Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good morning, everyone. It's June 18th, and we're starting our planning board meeting. So happy to see so many of you here this morning. So our first item this morning is adoption of minutes. We have one, minutes of May 21st. Do I have a motion for approval of the minutes of May 21st? I move to approve the minutes.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. The ayes have it 4-0. The next is record plats. We have two this morning, subdivision plat Rock Spring Park and subdivision plat Columbia Forest, where staff is recommending approval of these two record plats. Do I have a motion for approval of the record plats? Move to approve the record plats.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. The ayes have it, 4-0. Next, we have two, no, one regulatory extension this morning. It is the Burtonsville Towers Extension Request Number 2, Preliminary Plan and Site Plan, where staff is recommending approval of this extension, approval of the Burtonsville extension. I move to approve the Burtonsville extensions.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. The ayes have it for zero. Next, we have our roundtable discussion by our planning director, Jason Sartori. Welcome, Mr. Sartori.

Good morning, Chair Harris and members of the board. I'm Jason Sartori, for the record, planning director, and happy to be here this morning for our roundtable discussion. So just a quick summary of what I'll talk about this morning. I'll give my usual look ahead at things that are going on at the department or important for us to be aware of. I'll then give a few planning updates, including an update on our Community Planning Academy and our recent staff picnic. I'll talk a little bit about our FY27 work program now that we are just a couple of weeks out from the new fiscal year, and then I'll give the usual personnel updates. I did want to note a couple of two upcoming holidays. Juneteenth is tomorrow. And in two weeks, on July 3, is when we'll be recognizing Independence Day here at the commission. And these are commission holidays. And so we are off those days. And for people in the community to be aware, our information counter will be closed on those two days as well. Also want to highlight, as I mentioned, we're just a couple of weeks out from the start of the new fiscal year. And like I said, I'll talk a little bit about our work program for the fiscal year and our budget that relates to that. And on July 30, that will be our last planning board meeting before the August recess, before we reconvene with you all in September. And just for everyone's awareness, again, we will continue to be working through August. We will be reviewing development applications and preparing them for when you return from your recess. And we'll be continuing to work on our master plan efforts and other programs and studies that we are working on. And I also wanted to mention we have a number of people who will be attending the Maryland Association of Counties Summer Conference in Ocean City this August. This is always a great opportunity for us to meet with colleagues from across the state doing similar work, tackling many of the same issues that we are tackling here in Montgomery County. And so we look forward to that. So two weeks ago, on June 4, we honored the 49 people who were our first official graduates of the Community Planning Academy. This was a very, very exciting moment for us in this program. These dedicated participants completed all 10 modules of this immersive online program, equipping themselves with the knowledge and tools to help shape the future of their neighborhoods. 30 of the graduates and their guests joined us that evening to celebrate their personal achievement. Chair Harris and Commissioners Pettaweem and Bartley also joined us, as did County Council Member Laurie Ann Sales. We were all honored. to have Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development Secretary Jake Day deliver an inspiring keynote address in which he encouraged the graduates to use their newfound understanding of how the planning and policy process works in Montgomery County to benefit their communities. A number of planning and park staff who have been vital to the program also joined us that evening to thank our graduates for their commitment to civic engagement and their passion for being a voice for their communities. The board's chief of staff, Alana Branda, also joined us that evening. She has been so helpful in advancing the program, and in particular that evening, in securing such a high-profile speaker as our keynote for that event. And so I thank Alana and everyone else from our teams who has contributed to the Planning Academy's success. And to kind of highlight that success and its impact, I just wanted to note a couple of things. So some communication that we've received from our recent graduates over the last few days that I thought would be nice to share with you all. The first, I'll just read these. It was great meeting you and your colleagues. I enjoyed participating in the Community Planning Academy and learned so much about the amazing work your office does for Montgomery County. But we really appreciate that recognition. Also, thank you for the wonderful celebration and the opportunity to attend the Academy. The learning experience, talking with the planning board chair, planning board members, planning staff, and listening to Jake Day's keynote address was invaluable. I enjoyed networking with fellow graduates. So you could see why we are really proud of this program. And we look forward to continuing it through to our next graduation in the fall. Meanwhile, we took some time last week to celebrate our own staff at our annual staff appreciation picnic at Black Hill Regional Park. From volleyball and games to chair massages, forest bathing, pontoon boat rides, and a fascinating presentation by Montgomery Park's Cultural Resources Museum staff, the afternoon was full of good food, fresh air, and fun ways to connect. Events like this do not happen without a lot of helping hands behind the scenes, and so I wanted to give a big thank you to Karen Warnick, our Management Services Division Chief, as well as Clark Larson, Robert Reese, Robin Brittingham, Jim Rotino, Carl Morgan, Nick Freimark, Robert Cronenberg, Mark Beal, and Jonathan Casey for the time, energy, and care that they put into planning and executing this picnic. I also want to thank Chair Harris and Commissioner Petterween for joining us for the picnic, along with I think we had seven or eight former staff members who joined us for that event. And we'll continue to invite our former colleagues to these, because it's a great opportunity to reconnect with them, but also to share and learn from their experiences. FY27 work program. So even though it was a tight budget season, I did want to highlight that the department did have some wins. So our adopted budget approved by the county council earlier this year for FY27 is just under $29 million. This is an increase of just under $1 million, or 3.5%. I will say that I generally feel, while oftentimes we feel that our department and the commission and in our budget process here in Montgomery County is not treated or doesn't receive the same Increases were not held consistent with what we see in other county agencies. In this case, I feel like there was a pretty fair treatment across the board in Montgomery County that it was a rough year for everyone. So we didn't get any of the positions that we asked for. And we had asked for an 8.5% increase. So the 3.5% was down significantly from what we asked for. But it was also not expected. I did want to highlight a number of the things, though, that we did get through in this budget, which we consider very positive. Obviously, the coal and merit increases for our staff, inflationary increases for the contracts that we have, and the supplies that we need to maintain. Also, we did receive an inflationary increase for our master plan support funding that we now get. It's not as much funding as we think we need for master plan support, and that may have an impact on our abilities to complete and do all of the things we want to do for our master plans. However, we are seeing a slight increase for inflationary purposes. We also did receive some increased funding for the Community Planning Academy. As proud as we are of that, we've realized as we've gotten into it that it takes a little bit more to manage and organize and execute that than we had anticipated. And so the county acknowledged that and has given us increased funding for that. The growth and infrastructure policy and the biannual travel monitoring report are funded, as are the climate assessment quantitative tool update that we have to do on a biannual basis. We receive some additional funding that we get every three years for some of our data, our GIS-based map data that we need to keep updated, not just for our own purposes, but for other county agencies and for the community. as well as funding for some of our IT equipment. And I did want to highlight that we did receive an authorization for the transfer of funds that helps maintain the Development Review Special Revenue Fund and keeps it solvent. So I did want to highlight to give you a quick update on where we are with that. So you'll recall in FY20, that's 24, it's missing. You don't see that in the key down below. But in FY24, we had just under $2.4 million in revenue in the development review special revenue fund. That's the development application fees collected. Our target budget, our budget for that year for revenue was over $2.6 million. So you can see we were a little short in FY20. FY25, it was also $2.6 million as our budget, but we fell even further short at under $2 million in revenue. And you'll remember last fall when we came to you and we were looking at this, we were a little concerned. Well, we were a lot concerned that our revenue was down near 400,000. Well, that has improved. Since then, through May, you could see we've received a number of applications that have come in that have generated increased revenue. Through the end of May, we were just under $2.3 million, so we've already exceeded where we were last year. This is good. It meant that we did not need to ask for as much of a transfer, and so the council approved a smaller transfer than was in our original request, which was good. We intended all along to be as transparent and transparent honest with this as we were going through the process, not wanting to put more of a burden on us or the council in this process than was necessary. So we're happy to see this as a very positive turnaround.

Can I ask one question on this? So we've talked about this a lot. It's good to see it obviously come back up. And apologies if you've talked about this before, but do we, does staff In times where the start of the year gets a slow start and it looks like our projections are in flux, do we ever reach out to our partners just to get a sense of what may be coming up in the next six to 12 months, even if we haven't received anything, just to help us understand what the trajectory might be so we can better plan for the budget?

Well, so in terms of partners, this is really, this is money coming from the development. And so it's the best.

Say, for example, like their representative, like typical representatives that we see in the room here today.

Yeah, I will say there are times where our staff will say that they know something's coming soon or in the next few months because we're having constant conversations with applicants before they put in their application. So we have a general sense of where things are standing. In the fall, the conversations were not looking very promising, and things have kind of turned around. In particular, I will note, and you've seen this, and you're going to see it over the next few weeks. We've seen a number of commercial to residential reconstruction projects come in. Those, these expedited plans, we really encourage applicants to have conversations with us early. So as we progress through the year, we started having more of those conversations with people, giving us a sense of where we would be later in the fiscal year. So we try as much as possible to have a sense of what our our burden, our workload is going to look like.

You know what I would say, that while we have the revenue and we have expenditure, and I think that we should also, because it looks like that each year we have a shortage to some extent. Some years it's less, some years it's more. I think it's time that we see how we could reduce the expenditure. I have asked a few times that how things are being charged. Frankly, I don't understand how the budgeting is done. But I think that it is after so many years that we have had a shortage. We should look into, I'm not suggesting to increase the fees because community is already complaining about the fees. So we have to see that if there are ways that we could reduce the expenditures and also multi-purposing or using staff different ways, different charges that we don't have face every year with such a shortage. And frankly, it's not fair that we charge general fund to development review. It is an enterprise activity. It should be self-supported. And, you know, I do not know that if the general fund should go toward it. But, you know, well, there are two ways, increase our revenues and also decrease our expenditure. So we should look into that also.

Thank you. So I would note that there are a few things that we've done to try to put us in a better position as this moves forward. The first is that I will note that we are looking at our fees. We do this on maybe every other year basis. And in particular, we're looking at those expedited plans, those require an intense amount of effort by our staff in really combining two different plans into one and a very, very short review. So we are looking at our fees. The other thing that we have been, in effect, lowering our expenses on this. And very intentionally, we charge back fewer and fewer work years to this. Those work years are real work years that we have staff currently doing work, and they're doing development review. So by charging fewer work years to this fund, those work years are being transferred to our operating budget. So they're still being covered somewhere, somehow. But it is putting less of a burden on this particular fund. And the last thing that we've done with regard to FY27 and going forward is we've lowered our budgeted revenue expectations. So that $2.6 million that I said that we said, well, we're not hitting that. Why do we keep budgeting for that? Because our numbers were going to continue. So let's be more realistic with what our expectation is. I will note that, again, when we did that, we did that when we were down at the $400,000 mark. And so we lowered our budgeted expectation to $1.5 million in FY27. So if we continue to be on this track, then we'll start to replenish that budget. fund and build up the reserve that we're supposed to have in there to be able to weather the fluctuations that we see in revenue.

That's a great idea. I think that I really like that. The other thing is I don't know if it is possible or not that You don't keep the budget for revenue the same. I do not know if there is a way looking at the historical trends and also at what is the market for the next couple of years or outlook to the market. We could come and develop some kind of pattern that what and how much we should estimate for that year, something like that. Then it could change each year and get closer to reality than just keeping it the same number and then we fall short.

Yeah, we do look at historic data on this, and it is really difficult to predict because market conditions, global market conditions, impact whether projects move forward. Inflation, the interest rates, and then local policy. And we can't predict what policies are going to change, what the market's going to look like in two years. or when we start putting this together, we're starting now the process of preparing FY28. So it is difficult to do. So we will try to, as much as possible, see what we can extract from that historical data.

So Commissioner Hedrick, let me let you say something. And we need to move. Because I know Director Sartori has some other good stuff he wants to tell us this morning.

My only comment is, you know, Yes, to a certain extent, increased funds or decreased expenses is the baseline. But also, more development reviews would be more money. We have a certain amount of fixed cost. You're talking about charging it over to the operating fund. One of the things that would To help this problem more than anything else would be more housing being built and coming before us, whereas our revenues would increase faster than our labor costs given the fixed costs that exist. So there's also the option of just letting more housing being built, and I just want to put that marker down.

Well, and I would note, not just housing, but all development, you know, pays into this. Yeah, and then I'm the housing guy, so I was talking about housing, and we'll let the rest of it go. But yes, all that too. Yeah. So, you know, what does this mean? How does it translate? I just want to give a quick summary of the things that we will be working on in FY27. We have a number of master plans that we are actively engaged in at the moment. The dates that you see, the months that you see in those... in the parentheses for each of these bullets, indicates when we anticipate these going to the county council. So Friendship Heights, you'll be concluding that this fall, Germantown next April, and Eastern Silver Spring next June. Those are all three plans that we expect to complete with you this fiscal year, this coming fiscal year. Damascus, Wheaton, Kensington, these are all ones that we will continue to work on through FY27 and We'll have further dates out that we'll be sending those along. We have a couple of HP historic preservation amendments to the master plan for historic preservation that we're going to continue to work on. And we are going to start working on the climate resilience and adaptation functional plan. Burtonsville plan, we are pushing off. We just do not have the staff or the financial resources in master plan funding to be able to focus on that in FY27.

I'm really excited about the Damascus plan, like building off the placemaking exercise that staff did. Was that just last year, a year and a half ago?

It was October of 24.

Yeah, but there was so much enthusiasm and... momentum behind that. And yeah, I can't wait to see what staff and the community come up with for that one. Also excited about the climate plan. And I just want to put a plug in for this. I know we've talked about this before. Huge focus on resilience and adaptation, of course. But I really hope that we can also include a lot of elements about mitigation. I hope mitigation doesn't get lost in the wash with that plan. It really should be front and center alongside resilience and adaptation. Because as we've talked about, there's a whole host of things that we as planners can do to also mitigate the impact of greenhouse gas emissions and do our part from a land use perspective.

Thank you. I've just learned that I can take notes in here while I'm, you know, so I've been adding notes to this as you guys have been making your comments.

So the one on the Germantown, we can talk about it later as we talk about Germantown today, but it seems as if it's, Friendship Heights is ahead of Germantown. Is it just because it's a smaller plan?

Well, for a number of reasons. In part, we had to work through the scheduling with council staff. And I would be surprised if these don't get spaced out a little bit more once they get to council, just because they have a limited staff in terms of who reviews and brings these through their process. And we're going to have a brand new council. And so to bombard them with boom, boom, boom, three significant master plan efforts, I think I could see that these might get spaced out a little bit more. Other things we'll be working on are retail market analysis. We expect to complete that in October. The housing needs assessment and preferences, also completing that in the fall. The Clarksburg to Montgomery Village transportation study that came out of the master plan of highways and transitways recommendations that will be completed at the end of the fiscal year, along with the Green Streets guideline and the climate assessment update. Other programs and things that we're going to get started will continue well into FY28. And other efforts that we still have on our work program, but we're not going to be focusing on in FY27, again, due to lack of funding and staffing, are the implementation metrics of Thrive and the second phase of mapping segregation.

Can I say one very brief thing on the quantitative tool? It's great that that's being the climate assessment quantitative tool. It's great that that's being updated. Do you know if that's just sort of... You mentioned it gets updated every couple of years. So is that just the typical update that's going to happen with new data, new kind of baseline data, things like that?

Well, every two years, it's a full evaluation of does the tool need to be, do we need to change not just the data, but our method?

Got it, got it. Yeah, that's great to hear, because I hope that this could be an opportunity to, I know we've talked about in the past, that the tool, it does what it's built to do, but it also doesn't account for things that it wasn't built to do right now, which is accounting for, for example, If housing, just as an example, if dense housing doesn't go here, then where do those people go? They probably go to places where it's not as climate friendly. And that's a difficult thing for a quantitative tool to address. But I hope that with the consultant that we use, we can at least explore the possibility of that tool trying to account for this question of, if not, if we don't build here. So in other words, if we see a development here that potentially mitigates the climate impact if the development didn't happen here, right? And it happened further out, and there was more driving associated with it, and so on.

I've noted that we want to make sure, as we start that, that we talk with you, and you generally, the board, and also make sure we connect with you individually, see if there are thoughts that you have. Thank you. Okay. Finally, I want to give some updates on some personnel. I'm pleased to announce that Eli Glazier has been promoted to Planner 4 in the Transportation Planning Division's Multimodal Team. Since joining planning in 2018, he has played a key role in improving walking and biking conditions throughout the county. Most notably, he was the project manager for the county's first pedestrian master plan. And in his new role, Eli will continue to lead multimodal planning efforts, advancing growth and infrastructure policy updates, and serve as an expert resource and mentor to staff across the department. So congratulations to Eli. Commissioner has returned to Montgomery Planning. Mary Jo started June 8th as the Environment and Climate Division's new climate and master plan supervisor. Mary Jo will be leading her team in support of master planning efforts across the county and other initiatives related to the environment and climate for the department. She returns to planning after three years as an environmental planner at Prince George's County's Department of Parks and Recreation. It is really great. I'm really excited to have Mary Jo back with us. Mary Beth Warnick has also returned to the department for the summer. She's a part-time administrative assistant for the climate and environment and transportation planning divisions. Mary Beth was with us previously in a similar role in the winter of 2025. She's pursuing a master's of athletic training at Towson University, and so we welcome Mary Beth back. I am pleased to introduce our summer interns. And if any of them are here right now, I encourage you to stand up. Go ahead. They started on June 1. Thank you. So in the picture here, I'll note, you know, from left to right, we have Isabella Spanagel with our Management Services Division, Lauren Heath also with Management Services, Liam Dorian with Transportation Planning, and Victoria Blackham with Transportation Planning as well. Jamie Jordan from East County Planning, Ty Wharton with Design, Placemaking, and Policy, Helen Bates with Research and Strategic Projects, Ryan Cassidy with Management Services, Cecilia Shadrick with Design, Placemaking, and Policy, and Amelia Zalubis with Communications and Engagement. And then finally, Naima Caldwell with our Environment and Climate Division. Not in this picture, but also joining us this summer from the chair's office, Brooklyn Oster with legal, and Deborah Almeida with management services. We are always excited to have and help the next generation of planners and professionals develop tools for their future careers. In addition to their day-to-day tasks, our management services team works with our planning staff to organize a number of outings and educational experiences for the interns. For instance, they recently went on a tour of parks and burial sites in the county with park staff and the one and only Brian Crane. We hope that the experience that they have here with us this summer is valuable, fun, and memorable for them. And as you know, they work on many projects that are critical to our work program and our success as a department. I think it's fair to say that we benefit as much from our interns' experience as they benefit from the experience. So we welcome our summer intern team again. Thank you. And finally, I wanted to share news of two staff departures. Cultural resources planner and historian Serena Bolliger's last day was June 5th. Serena led a variety of projects to help us preserve places important to our county's history and to tell the story of people and events that have shaped our county. During her more than two years with the department and the Historic Preservation Division, her work on historic designations and markers demonstrated impeccable research, storytelling, attention to detail Serena is headed back to Europe to be closer to family we wish her all the best in her next chapter And as I know you are aware, a longtime employee and dedicated public servant retired last month after 30 years with the commission. Tina Schneider has been an outstanding environmental planner with us day in and day out. She made our work in our communities, remained steadfast stewards of the environment, and she has helped shape many, many plans, policies, and projects over the years that will keep our beautiful planet, healthy, and our community sustainable. Tina's last day at the department was May 29th. We thank her for her many years of service to the county and wish her all the best in her retirement. And with that, I'm complete.

Well, thank you, Director Sartori, for always your very comprehensive updates. I really appreciate it, and I want to congratulate Tina the Planning Department for the Community Planning Academy. It's such a great program. And congratulations to the 49 new graduates. And then the work plan, the board is so excited to see that and also there's some very excited some of those master plans that you're going to move forward with that's that's wonderful and welcome to our new employees welcome to our interns and congratulations mr glazer for your promotion and best of luck serena and congratulations tina hope you have a great retirement so the any other comments from the board Hearing none, we're going to just take a two-minute break and then start with our next item, which is the Fraley Farm East Preliminary Plan and Forest Conservation Plan. Thank you. Please take your seats. Thanks, everyone. So this is item number five, Fraley Farm East Preliminary Plan and Forest Conservation Plan, where staff is recommending approval with conditions. But before we start with the staff presentation on this item, I want to acknowledge that recently, while speaking with Mr. Eichlegut about general county matters, He mentioned that he had received a concern about the proposed Braley Farm East preliminary plan. I told him that we had already received written concerns from a party about the same matter, so Mr. Leggett and I had no further discussion about this project. So we can have the staff present Braley Farms East, and we have Philip Estes presenting this matter. Thank you.

Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the Commission. Phillip Estes here with the review team for Fraley Farm East. Staff is recommending approval of both applications, the preliminary plan and the forest conservation plan. The applicant has met all the sign and noticing requirements, and also just to note for the record that staff did receive an objection letter from two adjacent property owners to the Griffith Farm Road right-of-way width extension as initially proposed. However, staff and the applicant and the property owner's representatives worked to resolve that issue, and we'll review that in another slide. As shown here, it is 46.14 acres of undeveloped land. And as you can see in the image, part of the property is graded and was used for farming in the past. It's located north of Bowie Mill Road at Griffith Farm Road and Hayloft Drive. Surrounding property to the east and to the north is county parkland, the North Branch Trail, and to the west and south are single-family homes. The zoning of the property is RE2, which is a two acre minimum lot size. To the north is RE1, and also to the east, RE1, TDR 2.0. To the south and west is RE2. Application is a proposal to create 10 lots for 10 single-family houses. Parcels A and Parcels C will be conveyed for parkland that consists of 18.71 acres. Parcel B, which is just 0.2 acres, that is reserved for HOA stormwater management. And access to the site is provided by Outlot C, which is on the subdivision to the west. This parcel here is called Outlot C. The extension is provided from Griffith Farm Road to the subject property. The application also includes two proposed flag lots, lot number one and lot number six. They both meet the minimum required BRL, the building restriction line of 80 feet, which is shown here. Given the acreage to be conveyed for parkland, the topography, and other environmental constraints, staff supports these proposed flag lots. The recommended revised cross-section of the roadway extension of Griffith Farm Road. As indicated in DOT's modified approval letter dated June 16th, the recommended right-of-way is now 47 feet. Staff and DOT worked with the adjacent property owners to modify the proposed right-of-way from 60 feet down to 47 feet. to accommodate adjacent mature trees, landscaping, and fencing. Still, the 47 feet will accommodate all the necessary improvements, including the roadway, tree planting panels, sidewalks on both sides. Staff also wants to note for the record that the findings outlined in the staff report are hereby revised to reflect the right-of-way width changes from 60 to 47 feet and the roadway sections accordingly. The project will provide vehicular and pedestrian access by extending Griffith Farm Road into the site. The applicant will construct the extension of Griffith Farm Road featuring an open section drainage around the cul-de-sac up to the first driveway as shown in orange. And then transition into a closed drainage section up to the street extension and connect with Hayloft Drive as shown in green. Pedestrian access to the site is provided by two six-foot-wide concrete sidewalks, which are separated from vehicular traffic by street buffers with trees on both sides of the street. At the intersection with Hayloft Drive, a high-visibility crosswalk will be provided, aligned with two ADA-compliant curb ramps at both ends, shown by the blue dots. Policy was accepted, the application was accepted when that 21-24 growth in infrastructure, the GIP, was in effect, and therefore analyzed under the former growth in infrastructure policy. Project falls under the rural west policy area, which is a green area. The GIP requires a transportation impact study for projects estimated to generate a net increase of 50 or more trips, or this trip generates fewer than 50 net new person trips. Therefore, the LATR is satisfied with a transportation exemption statement. This shows the forest conservation plan. The applicant will clear 3.46 acres, shown in the red. Shown in the yellow is 9.19 acres of forest that will be retained. And then 6.92 acres of forest will be planted, shown in the blue. The application also includes a tree variance and mitigation program. The variance trees impacted are shown in yellow. Six trees will be impacted. 14 trees removed, shown in the red. And then shown in the blue, the applicant will mitigate the removal and impact of the trees by planting at least 38 three-inch caliper trees as mitigations.

If you go back, the trees at the bottom of the page, the yellow ones, what kind of construction? Is it for septic that they're being impacted? Do we know?

Yes, those are septic fields.

I'm wondering, maybe you cover it later, where is East and West? Because you had mentioned that if you show us that what is the East, you know, this freely formed development, you say East, so where is West? I don't know which one. This is East, so there is no West shown in here.

Well, Fraley Farm West is across, let's just go back to this. There is another development coming. It's a completely separate development.

Okay, could you just show around where it is?

I can pull up a – it's not on this map. It's quite a bit – it's to the west here of Fraley Farm Road. So maybe I want to do this.

Why don't you finish and then maybe someone else can get it ready and then we can show it at the end.

That's fine because one of the comments was related to that from people from outside. And you said that that would be part of that. Maybe when you get there, you show us where it is.

OK. Moving along, there is one forest conservation condition correction for condition 1A. This is simply to indicate that the condition is a modified conservation easement and not a standard category 1 easement. Condition number four will indicate that DOT has modified its approval letter with a date of June 16th, 2026. And this is deleted condition number 11, which is regarding the striping of the crosswalk that we mentioned. DPS is deleting this condition and has indicated they will handle that at the permit stage. We are recommending approval. The project staff's analysis finds the project substantially conforms to the master plan and satisfies all applicable development standards, codes, and regulations. Recommending approval of the preliminary plan and final forest conservation plan. So we can show you, let me pull that up and I can show you the Fraley Farm West. Okay. Outline of the Provost subdivision for Fraley Farm West. However, the applicant is here and may be able to assist with that. So the subject property we're looking for is generally located here. You can see that graded area that I mentioned. And Fraley Farm West is located generally in this area, down in this area here.

I have another question I ask at the end.

So we have three people to provide public testimony this morning, Mr. Jody Klein, Gary Benedetti, and Solomon Graham. So could you come up and provide your testimony? And I think each has three minutes, correct? Oh, you'll have six, Mr. Klein.

Mr. Harris, for the record, my name is Jody Klein, attorney with Middle Mill and Cambion Rockville. And we did tee ourselves up to talk today. But in light of the DOT recommendations and changing their condition, number one, dealing with the outlaw C improvements, our clients are accepting that condition. So we have no testimony to present. And I wanted to thank your staff for being so open-minded to try and work with us in DOT to be looking at it and trying to find a compromise that satisfied both of the public interest and the private interest as well.

Great. That was changing the right-of-way from 60 feet to 47? Yes, sir. OK. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

All right. My pleasure. And so the other properties owners would not like to testify either, correct? Okay, great. So are there any questions from staff about this project?

Yeah, I have a question. Just for me to understand, I was just a little bit puzzled. When you were calculating UPP for the school, the elementary school had deficit. So why there is such a big deficit, there is no UPP? Just for me to understand. I'm not saying, but I was sort of, OK. I don't get that. elementary school, it had like about number 56 deficit, something like that. Yeah, I don't know what is below the number.

If they're under a particular page, I'm pulling up looking quickly.

They didn't put the page number. Let me see if I can find it.

While they're getting that, you had another question?

No, that was it.

OK. So maybe we can go with our other questions, and we can come back to the school piece. Why don't you? OK. I had a couple of questions. One is just for education. I was curious that the main part of the property, I guess the stormwater is going to be an open section. And then between the two property, the other portion was going to be a closed section. Why would they have two different types of storm drains? Do you know?

Ms. Rebecca from DOT?

Yes, yes. I can speak to that.

So we have a constrained right-of-way of 60 feet, or it's not right-of-way, it's technically an outlot that was meant to be right-of-way in the future when this property was developed. So in this particular case, usually with an open section roadway, it requires with sidewalks on both sides of the street, 74 feet. And what makes that so wide is there's a swale And you can see that in the plans in the outer section. It is wider out there. So when we have that constrained area and we can curb the right-of-way, so it does reduce the area that they have to provide for the road and all the improvements that go into it.

Is it also less costly to do an open section?

I'm not familiar with how much it costs. I don't think so. I think that it just is like, because in this particular case, if we would have kept that, you know, if you look at, I don't know if you have the other section, cross section for the road, but the swale is usually like nine to 10 feet. And so you would only get, if you put it in, if you did an open section road, you'd only have, um, potentially only sidewalk on one side of the street, and then the street wouldn't be centered in the right-of-way. So in this particular case, for this, we do allow for the closed-section roadway right-of-way.

Thank you. I'm happy the team was able to work out with the property owner. That's great. And just also out of curiosity, I know that what's driving the size of the lots and the number of lots you can get is the zoning, correct? Because ideally, it would seem like you would want to put more housing on that. that large piece of property. But I guess the zoning is driving. Because you look at the driveways, they're very long driveways, just to get to those lots. And so maybe in the future, not this, but how do we? I guess you would have had to rezone that property in order to do something different. But it just seems like all that land for just 10 homes. So yeah.

I think it is in SPA, correct. And they are zoned right now for two acre for SPA. But I think that I didn't understand that they didn't have to follow the requirements of 8% cap because they were on septic. So that's something new I learned about SPA.

Right. So one, this is zoned. RE1, it is an area that's not anticipated for a large concentration of development. It is to be larger lot.

No, I understand that. I'm fine with it. They're doing it within the law. Also, the existing homes that back up, are they on sewer – septic and well, or are they sewer and public services? Do you know? Everyone's on septic in that community? OK. All right. Thank you. Thank you. I have no further questions. I'm happy that that this project is going out. We need more housing, however size we can get them and wherever we can get them. So thank you. Any other questions or comments?

I can respond to Commissioner Pettaweem's question about this school utilization premium payment. And you'll see this next week, because Haysu Beck will be presenting the FY27 annual school test to you all. And you'll recall that there are two thresholds that need to be met to qualify a school for utilization premium payments. The first is a utilization rate at least 105% or higher. So you can see that particular elementary school, Sequoia, I think was at 115%. So from that perspective, it meets the requirements for Tier 1 UPP. However, The second criteria is an actual seat deficit, how many students over the capacity of the school, the student capacity is the school. So for an elementary school, you need to be at least 74 students over the capacity. And in this case, this school is 67. So they are seven seats, and that's when you can see in the table four of the staff report that tier one adequacy is ceiling for Sequoia Elementary School is seven students. So if this project were to generate more than seven students, then it would have triggered a partial payment of utilization premium payments. But because it doesn't, it doesn't trigger that.

Got it. My understanding from I'm learning new stuff is that if you're an SPA and you do on septic, you don't have to make the threshold. Is that true? I didn't know that, but that was written in the report. You can tell me later.

Oh, OK. For the record, I'm Doug Johnson, environmental planner. Under the zoning ordinance, section 4.9.21, the overlay zone, this is the Upper Rock Creek overlay zone, which the site is in the Upper Rock Creek SBA. If a site is using septic, it's exempt from the requirements of the overlay zone, including the imperviousness. So that's how that kicked in.

Yeah, yeah, I didn't know. Thank you. No, I know. Thanks a lot. I appreciate that.

Vice Chair. I've got a couple of questions about the history of the site. And I apologize if I've missed this in the staff report. But I was wondering, how recently was this site farmed? Do we have any information about that? You mentioned that it was part of a currently existing farm on the west side, maybe. But on this site, do we know when the last time it was farmed?

Unfortunately, I do not know when it was last farmed. However, the applicant may have that information.

It still is farmed.

Oh, it's actively farmed?

The larger property, hay in the back.

Sir, please.

Yeah, I'm Gary Benedetti. I live in the neighborhood. Gary Benedetti, live in the neighborhood. It's currently still farmed. The larger property is cows and farm animals. And the back property where we live is typically hay is grown.

Got it. OK. It has an RE2 zone, so it's obviously not AR, not ag reserve. Right. Was the zone changed? This is the 2004 master plan. Was the zone changed in the 2004 master plan for either whether it was AR at the time or something to RE? Or was it always a version of something residential on this site?

I can look that up. I don't know what the prior zoning was at this time, but I can check.

OK. Because the reason I ask is it's interesting to me because I noticed that it has prime soils on this site. And which is not unusual. There's obviously prime soil on kind of other RE zones or other residential areas. But it seems as though we didn't receive, did we receive any comments from, say, the Montgomery Countryside Alliance, anyone else who advocates for kind of maintaining farmland? Any comments at all about this application, considering it's actively farmed and has prime soils?

No, we didn't receive any comments from those groups. Just the two comment letters that you have in your packages. Okay. Yeah.

Okay. Thanks. My other comment just briefly is sort of to the chair's point. I understand it conforms with the 2004 master plan for this area. I do think it's a little bit unfortunate that This type of development is something that's a little bit disconnected. It's a disconnected type of development that has not exactly a conventional cul-de-sac, but something akin to a cul-de-sac without connections to the south. Obviously, the park is to the east, but it's a large cul-de-sac type of development that I understand the existing zoning, but I think I would argue that I'm not convinced that this necessarily conforms 100% with Thrive, even if it conforms with the 2004 master plan at the time. That's probably open to interpretation to some extent, but housing is good. This is a large lot. Presumably, this will be a large home type of housing that's a little bit disconnected and doesn't have great access to areas around it. I know we're sort of limited in what we can do to shape that, given what the zoning allows in this area and given the other environmental constraints. I just wanted to note that although this brings more housing to the county, which needs it, to me, at least, this is not a preferred type of development pattern that I think we should encourage more of. This will be a 100% driving development. Are they proposing to have any connections into the park? Any trails that connect to the northwest, to the North Branch Park at all?

No, there are no connections from the property.

No connections at all to the park. Yeah, I mean, I think that's a really unfortunate piece of this, in my view. I think that's a real missed opportunity to at least allow people to kind of access not just the park, but the trail system that runs through it if they did want to move around without a car, so. I know it conforms, it meets the requirements, and we will approve this, but I think that there are some missed opportunities here.

Yes, I went out of turn here. I never gave the applicant the opportunity to speak, so... Welcome.

And I don't mean to cut you. Actually, we can cut you out. No, I would love to hear it.

Good morning. Pat Harris with Lurch Early and Brewer on behalf of the applicant. We were willing to just sit back, but I wanted to clarify one thing on the record, which, in fact, there are two trails over Parcel A leading to the park. And Tim Longfellow of GLW can further espouse on that.

Yes, as part of the Forest Conservation Plan, there's a condition in there that we provide two 12-foot paths that wouldn't preclude truck access as well for parks. We'll be working with the Parks Department for a park construction permit, and with the sidewalk connections to the community and those two paths, there will be connectivity into the overall parkland.

Okay, that's great. So obviously you wouldn't be responsible, of course, for kind of Continuing the trail once it reaches parkland, but did you hear anything from parks? their intention to connect what kind of you getting into the park from there to a where the trail is? Because there probably is still a little bit of a gap there. So this would just sort of lead people into the actual park area?

Sure. I'm not clear on what park's intentions are beyond that. But I would offer that the sidewalks through the community on both sides and the path through Parcel Way is a significant enhancement to invite people into the parks.

OK. Thanks. Thanks for clarifying that there will be access to the park.

And then the only other thing I would note is that the entire area that you see on your screen at one point in time was the Fraley Farm. And Mr. Fraley had the wherewithal to reserve that parcel, that little road parcel, knowing that in the future, 35 years later, the rest of this side of Fraley Farm Road would be developed in accordance with the master plan.

OK. Thank you. Anything else you'd like to say?

I can introduce the applicant, Matt Capese of Toll Brothers. And the only last thing I want to say, and then I'll echo what Mr. Klein said, is as evidenced by the staff report, there were a handful of revisions. And both parking planning staff and DOT staff have been great to work with so that the issues that were raised by the adjacent property owners have been resolved. So thank you.

Thank you so much. Any other questions or comments from the board?

I'm just wondering, the closed section of the road that connects to these 10 houses, that has drainage underground, or is it that the water comes along the curb and goes to the swamp?

It's the latter. So the way the road grades... We try to conform it to the natural land. So some of the drainage will eventually get into the open section along the curb flow. And some of it will be directed back towards hayloft, where there's some swales adjacent to hayloft.

OK. And then eventually, the water in the swell goes to the park? Or where does it end up?

So it'll end up at the park. In parcel A, we have a storm drain outfall that we've carefully coordinated with the parks department.

So it's coordinated with the parks department to make sure that it doesn't create any degradation in the park. I see that.

parks department says yes okay field meetings and yes okay good thank you yes ma'am so is that a preference i mean like from a builder point of view just to have the open section uh or is it is it a preference um i will tell you that the guidelines are we try to adhere to the guidelines as as much as we can um in this case that the outlot was defined force at 60 feet. So right out of the gate, we knew that we weren't going to be able to follow the typical 74-foot open section road. DOT worked carefully with us initially because we had to solve that conundrum through getting them to allow us to go to a closed section so that we could do it. Through further discussions, we further refined that right of way. But no, the preference is to meet the standard, right? Because then there's not a lot of back and forth. Time is money, right? You want to get housing built. And the longer that we have to go back and forth with staff, I'll say quibbling over the details, it's not good for anybody. So we just try to comply where we can.

Great. Great. Thank you. Thank you. So I have no other further comments or questions. None others seen. So do I, we can go back to the, so we're, there's two, okay, two.

One last thing. There seemed to be the question on the previous zone per the Upper Rock Creek Master Plan, a reference to retaining the previous zoning RE1. So it seems like it's been zoned this for quite some time.

Great. So, thank you. Thank you all. Is there a motion to approve the preliminary plan with conditions and modifications as made today?

Yeah. I'll move to approve the preliminary plan with the modifications to the conditions.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. The ayes have it. Is there a motion to approve the final forest conservation plan where staff is recommending approval with conditions. I'll move to approve the final forest conservation plan with conditions and the modifications.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. The ayes have it. 4-0. Thank you so much. Thank you for the presentation. Thank you to the applicant and the homeowners. Thank you. And we're going to take another two-minute break and start with item number 6, 4702, Chevy Chase Drive Preliminary Plan Amendment. Thank you. Everyone, we're on item number 6, 4702, Chevy Chase Drive Preliminary Plan Amendment, where staff is recommending approval with conditions. And this morning, we have Jane Purser presenting this item. Welcome.

Good morning. I actually wanted to just jump in. Elza Heisel-McCoy, Chief, West County Planning for the Record. And just thank Jane. Jane is on the Up County Planning team and in West County's Hour of Need. She stepped up to take this one for the team. And so we want to thank her and Patrick and the Up County team for letting her help us out. Thanks, Jane.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you, Elza, for having me. So for the record, my name is Jane Pizer. This is preliminary plan amendment number 12021001B for a multi-unit residential building located at 4702 Chevy Chase Drive. is for an extension of both the preliminary plan and adequate public facilities or APF validity periods. Staff recommends approval of both extensions, and the application also seeks approval of a waiver regarding the criteria for extensions of APF periods for residential development. Object property is located in Bethesda in the CR zone and is within the Bethesda overlay zone. Property is also within both the 2017 Bethesda Downtown Sector Plan and the 2025 Bethesda Downtown Sector Plan Minor Master Plan Amendment. The 0.4-acre site has frontage on Chevy Chase Drive and Nottingham Drive and is about a half mile away from the Bethesda Metro Station. Neighboring properties include the Bethesda Volunteer Fire Department to the east and the 4720 Chevy Chase Drive condominiums to the west. The sketch plan and preliminary plan, approved in 2020, proposed a 70-unit multifamily residential building, which was later adjusted via site plan in 2024, where the number of units was reduced to 49. The preliminary plan was last amended on February 29, 2024, concurrently with the site plan, which extended the preliminary plan validity period for two additional years due to COVID-19 market uncertainties and supply shortages. The application requests an extension of the preliminary plan validity period by 18 months from February 7, 2026 until August 7, 2027, and an extension of the APF validity period by 18 months from February 7, 2026 until August 7, 2027. The application also seeks an approval of a waiver regarding the criteria for extensions of APF periods for residential development. The period associated with the preliminary plan requires that all approved lots and parcels be recorded by record plat within the preliminary plan validity period established in the planning board resolution, which for this application established a two-year validity period extension for the preliminary plan with an expiration date of February 7, 2026. As detailed in the staff report, the application was submitted to planning in late January of 2026 and was accepted on February 23, 2026. The subdivision ordinance authorizes the board to approve a preliminary plan validity period extension if the board finds that there have been delays by government, some other party, significant unusual and unanticipated events, and or exceptional or undue hardship. The applicant states that ongoing negotiations with property owners has prevented recording a plaque. The APF validity period ended on February 7, 2026, and the applicant is requesting an extension of the APF validity period for 18 months to line up with the proposed preliminary plan validity period. In order to obtain the APF validity period extension, the applicant is requesting that the planning board waive the prerequisite requirements of the subdivision ordinance, which requires the issuance of building permits for at least 50% of the entire subdivision prior to granting an extension request. This is not feasible for this project, as it will be completed in a single phase, and the easement negotiations have prevented the applicant from recording the plat, which is a necessary step for obtaining the building permits. As complied with all noticing requirements. We received correspondence from two members of the community who live near the project site. The concerns included traffic, pedestrian safety and circulation, parking, lighting and landscaping, and school capacity, which were all reviewed with the previous preliminary and site plan approvals. In addition, as detailed in the staff report, a new school capacity analysis was not found to be needed with this amendment. The preliminary plan amendment is purely for the extensions of the APF and preliminary plan validity periods, as detailed in the staff report. Recommends approval of both extensions for the APF and the preliminary plan validity periods for an additional 18 months until August 7, 2027. And with that, this concludes the presentation. Thank you so much for your time. Both me and the applicant are available if you have any questions.

Thank you so much for your presentation. Would the applicant like to make a presentation?

Good morning, Pat Harris again on behalf of Apple Kent. The only thing I would say is that we are getting very close to the recordation of the plat and the issuance of the building permit. But this process has taken longer than expected, primarily because of having to negotiate two agreements with the adjacent property owners, one of which is a volunteer board, the other is a condo association. And those agreements had various easements that we need. So it's taken longer than expected, but we are glad that we're this far along on the process, and we didn't want to have to come back to you again for another extension, hence the request for the 18 months. But hopefully in the next six months, we'll start to see real activity here. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you. I'm very supportive of that. the requests. But out of curiosity, what easements do you need for this? Just out of curiosity.

There's a storm drain easement, a WSSC easement, a PIE, public improvement easement. And those were for both sides. Well, actually, those were on the fire department side. Then there was an easement, another easement on the condo side for construction easement, and then also along the southern portion of the condo property for streetscape improvements.

So meaning that in order to, you would have to go on those properties in order to input or...

Yes, and in fact, with the fire department, the storm drain is located exclusively on their property, and then the the WSSC easement straddles both properties. So yes.

OK. And is there anything by law that they would have to grant some of those easements?

Well, we now have agreements with both property owners, and they've been great to work with. It's just taken a long time, given the nature of the composition of those groups. In connection with the fire department, they already had There's already one of the storm drain lines is on their property. It's just getting upgraded. But I don't think legally they had to, but they've been cooperative. Thank you.

Thank you. I have no other questions or comments.

I just have one question, which is, I guess, more from my own curiosity or just information. But in cases where there's a volunteer board or a volunteer fire station, they are responsible for doing their own. There's no legal relationship to the larger fire department. So in other words, the fire department wouldn't be the party you would have to negotiate with?

No. And I'm not totally up to speed on that. But the county has county fire departments. And then there's another group, which are these volunteer fire departments. And so separate from the county.

Completely. Got it. Okay.

Yeah. I mean, I was surprised when I first learned of that structure because it sounds like something you would expect in a more rural environment, but it seems to work.

Except in this case.

Well, it did work. It just took a little while.

Yeah. Okay. All right. Thanks.

Appreciate it. Any other questions or comments? Okay. So do I have a motion to approve the 4702 Chevy Chase Drive preliminary plan amendment where staff is recommending approval with conditions? Yeah. Move to approve the amendment.

Second.

All in favor?

Aye. Aye.

The ayes have it. 4-0. Thank you so much. Thank you. I look forward to your project moving forward. Thank you. And so we're going to take another two-minute break, just a short break, and we'll start with our next item, which is item number 7, 801 Raider Road site plan, where staff is recommending approval with conditions. Thank you. Welcome back, everyone. We're on item number 7801, Rotor Road Site Plan, where staff is recommending approval with conditions. And this morning, we have Tamika Graham with the Planning Department presenting this item. Welcome.

Good morning, Chair Harris and commissioners. Just for the record, my name is Tamika Graham, and I'm with the East County Division. I will be presenting a site plan for 801 Roeder Road. And just as a quick overview, the project does meet all of the necessary requirements for approval. And for that reason, staff is recommending the board support of this project. It's an adaptive reuse project of an existing office building into self-storage with a charitable use. And we recommend it with the conditions listed in our staff report and one modification that I will be talking about today. So just for the benefit of the public, for those that are viewing this hearing or participating in this hearing, we just want to point out what the site plan application is. It typically follows a preliminary plan or a plan of subdivision. It includes details regarding a number of aspects of the project. It includes roads and sidewalks. parking areas, all of the details of the buildings, the architecturals, landscaping, open spaces, recreational facilities, lighting, and other aspects of it. So the requirement for a site plan varies. It really depends on the zone, the density, the height, and also the relationship to the immediate adjacent areas and those respective zoning districts. So this project is required to have a site plan. So let's get into where this project is located. It's in downtown Silver Spring. It has access to two major thoroughfares, Colesville Road and Georgia Avenue. It has a mix of commercial uses, which include office and retail. There's institutional uses, residential, and there's also a mix of surface parking and also structured garages in the area. It's also immediately adjacent to County Parking Garage 61. And it's also within roughly about a 10-minute walking distance to Ellsworth Place, which is south of the project. So just bringing you a little closer into the property, it's about 200 feet south of Spring Street. It's located within our 2022 Silver Spring Downtown and Adjacent Communities Plan. It falls within Ellsworth District. It's currently zoned commercial residential, but it is located within the Central Business District 2.0 under the 2004 code, and I'll be talking a little bit more about that. It has 0.35 acres for the site plan area. It's also currently... Actually, can I? Oops. Sorry about that. OK. It's currently a vacant eight-story building. It has just over 107,000 square feet of office building. It's located above three levels of structured parking. And the office building has been vacant for two or more years, which is the minimum qualification for this proposal. I just want to point out, too, in this graphic here that the overall site, it includes the office that I just mentioned. It also includes a hotel, which fronts on Coles Row Road, but that is not the subject of this application, so we are focusing exclusively on what's shown outlined in blue. So in researching the records, we did find that a building permit was issued for this property in 1975, followed by a certificate of use and occupancy in 1976. The project recently had a concept plan roughly about a year ago where the applicant brought forth improvements that they wanted to make. But I think one key conclusion that came out of that process was confirming that this project can use the legacy provisions of the current code. And so that is that it can continue, it can be renovated, it can be repaired, as long as they are not making any changes to the gross floor area, the height, and the footprint are still the same. And so that's the framework in which we're moving forward with today's application. I wanted to quickly talk about zoning that impacts this project. In 2025, what's making this project possible today is a zoning tax amendment that was approved by the county council, and that basically allowed self-storage to occur as a limited use in certain zones, along with charitable use or cultural institutional use. And so basically, the county council was recognizing that, yes, we do want to see some of these vacant office spaces be used as residential to address some of the housing. concerns that we have, but we recognize that there are structural challenges, that there are also financial considerations that really make it difficult to do that. And so this DTA allows another option to happen with those vacant buildings. And so, as I mentioned, this project is moving forward under the legacy provisions that are permitted under our current zoning ordinance. It basically says that the property can be modified and reviewed under the standards and procedures that were in effect on October 29th, 2014. And so that refers to our 2004 zoning ordinance. And it basically says, as I just stated, it does not increase the overall building height or density. It also satisfies the setbacks required under the zone that it's in on the date of the that it was submitted, which is the CR, and then it does not increase the tract area. And so we do find that all those qualifications are met. And then I also pulled in a section that also refers to the legacy provisions under the 2004 code. basically stating that any building or structure for which a building permit was issued before or after December 1958 can be regarded as non-conforming and can be structurally altered, repaired, or enlarged in conformance with the requirements under the CBD zone. in which it is located. And so as I mentioned, looking back at the history of the project, the building permit was issued in 1975. So basically saying all that to say that this project is in conformance with our zoning provisions. So let's get into what this project is proposing. So as I mentioned, really the gross square footage will remain the same, 107. But a portion of that will be devoted to self-storage, 104,000 square feet, and up to 500 square feet will be used for the self-storage leasing office. And just for the record, these figures clarify a typo on page 10 of the staff report. And then 3,300 square feet will be dedicated to a charitable philanthropic use. Again, no changes to height or approved density. But what the applicant is also proposing to do is to eliminate an equal amount of gross floor area that results in no net increase in square footage. And so this is possible through the removal of an internal staircase, the removal of a building maintenance office, and they're also creating a space for mechanical equipment, which can be excluded from the gross floor area. We've also coordinated very closely with the Department of Permitting Services, and documentation was provided that this is acceptable. So I want to talk briefly about circulation and access for this building and for the use. So road to road, the existing lane widths will remain the same, but the applicant is proposing to improve the existing sidewalk. It will be a minimum of six feet wide, and they are also improving it with a five-foot-wide buffer. Currently, the frontage is totally devoid of any trees, of any landscaping, and so this will be a substantial improvement in the streetscape. It'll bring new street trees. We'll also see some ground vegetation. And in terms of parking, it is within the Silver Spring parking lot district where parking isn't required on site, but the applicant is providing some spaces that will allow loading to occur for the self-storage. I think a big improvement here is also at the existing curb cut at the north end of the building, which we'll be focusing on in a few more slides. So this is the annotated site plan, primarily because it's just a little tough to read. And so we've done a couple of blow-ups here for you. But I guess a couple of things to focus on. Again, the existing access point will be reconstructed at the northern end. The pedestrian experience, as I mentioned, will be substantially improved. Along with the sidewalk, there will be a brick paver furnishing zone. And then there will also be a new pedestrian refuge at this end of the building. And we have some other views of that as well. All of the parking along the building and also two spaces along the frontage of the adjacent building will need to be removed in order to comply with the site distance requirements. And that has been coordinated with our partner agencies. Here's a look at the Roeder Road cross.

Can I ask you, does parking removal, does it create any hardship to any businesses or anybody else?

It does not. And also, as I mentioned, this is right across the street from the county parking garage. So there's a plethora of parking within that building.

Okay. And the loading and unloading to the new storage happens through the garage. So the loading is in the garage. So they're just pulling the garage. And then there is, I guess, modification to the elevators to carry those up.

Absolutely, yes. And I have some more graphics that I think will illuminate that change a little bit more. So again, the cross-section just shows the location of the tree pits and the reconfigured sidewalk. And you can just see the interaction with the street and the building. So in terms of the building, there will be some proposed changes to the exterior, and as you mentioned, Commissioner, to the interior as well. As shown in this graphic, we just put this sort of imaginary line here, but above that line, everything will remain the same. So the upper mirrored glass facade will stay, but then everything below that line will be substantially improved to ground floor levels. So again, the most impactful change is the activation along the street. So you see here there will be new entrances. There will be new windows. There's also a creation of an entry plaza that's at the southern end of the building. So the existing main entrance here, as shown in this darker color, will remain. The two new entrances will occur here adjacent to the main entrance. This is for the leasing office, and then the other entrance will be I think my mouse is moving, at this end, for the charitable use. There's also a green wall proposed to break up some of the concrete along the building. And then one of the major changes to the interior of the building is the installation of mid-span steel posts. So that improves the building's structural capacity and flexibility. And so that also... supports this use as well as some other uses in the future and as you mentioned Commissioner the applicant is proposing to make some changes to the elevator and there will also be some other changes to electrical This just shows the building cross-section. You can see everything in yellow is where the self-storage will be located, and then everything shown in the purple color is where the charitable use will occupy. So here is, I think, probably a better view of some of those changes that are occurring. So this shows the existing and proposed view from Rotor Road looking northwest. So you can see, again, the major improvement to the existing garage area. It's going to be basically reconfigured, and so there will be an exclusive entryway, an There will be a new entrance and then a new exit, which will have an exclusive write-out turning movement. What you can also see here I think is important is basically As I mentioned, the new leasing office will be here. And this is a substantial improvement because currently all of the office space is an interior. It doesn't engage any of the street currently. You can see in the left photo, you really don't see anything except for the structured parking that exists now. But in this new condition, we see, again, the new entry, the new parking. and a place that activates the street. So this is the opposite end of the building where this is Roto Road looking northwest now. You can see the major improvements at the corner where this existing garage area will be converted into the nonprofit space. So where you see all of the concrete now, you'll see windows and you'll be able to see some daily business activity, which is important because this is currently vacant. Again, this is the current of the new entry plaza. This creates an inviting space for the employees, for the visitors, but it also creates this new focal point for the building that will be an aesthetic benefit for the broader community. In terms of meeting forest conservation requirements, there are no environmentally sensitive areas on the site, and staff did approve a forest conservation plan exemption earlier this year. One correction that I just wanted to put on the record was clarifying some typos that are in the staff report on page 18. This is the data report. So the corrected figures are in red, and it shows the square footage of the overall record lot versus the square footage of the site plan area, so that area in blue that I previously outlined. The building is currently 118 feet, and again, there are no changes to density or height. So just looking at the findings, the project does satisfy all of the findings for site plan approval. It conforms with all of the prior requirements. It meets all of the requirements of the zone. Again, we talked about the structures, pedestrian and vehicular circulation. They remain adequate and will be safe. and efficient. This structure remains compatible with the existing uses. As I mentioned, this building has been around since the 70s, so it is already within the community landscape. Again, there are no issues with Chapter 22A for forest conservation. In terms of community outreach, the applicant has met all of the proper signage, noticing, and submittal requirements. There was a pre-submittal public meeting that was held. There was a lot of good discussion held at that meeting. I think one thing that came out was there was actually a compliment on this proposal for being able to utilize this vacant building, bring it back into a productive use. There is also a question about the applicant coordinating with the developers of the adjacent hotel. Again, that's not part of this application, but that's also being converted to a residential use, and so those two developers are coordinating closely. There's also another question about the opportunity for future building conversions to residential use. I think that's probably a question a lot of folks have. I just wanted to point out, again, that this is a limited use, and it does have additional requirements to be approved. And one of those requirements is that any structural improvements to this building can't cause any practical difficulty for the future conversion of this building to residential use. And it must maintain the facade windows. So as I mentioned, all of the upper level windows will be maintained. We'll have new windows. But all in all, that requirement is being satisfied. Again, the mid-span still post that I mentioned, it not only makes it flexible for this use, but it also makes it flexible for residential or some other use when it might be appropriately supported financially in the future. And I will wrap up this slide by also pointing out that staff received correspondence. We have a letter of support from Montgomery Pride. And this is the nonprofit that is the future occupant of this nonprofit space. And I know that they're really excited to come into this building. I know that there's been a ton of coordination between them and the applicant. And I know that they're pleased with the space. that has been presented for them. We also heard concern from two residents on this project. They were basically concerned about the use not generating a large amount of employment or foot traffic or that it may not provide many amenities and that it may be a space that may be less ideal for a downtown use. Again, I just want to underscore that this project is bringing back a vacant building that's been out of production for quite some time. It's also giving it a facelift. It's also making it very friendly again for pedestrians and also the nonprofit space will activate the ground floor. I believe they will also have some co-working spaces. So other nonprofits will be able to use that space. I think we'll hear a little bit more about the programming from the applicant a little bit later. But all in all, our conclusion is that this meets all the requirements. This is a permitted use. Again, it's a limited use, but it is permitted because it meets all of the requirements and standards. And we do recommend that the planning board approve this project.

Thank you, Ms. Graham, for your presentation. I really also appreciate you putting lots of existing and proposed pictures in your presentation. That helped me to understand better what the project would look like. So we have two people this morning to provide public testimony. It's Philip Downey with MoCo Pride Center and Josie Caballero, individual. Can you both come up, please? You have six minutes for your presentation. And Ms. Caballero, you have three minutes.

Press the button there and state your name and begin your presentation. PHILIP ALEXANDER- Awesome. My name is Philip Alexander-Downey. Good morning, Chair Harris and members of the planning board. Again, my name is Philip Alexander-Downey, he, him pronouns. I am a Montgomery County resident and the chief executive officer of the Montgomery County Pride family, MoCo Pride Center, Inc. I'm here today in strong support of the proposed site plan amendment for 801 Rota Road. The Montgomery County Pride Family, a 501 nonprofit, is a consortium of community organizations and programs working together to provide services, advocacy, arts and culture programming, wellness initiatives, youth programming, and community support throughout Montgomery County. We have grown from a grassroots effort into a countywide network serving thousands of residents through care, navigation, support groups, wellness programming, youth initiatives, community events, advocacy, and culture programming. Our consortium includes organizations and initiatives like Living Your Truth, Trans Maryland, Maryland Trans Unity, Montgomery County Pride in the Plaza, Poolsville Pride, Trans Latinx DMV, Rainbow Youth Alliance, MoCo Pride Prom, and other community entities working together to improve the lives of Montgomery County residents. Our headquarters planned for this location will provide a centralized community hub, a third place where residents can access food and essential support, secure mail access for individuals without stable housing, workforce and benefits assistance, youth and family programming, support groups, wellness resources, health screenings, partner-led services, arts and culture programming, and community gathering space. The facility will also include a media and recording studio that will support mentorship, education, storytelling, workforce development, and public information efforts that amplify community voices and connect residents to resources. This is not a speculative future project. We have already secured substantial public and private investments towards establishing this headquarters, including a $500,000 bond bill from the state of Maryland, and are actively working with the ownership and design team to bring this vision to life. We are committed to occupying this space and serving the community as soon as approvals allow construction. The 801 Rotor Road conversion cannot happen soon enough for us. A permanent home that provides food access, linkage to care and wellness navigation, health screening, support services, youth programs, workforce development, arts and culture opportunities, and a gathering place for residents is exactly the type of investment that strengthens Silver Spring. The location is ideal because it is accessible, walkable, transit-connected, and positioned to serve residents across Montgomery County. For us, this is more than a building. It is an opportunity to create lasting community infrastructure that will serve Montgomery County residents. Thank you for your consideration, and I respectfully ask that you approve the site plan application for 801 Roto-Road.

Thank you so much, Ms. Caballero.

One second, Mr. Downey. How did you do that? I'm just sitting here and looking at you. You talk like an AI with not even a note. If you were not in front of me, I said, this cannot be real. It was amazing. Is there something in front of you? No. You memorized it or it was just coming out? Both. But it was amazing. I hadn't seen something like that. I'm sorry. I had to say that. You were fantastic.

Thank you.

Wonderful. Thank you for hearing us. I'm Josie Caballero. I'm a resident of Silver Spring. I will be walking distance from this location. And I'm also a member of the queer community. I'm a trans woman. And this headquarters will really speak volumes for the community. We have local pride raising at the flags at the community center. And it has been a hotspot for our queer community. And this is going to be an asset. And I just want to express a personal story. So when I was in San Diego, when I came out as a trans woman, it was my local Pride Center that saved my life. I was in crisis. I didn't know who I was. I was like my gender identity. And I called my local Pride Center. And they said, come in. There's a support circle. And I went in, and I was able to be around other queer community members, other trans members. And I remember when the circle, when they were talking about their experiences, it came to me. And they're like, what's your name and pronouns? And I was like, I don't know. Just call me Jay. And I just burst into tears. And there was a moment where there was a... We hugged, we cried, but there was also a clinical person there that had the ability to navigate that situation. I'm not sure I would still be here if I did not have that resource. That's how important these spaces are. Of course, everything that Philip said is absolutely critical, but we cannot ignore the life-saving that this will create. Tens of thousands of people will be within walking distance, hundreds of thousands if you count the transit. And so this will be a beacon of hope for the community. Silver Spring is a place where people gather and have vibrant community. And not only will this be a community center, it will also be a space for other nonprofit organizations such as Trans Maryland to provide health access and actually health navigation Because we're here in Maryland, but we still need that access. We still need that support. So I really urge the board here to approve this because this is a huge step for Maryland, a huge step for Montgomery County, and a vital resource for Silver Spring residents. And I really, really deeply hope that you approve this project. Thank you so much.

Thank you both for your testimony. Would the applicant like to make a presentation?

Good morning. For the record, my name is Stacy Silber, the law firm of Larcherley & Brewer. here on behalf of Turbino Real Estate Partners Operating Company. With me here today, to my right, is John Sweeney of Turbino. Also joining us is Robert Sponseller, architect with Sponseller Design Group, Pat LeVay, an engineer with MHG. We have Maribel Donahue on the phone, who's with Grove Slate. And of course, my partner, Liz Rogers. We'd like to thank Tamika Graham, as well as staff, for their thorough work in reviewing Turbino's subject site plan and their thorough presentation today. We also appreciate the partnership of PRIDE. Phillip and his team have been working hand in glove with Robert Sponseller and his team in terms of really creating a space that works for a philanthropic type use in this existing building. We agree with staff's recommended conditions and with the clarifications that they made. With this application, we're really pleased that we're able to implement the county council's vision in its recent unanimous adoption of the SAVE legislation, which Ms. Graham was talking about. Thank you. The SAVE legislation creatively responded to situations in the county where there are long vacant office buildings like what is before you today and allows them to be converted to self-storage where there's a charitable philanthropic type use on the ground floor. The concept behind SAVE was was an acknowledgment that there are some office buildings that, for various reasons, can't be converted to residential or other commercial uses, and it serves no one to have a vacant building that sits dark. And this legislation provided a creative opportunity to take these vacant buildings, deeply vacant buildings, and underutilized, what the council was calling a ghost building, and require activation of the ground floor, but allow the economic support of such activation with the reuse with self-storage type use. The property is currently improved with an eight-story vacant office building above three levels of structured parking. While the requirement of the code was that the building be 90% vacant for two years, this vacant building has actually been 90% vacant for more than five years. And as a result, the building has been primarily dark and an eyesore on Rotor Road. And even before the building's long vacancy, as you can see in these existing condition photos, the ground floor of Rotor just really completely failed to activate the street with above ground structured parking, the fact that there really was no green, no streetscape, et cetera. The proposed self-storage project accompanying the building and streetscape enhancements and activating philanthropic use on the ground floor will activate and positively transform the Roto-Road building and streetscape. As was discussed by Mr. Downey and Josie, Pride really brings huge value to this community, not only with the services that they provide, but also with the amount of folks that will actually now be coming to Roto-Road. and visiting this area of the county near transit. What I'd like to do now is just turn it over to Robert Sponseller, who's going to provide some additional background on architectural site changes. And we can, yeah, that's perfect. Next slide. This existing slide's perfect.

Thank you, Stacy. Good morning, everyone. I just want to say at the outset that this project is a very compelling project. It's very easy to talk about what we're doing here on the site because I think it provides such a compelling urban revitalization case for a downtown site. Between the adaptive reuse of the building and extending its life through the infrastructure that we're improving inside the building over time, which I'll get into more detail in a minute, the conversion of an above-grade office parking facility to a nonprofit community use, changing from walking by a garage to walking by active office space, just makes for a very compelling story in addition to the landscaping improvements that we're making in the public realm. The scale of the project is about 220 feet along its frontage. So we're providing green street trees, improvements to the facade, and two new entrances to the street front from what's there today. And I'll walk through these in more detail.

Next slide, please.

The community use is taking two levels, the grade level and the second level. We've been working, my colleague Jennifer Chen has been working over the past year with Philip and his group, and we've designed sort of hand in glove the layout of their space to ensure the fit that will work for their And I think one of the wonderful aspects of the way it's laid out is on the lower level, which is the bottom image, a lot of their community activities and meeting spaces will occur along the street frontage, which will further activate the frontage, the street frontage. We've extended the windows in that area down closer to the sidewalk to engage with the streetscape and the interior. And their sort of office area and their more work area is up on the second level above street grade. So taken together, 20 to 30 feet of street frontage along that entire perspective will be improved architecturally and programmatically through the new entrances, the fit of the philanthropic use into this corner location, and the general improvements that we're doing architecturally and in terms of landscape.

So these two levels used to be parking.

Yes, you used to walk by cars.

So you're going to remove the whole thing because parking don't have enough height. So what is the height?

The height is nine feet inside the office.

Already for the parking garage? So do you have any underground parking or everything?

Well, the original building was designed with two levels above grade. and one level that sort of slips into grade because there's a one-story elevational change along road. So there is a level below this. but all the above-grade levels in the southeast corner are being converted to office use.

So is enough parking for the storage and also for the employees or people visiting, or do they have to use the parking garage?

No, John Sweeney is here as the owner, but we're providing three spaces for the storage use itself. The storage use isn't a high parking demand use. There's a move-in period, and then after that it's pretty quiet. I think John could... Provide more detail if needed?

Yeah, absolutely. We have ample parking. We've worked with our operator to confirm the amount of parking that we do have. Just to give you some context, for self-storage, the lease-up period is three years long. So just the math into that is one move in a day over the course of three years. And after that, you don't really have much usage beyond that, maybe one or two customers on a daily basis. So we have ample parking for that and an employee.

And for the employees as well?

That's correct.

So we believe it's really been a privilege to work with Philip and his group and design this space for them, put in the infrastructure for their use, and improve the facade along the entire frontage and in particular in their area. It's going to be a space that has a very high ratio of window to floor area. So in other words, there's a lot of windows for the size of the space inside, so it'll be very well daylit. I think it'll require minimal energy usage from a daylighting perspective, and I think it'll be a wonderful work environment for Philip and his group. Next slide, please. So in terms of the streetscape, I'll talk about the architecture, the improvements that we're making to the facade on our last slide. But the next topic would be the streetscape improvements, as Stacy and Tamika and others have mentioned. One of our first instincts when we came out to the site was, what a tough mid-block stretch with no trees along this frontage. So we've put into the working with DPS and working with our civil engineer, We've come up with a solution for a continuous tree planting area along the entire sidewalk frontage and a number of street trees. In addition, we're putting some greenery on the building, as has been mentioned. So it'll be really a benefit not only to the tenants and the occupants of this building, but anybody in the neighborhood that walks by the street will notice the dramatic improvement in terms of greenery and streetscape along the frontage. So I think that's not a small thing that we're doing in addition to the architectural improvements. Street furniture, lighting, seating areas are also being included in the sidewalk zone in addition to the two additional entrances that we're providing for general activation of the street. Next slide, please. This section is a detailed section through the sidewalk area. It shows the tree planting area that is a five-foot zone continuously along the sidewalk. The entire sidewalk frontage is being reconstructed as part of this effort, in addition to the architectural facade renovation. You can see the street trees, the planting strip, and still the provisions for a continuous six-foot walking zone that we've coordinated with DPS and all of their guidelines, and we're very pleased with it. And then you can see on the left, you can see in purple, the two floors of the office space for the nonprofit use, MoCoPride. Next slide, please. That also shows the floor-to-floor heights, if you're interested in seeing that. And then last but not least, I think sort of consider the architecture, the icing on the cake, if you will, the important programming and the activation and the greenery. Last but not least is the architectural treatments. And on this series of slides, you can see how we've designed, I think, a very interesting entryway for the group at the southeast corner. We've provided sort of an outdoor gathering area and porch-like space. away from the sidewalk to give a little bit of a refuge. We've designed a facade that is as opposed to the flat concrete structure that is there today. We are designing a metal panel system, which is diaphanous. It will capture and transmit light in a very unique way. It also has a series of variations along its frontage, so it's not a flat surface. It undulates, if you will, a bit. The windows that we're putting in are high-quality, Class A office-grade windows that we're putting into the building. So these exceed current code in terms of their viability. And you also get a sense in this view on the lower left of the greenery, the impact that that will have on the experience of walking the street and walking the sidewalk. On the lower right is a view from across the street, and on the upper right is a view at the new entryway. In addition to these architectural facade changes, upstairs we're doing a number of things that'll just extend the life of the existing building. First, I just want to say, Maintaining a building and not tearing it down is inherently a sustainable approach architecturally. Going beyond that, we are doing some things in the infrastructure that we're improving that will extend the building life for decades. We're replacing the elevators, for example, refurbishing and replacing most of the elevator equipment in the building. We're providing a new electrical service at street level for the building for the future, replacing switchgears and electrical metering, et cetera, providing a new generator for the building, new piping and water infrastructure, new sprinkler lines, et cetera. So the building is getting an upgrade in terms of its infrastructure beyond the experiential 30-foot zone at the sidewalk level that will extend its life in decades. And as has been mentioned, the structural enhancements that we're doing on the typical floor as well. I think for the general description of the project, I'm happy to answer any questions you may have about it. It's been a privilege to work on this project with Philip and his group and the ownership, and we're very excited about it.

Great. Just a couple of questions. So it's wonderful how you're activating the street and providing a use in the building. Again, on the parking, so in this front corner, like on the front along the road, You're blowing out the parking, but behind that, there will still be parking on the...

I think there's only where the two portals are, the two entry portals, where you see the parking along the sidewalk.

So people will be able to, whatever, go up to those levels or something.

Oh, you mean if somebody wanted to walk inside?

No, to park.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, great. And then, so thank you for that. The other question, so it looks like there's a plaza in that southern?

Yeah, it's a porch slash little plaza. It's for the entrance. There are events. The group has events, meetings on the lower level, as I mentioned. And so this is sort of a spillout space beyond the sidewalk area internal to the site.

But where the people are crossing, is that going to a garage on the left side, in the lower left?

Are you looking at the upper right image?

The larger one on the left-hand side.

On the left, yeah. I'm sorry, what was your question, Chair Harris?

Is that a driveway to go to something?

Oh, that's an existing service lane, yeah. That serves the hotel use on the left to our neighbor. I see. OK, our hotel would go back. OK, great, great.

All right, thank you. Sure. And let me just see. And so where the main building is above the second or third floor, so you're sort of somehow blowing out all that interior and making it some little rooms for the storage. Is that how it goes?

Yes. There's a storage architect putting partitions inside upstairs on the upper levels.

Great. Thank you. Thank you. Great that you're repurposing this building and also for office use. So that's all great. Thank you. I have no other questions or comments. Any other questions or comments from

Well, first, I wanted to say, just kind of reflecting what we heard from MoCo Pride Center, it's truly wonderful that you'll have this space. And for all the reasons you mentioned, particularly in downtown Silver Spring, where Silver Spring more generally, I also live downtown Silver Spring, and I'm really excited for y'all to come. So I just wanted to say that. I'm glad this partnership kind of came to fruition. I have a couple questions just on the building. So Last year, we talked to you about the ZTA that was proposed at the time. And I remember asking you, what was it about the current structure that made it impractical to repurpose for primarily housing, but I guess sort of anything else? And I was wondering if you have any updates on that, because it sounds like there's pretty substantial work that is being done. Plumbing, for example, which actually honestly kind of surprised me, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised that all work of all sorts has to happen for any readaptive use. But I would love, just for my own understanding and benefit, kind of thinking to the future about other projects, what was it specifically about this structure compared to others that have moved forward with redevelopment or kind of adaptive conversion to housing? that made it impossible in this case. And I'll just say sort of attached to that, one of the findings was that what they're doing to change the building won't prevent kind of conversion in the future, which is, I guess, a finding based on specifically what you're doing. You mentioned kind of that beam that's going sort of in the. So that makes sense that what they're doing, it won't technically make it impossible to convert. your position is that today, it's impossible to convert. So I'm not saying that that's an inconsistency with the staff's findings. I'm just trying to understand a little bit more of what was the challenge here.

And I'm going to, I think, There are a lot of factors that have gone into the evaluation. Robert Sponselor can talk about it from an architectural perspective. John can talk about it from an investment perspective in terms of the finances of everything. But maybe we'll start with Robert.

ROBERT SPONSELOR OK. So we are asked to evaluate buildings all over the region a number of times a week for just this issue. Less than somewhere in the 5% to 7% range of buildings actually are convertible. It's a very difficult undertaking. It sounds great. It sounds easy, but it's really quite complicated. In addition to a much more extensive infrastructure renewal that you need to do, the plumbing that I mentioned is for three or four bathrooms that are in the building currently as part of this use. In a residential building, you have a floor of 10 to 12 units with all that infrastructure. That's an order of magnitude, unfortunately, larger undertaking. The structural improvements will serve all uses in the future for whatever need may come in the future of this building. And all buildings over time That's the nature of our urban environment, right? Nothing we're doing would preclude that. One of the major tipping points, in addition to the market currently, I just think architecturally, which I'll let John talk to, architecturally, one of the major issues is the facade. would need to be completely re-clad. So we're able to reuse the facade as the storage use, but for residential building, it would have to be completely re-clad. And that's probably the single largest undertaking that would be required, honestly, architecturally and economically. But there are others. So it is a whole spreadsheet of analysis that goes into the conversion process.

And I know that things like plumbing, we've talked about plumbing before. I totally get that that is sort of an enormous but often under-discussed piece of these conversions. The cladding is interesting. Because we've seen other conversions come through recently. I think it surprised us a little bit. The pilot that went into effect, I think, has really helped some of these move forward. And I've personally been surprised how many have started down that process.

But in those cases- They're starting their design.

Starting their design, yeah. There are other obstacles, to be sure.

Reality is coming. But I'm not saying things aren't going to happen. But it is a very difficult execution.

Yeah. I think what you said made sense. I think I'm just trying to understand the key differences between this structure and those that have kind of started on that process.

Yeah. So when we're looking at a building for conversion, so just Torben and I are real estate partners. We have Roughly 10 adaptive reuse projects going on across the country right now, the majority of those being residential or hospitality conversions. So when we're taking our first look at a building, we typically start with the floor plate. And in a lot of cases, as Robert mentioned, that excludes office buildings in particular that are too deep for a residential or hospitality use. This is not the case with this building. I think the major hurdle, as he mentioned, is the curtain wall, plumbing, and then HVAC is another really large factor here that's overlooked. Opposed to our neighbor who's next door, they have some of those benefits with it being hospitality use today. It's a pretty easy conversion over to residential. This is not the case with this building. Economically, you match that with what rental rates are, low, high, in the middle. It would not support the construction cost to turn this project into residential. Self-storage conversion is going to be roughly 25% to 30% the cost of a residential conversion, and even so, your rents are on parity with each other, what your self-storage rents are versus what your residential rents are. Even with that low redevelopment costs comparatively to residential, this is still a pretty tight project to get across the finish line with those improvements that were mentioned. One of the things, and we're honest with ourselves, we understand there's questions about self-storage, especially in downtown settings. So I think one of the things that we have done with all of those self-storage projects, including this one, is think to ourselves, what can we do to offer community benefit? So whether that's exterior improvements, we're partnering with a group like MoCo Pride, In this instance, we were active and proactive with finding somebody that would come in and was in need of a space and would activate the first floor and would serve as a benefit to the community. It wasn't that we were told to go find someone. We want to provide that benefit to the community. We understand there are questions about self-storage. And we want the building to serve as a community benefit long into the future. The great thing about self-storage and the partitions that go in, they're relatively easy to remove and adapt to a new use if future economics change and housing does become a viable option here.

Yeah, thank you. So how does the – so do you – are you the ultimate owner of the self-storage, or do you – We would be the owner of it.

We will bring in – there will be an operator. So it will be a large national REIT that will be operating the project itself. So we don't serve as the management company for the self-storage. Okay.

So the – well, just out of curiosity, would it be – Available 24-7 and during, I guess, you have a management office. Is that mainly for just signing up new folks or is it the management company for daily check-ins and how the building's doing?

Yeah, so there will be a property manager on site. There will be, they have an assistant manager as well. So they serve not only to help folks that are looking to lease a space, but also make sure that the building is staying of high quality, if there's any maintenance issues that they're being reported, they're being serviced, so on and so forth. It is not a 24-7 access. You do have your typical seven-day-a-week office hours, and then there's usually an extension two hours after the office closes where folks could access the building.

Great. Thank you. Thank you. Well, thank you for being creative, and thank you for trying to make this work. Thank you. So any other questions or comments?

None.

None seen or heard. So is there a motion to... approve the Raider Road site plan, where staff is recommending approval with conditions and some corrections. Raider Road, did we say? Road to Road. I'm sorry.

I'm not even going to try to pronounce it already, so we're good. Well, first, just a thing. Congratulations to the Moe Cooper Arts Center. I'm really happy you guys got a new place to be, or first place to be, I think, than permanent. So, yeah, I'd like to move to approve the site plan with the conditions and the modifications.

I second.

All in favor? Aye. The ayes have it. 4-0. Thank you so much.

Do you know when you're going to be operating? Is it one year? I'm sure they're interested.

The plan is to open at the beginning of next year. That is our target.

Sounds great. Thank you.

Great. We'll take a two-minute break and start with our Last item before lunch, which is the item number eight, Silver Spring Downtown and Adjacent Communities Implementation Civic Improvement Fund Rate Adjustment. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. We're on item number eight, Silver Spring Downtown and Adjacent Communities Plan Implementation, Civic Improvement Fund Rate Adjustment, where staff is recommending that the board approve adjustment of the Civic Improvement Fund rate. And this morning, we have Katie Mencorini presenting this item. Welcome.

Hey, good morning. Thank you so much. I'm excited to talk to you about the Silver Spring Downtown and Adjacent Communities Plan Civic Improvement Fund Rate Adjustment. All right. So as you mentioned in the opening, our recommendation is to increase it by 7.6% based on the cumulative change in the Engineering News Records Baltimore Construction Cost Index, which was looked at from 2024 to 2026. You're going to hear me say this multiple times today. The increase from that time period for residential is going from 529 to 569 per square foot of residential density and from 317 to 341 per square foot of non-residential density. The new SIF rates will become effective as of the date of the planning board's decision. Give me a little bit of background. This probably sounds familiar, because Stephanie was here with you two years ago to talk about this. So in 2022, as part of the Silver Spring Downtown and Adjacent Communities Plan, the Montgomery County Council established a downtown Silver Spring overlay zone. And that allowed applicants to achieve density above the CR zone mapped density through a contribution to the Civic Improvement Fund, or CIF. And so originally, those rates were set at $5 per square foot of residential density and $3 per square foot for non-residential density. And we have to make these adjustments every two years per the code section noted here below in the slide. And that happens in the even years. So what does the SIF do? Well, the contributions that we collect will go towards implementation of very specific projects outlined in the master plan. But in sort of like an umbrella, what are those things? Those are enhancing the transit center arrival experience, giving kind of like a better zhuzhed up feel to the front. A pedestrian connection over the Metrorail CSX tracks, public bicycle parking facilities where we have deficits, where we already have development and we're not going to be seeing new investment in those facilities, green loop improvements beyond the frontage of a redevelopment site so we don't have to wait for redevelopment to get a better streetscape, and other projects that are identified by the planning board. All right. So as I mentioned before, the Montgomery County Department of Finance uses the Engineering News Records Baltimore Construction Cost Index, or CCI, to update impact taxes. The Planning Department also uses this same methodology in other parts of the county, such as the Bethesda Park Impact Payment. So we're being very consistent with our methodology that we apply. We obtained data from the DOF to calculate the cumulative change in the last two years. As I mentioned before, we do this every even year, 2026. You'll see me again in 2028, I know. Looking forward to it. Mark your calendars. This is the second time we've updated it and looking forward to many more years. Again, I've mentioned these numbers several times, but here they are in chart form in case, you know, you didn't want to read it in words, that's fine. So we have a $0.40 increase for residential and a $0.24 increase for non-residential. The only project that has been subject to the SIF so far is 8676 Georgia Avenue. They took full advantage of all of the things we have to offer. So first they used the SIF to be able to get up to their total mapped height. Then with additional NPDU bonus density of 15%, they were able to go above the mapped height. So they're at 312 when the mapped height is 300. In case you were wondering, their SIF contribution will be $1,198,185 that will be due before the first above-ground building permit. Please.

So I'm glad you brought that up. And it's a question on that. Are they... They've moved through preliminary plan, right? Oh, yeah.

They've moved through all of our entitlements.

They're through site plan. I couldn't remember where they stood. Thank you.

Yeah, 2025 is the last site plan.

Got it. So good to know. I've actually been kind of curious where they are right now. You and me both, yeah. So their rates were already locked in.

Yes.

So this does not affect projects that already moved through the entitlements? No.

You took words right out of my mouth. Yes. So these will apply to anything that comes to you after July 1st. So new projects, but not previous ones. Now, their rate could, just the question you didn't ask, if they do make modifications to their building, they come in, they could renegotiate if they went lower, but we don't foresee that happening.

Yeah. So I have a question also. When you say non-residential, do you mean commercial? Yeah, commercial or office, so retail. So why commercial is less than residential? Usually it's the other way around. Great question.

I am not exactly sure why that is. It's just based on the construction index.

I think that's – Yeah, it's very strange to me because usually – I guess Robert has some answer.

Thank you for the question. Robert Cronenberg for the record. So when we were evaluating the SIF and kind of how this would be attributed towards projects, The majority of new projects that we'd seen over the last decade were residential. And there really wasn't much commercial, and we didn't see a whole lot of commercial coming into the downtown. Even though it is an employment area, we'd love to see the commercial come in. But the majority of the projects that would be coming to you would be residential. That's why the residential rate was a lot higher.

What about office? Office is commercial, not residential. Right.

Non-residential would be office, industrial, biohealth. It would be anything other than residential.

Okay. Yeah. I don't know why, but that's fine. So now we have about $1 million. When do you collect it?

Great question. So we will be collecting this before their above-grade building permit. So they can do demolition and they can grade the site and get that all ready, but before they start their above-ground building permit, we will be collecting that fee.

Okay. And who and how it's decided what amenity it would be used for. Now we have $1 million. Who decides how to use it?

Great question. So it's coming from a list from the master plan. But I believe staff would be making the ultimate decision on what specific project. But again, you guys have already weighed in on what those projects are and what the priorities are. So we'll be using that guidance to make that informed decision.

And who builds it? The money stays with us or DPS or county. I'm wondering how it is being implemented, even though We are not implementers, so the county is the implementer, depending on what aspect, and it may be some kind of competition, or it may be timing. They don't have staff available. They can't do it early. Some low-hanging fruit can happen faster, so I do not know how those decisions are made and who are the implementer, and is there any process to decide what is best for the community?

So great questions. Again, Robert Cronenberg for the record. This is a topic of discussion we have any time we look at funds that, you know, whether it's an amenity fund, whether it's the SIF or even the park improvement funds, and we always look to what agencies have a CIP type of program where they can charge it to. Parks is one of those. You have DOT. Typically not DPS because they're not an implementing agency. No, not that. but there are some other bigger agencies, even like WSSC, that could potentially use that fund. But we do look at a variety of different agencies that we can tap into, and that's why there was a list in the master plan and the fund. And we try to put that list of projects in the applications like this so that when money does come in, we can begin that process kind of that advocacy for that type of project.

And it's based on back charge, or do you have to transfer the money? Because if it is CIP, I guess it goes like an annual cycle through the interagency.

Typically, when we get the money, we go through a... it's a transfer that goes to the variety of agencies. You know, whether it's, of course, much easier with parks because we can transfer that money internally. If it's an outside agency, then we typically bring that to the board and have the board endorse that so that it can be transferred to another agency.

Okay, thank you. So building off of that, Am I understanding this right, that the projects on the list, none of the projects on the list would currently be in the CIP?

And I'm sorry, I don't remember what projects were on that list. Some of them might be, but I don't know.

Okay. But it's not as though like they were automatically, they made it through master plan, they weren't sort of then automatically sort of given to the relevant agency CIPs. The agency CIPs would have to There would have to be some coordination. There would have to be coordination with the other outside agencies, yes. Okay. Okay. Thanks.

So just to round us out, recommendation, increase it by 7.6% at these numbers that we've talked about multiple times in this presentation.

Thank you for your presentation and I appreciate you guys making this adjustment every two years because things do go up in price. I have no questions or comments other than I'm in support of the recommendation. Questions, comments from my board members, fellow board members? So there's a motion to approve the recommended Silver Spring downtown and adjacent communities plan implementation, civic improvement, and rate adjustment that staff has presented. I'll move to approve the rate adjustment of the CIF.

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye. The ayes have it. Thank you so much. So we're going to go into closed session and have lunch and then come back at 12.35. So in accordance... Oh, we'll be back at 1 p.m. I'm sorry. We'll be back at 1 p.m. So according to the Maryland Annotated Code, General Provisions Article 3-305... B15, to discuss cybersecurity for which public discussion would constitute a risk to security assessments or deployments relating to information, resources, technology, network security information or deployment or implementation of critical infrastructure or security devices. Topic to be discussed, cybersecurity briefing regarding threats, assessments, and defenses implemented by ITI. So thank you so much. Oh, do I have a motion to go in the goal session?

Yeah.

I will move to go into closed session.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. The ayes have it 4-0. So we will be back at 1 o'clock. Thank you. Good afternoon and welcome back. We are on item number 12, Response to Forest Conservation Law Violation, Forest Conservation Plan Amendment, Sanders Court, Bethesda, where staff is recommending approval with conditions. And this afternoon we have Dominique Bello with the Planning Department presenting this item. Welcome.

Ladies and gentlemen of the Planning Board, my name is Dominic Bello. I am the Forest Conservation Inspector for the Bethesda area, and I'm here today to present to you Forest Conservation Plan Amendment F-2026-0390 in response to a violation of the Forest Conservation Law. You'll see on the first slide here an aerial image of the subject property. For all future slides with aerial imagery, the subject property is highlighted with this red dashed line and the category one forest conservation easement boundaries are highlighted in yellow. A vicinity map of the subject property. It is part of the 2002 Potomac Subregion Master Plan. Zoned RE2 is 3.08 acres in size, part of the Rock Run watershed and not within a special protection area. It is immediately north of the Rock Run Stream Valley Park and about a half a mile northwest of 495. History on persimmon tree lot 35. The subject property is part of the Kluwer wall subdivision, which was approved by preliminary plan 1-2001-0740 on the 8th of November 2001. That subdivision was ten and a half acres and four lots. A final forest conservation plan for that subdivision was approved on January 2nd of 2003 under the same plan number. And it was this final forest conservation plan that established the category one forest conservation easement on the property. So lot 35, the subject property was then developed in 2006. Here we see an aerial image of that property from 2012. You can see that the extent of the category one forest conservation easement comes up quite close to the back of the house, separated by just a thin strip of turf grass. The previous property owners constructed an asphalt sports court behind the home sometime between 2012 and 2014, which was determined using aerial imagery. That was done without consultation of the planning department. And from my records, I can find no associated permits in DPS's database. The applicant then purchased the property in May of 2024. So the enforcement history, how we got here. I visited the property on November 6, 2024, at the request of a landscaper to discuss the control of some invasive shrubs, barberry within the understory of the Category 1 easement, as well as to discuss the installation of a natural surface trail through the Category 1 easement. both of which are allowed in the conservation easement agreement as long as they have planning department approval. While on site using a GPS app called Field Maps, I noticed that the sports court behind the home was encroaching into the Category 1 easement. So on that same date, I issued a notice of violation to the property owner, now the applicant, for the permanent structure within the forest conservation easement. And here we have an image that I took that same day from the perspective in which this photo was taken. If you look straight ahead, that entire corner from where the photo was taken to the left of the basketball hoop is more or less in the Category 1 easement. And I'll share some aerial imagery here. So here is that same image taken in 2012. You can see that forested edge is undisturbed prior to the sports court being built. And then an updated image from 2021, where you can see that patio has been expanded on with the sports court, and that corner is encroaching into the Category 1 easement. So the current status of this violation, the sports court existed when the applicants purchased the property in 2024. Also, the category one easement boundary is not marked in any way on the property. There are no permanent posts, fencing, or signage. The easement encroachments amount to approximately 1,088 square feet. And to resolve the violation, the applicant was offered the choice to either remove the permanent structure from the easement and restore the disturbed areas through the planting of trees and shrubs, or to amend the existing FCP to keep the sports court. The applicant elected to amend the Forest Conservation Plan, and this amendment proposes to remove 0.025 acres of the existing easement and to mitigate for that abandonment on site. And this aerial image shows the subject property again, highlighting the Kluwerwald subdivision in blue. Staff considerations and support. So on-site mitigation of easement removal is always preferable to off-site mitigation. This keeps protected forest in the same watershed rather than that being taken off-site into a different watershed. Due to the presence of stream valley buffer in the easement that is to be abandoned, four to one on-site mitigation is being proposed, which greatly exceeds the standard policy of either two to one off-site mitigation or one to one on-site mitigation. Amendment F-2026-0390 proposes to remove 0.025 acres of the 1.8 acre on-site Category 1 easement, add 0.1 acres of existing on-site forest into the Category 1 conservation easement, and in that newly dedicated area of easement, remove the existing shed and install supplemental plantings, in a total of seven two-inch caliber trees and four shrubs. We see an overview of that amendment highlighting the area of easement to be abandoned and the area of easement to be newly dedicated. In addition to what I just described, a permanent wooden split rail fence with permanent forest conservation easement signage will be installed along the easement boundary behind the home, and no additional construction or development plans are being proposed by this amendment. Staff recommends approval of this Forest Conservation Plan amendment as conditioned in the staff report and summarized by the removal of 0.025 acres of conservation easement, providing 4 to 1 on-site mitigation by adding 0.1 acres of existing forest into the conservation easement, installing 0.1 acres of supplemental plantings in the new easement area, and installing permanent fencing and signage along the conservation easement boundary behind the home. Thank you, and I'm happy to take any questions.

Thank you, Mr. Bellow, for your presentation. First, I'd like to see if the applicant would like to make a presentation, and then I'll have the board ask any questions or provide any comments. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Michael Norton, Norton Land Design, representing the applicant who's beside me today. We don't have anything to go over this afternoon, except that we have, I believe it's condition number two stated, I believe it's the last sentence stated, off-site forest and planting. We don't have off-site forest, so we would like to possibly get that just corrected. And that's all that we have, simple corrections.

Yeah, can you go back to the last slide, please? The previous, yeah.

Do you have the conditions, maybe?

Yeah, Allie Myers for the Office of General Counsel. The condition language is referenced in the staff report. I don't believe it was in the presentation itself. But that correction can be made with the final resolution.

So it was- It's on-site, not off-site. Correct. We met all the planting on-site. Okay, great. Thank you. Any board members have any comments or questions?

I have a question in regard to process, and then I want to check with you to see if that's also this. I know that you bought the house and it was there, so that doesn't concern you. But in general, for education, if someone is hearing, is that How difficult it is to forest conservation amendment? How long it takes? And what is the cost for the applicants? Approximate cost.

I can't speak to the approximate cost of the hiring consultant, but I can speak to the process. Yes, please. That would involve hiring a qualified professional, a civil engineer, a landscape architect to draft an amendment of the forest conservation plan. And then depending on the specific violation, paying for the installation of new trees and shrubs, the recordation of legal documents such as the deed of easement, easement abandonment, and then a lot of time, review process, and so on and so forth.

So the amendment of forest conservation, what does it entail? Is it NRIFSD they have to do? Do they have to do the survey? I'm just trying to see that how cumbersome the process would be. Because I think if the process is easy, that's a very easy educational thing that people want to use their land, extend the court. Easily, they can come and put a request for amendment and do it, as long as it's easy and doesn't take a year or two. I don't know. That's why I'm asking, in general, How does it work if someone wants to do for something that is not really cumbersome?

For the record, Amy Lindsay, supervisor with the Environment and Climate Division. So we process a lot of forest conservation amendments, the vast majority of which you do not see. The only ones you see are generally the ones that involve additional forest clearing or easement removal. So the difficulty and the time frame really depend on how involved the amendment is. So we do try to get to them as quickly as possible. There is an application fee. We are looking at ways to speed up the process, but really, The key here is the easement removal. That is the part, because that's a legal document, and generally it's recorded in the record plats. And so it's that end of the process that's really the time-consuming part. It's not us looking at a drawing. It's really the easement removal.

So do they have to revise and redo the deed, or can they put an amendment to the deed, or...? put some kind of deed and meet some bounds or deed or some kind of language that attached to that plot that I'm just trying to see that if you could make this process simpler, less costly and faster to achieve the same thing.

So we have a, Ms. Sorrento has her hand up. Maybe she wants to.

Oh, here you are.

Hi, Christina.

Hi.

So this is an interesting question because when you're talking about a violation, you don't necessarily want to make it extremely easy, right, to just choose to remove the forest on site. It is always one of the options.

I'm not talking about violation. I'm talking in general if someone wants to do an amendment, not violation. Yeah.

Okay. So it really depends on the type. of amendment. In this case, when you're dealing with a violation, you do need to resurvey the easement area if you're keeping easement on site, and it does require you to file a new deed of easement with the new surveyed area. You know, other amendments can be much quicker if you're not removing forest conservation easements. Some amendments are very simple and, you know, many you don't even see because they're done administratively. So it's kind of hard to answer this in one way because there's multiple different types of amendments when it comes to the Forest Conservation Law.

Okay. I was just hoping that there are ways and, you know, I heard that, you know, I just heard that they are looking at it. to make it simpler. Let me ask you this. How long this process for you? I understand that you had to take care of evaluation. That was not your fault. But how much did it take you to get here? And then I guess from here, you have to move on to record it. And how long does it take? And how costly? You don't have to give me the exact, just the order of magnitude. and see if that's something reasonable.

So it's in the tens of thousands to do. This project is unique, as Amy and Christina were saying, because the easement is on a record plat. And because it's on a record plat, so we have to start with a boundary survey. So we have to establish where the easements are. We have to go through this process, which is usually pretty straightforward if the owners are willing to do to work with everyone. We have to abandon the existing easements. We have to create new easements. And then we have to go back and prepare a new record plat and get that recorded.

So it's all in the recording cost and time.

And that doubles the price of fixing a violation. Like what they're saying, if there's violations where it's simple forest clearing and there's no easements on the property, we can usually straighten those out much quicker. Those are the ones that you don't see. if the owners are willing to do restoration for what they've done, that we can do those very quickly.

That's quick to do that.

Those are very quick.

We are requiring that this is meant to be on plats, not with a deed or something that they could just amend the deed or change that and still keep the plat in place. I don't want to make it less transparent. I say that you want to put it on plat to make sure that people can see it. But I don't know if there is any other way that it could be done easier without people have to redo the plants. Because I think that if this process would be easier, a lot of people may just go through the process rather than taking the chance and clearing the forest. That's my thinking.

I think in this case, it's important to note that this easement was put on the property to protect the Stream Valley buffer. And so we don't necessarily want to make that easier, that the county has laws and regulations. And so it was put there. not just to protect the forest, but also to protect the water quality.

So this is just, but always you require to be on the plat, or just is in this case.

I'm talking in general, not specifically in this case. In general, it is required to be recorded on the record plat, just like other easements are. Now, that does not mean that someone has to replat if the easement gets removed. We have a number of easements that do get removed, and they're removed by deed. Okay. That's what my question was.

So it could be done by deed then? Yes, yes, it can be done by dean.

Commissioner, the importance of putting that on the record plat has always been that when it gets to permit, so if someone comes in and it's gone through subdivision and there's a line on that plat that says you have an easement and that's protecting forest stream buffer or something else, that that is flagged at the permit stage that says, okay, there's something else you need to be aware of on this site. So there's like a check and balance, I think, with our permitting agency here to give us a little bit more assurance about where houses should go, where grading should go. And that's the primary reason, I think, in addition to the protection that it provides.

Yeah, I totally get it. I'm just trying to see what the problems are and how... What are the ways that we could make it easier for people that if they want to make, and I'm not talking about this case, I'm talking in general, because we see a few coming in front of us, that make it easy for people to do the amendment rather than taking the risk and just do it with the hope that not to get caught. I'm not talking about you. I want you to understand. Okay.

So thank you for your point about trying to make the process in certain conditions easier and less costly. So yeah, I'm in support of staff's recommendations. What I want to just go over again, when the homeowner bought the property, Would a surveyor have done an ALTA survey, and the survey would have picked up the easements on the property, or not? Just out of curiosity, so that we're talking about checks and balances picked up on the survey when the owner bought the property.

It could have. It's like any purchase of a property. You get a house location survey that comes with it, and it's whether or not you flip through the 200 documents. of when you settle on the property. But a lot of times it's taken from a plat and created a house location. The whole purpose of that plan is just to show that a house is on the property and it's within the building restriction lines. They're not very accurate just for the purchase of the property.

So just out of curiosity, Has anyone checked the survey of this property to see if it would have?

As far as I know, a house location survey is not something that goes on to records that can be researched. We would have to acquire that from the property owner. We can't go and pull record data like we can a record. So when we hear about this, the first thing that we do is we go pull the plats. We go pull anything from Park and Planning's website. What can we find for this? We don't rely on that $200 house location survey for anything.

OK, so I'm always thinking that when you go buy, get a house, that survey is somehow is a record that government record, and that is the survey. As an individual, I would be the only one that would have that survey from my own home. I believe that's the case.

Yeah, I believe that is the case. Correct. It's just done for that. And if you sell your house and three months later someone else buys it, they will have that same $200 survey done as well. It's not a true boundary. You can pay extra for a boundary survey, but people aren't interested in spending more.

Well, because before, I thought that the issue was we said that, well, In the contract, it just says there is a Category 1 easement on your property. It doesn't necessarily say where it is. It just says, I'm just saying, I'm just trying. So we said it's disclosed when you purchase a property. But I don't know what, it's just some language, like written language, there is a Category 1 easement on this site. You should be aware. Is that all it says, or does it say where it is?

I mean, it could be on that house location survey. But to use this project as an example, when you go and purchase a property, you don't exactly expect the whole basketball court to be within a conservation easement. So even if they read through all those documents, that could have been overlooked.

Mr. Chair, I think for anyone purchasing a house, whether it's the first time purchase or they're buying it from someone else, there's usually a record plat that's part of that title search that's done. And that title search is usually what picks up any easements, any deeds, any liens, anything that would identify any encumbrances on the property. and an easement's going to be an encumbrance on a property. And so you're made aware when you go to closing through a title search, so it really depends on how good the title search is done. The plats that you were talking about, there's a difference between a house survey, which is really, as Mr. Norton said, identifying where a location of a house is adjacent to a property line. So you're getting a better understanding, but it doesn't always typically... share with you all the easements and the other encumbrances on a property. If you want to get an ALTA survey, that generally does, and that's a lot more expensive, and that's identifying boundaries, it's identifying corners and everything. Deeds that are associated with these easements typically have meets and bounds to them, so you know where it is as it relates to an overall property.

Yeah, just as I'm saying that, I just want to make sure that to protect the owners too, that they, is there something easy way to know that when it says I have a category one easement on my property, to really know where it is. But all good. All the learning and experience, thank you for coming in. Thank you for correct the issue. And I have no further questions or comments. So do I have a motion to approve what staff has put out is the conditions to, what do you call it, modify this? Yeah, amendment.

Forest Conservation Plan.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Approve of the Forest Conservation Amendment with conditions, including the correct that the plannings will be on site.

I move to approve the Forest Conservation Plan Amendment with conditions set forth by staff.

Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. The ayes have it. 3-0. Thank you so much. Thank you for coming. Thank you. Mr. Bellow for your presentation. And we will take a two minute break and start with our next item, which is our last item of the day, which is the item number 11, Germantown Sector Plan Amendment Preliminary Recommendations, where staff is providing a briefing to the board. Thank you. Everyone, we're on item number 11, the Germantown Sector Plan Amendment Preliminary Recommendations, where staff is providing a briefing to the board. This afternoon, we have Jamie Pratt, the Planning Department, presenting this item. Welcome.

All right, thank you. Jamie Pratt from Up County Planning Division, surrounded. Well, there's a lot of people that will be coming up to deliver their part of this presentation. So I will let them introduce themselves. Clark Larson is here to provide some support in case the questions get too hard for me. Today we're presenting the preliminary recommendations for the Germantown Sector Plan Amendment. This is a step that enables us to interact and engage with the board before we get to a published draft plan to make sure that we're going in the right direction. And if we need to pivot somewhere, then we will be able to do so before it gets too far into the process. So we've been working on this plan About two years, it started as a study, and we started this study because we were observing in Germantown that we weren't getting the development that the 2009 sector plan envisioned, and that was largely because that one was all about employment uses, and the office market was changing at the time, and it continued to change thereafter. So a lot of the recommendations in the plan were all about creating a huge work center in the up county. I think it projected about 50,000 additional jobs over the 20 to 30 year time period of that plan. But instead, we ended up losing a couple hundred jobs in that time period as people started relocating from suburban office parks into downtown areas, and people started working from home more, especially due to the pandemic. So a lot of changes have happened, and we want to update the plan to help solve some of the other problems in the county, particularly the housing shortage. Midtown is located in the corridor-focused growth area of the plan, of the county, according to Thrive. It's identified as a medium center, but it is the third largest city, if you will, in the state of Maryland by population. If the census-designated place had a boundary, it's 90,000 people. So it's a bit larger than a medium center, I would say. 2,645 acres. I believe this is the largest sector plan that's come through the department since Thrive. It's not all of Germantown. So it's maybe about half of the Germantown plan area. But it's got all of the shopping, not all of the shopping centers, but the major shopping centers. It's got suburban office parks. It's got R&D facilities. It's got the Department of Energy, Montgomery College. So most of the commercial uses in Germantown are contained within this plan area. So a few demographics to show. We have three different colors here on most of these slides. So the orangish column on the left is the county's statistics. In the middle, it's the whole census designated place of Germantown. And on the right, it's the study area, which are those census tracts that most closely reflect the plan boundary. And so Germantown is often rated as the most diverse city in the country. That ranking changes every year, but it's been in the top five for a long time now. So you can see the blue bars of Germantown show about a quarter, a quarter, a quarter, a quarter, and then some other. So it is a very diverse place. As far as renting versus owning, though, there's a whole lot more renter-occupied housing in our study area than the county as a whole or even Germantown. The housing types, single-family detached in Germantown is somewhere in the middle, not nearly as much as the whole county. But you can see in our plan area, there's not that much detached housing. There's a lot more townhomes and multifamily units. And we also have the only remaining mobile home park in the county. The population is for foreign versus native residents. It's actually kind of in line with the county averages of 65% native born and 35% foreign born. So as you can see here, Germantown, 90,000 people. And the study area is about half of that. The equity index perspective, most of the census tracts in Germantown are considered slightly disproportionate compared to the county as a whole. There is one tract that's moderately disproportionate, and these are mainly due to just lower incomes or lower rates of home ownership in those areas. We've been busy talking to people over the last few months. We had a meeting in April with the community that was well attended. And we've continued to meet with property owners and schools and other community organizations throughout the last few months. And we continue to do so up until the plan is ready to publish, I believe. This is just kind of a review of what I already presented at the Emerging Ideas presentation in February. Basically, what we're trying to do is create vibrant neighborhood hubs. We are referring to these as neighborhood activity centers. So these are walkable, mixed-use activity centers where people can live, work, shop, gather. There will be housing, jobs, and services close to where people live. So a lot of the complete communities and 15-minute living kind of concepts are rolled into this. The town center will continue to be the civic heart of Germantown, where the main cultural institutions and civic events will be located, and shared community spaces for the community to gather in. Connected mobility for all. We are trying to provide safe, comfortable, and seamless transportation options for all residents, workers, and visitors. So connecting people to jobs, services, schools, and other destinations by whatever means of transportation they choose. So by foot, bike, transit, car, or other options. We want to be inclusive, flexible, and context sensitive. So we recognize that each activity center will have a different context and will require a different mix of uses. For parks, recreation, and public spaces, we want there to be plenty of opportunities for physical activity and community gatherings and providing those green spaces a natural character that make a place more livable. And finally, environmental sustainability and climate resilience. It's important to protect the natural resources and prepare for climate change as we go through this. Framework is where we usually start talking about the major concepts of the plan. So we focus on the part of this to orient you. This is I-270 running this way and kind of running through here is Germantown Road. So the town center is the main town center with Black Rock, and the Library R is in this area. So you'll see these large circles. These represent some of these neighborhood activity centers. So we have five of these identified in the town center area. And so these will have a mix of uses. Each will probably have a distinct identity, we hope. There'll be a central public gathering space in each one. And they're going to be connected together with what we call a multimodal priority corridor that runs all the way from the MARC station up across German Town Road and then on Century Boulevard up into the northern part of the plan area. So this is the kind of organizing connectivity for the whole plan area, or at least for the town center. Some multiple mobility options, so we're going to try to create safer crossings, better transit access, dedicated bike facilities, and we want to be able to support a park-once environment with shared structured parking of some sort. And we have a lot of, you'll see on the orange parcels that are highlighted on the slide, those are what we're calling opportunity sites. So some of them are greenfield spaces, and some of them are large surface parking lots. So we think there's potential for a lot of the areas close to the town center to redevelop over the next 20 to 30 years. A unified identity through placemaking, well, through streetscape and public space improvements. We want to strengthen the sense of place and promote a cohesive town center identity with this plan. And finally, each neighborhood activity center will include new or improved parks, plazas, and open spaces to promote interaction and provide ecological function. Full plan area, most of these same principles will apply throughout the plan area. You can see there's activity centers throughout. So the development will be focused in those areas primarily. But then we're also envisioning some more connections across I-270 for vehicles, for people on foot, people using bikes. We want to improve the connectivity overall to help tie the east and west sides of I-270 together to kind of a unified whole for Germantown. So talking the plan about repurposing excess roadway space. So a lot of the roads in Germantown are kind of a little bit overbuilt. So they have often six to eight lanes, fast moving traffic, a long distance between stoplights, things like that. So Germantown Road is kind of a barrier. Middlebrook Road is a barrier. Father Hurley and Ridge Road's a barrier, 355. These people don't feel comfortable crossing the street here. But at the same time, some of these right-of-ways are excessively large, and we're hoping to be able to repurpose some of the lanes, if possible, to other uses, such as transit lanes or bike lanes or making wider sidewalks. We want to retain some land for industrial use. small industrial uses. We have some light and medium industrial land in the plan area. It's kind of the pink areas here, but there's also a lot of office and R&D space that is important to be able to support those uses going forward. So we will be recommending a mix of uses in these sites, but those mix should at least still support the types of uses that do continue to bring jobs to Germantown. And finally, the green infrastructure. We want to be able to tie the town center better to some of the environmental areas, like Black Rock Path up here. There's the Germantown Bog here. And then this is Lake Churchill. So being able to provide that regional connectivity to the parks and green spaces is important. And so now I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Duke.

Good afternoon. Roberto Duke with the Design Policy and Placemaking Division, and I'm going to be discussing the community design section and the recommendations and goals for that. Briefly, I want to discuss the goals. Community design shapes how people experience neighborhoods, streets, public spaces, and buildings. A consistent human-scaled environment will reinforce Germantown's identity and support long-term sustainability and livability. The goals that we want to discuss are we want to organize development around defined activity centers with structured blocks and a strong relationship between buildings and public spaces. We also want to make sure that we build a connected street network with block sizes that support direct travel, pedestrian comfort, and diverse uses. And we want to make sure that we design buildings for pedestrian environment through appropriate scale, orientation, and character. And buildings, again, should define edges of spaces, frame spaces, and create memorable places. And we also want to provide access, visibility, and well-distributed open spaces for recreation, social activities, and environmental functions. And finally, we think it's very important that when we integrate parking, utilities, and services, that their impact is minimized, the visual impact on the public realm. Thank you. Of the recommendations themselves, we've divided into neighborhoods, streets, blocks, open spaces, buildings, and services and utilities. And first I want to briefly discuss neighborhoods. Each neighborhood should be organized around a clearly defined activity center, as Jamie was discussing. that offers a destination and a strong sense of identity. And typically, the neighborhood activity centers are about a quarter mile in radius. So you can walk. It's about a 10-minute walk from edge to edge. The things we want to do there are to establish and strengthen the activity centers around key destinations that reflect the cultural, environmental, and historic features of the community. We also want to provide contiguous open spaces within centers and connected to the surrounding areas. So we want to make sure that there's a nice synergy of open space within any activity center. Also, we want to make sure that they add artwork, signage, and branding, and key elements to reinforce a neighborhood's identity and create gateway features. And on the framework plan, previously we showed where there were gateways along Germantown Road. And I just want to briefly just show some of the images here. We're just showing meaningful open spaces that are close to and in close proximity to uses so that people can enjoy the outdoors. Also showing kind of branding elements. This is just showing the Germantown. It's the up county. CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, THANK YOU. A LITTLE BIT OF A NUMBER OF WORDS THERE. AND JUST SHOWING THAT THERE'S POTENTIAL FOR CREATING KIND OF ARTWORK OR INSTALLATIONS OF SOME SORT IN JUST THE LOWER RIGHT. THERE'S A DECORATIVE BUS STOP AS AN EXAMPLE DOWN AT NATIONAL LANDING IN NORTHERN VIRGINIA No.

Thank you.

Talking about streets, we want to make sure that streets are essential to walkability, safety, and the character of the area, and that they're more connected, allowing for multiple modes of connectivity with expanded travel options and better neighborhood links. In terms of recommendations, we want to expand street grids to increase routes, reduce block sizes, and improve access, and support redevelopment at key opportunity sites. Diagram on the lower half of the image kind of shows that idea that with a greater street network, there are more opportunities for people to walk around. It divides up the block a little bit better. There's easier access to open spaces and that sort of thing. We also want to make sure, again, to encourage inter-partial connectivity and avoid cul-de-sacs and design streets to accommodate also on-street parking where appropriate to provide short-term access to nearby businesses and residences while maintaining pedestrian comfort and safety. As Jamie was expressing, we want to make sure that there are enhanced crossings at key locations to shorten those crossing distances, improve visibility, and calm traffic. And then we also want to improve the pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure on all streets, and including wayfinding signages, linkages to parks and transit. The block structure also plays a key role into walkability. Smaller blocks create more direct routes and support active ground floor uses and make neighborhoods feel more accessible and well connected. Where there are large blocks, we want to make sure that there is some sort of mid-block connectivity to provide that can shorten travel distances and open opportunities for public open spaces and pedestrian paths. And I just wanted to show that these are at different scales that you can have this connectivity of mid-block crossings. Right here is the Marriott headquarters in downtown Bethesda. This is a little bit lower scale, lower density at National Landing, a mid-block crossing. This is just in a residential neighborhood in San Diego, just showing a mid-block. mid-block crossing that also has play equipment in it to allow for activity within that area, and then a small bike path in a neighborhood in Bethesda.

What is a compact block?

A compact block, I would say, so that the uses themselves aren't spread out, so that the buildings themselves kind of frame the spaces, and so that you don't have these larger, it takes a long distance to get from one use to another use. Say, for example- Yeah, I mean, smaller distances between uses and that type of connectivity just to allow for that you could have a mix of uses, you know, adjacent to one another. The residential is close to the commercial and that sort of thing. And so then it's a compact development. It promotes a little bit more walkability to the area. For open spaces, a well-designed open space network supports recreation, social interaction, and environmental functions. Open spaces should be strategically located, highly visible and accessible from surrounding development, with larger parks anchoring activity centers, and smaller spaces providing additional recreational opportunities. Integrating features such as stormwater management, shade, and active edges helps these spaces function as a comfortable extension of the public realm. We want to make sure that we create a hierarchy of public open spaces with varied sizes and uses. We want to encourage the consolidation of usable open spaces on larger sites, and then support complementary smaller open spaces that provides a broader public realm network. And then we want to ensure that the spaces are visible from at least one street, accessible, and framed by active uses, and that they promote multi-generational amenities. So these are just some images from different places around the country showing the various types of uses and the functions within the open spaces and the uses around them. A small park. in a town center community with shops around it, the splash fountain in the middle for the kids to play in, a small pocket park in King Farm adjacent to residential units with a seating area, and then some larger spaces such as the ones at National Landing and at Reston Town Center that have Certain functions, kind of larger gathering spaces. What's particularly interesting about this one is that they have play equipment. In the foreground, you kind of see a lady playing with her child, using like the Jenga, playing. And then they have all those set up for activities for residents. With the building recommendations, we want to make sure that proper building placement, massing, orientation reinforces pedestrian-friendly environment and creates vibrant neighborhood centers. We want to make sure that buildings frame streets and open spaces and that they create visual interest and use architectural elements to break down the bulk and mass and maintain a human scale to the buildings, and that active ground floor uses are essential for creating the public realm. So again, we want to make sure that buildings are placed close to the street to reinforce a pedestrian environment. We want to break up the larger volumes with architectural elements such as porches, stoops, recessed entries, projections, and step-downs to create visual interest along streetscapes. And for residential development, we want to make sure that rear-loaded access is provided as a prioritized. And we want to, again, make sure that streetscapes are active. on both commercial, mixed use, and residential spaces. And this is just showing various uses.

Yeah, we've got some examples on there for you. So we have a lot of slides to get through. So I think we'll have the visual there for examples that match the words that Roberto is walking us through. Yeah, go ahead.

I'll speed it up. Finally, in terms of services, utilities, and parkings, We want to make sure that parking is located away from streets and more internal to the site. We want to make sure that the design of surface parking allows for the potential of redevelopment and long-term adaptability. And we want to make sure that, say, for example, drive aisles can be reconfigured as potential streets in the future. And we want to make sure that utilities are internal to the site, but if not possible, that they should be screened in an appropriate manner. and also that garages, if they face a public space, that they should also have some type of screening or artwork to provide a good front to the public realm. To Jamie.

Sorry. So for land use, the goals that are shown here are kind of like the specific way the land use section implements the larger goals of the plan. So you'll see that we want to make sure to continue to enable these mixed-use activity centers. We want to provide flexibility of development. That's like the number one thing we heard from the landowners. removing regulatory barriers. We'll get more into what that means in a second, but just making it easier to build. And there's a few cases where we're matching zoning to existing land uses, so that's kind of just kind of a cleanup exercise where there's not really a change expected. And we want to be able to expand housing choices in this plan retain land for employment uses, and then simplify the overall zoning in the area. On the left is the existing land uses in Germantown, and on the right is the recommended land uses. So you can see on the right, everything is a nice bright hot pink representing mixed use. On the left, it's a reflection of what currently exists on the ground, so it's very specific uses. So the red would be retail, for example. And the office uses are kind of a pepto color there. So what we're trying to show in the recommended land uses is that we're being flexible, but we're not expecting a mix of land uses on all of these sites. But any site could possibly have a number of uses on it to help support these active neighborhood activity centers. I want to start with kind of a Probably a strange place is the overlay zones. There's three of them in the plan area. I'll show a map in a second. But the reason I'm starting with this is because in the Germantown Transit Mixed Use Overlay Zone, there is a BLT purchase requirement. This is building lot termination easements that have to be purchased from landowners in the Ag Reserve. that transfers density. There's a requirement in the overlay zone to purchase a certain number of these at a certain rate. And that rate is seven times higher than any other place in the county. And so this is just a disincentive to investment that adds a lot of cost. And I want to show another example of that, too. So Germantown Churchill Village was created just a few years ago with a plan we did there. There was a town sector zone that was being rezoned. A very small part of that area, the town sector area, was in our plan area. And there was this overlay zone that was created to protect some of the uses that were in that area. But none of those uses are in our plan area, so we're just going to remove that zone. The TDR overlay zones were used already for the most part. Almost every site that had a TDR overlay was already developed using those, so we're just removing the overlay because it serves no further purpose. And that's TDRs, transferable development rights, and yet another way to transfer density from the Ag Reserve. And then finally, we're going to be creating a package of public benefit incentives for the CR, CRT zone properties when they use the optional method. We're still working on the specifics of that, so we're going to have to come back to you with our ideas for which public benefits will be most recommended within the plan area. So the BLTs in the CR zone, 7.5% of the incentive density floor area has to be purchased in BLTs. But in the overlay zone, it's 50%, so almost seven times the rate. So incentive density is basically anything over the first 0.5 FAR. And then you have to buy one BLT for 31,500 square feet. And they updated the value of these last year so that they're somewhere between 380,000 and 435,000 each. So in this example of Poplar Grove, which is a recent application that we've been reviewing, in the regular CR zone, they would have to buy one BLT at a little less than half a million. But in the current overlay, they the same development is 2.5 to 3 million. So this just is disincentivizing a lot of development in the plan area. The zones themselves, where they are, the current Germantown Transit mixed-use overlay zone is this green area. The reddish area is the Churchill Village overlay. And then the purples are the TDR overlays. So in the new zone, We've kind of reduced the transit mixed-use overlay to be the areas near the MARC station, near the transit center, and near the milestone park and ride, which is the current planned terminus of the 355 BRT station. So we still want to have an overlay zone. We're trying to discourage townhouse development close to transit. We want to see if we can get the densest developments possible within these areas. So we're working on recommendations to specify exactly how that's going to be done. So then another problem with the 2009 plan is that it has residential maximum densities on a lot of sites. So 40% max, 50%, 40%. Throughout the plan area, even up into this milestone north area, there's a 20% maximum residential. So to meet master plan conformance, they had to, Oftentimes, they would propose lots of uses that weren't residential and call that phase two, but phase one was the residential component. They could stay under that 50% or 40%, but they would never build the phase two because the market was never quite right for it. We're just getting rid of these and letting anything go. so to speak. So also, as part of that, we're equalizing the total residential and commercial floor area. So if the FAR of the whole site is 2.0, it can be 2.0 commercial. It can be 2.0 residential. We're not trying to say this property should be 0.5 and this should be 1.25. We're just trying to be as flexible as possible. We're rezoning the EOF properties to CRT in the plan area. Again, this EOF is kind of limiting to the residential development, so we're trying to get rid of that. And then so there's a few places where we have increased the density of the zone just for these activity centers and adjusted some of the heights in the plan area so that the tallest buildings are in the middle of each activity center. So you'll see on the left, I have shown all of the parcels that we are rezoning to address these flexibility issues when there's an overlay of the activity centers from the framework. So you can see that they're pretty well aligned. This would kind of maybe be a newish activity center. This one is Montgomery College. So it's not being rezoned. So it's not shown on this map. But this is another activity center. And on the right is a map of the proposed or recommended heights, the tallest being here right in the middle at 180 feet, and then it kind of goes down. Most of these are actually the current zoning heights. There are a few places where we've increased them, but many of these were applied in 2009.

Just a quick question. With the concentration of 60-foot heights, right now, Down and to the right. There you go. For the cursor there. Is there any particular reason for that? That and then the decline from 145 to 35 up with the yellow and the brown. Is there any particular reason for those to be that restrictive there?

Well, the 60-foot, this is just a townhouse development that was built recently. So... It didn't seem like in the 20 to 30 year time frame of this plan that they would redevelop. So we just left it at 60 where it is today. Up here, there's existing multi-family housing. So this is just in the current zone that they're in. This is just what the maximum height is, but it's multi-family, and we don't think it's inappropriate to have

No, I'm saying why 35 seems low. I like the 145.

I think 35 seems low. It's just the R20 or R30 zone that currently exists here.

If you remember, we actually stopped here in the bus in the Milestone Center. And when we drove. That's Milestone. Yeah, right. And we were driving back to Ridge Road. We did point out. Notice the density over here, the sort of garden apartment style development. We're largely leaving that alone, so we weren't recommending bumping up the height. Looked like great housing stock, and Phil, we were just going to leave that alone and focus our attention elsewhere.

I mean, for those, again, we're in a 20-year, 30-year time frame, and I understand that we're going on decades here, but we've seen market changes The market changed wildly from year to year, month to month, administration to administration on insurance rates and everything else. I don't think it's inconceivable that some of those would price out within the timeframe of a plan. Raising it doesn't affect it at all if nothing happens, but leaving it there if it's a possibility might preclude it from happening. The townhomes are less of a consideration, obviously, longer term. But I think we have enough to assume that there might be a reason for 145 just across the street. So it might be worth considering truing those up a little bit around areas where we have it. A thought as we go on, not to dwell on it too much right now.

Yeah, we'll look at, you know, it might require a change to one of the CR zones to do that. But we'll...

Yeah, so I hear what you're saying. We're just talking now, right?

No, that's good to get your feedback. Feel free to jump in. Don't feel like you can't.

No, no, no. I'm just given how sometimes Commissioner Hedrick, I don't know how old the things up where they are, 35 feet, but if they're relatively new, just to not I'm not trying to scare anybody.

Here I'm just saying that 35 is pretty low.

I think they're from the 90s. I think they were built in the 90s.

That's fair. Just something to just mention as we go along with the process, and you might not want to give me free reign to jump in too much. We'll be here until tomorrow, but... But, yeah, I understand, and that's all kind of thing. I just think that giving it as much of an opportunity as possible means we don't have to come back for anything like that. If it does change, circumstances change.

I think it would be good to have some diversity of the different kind of views and variety of houses around that area. So diversity is important because people want different things.

And any other pieces where... Ideally, we have 145 feet. That was probably what was there before. I looked at some of the old versions.

This one was, I think, currently it's 125. But all these other 145s are already what's there. This milestone is also a big jump from its current height.

Some of the things I was thinking, if this is a 10 to 20 year plan, is that what? 20, 30. That in order for a building, I'm just thinking out loud here, for it to be 145 feet, then it's into a high-rise construction, right? And then... in this area within and also with the, and probably you would want some sort of structured parking, right? You know, and would it even, I mean, in the foreseeable, you know, pencil out, but maybe you guys have done some analysis and seen, because I'm not sure you can build it right here, you know, or make the numbers work. So I'm just trying to thinking, how do we, when we look at all of these, how do we, out there long enough so that we don't miss something, but also at the same time sort of be somewhat realistic about what can happen to incentivize maybe what would actually go there, what is really needed there, and go from there. So I'm not sure. Sure.

Yeah, I'll just say quickly, going back to the overlay idea, and thank you, because I think that really set the stage for some of the big swings that we are going to be taking and discussing with you and wanting your feedback on, and how we can get there, including structured parking and others in a tough market, some of the things that we think were barriers to optional method development and utilizing full FAR, and really focusing aiming for the highest use and densities around the transit stations. So it's not going to be one thing. There are multiple things that I think we're going to be suggesting in these areas for you. And I think we're about to cover some more of that that idea and changes that we're making to justify the heights and the FAR envisioned around those centers.

I agree. And in terms of diverse housing types, if you don't want townhouses near the downtown area and you make the heights such as that, so it's only going to be apartments, That's not saying you don't want apartments, but I'm just saying, what can you do to incentivize some sort of home ownership product also in the area without having just so that only apartments go here and then only home ownership goes there? I mean, will they ever build a condo product that for some home ownership, some equity building in a higher building anymore. I don't know. I'm just, but just, I'm talking out loud here, but I'm just trying, how do you, how do you get all of those products and how do you incentivize that to happen?

Yeah, just taking what he said. I was not, I was going to wait at the end, but if you look at your slide, originally you showed that the home ownership in the study area suddenly is half. It has gone. And I think we are encouraging that to happen. With having everything multifamily and high, the only thing that is going to happen that you're going to reduce the homeownership and you're going to add to the rental. And this is the future dream of the young generation that completely evaporates. I'm concerned. I understand that we are pushing for more housing, but I don't think we are at all pushing the homeownership. And that is something that I believe is something that we need to also encourage by providing the variety of different kind of housing type to allow home ownership in the areas that people can, like downtown or township areas and so on, not just in the suburban areas. Because eventually they're going to move to suburban areas and it's not going to achieve the goal that we want to achieve.

Yeah, just quickly say I think we showed an example earlier. We have a project coming in, the TOTA property, that will be largely townhouse. And again, I want to maybe reframe or restate what was said earlier. Around the transit overlay zones, which we're shrinking down to be closely a few blocks around each transit station, that's where we're going to try to – piece together a series of recommendations that will support and perhaps incentivize property owners to use a higher proportion of their FAR that's allowed by the zone. But even there, in the areas that we're being most aggressive to try to encourage that outcome, we're not prohibiting townhomes or home ownership. But we hope that we would piece together a series of recommendations to encourage, again, the higher use of that FAR. Outside of that, which was the vast majority of the plan area, such as the TOTA property and others, that would not be the case. It would be simply a CR zone that allowed a high flexibility uses, and what we're actually doing is removing the restriction of capping the residential, having them balanced to allow much more flexibility in the commercial and residential, and not going to be cobbling together some policy recommendations that would encourage multifamily over townhome. It would be much more open and flexible in the vast majority of the plan area.

Yeah, I get it that right next to the transit area, you want to have high multifamily. That's why I'm suggesting that at the edges, I think that there's not a little bit further out. I don't know what is the width of this study area from 270 on each side, east or west. Is it, I don't know, one mile, two mile? I don't know. I can't tell. But if it is more than one mile, then you could consider having a variety of different height to encourage home ownership. I understand that putting a 145 foot height doesn't say that you cannot build something that is 40 feet height or two by two, but when it is 140, the market dictates that what could be built where. I'm thinking that There are places that we could use the market and also our judgment to help for home ownership. We see a lot of multifamily coming, and we are seeing also townhouses. But it is good to allow areas to still have townhouses or a small single family home. Those are a good thing also. I don't see any problem by having a smaller detached home that provides some yard and space and privacy for the family, for children. And dog, rather than being in a small townhouse with not that much backyard, that they have a small detached place that they have their kids play around, and they have to let their dogs to go play around. Those are good things. I think we shouldn't discourage them.

I would say we're not. I mean, I don't think that raising the height doesn't discourage the building of a particular type of housing. It's dictated, as you said, by the market. And what we're doing with lowering the heights is restricting one type in favor of another, which is what we do in about 80% of the land used across the county. And so what we're doing is not disallowing any other type of housing. We're allowing a type of housing we've historically not allowed. And I think that there's plenty of opportunity. In fact, for the last year, year and a half, the only thing we've had built is town homes and home ownership and no multifamily. I don't think that restricting the heights or restricting the zoning around transit-oriented development in which the state, the county, and the city have already invested millions, tens of millions of dollars for is not going to, if we have a low-density level of land use around there, we're not going to get the use out of those things that we need. And that's my concern is to allow for the appropriate level of development and density around the infrastructure that we have and not artificially restricting it by any means that we have. And there are layers of artificial restriction we're having to peel back at this point. And so if you'll look around that's not specifically in the plan area, there's plenty of single-family homes across the roads from these plan areas. And in fact, that's about the only thing we've built for decades here. And I'm wanting to keep an eye on making sure that we don't leave in legacy restrictions for no particular reason other than that they were there when we started this. And that's my primary concern about a lot of these here.

Good, good, good.

Vice Chair, you had a comment. Just to largely just second that, I mean, if you zoom out a little bit in the plan area, there's quite a lot of townhomes. In addition to single-family detached homes, we have quite a lot of townhomes in and around the plan area right now. As mentioned, it's already a pretty diverse housing-type community, I mean, relative to other parts of the county. But what it's lacking is, I think, a lot of what you're describing, particularly in the town center, which is a little bit more mid-rise scale, a little bit more dense, taking advantage of the surface parking lots. And I think this is the case. Isn't this part of Germantown now designated by the state as a transit-oriented development? Or is that around the MARC station?

The MARC station was one of two Brunswick-line designated TOD developments that are under consideration by the state.

Under consideration by the state. Yeah. OK.

I think they're, go ahead, Robert.

We're also looking at the designations for TOD, but it would primarily be around the MARC station. At least our initial conversations with the state have been that and not really expanded beyond much of this right here.

And that, from their perspective, rail, for the time being, makes sense. One of the things, I know transportation is probably coming up. We're going to talk more about that in a bit. But I'm interested to hear a little bit more about bus recommendations and how MCDOT is thinking about bus service there in the next 15 to 20 years. And to support this kind of thing, I mean, not that all of these blocks would in any way hit, you know, 145 feet. It's certainly not consistently like down century and kind of up century on the other side. But if we're going to get anywhere close to that, we need the support of transit service, not just the transit center. The transit center is a good hub, but the transit service really needs to be there And that's, you know, the combination of more routes and really just more frequency, like a lot more frequency in this area. This is probably a relatively high ridership area for buses. But I know we've heard a lot about how they're slow. There's not enough service. Sometimes it's just weekday service, right, but not weekend service. There's all sorts of, like, things going on in this area, but we can talk more about that.

Yeah, so you can keep going. This was, I have no problem to keep the 145, but my point is that what will we likely have, get? And then how do you incentivize some other things if you want? Also, for example, the 45 feet at the south of the interchange, Is there a reason why this 45 couldn't also be 65 or 70? What is there now that is driven?

This site, the Department of Energy, we have a recommendation right now that says if they ever come in the future to redevelop that site, we would recommend a floating zone. or a map amendment to enact the zone that makes the most sense at the time. But because they haven't indicated any intent to redevelop, we didn't want to spend a whole lot of time redesigning a new project there that may never happen.

Okay, perfect. Keep going. Yeah, thank you.

And this 45 feet is the high school, Seneca Valley High School. So then we have what we're just calling recommendations to the sport and vision development. But there's a couple of places where we're going from CRT to CR to be even more flexible. There's some places in this area, Fox Chapel neighborhood is down here. So there's actually a GR zone that we think is more filled with light industrial uses, and that would be a better zone. Along Frederick Road, you'll see some CRN 1.0, and this is kind of to help support corridor-focused growth in this area. Currently, these are R200 properties, but we think that they could slowly evolve over the next 20 to 30 years to be something a little bit more than just a single family detached home. And the same is true in this neighborhood. off of Observation Drive and Boland Farm Road, where there's these really deep backyards. Some of them are some transitional uses that are no longer residential anyway. So we think this could be a new activity center along with the redevelopment of this property. And again, we just mentioned this support for a future rezoning of this site. We haven't even discussed what height would be appropriate at this time. A few other zoning changes that are just kind of cleaning up. There's some split zone properties. There's some outdated zones, planned development zones, zones that are no longer supported after 2014. So we're recommending new zones for all of those areas. And then this big green area on the campus, the only thing that's changing there is When they did the 2014 zoning code rewrite, all of the zones that were established at that time through the formulas that were used just got a T at the end. So you would know that that's why that zone is there and that it wasn't the result of a master plan. So we're removing all the T. There's T's on all the CR and CRT zones in this plan area. But this is the only one where the only thing we're changing is getting rid of the T. So there's still technical changes. And you'll see... This purple area down here is a single family detached and townhouse community. Right now, it's in this R200. It was R150. But it's townhouses. It's smaller lots. So we're recommending like R90, R60 TLD. And up here is a lot of these properties that were developed under the TDR overlay that now have apartments or townhouses. So we are just recommending the zone that best matches what's on the ground. We do have a lot of zoning changes in this plan. So you'll see here are the few where we are not recommending any changes at all. So changes everywhere. There is this one single family detached neighborhood right in the middle of the plan area that we're largely leaving alone. But next to it was where that CRM was recommended.

Yeah, I'm curious about that one. Can you describe a little bit more about it's surrounded by kind of other uses largely, and R200, I mean, those are probably not, those lots are probably smaller than a typical R200 lot, I'm assuming. I don't know. It's kind of hard to tell from the map.

You might be right, and we might need to look a little closer as to whether this one should also be Perhaps an R90 or something.

Well, I was even thinking, you know, well, I don't want to propose things necessarily on the fly, but I'd be curious about the possibility of just allowing flexibility on those lots, too. The owners want to. Just in kind of the same vein as our diversification of housing types in general, following attainable housing, we've collectively apparently decided to do this through the master plan process. master plan by master plan. And so I just don't want to miss potential opportunities if they present themselves. But I obviously haven't looked at that neighborhood. I don't want to presume anything. I'm just curious what you all think as this moves forward.

And just to say, I was going to ask the same question for – because R200 precludes any – it's half an acre, essentially. It precludes any duplex, triplex, anything like that being built on it. I think that, again, I haven't reviewed it in detail either, but seeing R200 and RE zones – here, given their proximity to the only up-county transit we really have. Not the only up-county, but most of it. I would be curious, and I think probably the REs are probably institutional use, I'd imagine.

RE2 here is Black Hill Regional Park. It's the park. RE1 is a church, but it also has a senior living facility as a conditional use that's got maybe 100 units. So it actually has more density than you'd think for RE1.

For an RE1, yeah, it would make sense on that zone. But yeah, the 200s that are in there, and even the RE1, I mean, when we're talking about the zoning is appropriate, I think that we probably... need to consider the zone is appropriate and what would allow for a little bit more as opposed to the zone is appropriate and to what is exactly there right now. And I would be curious as to about for the RE1, the R200. I assume that's another school down in the bottom left.

That's the Seneca Valley High School.

Seneca Valley High School, OK. Trying to get oriented.

This R90 is Plumgar Park Rec Center. This R60 is also a park. So this R200, this R200. are really the only single-family detached housing that we're kind of leaving as is.

Yeah, well, not to do it all up here right now, but I think we can consider different options potential different zonings in the RE, the non-institutional and non-park zones in there to allow for flexibility within those. And even potentially with an R200, it's going to preclude anything coming in for splitting a lot or anything like that. if someone wants to build an additional house.

And I don't know what's in that particular neighborhood. And just, you know, a quick review just on MC Atlas, which is such a wonderful tool. I'm so glad we have MC Atlas at our disposal. And it has cybersecurity. But, you know, they actually, a lot of them do look like, you know, typical 20,000 foot lots. And it's actually, given proximity to transit, a lot of, you know, this is sort of maybe, you know, a really good opportunity to allow for it. Those lots do have presumably available space, theoretically, for additional units should those owners decide to split, to add on, to just do whatever they choose to do. Yeah, encouraged looking at that one more.

So why don't you look at the existing size of those lots.

Can I just add something on that also, about duplexes or triplexes? I think it's a good idea to do that. But if we want to allow that to continue give a peace of mind to people that they are there. Remember, we had the attainable housing. We had some kind of ideas that they look alike like the other ones. I think that would be a good idea to do. Or if they want to split the property and make it another auxiliary unit there, that's, again, something that we could look into. But I'm just saying, and I have always discussed that, these are all great ideas, but in reality, the implementation is difficult because they have to subdivide the one-piece land to two, and time and cost-wise, it's going to discourage them to do that. So that is something that you want to look, because the idea is good, but if we don't make the implementation and process easier... It's not going to happen.

So all great. Maybe there's a, look at the size. Maybe there's an overlay on all those R200s that would allow for, I don't know how, for multi-use. You know, you guys are, given it's close to, you know, the bus transit or transit station and some other things maybe. And also, Have the folks in Germantown taken advantage of the ADUs? Are there any ADUs in Germantown? Out of curiosity.

I've never looked to see.

OK. All right. And then the Rs you have there, the Browns are the Consisting Multifamily, correct?

Mm-hmm.

Is there any reason, because they must be newer, is there a reason why you want to keep them as, I mean, why not change them to a current multifamily sort of system?

I guess we just weren't expecting them to change in the foreseeable future, so we didn't look into it.

And they're relatively new, right, you're saying?

What was that?

They're relatively new.

Most of Germantown, almost all of it is after 1980, and a lot of the parts up here after 1990. Some of them up here might even have been closer to 2000.

Yeah, yeah. Only reason I'm saying that is because, you know, make them a zone that we currently use as a multifamily. But maybe if you see a reason why not, then that's fine. But I'm just, because we don't make many more R30s, R40s. We don't ever do that.

Yeah, I took the previous Explorer on the R30 that was adjacent to Milestone to apply. We were going to look at all of it. So I hear your comments. We'll look at that again. I think just our initial pass at the R200 development that you were pointing out, the subdivision that is on the east side of 270, the R30, R20s throughout, we thought were existing housing that seemed to be in good shape and add to the diversity of the overall mix that we were recommending. So we didn't, at least at this preliminary stage, think that we needed to recommend any rezoning. But we can certainly look at that again.

I can see why you said that. And also, we want to send a signal that we want this mixed. Just providing, we're thinking out loud here. Sure, yeah.

I think similar with general retail too on that, which is not one that we see fairly frequently at this point. I mean, they're tiny little slivers, but we don't tend to see a lot of GR zoning at this point, which I think is covered mostly under, you know, would be covered in, most of the uses would be covered under CRN or CRT or CR zone of some type. This is a thought.

The other thing is that if we don't think that anything is going to happen, we don't want to just create, you know, fear and opposition for something that we don't think is going to happen. I wouldn't recommend it because it's no sense. We want this plan to help, and this is a small thing that creates fear or issue and may not even give us such an opportunity. you know, outcome that we are looking for. So that's something to consider.

Not to jump in again before I go too long on this, but if we're planning on a 20 or 30 year timeline, does anybody remember what happened 20 years ago? Increasing drastically. the global economy was never going to stop going up, and neither were your housing prices, and what happened directly thereafter that. If anybody can predict what's going to happen in 20 years, or we assume that we know what's going to happen with these properties on a 20- to 30-year time frame, I think we can make predictions. We have evidence to back us up, but I think that we've got 20-year, 30-year timelines going back that show us we don't have any idea what's going to happen at all And a lot of this is what's going to happen to these properties. And what's going to affect them is going to be interest rates and external shocks to the economic environment. I think it's worth considering that, You know, an R30 or an R20 may be fine for what it is right now, but it may not be fine for what it's going to be in 10 to 15 years. And so I think it's worth considering taking the diversity of different zoning types and applying our CR zones that are specifically designed to allow flexibility within these places and allow that flexibility now for unpredictable things that may happen. I really hope we don't get a 2007 or 8 again. That was...

I was working there at that time. It's not fun.

But the idea that we can predict what will happen or what this use will be or the need will be in a community in 20 years with a degree of precision is... something that I think we have historical evidence to indicate that we should be careful at assuming that. And we have flexibility built into our existing ones. That's why we've created the CR and the CRT zones to create and allow flexibility. I think it's worth thinking about zoning to flexibility.

I was just going to say, you should try writing a master plan.

Yeah, so we'll keep going. I hear what you're saying, and also I hear what Commissioner Petterm is saying, is that what's the ultimate goal? When we pass this plan on, we want to get it approved. So what are the key things we want to get approved in this master plan? So let's keep going.

And I'll just also say, you'll notice that one Commissioner Linden pointed out, outside the plan area, there's a large amount of townhomes, single-family detached. You'll see these properties here are largely around the edge, and they serve as a transition to the areas that we are focusing our efforts on trying to bring about change. But I hear everything you said. We'll look at this again and take your comments into consideration before we come back.

Don't let Jim overwrite my comments. He always talks after me to overwrite my comments.

We heard you, too. We heard you, too. Let's keep going, okay? I know you have a lot to give.

And maybe this would have been a more useful screen to have had up for the last 10 minutes. But this is all of the zoning changes recommended in the plan area. But I mean, it is nice to see them isolated, the ones that have no change. So we have... This is the short zone, so it only shows you that total FAR. We have other maps that have been provided as attachments that will show the specific breakdown of the commercial and residential, which is largely the same now, and then the building heights, which I showed you on the prior map. So there's some changes, but there's a lot of places where it's not significantly different. I want to finally just, I'm going to transition right now to...

Sorry, I apologize, just real quick. That's fine, that's why we're here. So this is a useful comparison, and a lot of the changes apparent seem to be a little bit more maybe related to height and the overlay, for example, kind of like reining that in. And I know there's maybe going to be some recommendations around BLTs and kind of truing those up and so on. But since 2009, not a lot of development has happened in the way that 2009 anticipated. So what are some of our ideas to kind of everything we've talked about, the exogenous stuff, the interest rates, the recently foreign Wars, unfortunately, and everything else kind of going on. There's internal county policy. But setting that aside, what are some of our ideas to kind of move forward from 2009, considering we're not actually, in most cases, we're not recommending pretty dramatic zoning changes other than height and reining in the overlays?

So, Clark? Just kidding. So, you know, the BLTs was, you know, these barriers, like the maximum residential percentage of BLTs, you know, that's a big part of this, and we think that'll go a long way if that's the only thing this plant did. We're also looking at structuring the BLT purchase requirement and kind of a reverse sliding scale so that The more density you give us, the fewer BLTs you may have to buy. We're trying to do whatever we can to actually incentivize and encourage the types of developments we'd like to see. So we're still hammering out the details of how something like that might work. But we think that would be helpful. And Bob is going to talk about housing in a few minutes. But we were talking about the NPDU requirement. In that overlay zone that you saw close to transit, we were recommending 12.5. The rest of the plan area, we're going to say, let's do a 15% MPDUs. But near transit, let's just do 12.5, because 12.5% of a bigger number still could be more units. And every MPDU does cost the developer something, or it gets passed on to the consumer, or however that works. So things like that. I'm not quite sure that I've quite gotten at what you're asking.

No, no, that's helpful. And I wasn't honestly looking for an answer, right? I think it's more just sort of this kind of higher level reaction since we're at preliminary right now. And understanding a little bit more kind of from the economics on the market side, like what are typical rents right here? And what if the property owners, I know on the tour we talked a little bit about kind of some of the larger property owners, what their interests are, kind of what they may be looking for for redevelopment. You had some things to say about that. But how kind of this is starting to align with what the actual on-the-ground market is there today, what typical rents are today. Obviously, there's a lot of things at play there. But I just kind of wanted to just put in a little plug for that as we move forward.

I think that's a great question, and you're going to speak to it. And also, I think what another thing, a next step, is to go out to the market, the developers, and see what of all these changes, what lowering the price of a BLT having a more of a residential taking off the residential restriction what what else is needed what can you make that work or what you know like you said if what if you say you can get more density but if I get more density I have to okay then I have to go up if I have go up if I go up past eight stories nine stories ten stories and I have to go concrete well Does that still work? Or I have to park it. Does that still work? Or do I have to have some economic incentive, like don't have to pay full property? I don't know, some pilot. Or can I have a different parking ratio? But it would be nice to know, whatever we recommend, Can it work in the next five? What would it have to work? I'm going to turn it to Ben for rent.

I'll just say we are meeting with all the property owners, especially around the transit stations and talking about the ideas. The reactions have been largely positive and welcome. I don't know we've gotten the exact level of what would you build if we did this? But more about here are the things we're considering. This is the overall vision. This is where we're trying to go and getting those reactions. And they've largely been very positive, very welcome. And the awareness of the possibilities, I think, moving forward is also something that people are excited about. So yeah, I'll stop there. And then I think transition to Ben to talk perhaps about some ground rents and what the economic forecast looks like.

Yes, Patrick. So Ben Kraft, for the record, Research and Strategic Projects, working on the economic development portions of this plan. So not to get too far ahead into some of the things I'll be talking about when we get to that set of the slides, but I did want to say that a lot of the 2009 plan was predicated on office development, like mixed-use office development, which made a lot of sense back then. And of course, unpredictable events happened. And this plan is a recognition that that's probably not going to have, you know, we're not going to get the office and mixed use that, that was envisioned, nor, you know, had we even between then and we even when conditions were a little bit more favorable for that. So, um, A lot of this just – and this is, again, something that we can't – we, the planning department, can't actually do. But we can help, especially with our partner agencies, think about R&D and manufacturing because that is, as we've – I think I've presented it a few other times and put out some other products, that that is the – the German town of Clarksburg is really becoming the heart of that area of the satellite and advanced communications industry, the life sciences, and even biomanufacturing. That's where this is. So I think kind of tailoring our zones as we go forward and like what Jamie has showed with like how the new proposed land use will work will be more accommodative of that, not necessarily right in the town center, but in some of these other larger parcels that could accommodate that. So I think that's one That's one thing. There's a weird kind of catch-22, just to go back to the costs and the rents and things like that, where we're in not just Germantown, but a lot of the county is caught in this space where rents are high in the sense that if you have to go rent an apartment or a business, it's high. It's a lot of money and it's a lot of your income, but kind of relatively speaking, relative to all these other costs, they're kind of low. And that makes it extra challenging, too. So even where in addition to all the other challenges to building, especially very dense buildings, the low rents actually are contributing to that, too. And so in a sense, there is a need to kind of hope. And I think what a lot of these recommendations are doing is, in a sense, not raise the rents, but raise the land values so that you can kind of fit more on each parcel. And that can then justify some of the more dense building that you would want to do. And so I think that's part of the strategy here also.

I'm glad you mentioned the land value, because that was actually on my mind before, too, and I want to come back to that. But it sort of relates back a little bit to what I was talking about with the transportation service kind of in the area, and to what extent new transit service, or relocated a nice transit center, and other things, too. The other multimodal stuff can contribute to some of those kind of higher land values, not, again, not to your point, not like in an exclusionary way, but in a way to sort of make some of these projects work. So, yeah, I'm kind of interested in coming back to that. But, yeah, thanks for that context.

Thanks, Jamie. Eli Galicia for the record, transportation planner, Transportation Planning Division. I think this is a really good segue from the land use piece to the transportation piece. I'm going to talk about what we're now calling land use area types, but you may be more familiar with this Complete Streets Design Guide area types. These are area classifications that are integrated into the county code that We've been very successful as a planning department at using to guide and influence the transportation design standards. I'm thinking about downtown boulevards, town center streets. All of these things are based on these area classifications. And what the underlying land use is for these areas influences what the street type should be. So we've also been successful with the Safe Streets Act of getting certain restrictions on Turning on red on speed limits on lpi and other things, based on these area type classifications and for sort of to maintain the integrity of the classifications of what a town center means of what a downtown means. it's important with every master plan to sort of evaluate the boundaries of those area types within the plan area. So sort of preliminarily what we've done in this plan is, I think, largely redefine the Germantown town center, which had been all the way up, which currently is all the way up into Black Hills. south of Father Hurley and Ridge Road down to about where the Topgolf is with the understanding that the existing development, the pipeline development, and what's anticipated to be the future development is not necessarily going to achieve that mixed use walkable density that the town center area would envision. So the underlying area type should reflect that. So the sort of black hatched areas here reflect a change from town center to suburban with the understanding that, yes, we are seeing some residential development here and not detached or attached but like townhouse and some denser development but not really the walkable commercial retail things that this area is still very much connected to the town center itself sort of the core of the town center along century boulevard but not in a way that's necessarily walkable it's still like pretty far to get there so we recommend sort of Shrinking the size of the town center to be like what is actually walkable to the core retail and commercial area there similarly milestone town center on the other side and We've spoken a little bit, and on the bus tour, we went into sort of this office complex with the associated residential spaces north of Ridge Road. That's not likely to become more mixed use. There might be different residential there, like we've been speaking about some of the office to residential potential there. But again, Ridge Road acts as a major barrier here to access, so thinking about the town center as just the immediate milestone area south of Ridge Road. Some other things we're recommending in line with the idea that We want to strengthen and maintain existing industrial space, increasing the area for some industrial land uses. Either the one where my cursor is now is existing industrial, but it's outside of the Germantown sort of industrial area, which is this sort of triangle-shaped piece here. And then there is existing industrial in the Fox Chapel Town Center that we're recommending become industrial as well. So the implication here, is that it will affect street design and the underlying street classifications in these areas. It will also affect MCDOT operational policy when it comes to traffic signals and things like that. But it is all in service of maintaining the integrity of the area types, because our ability to work with the county council to enact policy based on the area types, which is really important to us, relies on the underlying land use reflecting adequately the definition of that area type. So thank you.

My only question on that is just based on my, really just based on the combination of the tour and sometimes I've been up there, is heading north on Century, as you mentioned, there are applications kind of in the pipeline. There's some recent townhomes you referenced. There's, I think, one or two maybe mixed use, maybe a couple more than that, like just south of Ridge. Maybe it's just north of Ridge. Um, and Century itself, um, obviously was originally planned, I think, to have, it had the right-of-way for, like, at the time, this, uh, uh, corridor city's transit way. Still has, still very wide because of that in most places, right? And, um, so I guess what I'm getting at is that I'm wondering if that into a suburban, um, category and all the street design characteristics associated with that are we are we potentially missing out on something given what is there or what could potentially be there um like just as an example uh we you know looking down century boulevard at all the excess space it's abundantly clear that like that that extra space could be used for something interesting in the future i'm kind of curious what recommendations are going to come out of this plan to to fit that. It may not be density necessarily. It could be something like, I don't know, a linear park. It could be a lot of things in the future to take advantage of that extra right-of-way. But are we missing anything potentially if we place it in suburban classification?

It's a good question. I think potentially it could influence if there was additional new development that that isn't already in the pipeline. It could influence the design of private streets or things like that. We're not necessarily recommending new master plan streets in the suburban area. And the ones that already do exist, we would want to change their classification from a town center street to just like a neighborhood street or something like that. There's not like a tremendous difference in the actual characteristics of those streets. And then I would say the vision that we have for Century Boulevard in this corridor, sort of in what would be shown as suburban, is in line with what you're talking about, like repurposing the existing space instead of adding additional impervious surface for transit lanes, thinking about one side of the road being the transit, like using the existing right-of-way in a more efficient way with the understanding that the amount of traffic that this road will likely see in the future is much lower than what would have been anticipated in the 2009 plan with the amount of development, the office development that was anticipated that is not. does not come. So I think the master plan gives us a lot of ability to create the vision that you're talking about without necessarily having a street classification that doesn't necessarily reflect the underlying land use.

OK. Thanks. So before you leave the slide, you added this industrial piece here, the pie-shaped piece, right? So this part exists already. Oh, OK. Is there any new industrial?

Yeah, so immediately to the west here along Middlebrook is new. There is existing industrial activity there, but it's currently in the suburban zone. OK. So we recommend changing it to reflect the underlying land use.

In the pie shape, is there actual industrial there today? Or that's reserved for industrial?

It's mostly auto dealers, I believe. But there is. There are some small industrial uses. And I think there's a warehouse space along the interstate there.

So if someone asks, what percent have we increased our industrial area in this plan, is that

The land use area type is independent of the zoning. So the areas that are where the cursor is right now, that is currently industrial. The one with the plus signs, that's already zoned industrial. The land uses are already light industrial or medium industrial. We're just updating the area type as far as how the road code would interpret what kind of street treatments needed in that area. Over on the east side of 270, there is an area that's currently, I believe, a GR zone area. But the land uses that are in it are more light industrial. So since we're recommending a zoning change there to actually be industrial, we wanted to update the street land use area type to recognize that.

So if new industrial users wanted to come to this area,

Point to them saying here is ideal places for Industrial use right so I think the zoning would do that and then what the land use area type designation as industrial would do is if they had to build or reconstruct streets it would govern a I see. Largely for industrial streets, it's lane width and curb radii. Obviously, with larger vehicles serving industrial sites, you need to have sort of a more generous curb radius and potentially wider lanes. So this is a recognition that for those places to sort of function and thrive, they need sort of different roadway standards than in a more downtown area.

Thank you so much for that explanation.

Getting into the transportation, completing the segue from land use, the goals of transportation in this plan are not going to be foreign to any of you having reviewed our recent plans like Eastern Silver Spring, but improving safety, working to achieve Vision Zero, creating a connected pedestrian network, expanding the bike network. A big challenge in Germantown, which we talked about on the bus tour, is just improving east-west connections across 270 and improve north-south connections as well, the need to provide reliable and convenient transit both locally within Germantown and to regional destinations, and then the idea that we should be able to maintain our existing roadway capacity but potentially allocate it much more efficiently to create a more resilient network that can support all of our other goals. We've heard a lot from the community about transportation, generally with a focus on walkability, unsafe crossings, indirect routes. There may not be crosswalks on every street. There may be sidewalks immediately next to high-speed traffic. High speed drivers, obviously a concern. There's not a significant and cohesive network of bicycling facilities. And for folks in the plan area that rely on public transit, the schedule, the routing, and just the general availability of buses and their frequency can be really lacking. We've heard some stories from people in stakeholder meetings about taking the bus in one direction, but having the frequency or the routing of transit service where they can't get back to their houses without taking Uber or something without a ridiculous wait. So there are people in this area, even though it is largely suburban, that rely on transit and ensuring that the transit network serves them and serves the trips that they want to make. I've talked about this, I think, a couple times, but Germantown is home to two of the top 10 county-maintained high-entry network roads. So Middlebrook Road and Crystal Rock Drive are two of some of the most dangerous roads that the county maintains in Montgomery County. And then similarly, two of the top 10 state-maintained high-entry network roads in the plan area are in the plan area, Germantown Road and Frederick Road. So we have recommendations in the plan to lower posted speed limits and use roadway changes and enforcement to reduce speeding. We've worked with a consultant to do some speed studies on different segments, and they're working right now on a memo for us to identify specific strategies for specific corridors that we could work to forward and implement as part of the plan. In terms of streets, there are a number of recommendations. I'll expand on some of them in later slides. First, and I think is just to remove two currently master-planned streets. There are these sort of hatched ones that I'm circling here. These were master-planned in the earlier master plan. They're no longer either development has happened. Their feasibility was examined, and they were not feasible to construct. So we are just recommending removing them. Mr. Duke spoke about this, and I'll just expand upon it. The idea that we want to build out a more dense network of local streets. So where that largely happens in the master plan is in our town center. So in the upper right, you can see a large network of new streets in the Milestone Town Center that we're looking at adding to the master plan, which generally follow existing drive aisles and access within that shopping center that we drove through as part of the tour. So creating a more dense block structure here that allows for piecemeal redevelopment of that area over time. and while building out a network of walkable streets to provide more routing options, and then similarly in the Germantown town center, creating more of a network of streets here, again, using drive aisles and existing access.

So when you say drive aisles, those are like on the private streets or private shopping center? I don't know what is aisle.

So yeah, so I think the best way to think about it is like, The circulation roads, the private circulation roads that go through the parking lots in a development like that, they already are. They function. They serve a street-type function. But with redevelopment, we would want them to have appropriate sidewalks and bike facilities and things like that.

So hoping that those parking lots will start to redevelop. Yeah, exactly. So then as part of redevelopment, they dedicate the right of way for this.

Yeah, and the frontage improvements and the off-site improvements and things like that.

Okay, got it. Thank you.

Yeah. Additionally, like Mr. Duke said, constructing alleys and three-block service connections to enable sort of off-site, off-street loading and parking access and things like that. I think we have a very, I think, cool idea to implement what's called a curbless street so a normal street but instead of being six inches below the sidewalk level it's at sidewalk level so that generally it functions like a normal street in the downtown sort of the century area like where we stopped at Black Rock but if there were events that couple block stretch could be closed and then the whole space could be a festival experience where you would be able to walk and see the amphitheater and be on the grass and then go across the street as well. So really connect across Century into Black Rock. We have that recommendation. And then the recommendation to provide additional local streets across I-270. This is a big idea, and it speaks, I think, a lot to what we heard and have been hearing from members of the community, the idea that There are not a lot of connections across 270 for people driving, but also for people walking and biking and taking other modes. So in this area, there is, in the planned area, there's Father Hurley Ridge Road at the north, there's Germantown Road in the middle, then there's Middlebrook Road at the south. all three of these roads have interchanges to 270 on them. So if you're trying to go east-west in the plan area, as a local trip, you are in traffic with all the people trying to get to or from 270. And if you're a pedestrian trying to cross east or west or a bicyclist, you have to cross all of the interchange ramps in these areas as well. One of the big recommendations in this plan is in addition to the already master plan Dorsey Mill Road connection, which is at the far north of the plan area. is to add two additional local roadway connections, one from Century to Seneca Meadows Parkway, and then the other from Middlebrook Road to Frederick Road. And we think the benefit of this is it will provide folks making local trips additional routing options that get them off of the more congested roads that have the interchange connections. which is a way on the margins by moving traffic off of those really congested streets. It provides more capacity on those roads as well. And it will also provide places and corridors for people who are walking, biking. It will provide new options for transit to get across 270 as well to better, I think, knit together the two sides of the Germantown plan area and Germantown to make it easier for people to connect to and from the Germantown town center in places east and west.

So they go over I-270?

Yes.

So the one on top, do they have grade to make it? It looks short.

Yeah, no, it's definitely short. And it's something that I think they would have to continue to explore the feasibility for. But this was a connection that was master planned as part of the Corridor Cities Transitway. Oh, it was. Yeah, so this was already envisioned. There is right-of-way for this on the east side already. So, yes, I think with the typical caveats about a master-planned roadway connection, that additional engineering would have to be done. These are connections that, if they're not in a plan like this, they're not going to be built. So we want to be prepared and imagine a future where... you can get across 270 in this area without having to cross multiple interchange ramps, without having to be in traffic as a motorist with people that are trying to go into D.C. or north to Frederick or things like that.

Yeah, there is, is there anything I can recall? I-270 and Germantown Road, there's an interchange there?

Yes, all of the roads that cross.

So there is an interchange, but these two just going to go over?

Over, yeah, just bridges.

Yeah, I think it's a good idea. It takes the load away from the...

Yeah, the idea is, I mean, so this is an improvement when we present it to the public. Got it they were like it's not like often like when I'm presenting it's like about bike and ped and like Drive like there may be some concern about like taking away space. But what this is about is about providing more options for everybody and People people seemed really supportive of it when we presented it.

So excuse me if you could only have one which would you do?

That's a great question. Uh So Dorsey Mill is at the far north, which is not in this graphic, which is already completely designed and is in the CIP.

If we only get one east-west across 270, it would be Dorsey Mill.

I think that's true. But for this plan area and for people in this plan area, that connection does not provide the most utility. because it's at the far north end of the plan. It provides the most regional benefit, without question.

But of these two?

Of these two, I would pick the southern one, frankly. There's a lot more development on the south side, and it would provide, I think, a lot more benefit. But that being said, if it's not in the plan, it won't get built. So just because it's in the plan doesn't mean it has to be or will be constructed. So just a note.

I just want to note that the far right end of this, that's where Holy Cross Hospital is, to orient you just a little bit. So that's going through the Montgomery College campus, but at the south end. And so it goes around Holy Cross and then would connect through to 355 there.

One of our biggest ideas, biggest transportation ideas, and it addresses a core need in the community, which is the east-west connectivity and sort of the low-stress multimodal connectivity. Another big idea we have is thinking about ways to potentially realign some of the streets on the east side of the town center. So a key piece here is, so Century today sort of curves, you may recall, and then becomes the main street. So the idea here is that instead of doing that, Century would go straight and continue on to Germantown Road to provide a direct connection to Germantown Road. And then Crystal Rock, instead of curving and having aircraft come off of it, would continue straight onto aircraft. So we would create these two parallel north-south streets throughout the entire plan area, provide another connection, a north-south connection, onto Germantown Road, and then Century, what's called Century Boulevard today, that is sort of the main street of the town center, would meet at a T intersection with sort of the wider Century Boulevard that we think about today that we drove on the bus tour, sort of to allow a gateway treatment, placemaking, things like that at the entrance. And then also, I think another benefit of this potential is, Jamie talked about this really briefly or showed it in the graphic, but it allows for potential integration in the future into the Department of Energy property as well, which this plan doesn't have any concrete plans for and we don't know anything about. if any development there could ever happen, but it lays the groundwork for potential connections there to better integrate that site, that massive campus, into the town center if that were to be possible in the future.

Is that feasible, all of this that you're suggesting, or is it going to go through properties and structures?

It skirts existing buildings and structures at the moment. This is something that would have to happen sort of, as capital in concert with redevelopment to occur. But we think this is a really important way to continue to build out the block structure of the town center. And I think another thing I would say is, so this intersection here is Crystal Rock at Century. And when we stopped on the bus tour, we were at the transit. We stood at where the red dot is, and we looked to the west. conveyed what we had heard, which is that that intersection really acts like a massive barrier to people trying to go east-west in the town center because it's multiple lanes. There's a massive expanse of pavement there. This redesign would allow that street to become right-sized to reallocate the space, sort of eliminating that internal barrier that exists within the town center and better connecting, I think, the very successful core of the town center that we were all in, and we were all with Black Rock and the park and things like that, it would reduce the barrier and allow that to continue to the east. So these are large connections. It would be great if these things were done when these roads were originally built. But I think what we can do is create a vision and a structure for changes to be made into the future as redevelopment happens. So that's what we're doing.

I think this is a really compelling idea. But it seems like it would also require kind of a redesign of the interchange, the western part of the interchange, probably in a good way to make it more compact. I have no idea what the state has to say about that. But make it more compact. You also open up more potentially developable land as you kind of bring those ramps closer.

So we do have interchange recommendations. One of those recommendations is that the three interchanges within the plan area should be reconstructed in a more urban way. These are very much suburban cloverleaf style intersection interchanges that take up a lot of land, like you said. in this case, encroach very directly into the town center. So yes, we presented this idea to SHA a couple months ago. And yeah, everyone's on the same page that doing this would require a redesign of the interchange. And they provided a pathway that we could do that. There's a design process. So we'll see if, when, how that would happen. But again, this is a vision.

Yeah, I think it's interesting to talk about zoning and everything else on these projects and looking at the two cloverleaf interchanges within the plan are as big as any of the lots in there and, in fact, larger. There's chunks of land use that we can't touch because of those giant interchanges. Yeah, they're massive. They're huge.

And then beyond that, repurposing lanes on other streets. I mentioned these roads were really designed to move traffic as quickly as possible. I think what we've found, Century is a great example, is that some of these roads are underused, and the number of lanes that do exist encourages speeding. I would say speeding in the peak hours and incredibly dangerous speeding in the off-peak hours to the point where They're called drag strips and other things where there's just tremendous opportunities to drive incredibly fast. So we have recommendations in the plan to repurpose existing travel lanes, either for planned transit lanes or bikeways, to reduce the master-planned lanes that are already unbuilt. So if a road's already two lanes, for instance, and the master plan says it should be four, we're going to recommend sticking with the two that exist today. Some of these streets that we're thinking about Century or Crystal Rock, like one of those pair. Crystal Rock Drive South, which is the street that would be created through that reconfiguration. Middlebrook or Wisteria or potentially Germantown Road as well. And I'll get to this in a minute, but we're also exploring potential lane repurposing concepts as part of an upcoming placemaking effort, which I'll talk about. Interchanges. The 2009 plan recommended four interchanges Interchanges for motor vehicles at Ridge Road and Observation, at 355 and Ridge, at Germantown and 355, and then at Middlebrook and 355, the logic behind those recommendations was that The 2009 plan was going to catalyze so much office development that the level of service at those intersections was going to be such that they would need interchanges to function safely and provide the level of service that the plan required. That has not come to fruition, as you might imagine. We haven't seen the level of development that the 2009 plan envisioned. have run analysis and are continuing to run analysis on. We will run analysis on the master plan scenario of land use that you receive in the form of the working draft. But with what we see now, it does not make sense to advance those interchanges. So we're recommending removing those. As I said before, we're recommending reconstructing the three interchanges here, 1, 2, 3, as sort of more constrained urban diamond interchanges that would still have the same ramp space and directionality, but would be on a much more constrained footprint. to allow potential repurposing or, in some cases, to allow for additional roads to connect and realign. And then lastly, this is a bit of a change from, I think, what you received in the preliminary recommendations in the staff report. There was a recommendation in the 2009 plan to create a transit and HOV interchange at Father Hurley Road. Sorry, Dorsey Mill Road, just north of Father Hurley. I think we're recommending not to retain that. There could be opportunities in the future for transit service to utilize that and for HOV to utilize that. So we're recommending retaining that. 270, sort of from 270 onto the to-be-constructed Dorsey Mountains.

So another interchange on 270?

Yeah, so the 2009 plan said this would be just a from-the-north and to-the-north interchange, so it wouldn't necessarily go to the south. It would be intended for people who are coming from the north. to access initially the CCT. So there was park and ride facilities envisioned here that you would drive, park, take the bus. And then when you came home, you would get off the bus and then take your car back north. There are still, I think, this is already in the master plan, and we don't necessarily want to preclude that from happening as part of any managed lanes things that may happen on 270. So we're just recommending retaining it for now. improvements. I think Mr. Duke talked about the need for additional mid-block crossings. We've also looked at our Complete Streets Design Guide framework for these street classifications and looked at sort of the spacing of protected intersections. And all of the red dots that you see are additional protected crossing locations that we recommend sort of advancing through this plan. And then similarly, you may remember as part of the Pedestrian Master Plan, we identified across the county over 300 pedestrian shortcuts, so like little pieces of trail that people maybe had been informally using but weren't actually sidewalks or trails. So there are a number of those in this plan area that are highlighted. There are purple lines that are highlighted in green on this map. And I think you can probably see them a little bit better in the staff report. I think the only one that I really want to call attention to at this point is right at this intersection of Century and Father Hurley. You'll recall that Century goes under Father Hurley. That's just an underpass. And this recommendation is for a set of stairs. to connect between the two that would, I think, reduce pedestrian travel time in this area significantly because the alternative is walking all the way around here. And instead, people would just be able to directly cross. So I think there are some really high value connections here that provide more direct pedestrian connectivity in places where the street grid has not necessarily been kind to people walking or biking.

is the recommendation for where the stairs are, which I think is great. Is there a way to add on an accessibility component to that, too, where everything's an additional cost and it's more capital stuff? But I don't know if, by law, that needs to be part of this sort of pedestrian project. But regardless of if it's required or not, I think it would be interesting to at least explore if there's the possibility for a ramp, at least on one side, that could help people with mobility challenges to make that same movement?

That's definitely something we can look into. I think in places where I've seen something similar in other places, it's maybe an elevator or something like that. There are obviously ongoing maintenance and operational challenges with something like that. But yeah, I think that's something that we can look into.

I think the existing, because I was going to ask the same question. you are required. And I had a lot of struggle that in some places it was cost prohibitive to do the ADA. And then I was saying, well, then You do the stairs and then see what you can do. You just showed another, I do not know how far it is, another alternative that people are doing right now. I do not know if that's accessible or how far is that. I cannot tell how far they have it.

No, it is accessible. Like the existing pathway is accessible. The existing pathway. How far is it? It would, I think. I think we would find that it was a substantial detour beyond the direct route. I cannot tell. Yeah, I think this is a challenge because- Yeah, that's a big challenge. Yeah, if the alternative is not advancing a project, then there's no connectivity for anyone, which I think is also problematic. Yeah, I mean, yeah. So we will continue to discuss that, and we're continuing to discuss that in regulatory things as well. Great. In terms of the bikeway recommendations, this plan largely looks to just reinforce the bikeway recommendations identified in the Bicycle Master Plan. They're generally shown on the screen. There is a very comprehensive network of separated bike lanes. The new streets that the plan, that the preliminary recommendations recommend, also have appropriate bikeways identified along them. We would like to use bike facilities to connect to natural resources using off off-road trails, off-street trails, and then we recommend removing, there was a trail that was supposed to parallel the corridor city's transit way, and because that project isn't happening anymore, we're just recommending removing that trail from the plan. Transit The plan largely confirms the 2022 corridor forward plans recommended transit, which is the main spine of the 355 BRT. And then all of these other corridor connectors that come off of that. Most of these have recommended dedicated transit lanes as well. So we're recommending that. In some cases, like I mentioned on Century, the roadway configuration that was master planned envisioned additional space used for transit lanes. I think we're imagining the repurposing of existing lanes for transit on Century in particular and likely on Seneca Meadows as well. The corridor forward plan also supports, and we support as well, a red line extension into the town center from Shady Grove. and then mark train service improvements that would hopefully lead to sort of what we would call a two-way all-day service on the Brunswick line. We continue to be supportive of that. I think when you talk to people in Germantown, they're very aware that wedges and corridors, as sort of the foundational plan, general plan for Montgomery County, envisioned corridor cities like Germantown to have a development and transit, and that promise has not been kept yet in Germantown, so it's really important not only that this plan confirm those recommendations and work to advocate for those improvements to be made, but that the county actually makes progress on implementing them.

Can I jump in just with a quick question for when we get further along with the Germantown plan? I mean, I know that for transit advocates within Montgomery County and Maryland more generally, two-way all-day service has been a huge thing on the MARC train for A long time now. My daughter's 12, so at least that long. What other than money is the hang-up there? And it's not an answer to the question we need right now, but other than simple funding, is there anything that we can do or recommend in the plan that would encourage that in a substantive form? Same with the red line, but that's a whole other kettle of fish. Let's skip that for now.

I would say that money would solve a lot of problems in regard. I think there's right-of-way issues. There's operational issues. There needs to be additional trackage. And that requires right-of-way. That requires money. You've seen, likely, in Northern Virginia, the purchase of some freight rail to allow for VRE to be expanded, which is fantastic.

Three point something billion, I think, for a CRE.

It costs a lot of money. And that's a generational transportation improvement. This would also be a generational transportation improvement. Just a quick anecdote. I had a meeting in Rockville one time when we were based in Silver Spring, and I took the markup. Just to be able to take the MARC train is incredible through Montgomery County. And for more people to be able to do that, I think, is one of the main things that would really catalyze development of all kinds in Germantown and these quarter communities. So I think I'm not sure there's much we can do beyond continue to support this and continue to point to master plans that advocate for this. But it would be massive.

No, no, that's it. I mean, I know that 99.9% of the problem is that it costs a ton of money. But for things like right-of-way or if we could throw some concrete recommendations or at least something in there to signal more than, yeah, it'd be nice if it came. If somebody else did something about it, that'd be good. Not that that's it, but we can't do it all ourselves. It's a huge undertaking. But it would be the most fundamentally effective and practical thing we could do for both the development and access for Germantown. And it's criminally underused and underinvested in Maryland, in my opinion, and the MARC system in general. But something I think worth particularly for this plan giving some attention and focus to.

I think so. We could speak to this potentially with Mark and I think also with the red line. I think there's the need probably for some further preliminary engineering work and planning work on more of the engineering side. So potentially there could be master plan recommendation to do that. I think that's obviously... figuring out where the red line, for instance, should go from Shady Grove up to Germantown is beyond the scope of this plan specifically, but we could make that recommendation.

But yeah, I mean, Central Boulevard, it's not the thing where it would be, but we have areas in here, and I think you know, right of way from the quarter cities and spaces that are located within the plan that at least we could make mention of, you know, hey, if you wanted to take the red line up here, this would be a decent spot to have it, or something along those lines, but something to just be a little concrete. We don't have to, you know, do it in detail here, but I think it's worth... as this area grows and as we're dealing with all this, that we've got a mark station, we've got plans for a red line, and as you said, we've planned for transit to be here for the whole time, and it never has. I think it would be worth emphasizing that, hey, there is some transit, and we can do some work with making it more accessible, available, and useful.

And then the last transit recommendation, which is also kind of an economic development recommendation. We'd like to consider relocating the transit center, moving it. Right now, it's on aircraft sort of on the west side. And just looking at potential places to move it in the immediate area in concert, sort of working closely with MCDOT moving forward in such a way that maintains the existing operational configuration. So it doesn't make transit trips longer, but potentially unlocks the ability to better redevelop that block. So nothing concrete, nothing specific, just like future work and future collaboration with MCDOT on that. And then lastly, I mentioned the placemaking. There is a pilot project from our design division to support our plan's transportation recommendations in partnership with MCDOT, all of the planning teams, and then tool design to look at repurposing some of the lanes on Century Boulevard between Crystal Rock and Aircraft, which are shown here. to better connect that space, which we were standing on when we got off the bus when we first got to Germantown in the bus tour, to the town center. This is a phased project. The first phase, which is just like analysis and potential design, is going to kick off in a couple weeks, in a week. And then the second phase would start later this year. So that's all from me. Jamie has generously built in intermission here for folks. But thank you.

Seventh inning stretch, yeah. Well, before you, we never, you weren't here this morning when Jason announced your promotion, so congratulations. Thank you very much. But approximately how many more slides do you have?

Okay, great. Because they're not as controversial.

Welcome back, everyone. We're continuing on item number 11, Germantown Sector Plan Amendment Preliminary Recommendations, and led by Jamie Pratt, and please continue.

I'm going to continue by turning it over to Henry from Parks.

All right. Hi, everybody. Henry Coppola, Parks Long Range Planning Supervisor. Happy to be with you guys again. I'm pinch-hitting today for our lead park planner for this project, Lillian Merton, who couldn't be here, so I do have some cheat sheet notes and stuff but she did a great job getting me prepared along with Jamie and and the slides and always like to stay involved so we will see if we can walk you guys through um I currently have to hit that and not click the advanced button on the mouse so uh touching on our parks goals briefly um these are pretty standard for us uh sort of county-wide and then as we look more specifically at plan areas too these are the the standard ones that have kind of come to the top um we're looking at expanding active recreation opportunities as we've looked around in the existing conditions and talk to folks in the plan area. Things to do in parks are something that appears to be in need. Improving access to parks. We don't have, as you'll see on the next slide, or two slides from now, mention the number of parks here. We don't have a ton of them in the plan area. We've got a lot in the close by area, and getting to them is something that we're looking at a way to improve access to and people's ability to use the parks. Stewarding our natural and cultural resources. There's some interesting ones here that we want to take care of. And then strengthening social connections in parks, something we're always interested in, in addition to those sort of active recreation things. How are people interacting with each other and connecting socially when they're in parks? Speaking of things we've been hearing from people, added this slide just to talk about some of the concerns that have really been getting underlined lately, particularly as we've spoken with more young people, especially teens and folks in the plan area who are working with them a lot. So hearing from the principal and staff at the high school, for example. There's a lot of need for there to be space for teams to be themselves, to do things, to stay active and engaged, and thinking about ways in which we might be able to help provide some of that in the parkland and the plan area is one of the things we're working on. So I mentioned larger context. You can see the plan area here, a couple of shots from some of the parks in the plan area. We've got seven parks that are either entirely within or partially within the planned area. There's a couple extreme valley parks and a regional park that only have little pieces of them in here. And then within the two miles outside of the planned area, though, there's another 55 parks and almost 40 miles of trail. So there's a lot to do park-wise in the area. But it's not right there. And like I mentioned, looking at how we get people there is important. And that's also important because as we've looked at the plan area, there's really limited opportunities to create new parkland. Nothing's jumping out as this would work really well and be a slam dunk for a spot to put a brand new park in. And as Roberto talked a little bit about, that's one of the reasons that the POPs, privately owned public spaces, are going to be an important aspect of recommendations in this plan as well. So we're really focusing on strengthening the network of public spaces that we have, looking at how we can improve those existing parks and connections to them are kind of driving where we're going with parks here. So we're going to take a quick look at touching on all the existing parks and things we've started to think about for them and these preliminary recommendations. Germantown Town Center Urban Park, if you remember when we got out and walked about a block along the library after stopping in front of Black Rock Center for the Arts there, the park that we kind of pointed around the corner to to demonstrate that it was not easy to see is tucked back in there. It's a gorgeous park to walk through and spend time in. If it's not being programmed, there's not a ton of active stuff to do there. We've been hearing that a lot from park users in the community, so we're looking at that. is there space that we could put something more engaging in what are the opportunities to make sure that we keep programming it well um the library and black rock are right there are there potential opportunities to to get them more involved um germantown square urban park is uh across the street um it's at middlebrook and germantown road it is under resourced we had some old resources there that um came to the end of their useful life and were removed, and we haven't been able to figure out exactly what should go back in there yet. It's close to the high school. We're looking at whether we can test run some things, maybe a little bit of pop-up skate park equipment there, as that's another thing that's been prominently requested, particularly by younger folks in the area, and that our analysis shows a skate park in the area would probably be pretty useful. Plumgar Local Park's another interesting one. There is a small Montgomery County Rec Department recreational center there. We're looking at how their visitors and park users sort of interact and overlap. And there's a lot of parking issues there. So that's a spot where we're trying to figure out is there are ways we can address that to keep that very busy park as busy as possible and not overwhelmed with cars. Uh, taking a quick look at these other ones, Germantown East Local Park is an interesting one, and we don't actually have a ton of recommendations for changing it there because we leased that to the Boys and Girls Club. Um, and one of the things, one of our most prominent recommendations for this one's actually going to be, like, just being a little bit more clear and communicating about that. If you look at a park map right now, it says Germantown East Local Park on it, and not Boys and Girls Club of Germantown. Um, they're, they're a good partner, uh, This has kind of always been the arrangement here, but making that a little bit more clear and having them keep doing the important programming and things that they're doing there. Touching quickly on Black Hill Regional Park, and we've combined that with North Germantown Greenway Stream Valley Park, since they're at the top end of the plan here and both have important trail connections into the plan area, but really only have those pedestrian trail connections, particularly Black Hill. We've talked a little bit on the tour and also when we were talking about the Clarksburg Gateway Sector Plan, about the issues with not really being able to bring more vehicular access in here through a best natural area and the topography and stuff. But can we continue to make the existing access that we have and the access that we can provide improved and easier to find and use? And then mentioning as well the Great Seneca Stream Valley Park, which is tucked down in one of the sort of the southeastern arm of the plan area where it comes down off. Just outside of the plan area, there's a trailhead and entry to the Great Seneca Stream Valley Park, which stretches. One of our big stream valley parks, it stretches for quite a while once you're on that trail network, which is great. And I'd be remiss if I didn't touch on, because I can see it in the Orange dotted line in the presentation earlier on potential crossings of 270 and the Dorsey Mill Bridge. That's one that's long been on our radar to advocate for as a park trail connection. It'll help make that eventual big loop from Black Hill across up and around to Little Bennett and then back down through the 10 Mile Creek corridor. So that will be an important crossing in the future, hopefully, as well. and then touching on as we wrap up as I started by mentioning the privately owned public spaces are going to be important in this plan area working to figure out where those might fit best what kinds of programming they could have this is an example of one of the things in the photo there that we're looking at our our biggest waitlist request area for for community gardens tends to be in this area of the county and Germantown so We don't have a great spot to add one to a park right now, so that's another thing that when we're looking at POPs and things like that, would that be a possible entity that we could work on there as well? And I think one of these bullets does call out the Up County Regional Services Center is in the planned area, and POPs that was near there might be able to create some nice synergy in community garden and some of the food security issues that the county also works on. And if I'm right, I think that gets me to the end of park stuff. I probably will pause before we hit historic resources in case you guys have anything. Otherwise, I will say thank you.

Thank you so much. The key there was more connections. Yes, definitely. Thank you. Great. Thank you, guys.

Good afternoon. Dan Brooker, Cultural Resources Planner. Talked about historic resources. Our goals are pretty much the same for every plan. With this one specifically, I would like to point you to the last bullet point to ensure compatible new development. And I'll tell you why in a minute. Jamie, go to the next slide. So there are a number of designated historic sites. There are also two cemeteries. Both of these are 19th century cemeteries. And they're on our burial sites inventory. Additionally, the US Atomic Energy Commission is on the National Register of Historic Places. It's not locally designated. And then all of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and Metropolitan Branch are determined to be eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. And then there are additional sites that are locally designated. The Pumphrey-Matini House, which is the blue house in the center, this is the one that's located in the middle of the Mark parking lot. The Cider Barrel, which is the one that's shaped like a barrel, which is a bit of 1920s roadside architecture. The Warren Crawford Farmhouse. And then the Madeline Waters House. And you see that's in the illustration in the lower left. And then on the upper right is a photograph of the Warring Crawford Farm. So as with all plans, we want to encourage and educate people on the benefits of our tax credit program, collaborate with partners. And then specifically for the Pumphrey-Matini House, we want to ensure that any development around it doesn't tower over it. So we'd like to have a one- or a two-story base for the buildings immediately adjacent to that. and then it can step back up. That gives the resource a little bit of room to breathe, and it maintains the fact that it's a special resource. And then go to the next slide. And then the Madeline Waters House gets its own slide because it's a very unique resource as far as we're concerned. The house was constructed 1899 to 1902. It was designated in 1985 as a master plan resource. 11 months later, it was destroyed by fire. It has been... contemplated in the 1989 Germantown Plan and the Mark Rails Community Plan and has been retained as a master plan site for the duration. Even when Germantown Road bisected, the area to the north is where the house was. To the south, there was some environment and an alley of trees. Those are all gone. All of the trees have died. In 2023, after a number of sites of this nature, where the resource is gone through, in most of those cases, through no act of the owner themselves, the HBC adopted a policy to examine these sites and how to treat them. And one of their recommendations was to bring these sites forward through geographic master plans to get them delisted. In the 50 years of the program, this will be the first delisted site where supportive of it. And next week, Wednesday, is the Historic Preservation Commission's hearing to evaluate our recommendation. Once they've made a motion and voted, they will bring their recommendation to you. And hopefully, it will be to delist the 7.7-acre site, which we don't find has the integrity and justifies listing on the master plan further.

for development?

Well, I mean, right now there's a 1997 NTB to the north of Germantown Road. And then in the south of the street, there is a 2003 three-story credit union building. And then there's a concrete foundation from another commercial building that was there. So it has been thoroughly developed in the late 20th and 21st century. Oh. Every single change to the site requires a historic area work permit. So there's an administrative burden on the property owners. There is an administrative burden on us as historic preservation staff to carry those forward. So our objective is to evaluate and then, if appropriate, delist, and that will remove the burden on both the staff and the owners to get the additional permitting requirements.

Yeah. Something then is not historic is not there. Why should we call it historic? That's what I was wondering. And why should you get the developer or whoever is there to pass them through Ringer for something that doesn't exist?

So what I will say is the Historic Preservation Commission has taken a very lenient approach to these historic area work permits. But the only way to delist them is through the master planning process. So whether that's as a standalone amendment to the Master Plan for Historic Preservation And as part of a geographic master plan, it requires a lot of staff time and energy and research to develop everything for that amendment, which is why we haven't done it until now.

So you just pointed out to something that needs to be streamlined. If something doesn't exist, it doesn't need to go to a master plan to delist it. Maybe they should find something much easier that they can just do it and let the land to be developed or whatever it is that needs to be done.

So, I mean, the master plan for historic preservation is a functional master plan. So to amend it in any way requires the same process whereby the Historic Preservation Commission has to review it and provide their recommendation to the planning board. The planning board needs to take it on and come to their recommendation. And then the county council would need to take it on. And it's not a requirement that the county council act on any master plan amendment. they can take it up or elect not to, depending on their needs and their availability. So by bringing it forward as part of this geographic master plan, they will act on it. And that was why we're bringing this forward as part of this plan rather than a standalone amendment.

Yeah, I would just underscore that because it is a master plan process. It does a master plan. designation, it needs to go through the master plan process. But the other thing I would point out is that there are different reasons for things to be designated. And so we can have a policy that simply says because it no longer exists, it should come out. Because it could be that it was designated for architectural significance and maybe that building no longer exists and then it might be reasonable to remove that. But if it was designated because something historic happened or someone lived there that had historic the person's life had some historic value that we want to commemorate, whether or not the building that they lived in is still there or whatever. So there are numerous things that need to be taken into account when this is all being done. And so that's what the process allows.

There are, I believe it's nine criteria that would qualify a property for listing on the master plan for historic preservation. So we need to go through all nine of those to ensure that it doesn't meet those criteria before recommending delisting.

Thanks. I'm Ben Kraft again. I'm going to briefly go over the economic development goals and recommendations. So we've talked a little bit about this already, but just want to go over the main goals, which are there's really kind of two prongs to them for economic development. One is the idea of just reinforcing the town center as a community destination, which in that goal, most of what is involved in that is just essentially like doubling down on what everybody's already said that they've already gone through with you here, which is just to make the town center a more vibrant place that can support more businesses with more people. The other part is the idea of our economic base and our innovative industries like life sciences and other aerospace and defense research and development and manufacturing industries. Because Germantown right now has got the best opportunity for where we have space to actually site some of these industries. And so just really thinking about how we can make the area more readily able to have this sort of development for really the kind of industries that export things and bring money, wealth back into the county that really supports all of these industries. these improvements that we want to see for our quality of life. And then finally, what goes along with both of the prongs is the idea of reducing barriers to reinvestment, which we talked a little about with the TDR and BLT requirements. So again, this is really just, for the most part, reiterating things that people have already said in the transportation and land use sections. just trying to make better use of the parcels along the town center of Century Boulevard to really foster a larger town center. Because one of the keys to doing any of this is, once again, increasing the population. We need more people there to have more activity, to spend more money. And that's really going to be one of the main drives. Also, to create population for transit use, too, to support a more robust transit system. So any of the things that we've already mentioned hinge on having more population there. Of course, there's a chicken and egg problem because people will, you know, having those things first would actually make it more enticing for people to live there. So that's just one of those kind of perpetual planning questions that we'll be trying to wrestle with and figure out. The one thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is the idea of a business improvement district or urban district. The umbrella term we've used for other plans is a place management organization. This was a recommendation in 2009. Obviously, it hasn't come to fruition yet. But the chamber up there, I believe, is doing a study. I don't think we know the status of that. there does at least appear to be interest in exploring that. And again, that would be a way of coordinating all kinds of things in that area, placemaking, streetscape improvement, any other kinds of transportation investments, and even to things like marketing for businesses, just whatever that organization, if it comes to fruition, would want to be, it could be done. Even if it's typically our urban districts in the county, the way they're set up are usually kind of just like helping with the community festivals and keeping things clean and and making sure public safety is taken care of, which is also great. But depending on how they're funded and how they work, they could take on plenty of different functions. And so this set of recommendations is more about the economic base, innovative industries. Probably, for the most part, these would be going, we're not really looking at that town center because it's kind of hard to fit some of these uses there, would be probably more in the periphery of the plan area because we would need large sites for large buildings. And in some cases, there may be security requirements and things like that. And all of these requirements are these recommendations like marketing, especially when we're looking at what could go on Montgomery College's site, the investing in pre-development steps, just like making sure sites have the power and water infrastructure they need, which in Germantown, a lot of them already do. But these would require partnerships. These are a lot of functions that would lie outside of Montgomery planning. And we'd be partnering with people like MCEDC, the county executive's office, and chambers of commerce to do these. And we're already working with MCEDC on a map of opportunity sites around the county. And there's a few in Germantown. The last one is really, which has already also been touched on, but is the reducing impact fees and other pre-development costs. I think that, as we saw, the TDR BLT, reducing that requirement I think really will go a long way. There is, you know, something is, has been broken in Germantown, just given that we're kind of offering, I guess, discounted density, which land economics should say that you'd want that. But the way development has gone, nobody has taken us up on that. So there's got to be something. I think it's clear that the very expensive TDRs and BLTs have something to do with that. But I think we'll be looking even more, as we look into the public benefits, how we can really tailor that to get the right benefits for Germantown, but not stop the development that would otherwise be there and make use of that density. And I think that will take us down there. Can I ask a question?

The CompSat center that we just had the sector plan is north of here. I don't know how far it is. Not that far.

Not that far. Just a mile. I don't know in miles, but is it a mile?

Not a mile, yeah. So there is a lot going on there, I hope, because they were thinking about bringing some of these that you're talking about I'm wondering why can't we just sort of tie this together and see that how this master plan that you have could support the CompSAT and vice versa from the other side that we come. Because these lines boundary areas is not on the ground. I think it is important that we look at the neighborhood and the potential on the neighborhood and see how that could help and impact the area that we are studying or how we could be a support for what that is going to come in the near future. Because they're going to hopefully, finger crossed, they're going to come sooner than this. So we could see how we could take advantage of that. I don't know. You're the expert.

Yeah. Well, I think, again, all of the most of what this maybe we could more explicitly state how this plan and the Clarksburg plan would work together. In essence, they're very similar in how they're both really acknowledging that they are the areas that can absorb the type of industrial and R&D development that would go on. at a site like ComSat. And then adding all the transportation infrastructure and more population, I think, goes right along with that. So I think we could probably just make it more explicit in the plan. And as we're talking about it, that this It is one I-270 corridor and one very important section of the corridor. So yeah, I think we can.

And we need to get more population here. So you want to get more activity to make it more active, make it more live. And just the population in that area may not make it. So we have to make it so attractive that people from other places come here for food. Germantown Town Center, when it was developed, it attracted a lot of people from different areas of the county to come. But then gradually died off, I guess, because other places was opening up. And, you know, I don't know what happened, but didn't have that oomph that when they started, it didn't continue to have that. But, you know, for what you are describing, we need to use the potential of the neighboring community outside the planned area to contribute to the success of what you are planning, especially you have the ComSat Center. I think that would be a great asset for this.

Yeah, I think you're right. And I probably didn't emphasize, I believe, right, as in the preliminary recommendations draft, there is actually language about making, you know, reinforcing Germantown as the kind of commercial hub for basically up-county. So I think that I probably didn't give it enough due in this talk right here. But I believe that is in there. And we can definitely re-emphasize that in future drafts as we go. But yes, I think that's the idea is that this is the center where everyone from that can kind of accommodate all of the bulk of the activity for up county and where people can really meet and feel a sense of place there.

Essentially, but one another. So we did try to make some recommendations for more direct connection to that RE2 portion that was PARCC. It's very challenging for various reasons, so we did fall back to the observation drive alignment in conjunction with the Dorsey Mill connection that would actually connect the two town centers. So that's just one physical connection. And that's just the physical connection, but our recommendations have very much, we've been reviewing these plans in concert, not by accident. a year apart from one another, thinking of this as sort of one big idea, but two distinct recommendations for two distinct communities.

And they could walk. If it is just one mile away, people can walk. So it's like when you go to Bethesda, you have two districts, the older and the newer one. And people can go, you know, spend the whole afternoon or one weekend walking. you know, go to one place, explore what is out there, provide things that people can entertain, a whole family, and then they could walk and come back to this area. So connect these two town centers in a way that they both support and help each other.

I would have loved that, but I don't see them in the room any longer. So yeah, we'll carry that back.

For the record, Bhavna Sivisaramanian, housing planner with design, placemaking, and policy. I know we've had quite a bit of housing conversations earlier in the presentation, so I will try not to repeat, but just to reiterate some of the housing context in the plan area. It has a very diverse mix of housing types, but production has not kept pace with demand. There have been changing household structures, such as higher birth rates, multi-generational living, shared housing. That's all contributed to rising population to unit ratios. And so as we also mentioned, there's a lower homeownership rate here, and all of this kind of underscores the need for both increased housing opportunities and long-term housing stability. So given that context, there are five main housing goals for the plan. The first is to increase housing supply to help meet countywide housing targets and support growth in activity centers, particularly along key corridors and near transit. Expand housing choice to serve diverse households, life stages, and needs. preserve existing market rate affordable housing, and mitigate displacement for low-income renters as redevelopment occurs, increase availability of affordable housing across a range of income levels, including deeply affordable units, and lastly, promote equitable access to housing opportunities in all neighborhoods supporting racial and economic diversity. The recommendations is around housing production. Within the plan area, there are just over 7,200 units, and 62% of these are multifamily. A third, 33%, are single-family attached, and only 5% within the plan area are single-family detached. And I know, Chair Harris, you had asked a question about ADUs, and I quickly looked it up in the past hour. There are zero ADUs within the plan area itself. That's not surprising, given the low number of single-family detached houses. And then within the broader planning area, there are only three, so not so many within this area. So we recommend adding more units to the plan area and a mix of housing types and unit sizes to meet the diversity of incomes and households, which include young families with children, first-time homeowners, and multi-generational families. And we've seen, as was mentioned before, a boom in townhouses in this area, but we would like to see a variety of other types of houses, including duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes, and small multifamily buildings. Given the existing transit in Germantown, the plan recommends advancing transit-oriented development by coordinating with the Department of Transportation to pursue TOD designation for key sites. And one of these key sites is the MARC station and adjoining parcels that's seen in the photo here. And then lastly, within this bucket, the plan area, it has a considerable number of family-sized townhouses. But again, we want to incentivize family-sized market rate units and MPDUs and other types of housing as well. And as Jamie mentioned at the beginning of the presentation, the overlay zone will incentivize certain types of housing, but those details have yet to be finalized. We're going to talk about housing preservation. The plan area has a significant amount of market rate affordable housing, with average multifamily rents for non-subsidized units typically below 70% of AMI. So this next set of recommendations focuses on preserving the supply, which is really essential to maintaining affordability and preventing displacement as Germantown continues to grow. So we support the right to return with relocation assistance, meaning that residents who are temporarily displaced, either due to redevelopment or rehabilitation, have the right to move back into the property once construction is complete. The plan aims to leverage partnerships with public, private, nonprofit, philanthropic, and religious institutions to preserve and expand housing affordability. And we also encourage the use of funding tools like HIF contributions and pilot agreements to make the preservation of market rate affordable housing financially viable for owners. So as mentioned, housing affordability is a major concern. We heard a lot from residents during community engagement. Under the existing NPDU law, new developments or redevelopments with 20 or more units require at least 12.5% NPDUs. We recommend keeping this requirement within the overlay zone as to not disincentivize development in these areas where we want to see the more dense growth. So we did have considerable discussion internally around this MPD requirement. And we decided this approach really accounts for market trends and development conditions and prioritizes where we want to see development, which is along these and in these transit areas. And then in line with other recent master plans, we recommend 15% MPDUs in new developments or redevelopment outside of this overlay zone, so in the rest of the plan area that's not green on this map. The plan area has several public properties, including the library, Black Rock Art Center, the combined police fire site, And so we recommend that in the event of redevelopment, there should be a goal of 30% MPGUs on these sites, 15% affordable to households earning the standard MPGU level, and 15% affordable at deeper affordability levels at or below 50% AMI. And then lastly, the last recommendation in this bucket is regarding supportive housing. The poverty rate in this area has risen rapidly in the past two decades, signifying the need for economic resources, including housing. We recommend promoting supportive housing development by encouraging permanent and temporary housing for people experiencing homelessness. And there's currently no homeless shelter in this area, so we believe this is a sound recommendation here. And lastly, we have a few housing equity recommendations. As a reminder from existing conditions, Germantown is one of the county's most racially and ethnically diverse communities, with multiple racial ethnic groups representing equal portions of the population. It also has a higher rent-occupied rate than the county, and 2022 is 41% versus 34% countywide. So we recommend supporting and strengthening existing homeownership programs for low-income residents, people of color, and young adults. As mentioned previously, we also recommend encouraging a broader range of housing types, including duplexes, triplexes, and small multi-family buildings. These missing middle types can really provide more attainable homeownership opportunities, particularly for renters transitioning into homeownership. And finally, to think beyond just helping people buy homes, but really to ensure long-term affordability and stability, tools like community land trusts and shared equity models can be useful here. recognizing that the planning department can't administer these, but we do support our other nonprofit organizations that do.

Okay. Good afternoon, commissioners. For the record, I'm Steve Finley with the Environment and Climate Division. Knowing that you've seen and heard a lot of material today, and it's been a lot of stuff to cover. We thought we would present some of the most interesting and exciting and important information later in the presentation here, so I'm happy to cover the environment and sustainability recommendations for you now.

Josh is very happy. Commissioner Lindh.

So the goals for environmental sustainability in the Germantown Plan are drawn, of course, originally from the recommendations in Thrive Montgomery 2050, which identified that our master plan priorities for creating environmental resilience are addressing climate change, protecting and improving water quality, protecting and improving air quality, and preserving biological diversity, protecting and improving human health, and addressing environmental justice issues. Thrive also commits the MNC PPC in Montgomery County to implementing the actions in the county's climate action plan, which are under the scope of our work program. And we've also taken into consideration feedback that we've obtained from our community outreach efforts. So a number of the things that we've identified as goals also are supported by things we've heard in community testimony. So given that, the goals for the plan for environmental sustainability are to reduce urban heat island impacts by increasing shade and tree canopy while encouraging site and building design that helps to lower temperatures, improving stormwater management and water quality by promoting practices that reduce runoff and support healthy stream systems, protecting biological diversity through conserving sensitive natural areas and supporting landscapes that sustain native species and habitats, protecting human health by reducing exposure to air pollution, excessive noise, and extreme heat, reducing energy use and emissions through encouraging cleaner energy, improved efficiency, and sustainable building and site design, Advancing environmental justice by focusing resources and attention on communities that are disproportionately affected by environmental burdens. And strengthening climate resilience by integrating nature-based solutions and expanding green cover to better withstand climate impacts. One of the most important things that we want to cover dealing with the climate impacts is dealing with the increasing heat that we get with climate change. This is one of our heat maps that we are frequently referring to these days to help us Focus in on the areas that are hotter, and those areas are typically characterized by areas of high imperviousness and low tree cover and vegetative cover. The areas that have more vegetation and tree cover show up as cooler areas. You can see among others here, if I can get that, One of those places up here, this is where the Germantown Bog is, so you can see how that shows up in this slide as being one of the cooler areas. So these recommendations to reduce heat islands may sound familiar to you because many of you heard the presentation that was presented a little earlier this year on urban heat. So to address urban heat, heat island impacts. The plan recommends increasing shade in developed areas by targeting the impervious areas, parking lots, roadways, and transit stops, providing tree canopy and supplemental shade structures, creating continuous shade along the corridors by planting closely spaced native trees, and by providing sufficient soil volume to support long-term canopy growth. Reducing heat absorption in built environments by using heat reflective pavements, permeable materials, lighter colored surfaces, green or cool roofs, and expanded landscaping. Again, you saw examples of those in the earlier presentation. Incorporating cooling features into urban design by supporting green spaces, shade structures, and cooling centers in high heat areas. and by protecting and preserving mature trees and forests by prioritizing their retention and site design and redevelopment. I also want to note that we try to place a special focus on these and other human health recommendations as identified as disadvantaged areas in our Community Equity Index. Protecting and improving water quality is an especially important focus for the Germantown Sector Plan Amendment for several reasons. First of all, the northern portion of the plan area drains to Little Seneca Lake, which serves as an emergency backup water supply for the county and for the area, roughly the area north of Germantown Road. Second, portions of the plan area drain to some streams with some high water quality, including a portion that drains to Class III-P waters. south of the dam at Little Seneca Lake. So that's this little, if I can get the mouse to wake up, there it is. And so it's this, this is the Germantown Estates sub-watershed here. So that drains to Little Seneca Creek below the dam where it's Class III waters. Incidentally, Germantown Plan Area is fairly unique in my experience in that it actually includes all three different state use class types that occur in Montgomery County, Class 1, Class 3, and Class 4. And I don't often see that with one plan area overlapping those watersheds. And that changes the stream buffer size in each of those areas. So protecting water quality, the plan recommends limiting new impervious areas and supports the idea of repurposing roadway areas that has been talked about in other areas, increasing the use of porous pavements to reduce the runoff, including that green infrastructure and a site design with vegetation and tree canopy, designing our landscapes to manage runoff by using the plantings and the grading that will then capture and infiltrate and filter the stormwater, and incorporating intensive green roof systems where practicable. Biological diversity in the Great Center Plan Area is supported by recommendations in Thrive and from specific citizen comments from our outreach efforts. This plan area includes a number of high quality areas including some very high quality forest areas, and also the Germantown bog, which is classified by the state of Maryland as an area of special state concern due to its unique wetland habitat and past recorded incidences of some rare species. Great care has been taken in the past in past versions of this plan to protect the bog and to preserve the hydrology that supports the wetland. I've got two different pictures here on this slide. The one at the top is a picture from 2007, and the one at the bottom was taken recently, just a few weeks ago, when we went back out with an ecologist to reevaluate the bog. One of the things that's happened in the meantime is that a lot of trees have grown into the area. And because a number of the rare plants are actually full sun obligates, it was harder to find them present. We haven't gotten the final report from the field ecologist yet, but it's still a very high quality wetland nonetheless. Besides preserving important natural areas, biodiversity can also be supported in our urban areas by bringing native trees and plants into the landscape designs of our developments and by promoting bird-friendly building designs. This plan also seeks to protect and improve human health by improving air quality and, as we mentioned, by reducing exposure to air pollution by adding vegetation in corridors, and that also helps support safe walking, biking, and rolling networks. increasing shade in some of the high-use areas. We particularly pay attention to people who are waiting at transit stops and children who might be walking to school. Expanding access to local food by supporting farmers' markets and urban agriculture, by trying to minimize exposure to air pollution by where we put certain uses near highways, and mitigating transportation-related noise through use of barriers, site design, and so forth, plus building materials that help lower interior noise levels. Energy use is our primary approach to reducing overall greenhouse gas emissions. These are our primary greenhouse gas mitigation recommendations, and they're all designed to help reduce energy use, which also reduces the amount of greenhouse gases being generated. So that includes encouraging adaptive reuse and expanding the use of clean energy, incentivizing green buildings, promoting solar-oriented design. Building orientation and block orientation is particularly important with that. Improving access to public transit and supporting electric vehicle adaptation. I will note that there are a number of other areas of this plan that support reducing energy use, including the transportation recommendations that provide alternatives to getting around by gas-powered vehicles, so the pedestrian and bicycle systems, by promoting compact development, and by including a mix of uses that helps reduce vehicle miles traveled. Oops, let's see if it goes twice. Of course it does. Okay. So finally, we have some adaptation and resilience recommendations, and these include identifying opportunities to see if we can find a place to create a resilience hub. That can be public property such as a public facility such as a library or community center, or sometimes it's an institutional site like a private community of faith that operates normally most of the time, but in times of emergencies can convert to becoming an emergency center to provide people with shelter, a place to recharge their cell phones, a place where first responders can come and have a point of organization. People can meet up and those sorts of things. In addition, we want to integrate these nature-based design solutions that increase the green infrastructure to help address impacts. It's a major resilience building recommendation. And increasing green cover in new development, we recommended this in a number of plans with 35% green cover and encouraging higher levels of that where it's practicable. I think that's it for me.

Hello again. I have one slide on community facilities. We don't have any current recommendations about existing public or future needs for public facilities. It's well served by the library. In addition to the Plumgar Rec Center in the plan area, the Germantown Rec Center is nearby. There's two fire stations, one of which is on the same lot as a police station. The Up County Regional Services Center has a number of county agencies. Montgomery College is here and has their own campus master plan to expand greatly over the coming years. And the only school in the plan area is Seneca Valley High School. But there are a lot of residents in the plan area that are served by other middle and elementary schools. And right now, they're all well-served. We don't foresee the need for any new school buildings at this time, but we are going to run the numbers once we have some future land use projections, just to make sure. But the trend right now is that there's going to be more vacancies in the schools than filling of the schools. And even if the schools were filling, They're going to be doing a boundary survey for middle and elementary schools soon. So even if there was overcrowding, they could try to address that. But that doesn't appear to be the case.

Sure. But yeah, while there's no new public facilities proposed at this time, we'll, of course, go through that planning process with MCPS and coordination and make sure that they're seeing the same thing we're seeing and that if we have any different recommendations or new facilities, we'll definitely be back for that. Also, with the police and fire station and potentially a recommendation on some relocation of the transit station to allow for better development within the town center, there may be a recommendation on a new facility on the same block but in a better location. But we still have a little work to do there before we get there to make sure that everyone's on board.

Again, Roberto Duke. And we just want to end with some community concepts based on the recommendations that we've presented today. The first one is of the area in front of the Black Rock Center. So the Black Rock Center is on the left side of the image here. And just BlackRock is trying to reimagine that open space in front of their facility to have better acoustics, so to reorient the stage and to reimagine that so it can be better used. And then on the right-hand side of this image, showing where the Safeway parking lot is right now, showing the idea that you could have build up the density there, still have a grocery store at the base of the building like many mixed-use buildings, but then have people actively there right in the area living there. Oh, yeah, and then the curbless street where it says Century Boulevard, showing that so it blends in a little bit more so that it's easier to walk across the street and it's all seen as one space. here is of the transit area transit station area just beyond Crystal Rock and Century Boulevard right here reimagining it right now the transit center is in this block here and it's just showing a reimagination of this area again higher density mix of uses it's showing repurposing of the cct the former cct right-of-way as a linear park and showing that potentially showing mixed use on the area where the fire station the police station is still having those two facilities there but providing for a mix of uses and then you do see in the in the background The Fairchild Apartments, that is one of the existing buildings that's based on the 2009 plan, that really pretty much followed the 2009 plan, and Topgolf in the background, and just showing how this area could, with additional density, be reimagined and also provide for transit facilities still within this area. This one is leading up from the MARC station, just showing along Century Boulevard, along the southern portion of Wisteria Drive, just showing... the possibility of adaptive reuse in portions of the parking lot of a shopping center there? What are the possibilities that you could still have? What portions of the shopping center in the background on the edges but trying to create a street or through the parking lot so that it pulls you ultimately from the Mark Station area up through Century and up to the main part where the Black Rock Center is and beyond. At the Mark Station itself, where my... Marker is that's the Pumphrey-Mittini house, but trying to provide a... a kind of gathering space from the MARC station on the north side of the MARC station, north of the train tracks, and providing a green space and providing for uses around the historic facility, still respecting the historic facility with the heights and then stepping back away from it so you have two two stories around the Pumphrey Metini House and then stepping back so that you have a little bit higher density, so you're able to use that density around the MARC station, but also respecting the facility and trying to create a place for people to gather, people to use as they're walking to and from the MARC station, and so it becomes an enlivened place. This is just showing the Milestone Shopping Center. So on the right hand side of the image, is the Walmart retail space and just showing what could be the possibilities. So using the idea of the drive aisles and now making them streets and creating blocks out of that and showing the potential for different types of housing types. So you have smaller apartment buildings, townhouses, stacked flats right in this area, and then also a bigger multifamily building, but then also creating an open space for this new community so it can kind of be ingrained into the whole area. So it becomes now kind of a focal point and a gathering space for the shopping center. And this could show, you know, this could be adapted over a period of time. It doesn't happen all at once or, you know, it could be block by block. And it shows what the potential could be in the future for some of these shopping centers that you still have a mix of, you still have the retail on the ground floor, but then the housing above to help support that retail space. pass it on back to Jamie.

OK, so we're really close to the end. So we don't have all of our recommendations done yet. So we are still working on ideas based on these conversations we've had with all these different groups in the community. We've heard over and over again since we first went out to the community two years ago, we want more things to do. We need more things for the kids to do. We need more things for seniors to do. We need more things for young adults to do, families, everything. They say, we always have to go to Rio if we want to do something or other places like that. So we think that there's a great opportunity in Germantown to have these spaces and that this plan will help that. But we might need to be more specific on how we can get there. This community center, amphitheater, other space is kind of like a little bit different than the Black Rock space. This would be more of an informal space There had been this kind of self-constructed skate park on some land that was and that got disassembled. But even on that land, the kids were organizing their own concerts and stuff. They just wanted a space to be and to do their thing. And so BlackRock might be too formal of a space. You might have to, you know, reserve a time and pay a rental fee, but maybe if there was a space in a park or in a privately owned public space that could support just kids being themselves, really. An information hub. People say, we don't even know what's going on in Germantown, or we don't know what's going on in the parks. People we talked to at the Soccerplex said people there don't know what's happening in Germantown. So if there's some better way to get the information spread throughout the area about events and amenities. And then further, people that come to Soccerplex, they told us this is the third largest, by number of visitors, the third largest space in the state of Maryland. The baseball stadium in Baltimore and the aquarium might have been the first two. But then after that, it's the Soccerplex. So you get all these visitors. None of them stay in Germantown. There's like two or three hotels at the most. It doesn't necessarily have the kind of restaurants that would work well for a team that's coming through the area. So they all find other places. So if there was a way to make Germantown work better for the Soccerplex that's only two miles away, That would be great. Public parking garages, when we talked to DOT, they said they're expensive. The 2009 plan recommended that a parking district be established. But that requires funding from the businesses that are there. And if there's no businesses there, where is that funding? And then we also hear that people won't pay for parking in the county. Even at Rio, I believe the parking is free. You know, if we are trying to charge a couple of dollars an hour for people to park, that's another disincentive to people going to Germantown. So if we could come up with a clever way to address this problem, it would free up those parking lots that we want to turn into the more activated Germantown. The shelters for people experiencing homelessness, I think they told us that the closest one is in Rockville, but a lot of homeless people do end up in Germantown, and then places like the up County hub that try to help these people they you know they have to get them to Rockville now so now you got another problem so now the homeless they can't get to where the homelessness can be addressed and in our conversations with the schools or every school we talked to the food insecurity came up you know there's food distribution sites at all these schools and Sometimes the families have trouble getting there because of the routing and the timing of the buses. And like Eli mentioned, they have to take Uber just to get free food. And so now it's adding an expense. And in some cases, there's dangerous roads that they have to cross to get to these places. Lots of things we've heard that we want to try to create more specific recommendations. Things like better lighting. We heard a lot. Once it gets dark, they don't feel safe, even when there are sidewalks and the traffic isn't even that high, but then it just gets dark. And so things like better lighting can go a long way. So that is... Well, I promise this is the last slide. So if you guys have any questions, comments, concerns, ideas, we'd love to hear them. That's why we're here. So let us have it.

No, thank you for the presentation. Very well thought out. Before we give our comments, can you go over the schedule again from when do you feel that you'll be ready to come to the board again with your final ideas

We're going to plan to have the working draft done by the end of the summer so that we can come to you in the early fall to request it be the public hearing draft, and we can do our work sessions. So right now, we're trying to get approved by the board by the end of the calendar year so that then it can go to the county council for them to begin their deliberations. They may not be ready for it until a little bit later based on the schedule, their own schedule, and the fact that we have multiple master plans going through.

Great. So let me just say. We're trying. No, no, thank you. This is wonderful. I like you've been methodical because the last time you came, you came with emerging ideas, I believe, and then You refine them as you go along. So, yep, you've got some of our comments along the way. A couple of themes for me are one is how do we solve the BLT problem? Meaning that, yes, you can reduce the price, but will that cause a problem that was intended to paid the farmers? Was it a payment back to the farmers for them reducing the density on their land? So how does all of that work together in the end? But I do feel that the price needs to go down to incentivize people to do more development. So the other is, we talked about testing your recommendations, like what, based on all your, you know, like especially around density and, you know, what are you testing them with the developers or other, your consultants or whatever, like what's really gonna develop, you know, are the, do you balance, have you balanced all the incentives? You talk about the garage, maybe you, and the whole thing is maybe you, like the county, may need to do a garage or two to help maybe reduce costs so that development next to them won't have to pay for it and things like that. But that's all how you work that together. And when you come back with your recommendations, can you prioritize them? If you had to implement, what would come first or second or third? And then I guess a big part of this is all about this implementation plan. because some of the recommendations are add new intersection, you know, what do you call it, I-270 interchanges, and, like, yes, ideally you should put it out there, but what's the likelihood, you know, and what would you like to have happen, must happen? And then I like how you reduce the MPDU requirement in certain areas and have, like, 12.5% in certain areas and then 15% in others. But what would happen if, like, you would still have 15 in other areas, but what if within five years of the plan being approved, it's all, you know, something incentivizes. Like, it's going to be 15 in the long term, but maybe within the first five years of the plan being approved, everything is 12 and 1 half. I'm just ideas. How do you incentivize people to do more development or jumpstart? so that 20 years from now, something, the plan starts to move along. So just thinking about that, I like the idea of putting some overlay or maybe on the R200 to make them more flexible. You can do multi-unit, maybe also incentivize. Why aren't those areas doing any ADUs? I don't know. Is there any way to incentivize those? But I love it. I love the renderings. You got the renderings. They were helpful. I remember last time we were doing, I think it's also good for us, for the public, and also when we go to council to have the rendering. So thank you so much. Those are my big picture comments, but it's easy to see all your hard work that you put into this. Thank you.

And I do want to mention, since you brought it up, I should have mentioned that we need to come up with a menu of public benefits that apply in the incentive zoning update. So we are in the process of brainstorming ideas of actual public facilities that could be provided as part of the development process through the incentive density program that exists. So we're going to be prioritizing those items as well by including them. But what this also means is even though we've reduced the size of the transit mixed-use overlay zone, we may have to create another plan-wide overlay zone just to implement these specific recommendations for incentive density, bonus density.

I'll be very short because I know it has been a long time and we want to go home. I have said what I needed to say. It's just that when we had the tour, a lot of office buildings, they were closing, and that is sad. We need to have a true mix of housing and employment, any kind of employment, offices or retail or whatever. And also, we have to have a diversity of users and diversity of housing at all different levels to allow all the people, you know, young, old, middle, the children. or people that are retired, they stay and they could live there. Also, as we discussed, I really believe that we need to use the potential for the neighborhood outside the planning area to make this area more dynamic. and make it more usable. I remember when the downtown Germantown was very dynamic, but I don't know what happened. We have to create what it was at the very beginning, and maybe it was hard for people to get there. Maybe it was parking. I truly believe that if we want to get people there, we need to make sure that it's accessible. that people can, with all the modes of transportation, and if they bring cars, they should be able to park their cars. If they bring bikes, they should be safely park their bikes and be able to do their business, to spend time, to spend their money, to have fun, and then walk or bike or drive to wherever that they want to do. All the possibilities should be open. for everyone that to be successful. Thank you.

Yeah, that's excellent. And I do want to make clear, while we're pivoting from the original employment corridor idea and framework, we're not abandoning the potential for jobs and employment, et cetera. We have met with several of the larger commercial enterprises in Germantown. And we were convening a meeting with MCEDC. We've met with Visit Montgomery, the chamber, won a larger, more robust discussion about building on the strong foundation of economic development in Germantown. We still think there's a dramatic amount of potential there as well. So while we're allowing more flexibility for housing and making some changes to hopefully infuse some life into Germantown, we're not pivoting completely away from that original idea.

That's fantastic. Thank you.

Vice Chair Linden, any parting words?

No, just to add my thanks for all the hard work to this point. The recommendations, as always, are extensive and well thought out and applicable to the area, and it's obvious that you all did the groundwork and your research and you talked to a lot of people so far. I look forward to seeing the next The next step and clarifying a few of the things that came up look forward to talking more about transit, in particular, and some of the details about like yeah, how do we actually like. Specifically kind of make this, even if it's incrementally sort of the implement a like what does that look like in a little bit more detail, how can we present that to counsel and kind of a practical way. But otherwise, yeah, I mean, this is a great next step. So thanks. Thanks so much.

And one of the last thing that we were talking a little bit about how this connects to other nearby areas and how, you know, we look at as like a, like a regional or, you know, its own small regional connections. I think that's, that's really great. So thank you. Thank you. It's, it's, it's obviously a lot of hard work. So thank you. And this ends our planning board meeting for today. Everyone have a, Great Juneteenth holiday weekend, and we'll see you next Thursday. Thank you.