thank you for your presentation. Would the applicant like to make a presentation?

Good morning. Chair Harris, members of the board, for the record, Elizabeth Rogers, law firm of Lurch, Shirley, and Brewer, pleased to be here today representing 495 Movers, the applicant for the local map amendment before you today. With me today is Tom Giuseppe with 495 Movers, along with several of our applicant team members. Before we begin, I did want to thank staff, particularly Troy Lefwich as lead reviewer. They've done an excellent job at getting us through the process in a very organized, streamlined fashion. It's been great to work with them. So we appreciate all their efforts and hard work Troy has given a great presentation on kind of what the application covers, so I'll try to be brief and not too duplicative with my comments. What I did want to give the board is a little bit more background on who 495 Movers is and the why for this application, just because I think it's a really great story. 495 Movers was founded in 2009 by two friends who started out as helpers on the back of a moving truck. When they started the business, they had three employees and one truck, and they've grown that business into one of the most respected moving companies in the DMV area. They're a strong local employer that supports both households and businesses in the county. And as their operations have expanded, one of the things that they've discovered is a strong demand by their customers for storage solutions. They are unable to rely on other third-party storage providers to meet that need because they're limited in the amount of space that they can rent within any given building that's owned by a third-party provider. So to kind of control their own destiny and meet that need for their customers, they need to do so through their own facilities. And that's what this application is seeking to allow them to do. As staff has mentioned, it's obviously an existing industrial district today. That industrial classification won't change with this application. It's a longstanding self-storage use. Again, the use will remain unchanged. What this application really does is facilitate their reinvestment in the site in a manner that allows them to continue to serve county residents and businesses and grow in this location, which is something that the sector plan specifically recommended. Obviously, Troy has showed you pictures of the dated self-storage facility that's there today. It's largely, almost entirely impervious in terms of the site. And the application allows us to redevelop that in a way that promotes many of the county's goals and design objectives, both from an urban design perspective and an environmental perspective. allowing us, for example, to introduce stormwater management, where none currently exists. And the only other thing I'll say is just from a sector plan perspective, the sector plan specifically sought to retain the industrial district here, recognizing the important function that serves for the Twin Brook area, but also central Montgomery County. And it really sought to facilitate flexibility and ways for those businesses to evolve in place. Those recommendations, it may didn't go far enough, obviously, for this property to do that, but I think this rezoning is fully in line with that overall objective of allowing this local business to evolve and grow and remain in the county. So with that, we support and agree with staff's report and their binding elements and recommended conditions of approval. I'd be happy to answer any questions the board has.

Questions for my board members? Any questions?

No. Thanks for sharing the story. It's an outstanding story. Love to see entrepreneurs take a risk and grow their business, and it's exciting to see this advancement.

Thanks. Great. Thank you. I have a couple questions. One is that I know this is one of the – I think the second one we had where they – there was going to be cellar space. Is that future build-out of space in the future? What is the cellar space? Is it just like?

It just really has to do with how the building sits within the property grade. There's just a portion of the building that will be counted as cellar, which the zoning ordinance just excludes from the calculation of FAR. But it will all be built and built out internally at the same time.

Great, great. And it talked about A 10-foot sidewalk, 10-foot street buffer, utility easement, and then it said a 1.5, 1.5-foot buffer maintenance. But where is that maintenance buffer? Where does all those 1.5-foot maintenance buffer be? Do you know? I'm just trying to look on a plan.

The 1.5-foot maintenance buffer? It'll be behind the sidewalk to allow for, between the sidewalk and the building.

Robert, can I go? Mic check with you, please.

Pat LaVey with MHG for the record. Yeah, the maintenance buffer is typically what's required or provided behind a public sidewalk in the property line. It's usually for minor grading, form work of sidewalks if the county ever needs to replace the public sidewalks.

So it's on the other side of the six-foot street?

Yeah, so if you're starting at the curb, you'd go curb, tree panel, sidewalk, maintenance buffers behind the sidewalk on the property line side.

On the property?

Yeah, it's just a sliver of land. It's often provided in urban context, sometimes not, but often just to give the county a little extra room if they need to do a little bit of grading when they rebuild the sidewalk in the future or put form work in or anything like that.

I see, great. Not amazement. Great. And the last question is, if this didn't have the F for floating zone, what couldn't you do? So it's changing from an IL to the ILF, what I mean, I know you increased the density from a 1.0 to 2.25. You couldn't do that if it weren't an F. So what does the F allow you to do on this site?

For the record, the F is giving you the increased density. The uses essentially is the same, since it is in the same zoning category essentially, but the F was essentially allowing for that additional FAR. It also could have been, I guess, a potential additional height, but that's not what the applicant is essentially requesting. The LMA was essentially allowing for that floating zone request, and then the use in this particular case are the same.

So to get that additional height or additional density, you have to put the F?

The F is just a designation that a floating zone has been applied. Right. So sometimes when a floating zone is applied, goes through this process, it changes the zone from one type of zone to a different type of zone. In this case, they're keeping the industrial. They're just... The only change that is being asked for in this LMA is the density, the FAR. Okay, great.

Yeah, I know we used it, and sometimes in the past it changed the... Okay, great. And... My comment is thank you. We are always looking for economic development in the county, and it's great that you're able to want to grow your business and have the capacity to do that. So thank you so much. I have no other questions or comments. And so do I have a motion to approve the local map amendment with binding elements?

I move to approve the local map amendment with binding elements.

I second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye. The ayes have it, 4-0. Thank you so much. Congratulations. Thank you. We're going to take another two-minute break and then start with our next item, which is Little Steps Day Care. Thank you. And welcome back. We're on item number nine, Little Steps Daycare Conditional Use and Primrose 16550 Georgia Avenue Preliminary Plan and Forest Conservation Plan, where staff is recommending on the conditional use to transmit comments to hearing examiners supporting the conditional use with conditions. And on the last two, the preliminary plan and the forest conservation plan, staff is recommending approval with conditions. So this morning we have Jonathan Casey with the planning department presenting this item. Thank you.

I'm Jonathan Casey. For you is Little Steps Daycare slash Primrose at 16650 Georgia Avenue. As the chair stated, this is a conditional use preliminary plan and forest conservation plan. Approval of the conditional use with conditions, which would be transmitted to the hearing examiner, as well as approval of the preliminary plan and final forest conservation plan. Real quick, I do want to note that we have one minor change in the language to condition 20 of the preliminary plan. After discussing with the applicant's counsel, we've updated this condition to be a little bit more specific regarding offsite improvements. So the subject property outlined in goldenrod is on the west side of Georgia Avenue. This is just south of Emory Church Road. And this is part of the 2005 Olney master plan and Olney policy area. For conditional use purposes, outlined in red is the neighborhood. Within that neighborhood, we have a church across the street, as well as a number of single family detached dwelling units and some HOA open space, which includes a PEPCO easement. And directly to the south is Avenir Court. I cannot pronounce that no matter how many times I try to say it. The subject property does have access to Georgia Avenue. So this is what the site looks like today along the frontage. There is an existing antique store. Behind that is a small accessory building, which is connected to the antique store sales, an existing garage or warehouse, as well as a number of ancillary buildings and on-site parking. Directly to the north are those two open space parcels I was discussing. And to the southeast, directly abutting the property, is the Wyatt Jones Hyatt House. And just for clarification, this property doesn't directly front on or have access directly to Georgia Avenue. It accesses an access road that is parallel to Georgia Avenue. And then there's an intersection here to the north. If you've ever driven up Georgia Avenue, you may have seen this property. This is the existing antique store, as well as some of those other buildings. The buildings that will remain are the main antique store, which you can see here and here, and this red accessory building to the rear. Conditional use is strictly for the daycare, daycare over 30, bless you, daycare over 30 persons is a conditional use in the R200 zone. The antique store is an existing non-conforming use that is certified with Department of Permanent Services. And so the conditional use is strictly for the daycare. The preliminary plan, however, does include both buildings because the lot will be, both these buildings will be on one lot. We've also included the antique store for parking, the parking analysis, as well as other APF findings. Implanted parcel, which will be converted into a 2.11 acre lot for a daycare center here in Beige with up to 165 children and 35 employees. The existing antique store and the one red building will remain on site, as well as the existing parking to the south and north that is part of the antique store non-conforming use. 37 additional parking spaces will be provided on site. And as part of this, the applicant will be utilizing public water and sewer. They do need to extend sewer from Tavenner Court to the south onto the subject property. And they'll be utilizing a grinder pump for a short length of service between the existing buildings and the access road where we're connecting the public system. On-site reforestation will happen here and the northern edge of the property. And my apologies, landscape infiltration will not be provided. It is microbioretention facilities. Here and here are the two play areas associated with the daycare. And circulation on site will be one way from the north entrance and exit through the south entrance. As I stated, this approval is for up to 165 children. The hours of operation are limited to 6 a.m. to 6.30 p.m., and no more than 40 children can be outside in those play areas at any one time, or 20 children per play area.

Antique store getting in and out is on the north.

So the...

You could just show it on the map. It's not sharing, or is it sharing this? So they're sharing the interest.

You're stealing my thunder again.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I'm going to get into that in just a moment. So parking. There are two uses on this property. The applicant is requesting a parking waiver from the number of total spaces. And to support that, they provided a shared parking analysis according to the zoning ordinance that specifies the peak parking requirements based on the existing and proposed uses. And based on that analysis, staff does support the applicant's request for a parking waiver. image, the existing parking here and here will be retained. Those are not necessarily assigned spaces. With the shared parking analysis, that analyzed all of the parking for both uses. So they will be sharing spaces and circulation. This circulation pattern, these two entrances are actually existing. So those will be Essentially, the circulation will be very similar from the access road. Hopefully that clarified.

So is it enough parking? Because they have 35 employees. And how many parking right now is provided?

There's 37 spaces provided. Sorry, 37 new spaces and 17 existing.

How many is all together?

It's 49 spaces.

OK, that would be enough for both users.

So according to the shared parking analysis, that is correct. They did a study where they looked at the existing use and looked at the peak hour parking hour by hour. And then they've used the essentially existing data from the Perimero School, because they have other locations that they can use as kind of benchmarks for how much parking is required based on an hourly basis.

Is the same owner, is the antique store owner the same as this? Yes. So there is no complaint from the antique?

No, it's all one property owner. As I mentioned, this is going to be one big lot. So this property, it's one property. It's owned by the same person.

OK. So it makes sense. That's why they're not making it like two lots, because parking probably wouldn't be possible.

And also, if you look at the operations of the antique store versus the daycare, the peak hour, when people are going to go antiquing versus the daycare drop off and pick up they little bit of overlap but during the peak they're not they're not in conflict On this slide, there is a request for a parking lot setback waiver. The area in blue is the area of those 12 parking spaces along the northern property line that is within the 24-foot parking setback. And so they've asked for a this waiver to allow that to occur. And to the north and to the west are these open space parcels, parcel D and I believe it's C. They are open space parcels for the adjacent HOA. There's also an 80-foot PEPCO right-of-way that essentially starts at this property line and goes 80 feet to the north. So there's no anticipation that those properties will ever be developed with anything in the future. Still providing landscaping along here to mitigate any kind of headlight glare or anything that's typically associated with the parking. As I mentioned, they are providing landscaping along the northern and western property line. along the south where the existing residences are, and a small portion of this section C, so section C and D, the applicant is requesting alternative compliance. It does not mean they are not meeting the screening requirements. It just means they are deviating from the specifications in the zoning ordinance. The plantings and six-foot fence they're providing will meet the intent of the screening requirements section and will provide adequate screening along those property lines. And this six-foot fence is a board-on-board fence that will actually be installed on top of the proposed retaining wall, which will give it a little bit more height and buffer the play areas. A metrics plan that shows that none of the proposed lighting will cause any glare or spillage onto the adjacent properties. With regard to the preliminary plan, as I said, this is for one lot. No additional dedication is required with this application. They are providing a private improvement easement for part of the side path that will be along the property, as well as just off-site to the north, where they're making a connection to an existing shared use path. And I would like to point out that the applicant has had to jump through some hoops to make the off-site connection happen. But with a little bit of encouragement from staff, they did make that work. So we're connecting the proposed path to an existing path that leads to the north where there's additional development. does substantially conform the recommendations of the 2005 only master plan and the way the building has been cited it will minimize visual basically the ability to see the building from but the right-of-way and the neighboring properties Transportation elements of this plan, they are doing a 10-foot wide side path, and that will be in a PIE in addition to a 6-foot wide street buffer and We do have one condition that the applicant has agreed to. Later in the process, before everything is completely approved, the applicant will be providing an additional pedestrian connection from the shared use path into the site with the dotted blue line. There may be some variation in the alignment, but nonetheless, a connection will be made as part of this plan. The applicant did submit a traffic study for this application to analyze all modes of transportation, non-motorized and motorized. And as part of that, the applicant is providing mitigation by installing two high visibility crosswalks identified with the blue stars.

Hello. For the record, Josh Penn with Up County Planning Division. I'll be presenting the forest conservation plan for you today. The land use category, we have this institutional development area. It comes with a 20% and 25% afforestation slash conservation threshold. It's a 2.3 acre net tract area. And there's about 0.08 acres of forest on-site, of which 0.04 will be clearing. It does generate a planting requirement of 0.46 acres within the same watershed or 0.4 acres off-site. We are giving them 0.14 acres of on-site planting credit, which will be given landscaping credit towards our afforestation threshold. And they will take the remaining 0.34 off-site. We do have a variance request. We have two trees in Goldenrod to be removed and three trees that will be impacted in blue here. They are, all the findings have been met for the variance. There's an unwarranted hardship and they are providing a mitigation of 25.5 inches of trees using minimum three inch caliber trees as per policy. Thank you.

So I'll not bore you with going through every single finding that is made in the staff report. This slide just summarizes all of the findings that were made for the conditional use application as well as the preliminary planning application. In conclusion, staff is recommending approval of the conditional use with, excuse me, the conditional use to be transmitted to the hearing examiner, as well as approval of the preliminary plan and forest conservation plan. I do want to just note that the preliminary plan will not be certified until the conditional use has gone to the hearing examiner and they have made their determination on the application.

The preliminary plan includes changing the parcel to lot, to one subdivision, or that's already done?

To boil it down, yes. Right now it's an unrecorded parcel. In order to put a new building on there, they have to have a recorded lot. So essentially they're converting an existing unrecorded parcel into a lot.

So that is part of the preliminary plan. When we approve that, that is approved. also, or is that an administrative approval?

No. So they will plat that property and that lot as shown on the preliminary plan.

We're asking you to approve the preliminary plan today that will ultimately lead to a record plat for the one lot.

OK. OK. Thank you.

And this is part of our, as I recall, a policy we developed that we can parallel both approvals. However, we can't finalize the preliminary until the conditional use is approved. Thank you. Would the applicant like to make a presentation?

Good morning. Chris Rulon with the law firm of Lurch Early and Brewer. We're really pleased to be here today. With me is Peter Chu with Prospera U.S. Incorporated, who's been overseeing this matter for the property owner and the applicant, and Courtney Galliver of Morris and Ritchie Associates, who's been providing land planning services. Her firm has been providing civil engineering services on this application. I wanted to start by thanking staff for their thorough review. We agree with all of the conditions and the changed condition. I think it was 20 with the updated language about the LATR and the alternative improvements. This project has been a very long time coming since we filed, and that really had to do with a bunch of factors that all came together, but one of them being the one that was just mentioned, the change in the process after we filed to allow for the concurrent review of the preliminary plan and the conditional use application. We sort of paused efforts on the application on the conditional use to be able to incorporate the preliminary plan element, and that's brand new for everyone involved. So we've been figuring that out as we've gone along how to address all of But I would say at this stage, having gone through both of them together, in my view, we have a very complete application where some of the things that don't typically get looked at with a conditional use application actually have been examined now, hand in hand with that. And so coming out of this, we will have, I think, a very tight double application that works very well. And hopefully, if we have luck with the hearing examiner, we'll be back to move forward with the record plat application. But really, we're really just here to answer questions. We support everything in the application and very glad to be here today on this.

Great. Thank you so much. Any of my board members have any questions or comments?

I like the design, and it's an effective use of space, and I like how you're incorporating the daycare in back of the antique mall, and it looks like it's going to be an exciting, much-needed addition to the Olney community. Great. Thank you.

Yes, we so need daycare in the community. So I'm glad you're developing a project for 163 children. On the surface, I initially thought that it didn't look like it had enough parking spaces. I think it was 49. But given you had 35 employees, and then you had the families coming, but I'm glad you had the parking analysis to show that it would work. And I know that even when our kids were at the daycare in our community, it's having the people come drop their kids off. But at the end of the day, they made it work by even if it doesn't seem like they had a group of parents or something monitoring and getting people in and out. Thank you for moving forward with this project. And I just had one tiny question. Maybe staff could ask it. You talked about this Waite-Jones-Hyatt house that's historic. Do you know anything about that? Just out of curiosity.

I don't know the exact details, but I believe at some point the house, so the antique store was originally a single family house. I believe the Wyatt Jones house, they were the owners and maybe operated the antique store.

Okay. Okay. Great. Great. Love to hear more if you get more. Thank you.

Thank you. One thing I did want to mention that I failed to put on the presentation is we did hear from the Tuxent Watershed Group. There was an email circulated that they support the application. There was a couple of clarifying questions, but I did want to put that on the record that we received that.

And did you respond to them at all? I did. OK, great, great. Yeah, I think I remember that. OK, thank you. So look forward to moving forward with the project. And do I have a motion to do three approvals, shall we? OK, great. Do I have a motion to approve the conditional use number 20-2504 by transmitting comments to the hearing examiner supporting?

Conditional use is a different number.

The conditional use, thereby transmitting comments to the hearing examiner supporting the conditional use with conditions.

I move to approve the conditional use number CU20254.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. You thought I did an aye, Commissioner Linden? Oh, yeah, sorry. Okay, thank you. So it's 4-0. Do I have a motion to approve the preliminary plan number 1-2025-0090 where staff is recommending approval with conditions?

I move to approve the preliminary plan.

I second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye, the ayes have it. And then lastly, do I have a motion to approve the Forest Conservation Plan F20240890, where staff is recommending approval with conditions?

I move to approve the Forest Conservation Plan.

I second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. The ayes have it, 4-0. So thank you so much. I look forward to you moving forward with the project. Thank you. And we're going to take a lunch break and come back at 1.30. So thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome back. We're on item number 10, which we will go over ZTA regarding general development requirements, access, and parking. And then we'll talk through updates and proposed subdivision regulatory amendments, technical review, streets, and roads. And we have Mr. Burbitt going through these options with us today. Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Harris, and good afternoon, members of the Planning Board. My name is Ben Burburt with the County Design, Placemaking, and Policy Division. I will stop trying to call myself countywide one of these days. And as alluded to, I'm bringing before a request for both a zoning tax amendment and a subdivision regulation amendment, which we would like the board to transmit to council for them to introduce. This is sort of part of a larger update of transportation policy happening, which also includes updating Chapter 49, which is being undertaken by MCDOT. And so while this ZTA and SRA don't look all that mighty, they are part of a larger project, and this is just the part that we fit within. Looking at the subdivision regulation amendment, the updates are pretty minor, but I think could have some pretty decent impacts on how we design roads. The first is acknowledging that we have a new road type called the growth corridor boulevard. And so we're adding reference to that in one of the tables that specifies protected crossing and intersection spacing targets for roads. And simultaneously, we're removing the parkway road type, which is no longer a supported road type. The other, maybe more substantial change, currently there are very specific recommendations to horizontal alignment and turning radii based on the road type. And we are looking to update that to just reference what the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, otherwise known as AASHTO, set for their national standards. The draft ZTA, it basically just clarifies how alleys should be used for parking access being consistent with Chapter 49 and some modifications that are being made in Chapter 49. And it updates the citation for how to do shared parking. Right now we have a very specific reference to an outdated manual that we are looking to have updated. Just to sort of see what we're looking at here, again, this is a sort of pulled-out snippet of that table that talks about intersection spacing and protected crossing spacings. You can see where Growth Corridor Boulevard is being added as a new boulevard type and where Parkway is being removed. In discussion about the turning radii, there's three road types that are explicitly called out in the code. Neighborhood connector, neighborhood street or neighborhood yield streets that are over 500 feet long, and then those that are less. And you can see that as you get kind of into smaller road types, the turning radii decreases. Really what this is affecting is a design speed of the road. If we were to use the new AASHTO policies, we could actually make these a little smaller because our target speed for these roads are slower than it used to be in the past when some of these figures were originally contemplated. Again, getting into what the zoning tax amendment covers, chapter 49 is clarifying language on how alleys will provide access for parking. And so we're just updating the access section of our code to provide clear guidance to look to that section for further analysis. And then again, this is the section in the parking code that talks about shared parking, currently referencing the second edition from 2005. We're just going to remove the edition number and year and just say to use whatever the most current version of that shared parking model is. So in conclusion, planning staff is recommending the board support transmittal of the SRA and the ZTA to council so we can get those introduced and reviewed over the summer. And that concludes my presentation.

Well, thank you so much, Mr. Berber. Thank you for making these changes to the ZTA and to the subdivision regulatory. So I have no further questions or comments. I support these. Any other comments or questions from our board members? So should we have two separate or one motions for these? OK, we'll have two motions. We'll have a motion to transmit the requested ZTA to the county district council to introduce.

I move to transmit the draft SRA to the district council.

I second.

Well, this is the – we were doing the ZTA first, and then we'll do the SRA. Well, it doesn't matter. Okay.

Well, just – I just wanted what was in here.

Okay. We'll do the SRA first. Okay. Motion to transmit the SRA to the district council for introduction. And you? I second it. OK. All in favor?

Aye.

Aye. The ayes have it. Do I have a motion to transmit the draft ZTA to the district council for introduction?

I move to transmit the draft ZTA to the district council.

I second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. The ayes have it. 4-0. So thank you so much, Mr. Berber. Generally, we have a whole List of things that you go over in a day. Thank you for doing these two.

Just wait till May 28th.

Oh, May 28th. I can't wait. We're going to take a one-minute break and start with our next item, item number 11, Chevy Chase Garden Plaza site plan, with staff as recommending approval of site plan. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. We're on item number 11, Chevy Chase Garden Plaza site plan, where staff is recommending approval of the site plan with conditions. And this afternoon, we have Ugo Njeze presenting this item. Thank you.

Good afternoon. For the record, Ugo Njeze with the West County Planning Division presenting Chevy Chase Garden Plaza site plan amendment number 81984001B. So this is an application to change an existing office used to a daycare in downtown Bethesda in the downtown plan area and the minor amendment plan area. That is located right in this developed peninsula with Arlington Road to the west, Moreland Lane to the south, and Old Georgetown to the east. The building where the use is proposed is highlighted in a red dashed line. There is a garage underground parking right there entered through Moreland Lane. So there's some previous approvals for this application. The amendment is coming to the 1984 site plan where the office use was codified and the development standards were approved. The proposal is to convert the existing office use in the building to a daycare use, expand the second floor area from 2,039 square feet to 5,189 square feet. This will not change any of the existing building footprint. or the height of the building. This was reviewed under the previous zoning code, CBD1, through an exemption. And then number three, they're going to convert the existing outdoor mani space for a 3,600-foot play area corresponding with the daycare use. And this is going to reduce the existing mani space from 58% to 54%. The previous approval required only 20%. So this expansion is going to be 3,150 square feet of an increased floor area. Once again, the building footprint will remain unchanged and the height of the building will remain unchanged. The 3,600 square foot play area will be fenced. It will be a private play area serving about 48 children at one time. And once again, it keeps the subject property above the 20% minimum. will take place in the underground parking area. The applicant has at least 10 parking spaces that will be used. There'll be staff there to escort kids via the stairs or the elevator internally to the entrance of the subject building that is within the plaza area. And 200 spaces will be remaining for other vehicles to use during the operation. This application was reviewed, as I said previously, through the old zone code, the CBD-1 zone. This complies with Section 771C1A of the zone ordinance as the application's increase does not exceed the height limits or density in effect of the previous code and complies with the development standards from the prior approvals. All the noticing requirements, signposting, notice of application and mailing. Notice of public hearing was mailed by staff, but we did receive community correspondence. Correspondence from a resident and the Christopher Council of Unit Owners. The concerns were traffic during pick-up and drop-off operations. parents not adhering to the operation and parking on Arlington Road to make drop-offs, and a request to study the traffic operations on Moreland Road and Arlington. The applicant did submit a transportation adequacies form, and an LACR was not required with this application. Staff recommends approval of site plan amendment number 81984001B with conditions to change the existing office use to a daycare use, expand the second floor of the building, and install an associated play area. Thank you for listening. The applicant team is here for any questions, and so is staff.

Thank you so much, Mr. Ndeze. We have one person online, Neil Tender. adjacent property owner to present as three. Great. Would the applicant like to make a presentation?

Good afternoon. For the record, Suli Cho with the law firm of Bregman, Berber, Schwartz, and Gilday on behalf of the applicant. And Katie Wagner with Grove Slade. Due to the agenda, I think, timing changing, the principal or the applicant representative, Mr. Nishant Gupta, wanted to be here in person, but I think he's running behind because of the change of time. But we don't have any additional presentation to make before the planning board. I thank staff for their detailed review of both the historical documents. This site plan obviously dates well before my time in Montgomery County even. And so we had to do a bit of historic research and getting the previous approvals straightened out to file this amendment. And staff was very pivotal in getting all of the records to us and so very helpful, and we thank them. As staff described, this is a reuse of an existing building. There is a build-out of the second floor mezzanine that will increase the square footage, but the footprint does not change. The existing parking garage has ample parking to accommodate the change of use. We did review the community comment that was received concerned about the pickup drop-off capacity or the planned operations. And so we asked Grove Slate to provide a more detailed response. That memorandum was added to the record and provided to the planning board for review. And so on that issue, I would just like to ask Ms. Wagner to elaborate on why the pickup drop off and the designated amount of parking spaces for that operation will be sufficient. Thank you, Sue.

So as staff described, this office to daycare transition is in the middle of Bethesda. There will be a lot of families. that there's apartment buildings nearby, single-family houses nearby, so there will be a considerable number of people walking to the daycare with strollers. The parking garage is existing. There is ample parking in the parking garage for pickup and drop-off. There will be 10 designated parking spaces. This is a common reuse that we are seeing more and more in downtown Bethesda, Friendship Heights, with the unused ground floor office. retail space and so we've done other studies where we have done observations at existing daycares figure out how long it takes for somebody to get their kid out of the car to the daycare back to their car to leave and having that turnover of parking spaces and so with the data that we have previously collected at similar locations The 10 spaces should be plenty for the number of students that are going to be coming and going during pick-up and drop-off time periods. And then as staff mentioned, there will be a staff dedicated to making sure that there's efficient operations. There also will be communication with parents about making sure that they are parking in the designated areas, that they're not doing curbside pick-up and drop-off, that that will be prohibited from a safety perspective for the parents and the children, and so that will be very much discouraged. So the daycare is very committed to addressing those concerns and making sure that there's safe and efficient pick-up and drop-off operations.

And I would just add that the 10 designated spaces to facilitate this pick-up drop-off operation is not the only number of spaces that will be made available. by the landlord to this tenant, you know, the Celebrity School. There are 10 additional spaces that are unreserved, but nonetheless under the lease available to the daycare. So just wanted to clarify that it's not just the 10, but the 10 will be kept open, especially during the pickup drop-off operations.

Great.

Thank you for taking some time so we can get also our Mr. Neil Tender on. Mr. Tender, welcome, and you have three minutes to present your presentation. Please state your name and begin your testimony. Thank you.

You can hear me okay?

Yes.

Thank you very much. My name is Neil Tender, and I am an owner and resident of a condo across the street at the Christopher Condominium, 4808 Moreland Lane. And I'm calling because I wanted to raise one concern about the proposed development. So I had actually raised this earlier in an email that I sent back in January, and unfortunately my comments did not get addressed anywhere as part of the community feedback. But basically the issue was related to my concerns about the traffic on Moreland Lane. So Moreland Lane is a very tiny little street, as you guys probably all know, and it's kind of bookended on either end by two very large, you know, major streets, you have Arlington Road on one side and Old Georgetown Road on the other side. And as someone who's been living there for, I've been living in the Christopher for 16 years, it's always been kind of difficult to just get out of Moreland Lane. Like Old Georgetown Road is a busy road. It has no traffic signal and it's always backed up because of Woodmont Avenue intersection there. And then the other side, Arlington Road is also very busy, also backed up because of that five-way intersection with Wilson. It does have a traffic signal. So the traffic signal is the way you can get out. You sometimes have to wait, but it's tolerable. But it's gotten worse over the years. They built the Griffin Apartments about five years ago, 400 apartments right on Moreland Lane. There's a lot more cars now. And then they added a no-turn-on-red signal to the light, which makes it also take longer to get out. So my concern is that with the new daycare center, with the large number of drop-offs and pickups, It's going to add a lot of cars to this tiny little road. And the only way all these cars can get out is on Arlington Road at that traffic signal. And I can just feel that it's going to get really backed up. So I really feel like there should be a traffic study done to confirm that or to deal with, you know, see what the situation is with this street and these intersections and if any improvements need to be made to the traffic, maybe signal timing or maybe add another traffic signal or something on the old Georgetown Road. But right now, it's very much a concern. And I looked through all the materials. I didn't see any traffic study that was done by the county anywhere. The only traffic study I saw was one that was done by the developer, which had some numbers in it, didn't really have a lot of backup in it, but it basically was claiming that they were exempt from doing a traffic study due to the fact that it was a daycare center and they weren't adding a lot of new cars to the road. But I question those assumptions that were made. There were some pretty, I think, optimistic assumptions about how many people were already driving down Moreland Lane to drop off their kids. It wasn't adding new traffic, but I can tell you Moreland Lane is only really used by people who – the Christopher and the Griffin and the Garden Plaza. It's not a pastor's street. Anyway, thank you. Basically, I just wanted to conclude by requesting that a traffic study be done for this new project.

OK. Thank you so much for your testimony. Can someone get up a map? You can show where that Morgan Lane and Howard. On one side is what O. Georgetown and the other is at Arlington Road. OK.

Arlington Road, yes.

Okay. Would the staff and the applicant like to respond on the need for not or why wasn't their traffic study done?

For the record, this is Florence Dwyer. I'll go ahead and start, and then I can turn it over to the applicant to provide any more details. But per our LATR guidelines, if there's a daycare use that does not generate more than 50 net new peak hour trips, then we don't require an LATR study. And that was the case for this, also because of the existing use. So the net new trips were, I think, peak maybe 35. And during the review process, no agency, DOT or SHA or anyone requested an operations analysis or anything. There were no concerns from any of the agencies about the pickup or drop-off operations. So that was why there was no traffic study. But I'll let the applicant respond further.

Yes, echoing what Florence said is that there are 35 peak hour trips during the morning time period that are anticipated to be new by the project, and then in the afternoon it's 31. So this is below that 50 trip threshold for the traffic study. This is an existing parking garage, as we've stated. And again, a lot of these trips will not just be by people that live in the area and are taking advantage of walking, but it will also be a lot of what we call pass-by trips, where it's people that are driving into downtown Bethesda. They're already on the roads, so they're going to sign up for the state care because it's convenient. It's next to all the office buildings that are in downtown Bethesda. So a significant number of cars are already on the road. And so that's really why there were no access concerns raised by both SHA and MCDOT. And we definitely made sure to check with them.

OK. And then the access points, there are one or two on Moreland.

So it's a bit confusing because on Moreland, it looks like there's four access points. But there is just one access point for the driveway. kind of curb cuts looking things on Moreland are loading docks for the existing office building. Because the office building is, the entire site is served by this parking garage underneath the building. And so there is an office building on Moreland. And then our site is just at the corner of Arlington and Old Georgetown.

OK. And when they come out on Moreland, if they're going east, I guess, They either can go left or right or Georgetown.

Yes, and it probably is easier to use the traffic signal if you're trying to head north on Old Georgetown to use the traffic signal at Moreland and Arlington and wait for that traffic signal. Okay, to go northbound. Yes, to go north. And there is a traffic signal at Old Georgetown and Arlington Road also to be able to facilitate those turns and to be able to get any direction that you need to go.

Okay, thank you.

So I was just looking at the aerial view that's on the screen. So the actual location of the daycare is, as you can see at the top of the image outlined in red, is in that building. And so it really, from a drop-off perspective, it is quite far. No one would want to drop off their child at the Moorland, in the Moorland area. They really are incentivized to enter the garage to then park in the designated spaces. And the spaces, you can see it's on site in the staff report. There's a parking garage floor plan that shows the spaces on, I'm sorry. That's in the staff report. It was on page 11. It's on the image now. So as you enter the garage, you would follow the drive aisle and get closer to the actual corner of the site where the daycare is located. Those are the green spaces that are designated for the pickup or drop-off operation. There will be a staff person stationed there to escort the child or children up to the daycare site, and then the cars can proceed to exit the garage. And as they exit, any queuing or waiting at Moreland, they'll be queuing inside the garage waiting to get out. So there's really no stacking or queuing happening on Moreland as a result of the drop-off and pick-up operations, all internalized into the garage.

Great. And when they come up, do they come, they exit the garage at the plaza and they walk to the building? Or they exit...

Yes, they'll take the stairs or the elevator and they'll walk the blue lines in the aerial image below and show the route that the children and staff will take to get to the front door of the building.

Okay, great. So what I heard you said is that based on the requirements, it didn't hit the 50 peak traffic to require a study, right? And then also MCDOT didn't also require anything separately, so So thank you. And I have no further questions. It's really important to me. And we talked about it. We had another daycare this morning. We need more daycare facilities in the county to support families with children. And this is a great option for that. And it's not like you're building out more space, more square footage. The square footage is already there in the building. So thank you so much. I have no, and I'm very supportive, of this project is like a great use, a co-use of that area. So thank you. Do I have any other questions or comments from my board members? From Mr. Linden. Vice Chair Linden, please.

Thanks. Similar, I'm really happy to see more daycare, more childcare in general, but certainly downtown Bethesda. So this is, really encouraging. Thanks for bringing this forward. I just have a few questions, nothing major at all, just a few questions for clarity on a couple of things. The first is looking at the image we have on the screen here, it looks like the proposed play area kind of cuts through an existing internal path that meets a sidewalk on Arlington Road right now. And so It seems to suggest that the internal circulation will still allow for walking kind of south down to Moreland, but it will no longer be like diagonal through the play area. Obviously, it comes out. Is that am I interpreting that correct that you could still kind of move into the center of the site from Moreland? It would just be the location will be that the path will be changed.

So because of the location of the playground is now in that corner, but we're not going to be completely cutting off access around the play area to get into the center of the courtyard from Moreland.

Okay. All right. Great. Yeah, that sounds good. Second question is about the kind of the existing landscaping and I think at least three trees that are in what is shown as the play area right now. Are you removing those trees or are you designing a play area to somehow incorporate elements of the existing landscaping or anything you can share on that?

So the existing trees within the actual play area do need to be removed for safety reasons for the children. They need the open space. For that reason, those trees will be removed. The street trees will be subject to further review by the Department of Permitting Services right-of-way. At this point in time, we anticipate there may be a street tree removal and replacement requirement, but that is something that I think it's covered in the staff report and in the DPS approval letter that that will have to be closely looked at at the permit phase.

Okay, gotcha. um and my final question is uh about the screening um so i i think i heard that correctly you you do intend to screen or fence kind of on the west and south side of the play area or maybe maybe around all i guess all all the entire boundary yes so um there's a

requirement to fence the entire surround of the play area itself, including the right-of-way sides of the play area.

All right, got it. Yeah, thanks for the clarification on those. One, this final thing isn't a question, more of a brief comment, which I know is not under the purview of of this application or the applicant has no control over this. But the intersection just to the north of this with Arlington, Georgetown, I think Wilson going west, kind of the classic Starburst intersection. We maybe talked about it once or twice. I think it came up in maybe a previous application. But this intersection is sort of known to be really challenging for everyone who uses it, but certainly for pedestrians and people who are rolling. And I'm really happy, and I agree with the applicant that we, you know, we should expect lots of people to walk to this daycare. This is like one of the great parts about putting daycare in this kind of location is that it will encourage lots of walking and not as many driving trips. So that is great. But we are looking at a situation where even more people and small kids will be using this really crazy, dangerous intersection. So I don't know if anyone from MCDOT is on the line for this particular item, or I guess Old Georgetown is also a state road, so there's that element too. But this is really an intersection that we have to figure out with our partners because it just doesn't work and there's more development coming as we've seen right across the street from this. It's both inefficient and it's dangerous. And so, again, this isn't relevant for us today. I mean, it's relevant, but it's not under the purview of what we're talking about today. But I just wanted to flag that again for staff. How can we think about being proactive for these types of environments where we know these uses are changing or developments coming, but there are known problems here? So I hope that at some point in the future with partners, we can make this intersection better.

Great comments, Vice Chair. And we will further have discussions with our partners about this intersection. So any other questions or comments? Hearing or seeing none, do I have a motion to approve the Chevy Chase Garden Plaza site plan with conditions?

I move to approve the Chevy Chase Garden Plaza site plan with conditions.

I second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye. The ayes have it 4-0, so thank you so much. We look forward to this project moving forward. We're going to take another two-minute break and then start.

Are we so far ahead? We don't have to wait for anyone for this.

Okay, we're good. So the next item is item number 12. We'll just wait two minutes and we'll start it. It's the briefing on the application for state-designated transit-oriented Development areas. Thank you Good afternoon, everyone. We're on our last item of the day, item number 12, briefing on the application for state-designated transit-oriented development areas, where the staff will brief the planning board on the intent to request that the Maryland Department of Transportation designate areas around the metro stations in Bethesda, Silver Spring, Wheaton, and Friendship Heights as official state transit-oriented development locations. This afternoon, we have Robert Cronenberg, Deputy Director, presenting this item.

ROBERT CRONENBERG, Thank you, Chair Harrison. As Commissioner Pettaway said, we're bringing it home this afternoon. So last item of the day. And as you mentioned, Chair Harris and members of the board, we're pleased to be here today to really brief the board on an opportunity and a request with the intent to request from the Maryland Department of Transportation to designate areas around metro stations in Bethesda Silver Spring, Wheaton, and Friendship Heights as official state transit-oriented development, or TOD, locations. So I'll be referring to that as TOD throughout the presentation. I'm joined by Bridget Breuer, our deputy director, and Kerry McCarthy, division chief of research and strategic projects. And I'm also very pleased to be joined here by Deputy Director from DOT, from our Montgomery County DOT, Haley Packett. And also online, in case the board has any questions, we have Alex Walenskas from the Maryland Department of Transportation, who has graciously joined us to hopefully, if you have any questions answered about the process and kind of where we are, But we have the whole team here ready to kind of move ahead. So these designations will unlock opportunities for state support, including NDOT's TOD capital grant and revolving loan fund. The designations do not impact existing zoning or local development approval processes. Today's briefing will summarize the purpose of the designation, the application process, and next steps. Staff is requesting approval from the board to pursue this designation in conjunction with the Montgomery County Department of Transportation. What we're going to cover today are, on the slide, it's the details of the TOD program, the benefits, the application process, and then the four areas that we are requesting designation, and then next steps. So just to start this off, what is transit-oriented development? And honestly, I can tell you, I feel like we've been doing TOD development in Montgomery County as long as I've been here for well over two decades. And even before that, I think it's something that initiated with Governor Glenn Denning with Smart Growth. And so something that we have really prioritized in the county. And as you can see, the state definition is focusing on dense mixed-use plan development that maximizes transit usage whilst walking and bicycling. I think that really epitomizes the four areas that we're focusing on, which are our Standard central business districts or what they used to be called central business districts we are referring to them in many respects as downtowns and They are major transit hubs within the county and just some information that you can see on the slide 29 rail transit stations in Maryland and we have a almost 12,000 acres of classified as mixed-use general zoning within a half-mile of rail transit stations within the state. And then you can see the MARC ridership, which has been a big focus for the state in terms of the state-owned land and some of the TOD development that they've seen and wish to see within the state. So the TOD designation program was established in 2008. It is administered by MDOT. It provides state recognition and support for local governments advancing TOD around the transit stations. and the state currently has 18 designated TOD stations statewide. The map is a little hard to see, but you can see the main lines within the state. Many of those are part of the MARC system, and this definitely has gained a little bit more notoriety and priority within the state given the current legislation, but also looking at kind of the opportunities and the funding opportunities that exist within those areas. We have two TOD locations in Montgomery County. The first one is North Bethesda. It's state designated back in March of 2012. And then Rockville was recently designated in March of this year. And I would point out that about maybe a year ago when we started looking, our leadership looked at the TOD stations within our county, and the only one that we saw was North Bethesda. It kind of sparked some interest in us to say, this is crazy. Why don't we have Bethesda? Why don't we have Silver Spring, Friendship Heights, Wheaton? I mean, those make sense. And so it really ignited us to kind of start this process to move forward with the state.

Is it just railroad, or does it include, like, rails, or does it include, like, BRT buses also, or is it just rails?

So most of it is rail, and this is something that maybe once my presentation is over, I can either be corrected by Ms. Walenskas at MDOT, but what we have seen is really it's MARC, it's Purple Line, it's the red line that we have in Montgomery County, but there is a – also BRT stations are something that are being considered. So that's something that I think that we're willing to explore for other avenues within the county. And this just shows the state-designated TOD areas, again, along the MARC lines, WMATA, and Baltimore Subway, and then their light rail stations as well.

Hi, Bridget Breuer for the record. Just wanted to talk a little bit more about the benefits of this TOD program and why this is a good thing for Montgomery County. First, the eligibility to apply for MDOT's TOD Capital Grant and Revolving Loan Fund. This program supports the public sector with funds for public infrastructure and the private sector with gap funding for development within MDOT. eligible TOD areas. The program, also known as the TOD Fund, is the department's latest tool to speed up state and local efforts to create vibrant, connected communities around transit and grow transit ridership and expand housing opportunities. I did want to turn it over to Haley Peckett to explain how this is actually already being implemented, if you don't mind just sharing with the board about the grant. Sure.

Sure. So last year, we received $250,000 from this fund. We do provide a match from the county. And that's going to go for Project Connect, which we all know is a really big transit-oriented development and economic development project that is at the North Bethesda Metro Rail Station, which is one of our already designated sites. And that $250,000, just to give you a sense of what this will fund, is going to go to community engagement and concept design. So we can start really bringing in stakeholders in the community when we are trying to build out this TOD project in the support of infrastructure.

Thanks, Haley. Some of the other benefits of the program, projects located in state TODs receive additional points in competitive application rounds for the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development's Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program. And the Maryland Department of General Services and MDOT give additional points to sites located within state designated TODs when evaluating requests for proposals to lease or purchase office or lab space. and then priority advocacy with MDOT and associate modes in supporting development.

Thanks, Bridget. So the state designated TOD application process, we have actually started this discussion with MDOT and with Alex to basically provide a narrative of the four areas that we feel would be supported because of their location, because of what the infrastructure that is already existing within those areas. Once we get a nod from Alex and from the board today, we would submit a formal TOD request to MDOT that needs to be associated or needs to be provided with a county council resolution. So in conjunction with the application, there is a resolution that the county council will need to approve so that we can include that as part of the application. The submission includes transit assets, TOD supportive land use, redevelopment potential, local commitment, and alignment with state goals. The application itself has nine different questions that we would be answering that all relate to kind of what's going on within those areas from an infrastructure standpoint, even economic development, environmental and sustainability, all in many respects the master plans that have been approved more recently within those downtown areas or are currently underway. MDOT conducts interagency review with planning, with DHCD, MTA, and others. Our understanding is that MDOT can take on about four, three to four maybe at a time. I'm not going to, I'll let Alex agree with that or not, but it's resource heavy, and so they have a lot of people and a lot of agencies that they coordinate with once they receive the applications, and so we're mindful about what we can submit at a given time. And then MDOT prepares designation recommendation if the criteria are met. And then the Secretary of Transportation issues the final designation and adds the site to their TOD portfolio.

Great. For the record, Carrie McCarthy, Division Chief, Research and Strategic Projects. I'm going to walk you through the boundaries of the four station areas that we are requesting to advance first. We've selected these areas because, as Robert mentioned, they are recognized as central business districts and downtowns in the county. They are large activity centers, Perth, Thrive, and the Metropolitan Washington Council of Government activity centers, and they are already planned to be most consistent with the state goals. Next slide. So per the instructions from the state, we have focused on the mixed-use commercial areas closest to the metro. Most of the boundaries align closely with the master plan boundaries. Later you'll see one that's a little bit different. So for downtown Bethesda, the boundaries are consistent with the 2017 Bethesda downtown plan and the 2025 downtown plan. minor master plan amendment. One interesting point that was mentioned as an incentive for this program is focus on redeveloping state-owned property and state leasing. They'll give priority to transit-oriented areas, which is great for us because today, honestly, we don't have much state-owned property in these areas. It's really de minimis. And also, there are not many state-leased facilities in these areas. So hopefully... Participation in this program could help encourage both in the future, which produces benefits for the community in having more state offices and benefits for the state employees in being located in transit accessible locations. Next slide. This is downtown Silver Spring, and these boundaries are consistent with the Silver Spring Central Business District. The last update to the Silver Spring plan was done in 2022. The CBD boundaries are a little bit tighter than the 2022 plan boundaries, again, as we were more focused on the existing mixed use and commercial areas. Next slide. This is Wheaton, and as you saw this morning for the downtown Wheaton plan that we're just launching, again, these boundaries are tighter than the 2012 plans. Basically, with the Central Business District, exclude some of the single-family areas that were considered in past plans and are being considered in the plan update. Currently in Wheaton, the state rents a little bit of office space in one of the office buildings by the mall and owns a very small amount of right-of-way. Friendship Heights, the boundaries are consistent with the 1998 Friendship Heights Sector Plan. As you all know, the 2025 Friendship Heights Sector Plan is in the final stages of public comment. The 2025 plan includes Brookdale, the Brookdale neighborhood, which is a single-family neighborhood. That is excluded from this plan because, again, we were told to focus on the mixed-use commercial, higher-density residential areas. But as plans are approved, for example, with the Wheaton plan that we're launching, there will be a process in the future if we want to increase the size of the boundaries based on changes we make to the planning process.

Question here about... So basically, if this area are included in Todd portfolio, I don't know if I'm saying it right or not, then state... What are the advantages? One could be grant. They could give us grant. And that would be decided on a yearly basis? Or is it given to county? Or is it given to the commission? And do we ask that what kind of grant do we want? Do we have to spend it specific for the scope associated with the grant for a specific project? Because that's how parks department work. I don't know how these grants are there. And are there any other benefits in addition to grants?

I might want to turn that over to Alex, if you don't mind maybe discussing some of the benefits that Commissioner Pettawayne was asking about.

My name is Alex Wilenskis. I am the Policy and Partnerships Manager at the Maryland Department of Transportation Office of Real Estate and Economic Development. and I manage the state TOD designation program and the MDOT TOD capital grant and revolving loan fund. So to answer your question, starting with the MDOT capital grant and revolving loan fund, that is $5 million annually. We are intending to move to a twice annual funding cadence, so offering funding availability twice a year. for that fund and the eligible grant recipients are local jurisdictions with the land use authority for a site. So currently in the statute of the law that established the fund, MNC PPC would not be an eligible recipient of the grant funds because it is not technically a municipality, but as As we've mentioned earlier, the county agencies can receive that funds and so Montgomery County Department of Transportation is the recipient and the implementing grantee for the North Bethesda grant that we awarded. And we are looking for specific scopes of work when we receive applications for funding.

Okay, so they have to put like specific projects that it is, and you said revolving. If it is revolving, do we have to give the money back at some point?

So there is a loan component of the fund, and that is for at the moment that's structured. So any development partners seeking funding from the program would be eligible for a loan. To date, we have not executed any loans as part of this program. So when we're talking about local jurisdictions, they are almost always going to be grant recipients. So they do not need to return that funding.

Okay. So that is good. I guess that then we're going to work with county for eligible projects. That could be something that we could work for the implementation. Thank you so much. Thanks.

And just to add, it highlights that there are benefits for the program for both the public sector and the private sector. As the loan fund she mentioned can go directly to the private sector. And then also the scoring points for projects applying for LIHTC, for affordable housing projects, and also property owners that are trying to get state agencies can get higher scores by being in a TOD area.

Yes, and I just wanted to note that from conversations with folks that I've had who are more familiar with the LIHTC, the Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program, the bonus points that an applicant receives for being within a state-designated TOD site, I'm told, is significant and can certainly be an advantage in those competitive rounds.

Thank you.

Thank you. So one of the things we did, and it's in the staff report as well that was provided, was we started with the four what we thought was kind of the low-hanging fruit of the downtowns for designation. We did list a number of other station areas that could be considered in the future. Again, we only have the capacity to do so many right now because the application process is extensive, and not only for us but MDOT. But I think as we start thinking about other areas TOD areas, station areas to be considered. We did talk to Alex about all of these and to see whether or not there would be kind of an appetite and a path forward for them. So I think the ones that We've heard more about our ones along the Purple Line. Specifically, in the Long Branch area, there's some funding opportunities that are available right now. So that might be one to consider in one of our next tranches. Germantown is on the mark, and it's undergoing a master plan update right now. And I know that MDOT has had conversations with our team about the station area around the MARC station. So as we go into additional studies for consideration, these are some of the ones that we would have to go through the same process for resolution, for application. I would also point out that last week we had a meeting with our Prince George's counterparts to look at the Purple Line Corridor, which you see here on the map. And that's one of the One of the benefits of this program is to look at corridors. And so while the Purple Line corridor has a lot of gaps between the stations, there's an opportunity to evaluate the consideration for TOD within these stops, not only for Montgomery County, but as a whole with Prince George's. And I think there's a willingness to do that. But again, there's a lot of effort that goes into it. We have been meeting with the Purple Line Coordinating Committee and with MDOT about these. So again, these are future considerations, but we wanted to put these up in front of you, and we would definitely be coming back to you at another time once we get beyond the four that we have in front of you right now. And then just finally... Next steps, we need to coordinate with our county council and their council staff on a resolution to move forward with the process and then submit the formal TOD application to MDOT for their review. And again, we will be providing and coordinating with MDOT the appropriate information that's needed and all the materials that are needed. And then we would be returning to the planning board with updates as the evaluation and the application advances. One thing I did that we put on the next steps is we've only reached out to a few groups with respect to engagement and other partners, and I think that's one of the things that we would want to do as we move along with the application. A number of the downtown areas, they all have a regional service center. and some have different groups that represent them, like BUP or like the advisory groups and so forth, to inform them of the initiative and the benefits. So those are some of the next steps that we have. We're happy to answer any questions, and hopefully we get the green light to proceed with the application and the resolution from the boards.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for that presentation, and thank you, Maryland DOT, Maryland for this opportunity. This is wonderful. You know, it's always great that we can leverage funds from our partner agencies. It's greatly needed. I'm in support of the four, Bethesda, Silver Spring, Wheaton, and Friendship Heights. Those are, as you mentioned, there are large activity centers and There are large downtown areas, and we've got some master plans in those areas now. That would be great. In terms of future, maybe, because I don't know if Prince George is going to claim it or we, but the Tacoma Langley Park on the Purple Line, maybe. Maybe down the road, we call it our Shady Grove. I don't know if that would be because it's on the metro line. I don't know.

We did talk to Alex about Shady Grove. I think there were some limited opportunities there. There were definitely some opportunities. We did not list that as one of the considerations. But again, these are some of the additional stations, and we can always come back. and kind of look at where that falls into the opportunity.

Great. And then I'm assuming Tacoma, not Tacoma because really it's Tacoma, D.C. is that red line metro station. But I see all of that. I mean, we love it when our, like D.C., it's where D.C. is doing a lot of development there. There will be some. And then there's the development around that metro station that I guess that I thought EYA at one time had rights to do. And then I think there may be some opportunities there in the future, but it's in D.C. So those are great. Thank you. This is wonderful. Yeah, we want to see growth. This helps with economic development, also helps in our multimodal. Expansion is not just car-centric. We want other modes of transportation. So thank you. Do we have any questions or comments from my other board members? None. Thank you. So do we want a motion for us for those four? OK. Yeah. So do I have a motion to move forward with the four programs? stations, Bethesda, Silver Spring, Wheaton, and Friendship Heights as the official state transit-oriented development locations.

Should I move?

Yeah, because it is a briefing, but they're requesting authorization to act on behalf of the board. So I think a vote here would be appropriate.

OK, I move to provide the authorization to go ahead and do this. I always say that there is no need for permission to do a good thing. So move on.

I second.

All in favor? Aye. The ayes have it. 4-0. So thank you so much. We look forward to that moving forward. And this ends our board meeting for today. I hope everyone has a great weekend. And we'll see you two Thursdays from now. May 21. So thank you. And we'll see you May 21. Good evening.