Sandy Spring-Ashton Rural Preservation Consortium

The SSARPC (PreserveAshton.net)

supports development in Ashton that conforms to the Master Plan.

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

Written Testimony before the Planning Board

on Ashton Meeting Place

April 12, 2007

Preliminary Plan No. 120050060

Site Plan No. 8-06023

Testimony of Michelle Layton, Co-Chair, SSARPC, on behalf of SSARPC

Good Afternoon.

For the record, my name is Michelle Layton. With me today is Paul Maninna.   Together we co- chair the Sandy Spring Ashton Rural Preservation Consortium.  We live at 17905 Ednor View Terrace and 17717 Pond Road, respectively, which is 2 miles from the proposed Ashton Meeting Place site.  Here also is our land use attorney, Dave Brown of Knopf and Brown and the Consortium's Design Team - Landscape Architect Brooke Farquhar and awarding winning Architect Miche Booz, familiar to many as the architect of the Sandy Spring Museum.

As our name implies, the SSARPC's mission is to support development in historic Ashton that conforms to the Master Plan in order to preserve the historic rural village that Ashton is. We are, in fact, Pro-Master Plan, not anti-development.

Since November of 2005, we have been the primary community group that has disseminated information about the Ashton Meeting Place project primarily via electronic mail to our 800 member email list and our website at www.preserveashton.net, . We have walked door to door garnering support and have held a candlelight vigil, 4 public meetings and 1 Open House to update and inform the community on changes as they occur.

The SSARPC has raised money through benefit dinners and concerts, selling         "Preserve Ashton" preserves and by the contributions from our many supporters. These funds have permitted us to retain the services of Dave Brown and Stu Sirota, an urban planner and Principal with TND Planning Group to help guide us through the legal and design issues of this project.

The SSARPC Steering Committee consists of residents of Ashton, Sandy Spring, Brookeville, Olney and Clarksville, all who have the same goal: To preserve the rural look and feel Ashton.

From the very beginning, we all agreed that any development in Ashton should "look like it belonged in Ashton," all the while conforming to the Master Plan which describes it as a rural village center. It was all of our observations that the original plan did not match our own vision of our small historic town.

The buildings were too big, too tall and we were all offended by the 237 ft. blank wall that fronted Route 108.

Additionally, our concern that the project adhere to the County guidelines for the environment was extremely important.

After 10 months of meetings and several requests to meet with the developer to discuss our concerns, finally in August 2006, we were able to sit down and begin an open discussion about the design of Ashton Meeting Place. While we made it clear that one of the goals of the SSARPC was to bring the proposal into compliance with the Master Plan, the developer, Mr. Fred Nichols, also made it clear that there were certain areas that were non-negotiable - first, the size and placement of the grocery store, second, the size of the project and third, the placement of the existing bank. Within those parameters, our design team worked with the developer's design team to negotiate the plan you have in front of you today.

In November, we were ready to present to the community, with the developer, a plan that while a compromise, would be acceptable to our group and adhered to the Master Plan guidelines. The new plan offered a sizable village green, active store fronts, on-street parking and several other design elements advised by the Master Plan. We continued to make it clear to the developer and our email list that while this plan was a compromise, we never abandoned our goals to reduce the size of the grocery store and bring the project to total Master Plan compliance.

We subsequently learned that Park and Planning staff had found the developer's environment mitigation plan to be unacceptable. We encouraged the developer to revise his plan to conform to staff's recommendations. While we were still willing to support the design changes of the plan, our Steering Committee decided that we could not fully support a plan that encroached into the wetlands and their buffer.

We are appreciative of Mr. Nichols' efforts to work with us to achieve a compromise as to the design elements and we especially thank the Park and Planning Staff for having soundly and completely researched a comprehensive document that supports the vision of the Ashton-Sandy Spring Master Plan.

I now introduce you to Dave Brown who will discuss our Steering Committee’s position on the plan before you today. 

Testimony of Dave Brown, SSARPC Attorney, Knopf and Brown

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Board:

            I am David W. Brown of Knopf & Brown, counsel to the Sandy Spring-Ashton Rural Preservation Consortium Steering Committee.  Let me get right to the bottom line:  the recommendation of the Steering Committee in this case is that the Board should not approve the current plans for Ashton Meeting Place, as they currently stand.  Rather, my clients are hopeful that, through your deliberations, the applicant will see that its interests are best served by requesting a deferral of final action to correct the deficiencies in the plan.  In that event, the Committee has every intention of working with the developer in the same spirit of constructive cooperation that has marked our recent negotiations.  In short, this is a plan that, with adjustments, can be improved and approved, rather than categorically rejected.

            I want to elaborate just a little on the background presented by Michelle and Paul.  Upon retaining me, the Committee learned quickly that although I could find my way around zoning and subdivision law, I was no expert in land planning and design.  So the   Committee did something extraordinary, something I think few citizen groups in the County in like situations have ever done.   The Committee hired its own expert land planner, Stuart Sirota of TND Planning, to help the residents rework the plan in a general, conceptual way, well before they had any assurance that anyone would pay attention, especially the AMP developer.

But as Michelle explained, the Committee’s efforts were not in vain.  In the summer of 2006, a new compromise plan emerged.  It is the one before you, a significant improvement over the original, with an improved “sense of place.”  The revised plan does achieve a sizeable and usable village green at the corner of the major intersection; active store fronts and parking on one of the street frontages (MD Route 108), instead of a blank rear wall of a grocery store; active store fronts facing Route 650, although not directly on the road; and a greater variety of building materials and styles, more in keeping with a rural village character.  Unfortunately, among the Committee goals NOT realized in the discussions are a reduced footprint for the grocery store; any significant reduction in the size and scale of the project; a more rural village feel in the building/parking layout; and retail stores directly on New Hampshire Avenue (Route 650), instead of an internal drive aisle parallel to the highway.  Overall, the Committee’s impression is that the developers were not resistant to a village-style plan, but rather had certain pre-determined economic objectives for development of the land that ultimately limited their willingness to accommodate size and scale changes sought by the Committee.  

            This is where things stood in November 2006.  At that time the Committee believed that the developer had worked out the wetlands and buffer issues with Staff.  The Committee has always taken the position that the plan should adhere to established Guidelines for wetlands and buffers, and all of Stuart’s plans avoided construction in them.  When it became clear that the developer’s wetlands mitigation plan was not acceptable to the Staff, the Committee encouraged the developer to revise the site plan to accommodate Staff’s environmental concerns.  The applicant has not done this, and instead has filed a rebuttal to Staff’s report stating that compliance with environmental standards can be weighed against claimed but unspecified “other public benefits achieved by the project.”  The Committee does not agree with this kind of tradeoff; one can always conjure up reasons for putting aside environmental standards.  Rather, the Committee would prefer to see the standards met via project redesign.        

Next, the Staff report notes that (at p. 12) that under § 59-C-18.186(a), the site plan must be found to be consistent with the recommendations in the 1998 Master Plan.  Then the report notes that (at p. 13) that under § 59-C-18.184(b), the site plan must substantially conform with the design guidelines in the Master Plan.  But the design guidelines are themselves Master Plan recommendations, so what standard should the Board employ?   In evaluating compliance with the design guidelines, it appears the Council intended to provide you with a standard short of strict compliance, but for all other Master Plan recommendations, strict compliance is mandated.  Coffey v. M-NCPPC, 293 Md. 24, 441 A.2d 1041, 1044 (1982). 

            In the category of recommendations applicable to the AMP site that are not design guidelines, is the following Master Plan language:  “[T]his Plan confirms the 1980 Plan land use recommendations … in the Ashton Village Center...”  Master Plan 38.  This same language is referenced in the recent Staff rebuttal letter from the developer’s attorneys, albeit for a different point.  The 1980 Plan recommendations incorporated into the 1998 Master Plan, as relevant here, read as follows:

                                    Commercial development is channeled along New

                                    Hampshire Avenue south of Maryland Route 108 where

                                    stores and offices are interspersed with small residential

                                    lots.  A small amount of commercial expansion should

                                    occur in these areas in accord with the present development

                                    pattern:  small stores fronting on New Hampshire Avenue.

                                    Parking for these uses should be coordinated and placed in

                                    the rear of these structures, if this is feasible.

1980 Plan 37-38.  The Committee’s position is that unless and until the Master Plan language is changed, it is binding on the Board in its evaluation of the AMP plan.  It also is the basis for the Committee’s efforts to negotiate with the developers smaller scale and street-fronting retail along New Hampshire Avenue.  As explained, the Committee did not succeed in achieving these goals in those discussions. 

            As for other issues raised in the Staff report, the Committee agrees with the Staff report’s observation (at p. 19) that the parallel drive aisle along MD 650 raises safety and traffic back-up problems.  The Committee believes these problems would be reduced or eliminated if the plan included their ideas for street-fronting retail in that location. 

            While the Committee recognizes the legal issues related to the zoning requirements, as Ashton area residents, the Committee does not object to the presence of residential space in the project or to mixing it with commercial space in the manner proposed.  The Committee also does not object to the use of the R60-zoned land for parking.  T  Staff suggests in proposed finding # 4 that the parking issues might disappear with a redesigned, less dense, and thus a smaller scale, project.  If the Board agrees, the expected deferral to address parking issues and other issues would mean a revised project that more closely adheres to the design, layout and scale objectives that the Committee has pursued all along.

            With that, I would like to turn things over to the rest of the team to highlight the desirable design elements of the current plan and the additional design elements the Committee would like to see in a revised plan.

Testimony of SSARPC's Design Team - Landscape Architect Brooke Farquhar and awarding winning Architect Miche Booz

For the record my name is Brooke Farquhar and I live at 6883 Haviland Mill Rd, Clarksville.  My home is exactly three miles from the Ashton Village Center where my family and I frequent the Post Office, the hardware store, and the restaurants.

A year and a half ago I was asked by some of my friends and neighbors to comment on the proposal for AMP, since I had worked as a site plan reviewer for Montgomery County for 9 years.  Before even cracking open the Master Plan my reaction was that it would be difficult for the Board to make the finding of compatibility, given the big difference in size and scale compared to adjacent development.

Once I read the Master Plan and its emphasis on rural character, as well as its more specific guidelines about active fronts, I was sure the plan would be denied as designed on the basis of the finding of conformance with the Master Plan.

As you have heard from our co-presidents and our legal counsel, our group decided to hire an expert land planner, Stuart Sirota, who would have been here today except his wife is having a baby.  Stu has worked several years in the public and private sectors, on land use and transportation planning projects, with an emphasis on helping communities develop their town centers while retaining their sense of place. 

Stu helped us to look at the site with fresh eyes.  Together, Miche, Stu and I generated several iterations of layouts for this site, including some that kept the parking off the R650, and some that showed a different grocery store location.  All of our sketches had both street frontages lined with active fronts, and no encroachment in the environmental buffers.

Once the developer’s design team agreed to sit down with us, we had a series of design meetings with a small team from AMP, and we came to understand what the developer’s non-negotiable points were, namely:

1)     that the bank would be located at the corner because Sandy Spring Bank required it;

2)     that the financial formula determined the location and size of the grocery store;

3)     that the buildings along NH Avenue were set back from the street based on conventional retail shopping layout formulae, and

4)     that they were not willing to decrease the overall size of the center, for economic reasons

5)     that the wetlands buffer would be impacted to accommodate the grocery store.

Several rolls of trace later, we arrived at the plan you see before you today.

At this point the plan goes a long way toward Master Plan compliance, but it could go a lot farther. In particular, we were able to convince the developers to line the back of the grocery store with active fronts, to provide a truly usable village green, to hide the parking and drive aisles for the bank below grade, and to provide architectural and signage details more in keeping with a village center.

Despite these advances, we cannot argue with Planning Board staff when they say (p. 14 of the staff report) the plan “does not provide the recommended scale and active main-street the master plan envisions.”  And, as you have heard we are particularly opposed to the encroachment into the wetlands buffer.

It is always difficult to translate written guidelines to an actual on-the-ground plan.  But as we have seen, there are typically many ways to achieve a design solution.  We have full confidence that a village center can be designed for this site that maintains the historic and environmental integrity envisioned by the authors of the Master Plan.

Thank you very much.

 Conclusion by Dave Brown, SSARPC Attorney, Knopf and Brown

            To conclude, we support the Staff report and agree that changes need to be made before this plan should be approved.  The wetlands and buffers must be kept intact and we would like to see more rural village design elements incorporated into the plan.  The Board can count on the continuation of the dedicated hard work the SSARPC Steering Committee has already brought to this project. Ashton is at a crossroads regarding its character.  We look to the Board to ensure that it will become a village with a true sense of place.