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Testimony Before the Planning Board June 28, 2007 |
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Michelle Layton 17905 Ednor View Terrace Ashton, MD 20861 |
Ashton Meeting Place
Preliminary Plan No.
Site Plan No. |
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My name is Michelle Layton and I live at 17905 Ednor View Terrace in Ashton, MD. I am also the co-chair of the Sandy Spring Ashton Rural Preservation Consortium, but today I am speaking on my own behalf.
Today I would like to share with you how I came to be involved in the opposition to the Ashton Meeting Place project as it currently stands. In November, 2005, I was in a salon in Ashton. As I entered, I saw posted on the wall a drawing of a shopping center that, to me, closely resembled Reston Town Center. When I asked what the drawing was, I was told that it was the center that was going to be built at the NH Ave./Rt.108 intersection.
Having lived in Ashton for 18 years, I was appalled that someone was going to build a center that was so large in the town in which we loved so much.
The next day, I happened to be in a Sandy Spring store where I saw a notice for a meeting to discuss the plans for the site. At that meeting I saw the plans and was shocked to see the inclusion of a 240-ft. wall with fake doors and windows that would front Rt.108.
At that time, I knew nothing about active fronts and MP guidelines, but I did know that this plan was not right for Ashton. At that moment, I decided to become involved with a group of community members who felt the same way that I did. As time went on, I learned that the project did not meet many of the guidelines set forth in the 1998 SS/Ashton MP.
After several months of attempts to get him to meet with us, the developer finally agreed to work with our group to design a plan that included input from the SSARPC design team, to bring the center more toward MP compliance. One way was to eliminate the 240 ft. wall and turn it into an active side of the center with real stores and entrances off of Rt.108. The developer admitted publicly that this was a better plan.
As we meet here today, that compromise plan has been replaced by one that reinstates the inactive wall and includes, in my opinion, other violations of the SS/Ashton MP.
It has always bothered me that any developer can alter the sense of ruralness that defines Ashton with the stroke of a pen and a plan. More so, I am frustrated by the fact that several people involved in the development of the AMP project have had an opportunity to raise their children in the same slow, small town environment that my husband and I chose to live and raise our children. Yet, they have decided for us that we are not going to be allowed that same chance so that they can create the biggest center they can with an economic formula that mostly benefits their pocketbooks. It is my strong feeling that no one person or group should make that decision for us or any other family that lives in Ashton.
It is with that, that I urge the PB to deny the AMP plan as it stands. So many of us chose to live here for that sense that is Ashton and its 250 year old history of community. No one person should be allowed to change that without the community’s input. |
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