For some Fulton residents in southern Howard County, a new plan for development at Maple Lawn is producing an uneasy sense of deja vu.
More than five years ago, they waged a battle with developer Stewart J. Greenebaum, spending thousands of dollars to marshal opposition to the huge residential and commercial development at the former dairy and turkey farm near Routes 216 and 29. After 32 hearings over more than a year, Greenebaum was forced to scale back his plan by nearly 500 houses. In the end, residents thought they knew how Maple Lawn would look someday, how many people would live there and their impact on roads and schools.
But tonight, the Howard County Planning Board is reopening the case at Greenebaum's request. The developer has purchased an additional 97 acres at Maple Lawn, once known as Maple Lawn Farms, and wants to add more than 500 homes, along with new office and retail space to the 508-acre site. And that, some neighbors say, could mean a rerun of the fight that culminated in 2000, pitting residents against elected leaders and leaving many worried not only about the county's planning process but also the fate of its undeveloped land.
"We all participated in good faith," said Greg Brown, head of a nearby neighborhood association. "But now the developer is coming back and saying, 'Forget that, I bought more land.' "
When Maple Lawn is finally completed, probably within 10 years, it will be a mix of office space, retail, high-end townhouses, condominiums and single-family houses. It will have four neighborhoods--Hillside, Garden, Midtown and Old Farm--each centered on a neighborhood square.
The starting price for many townhouses is about $550,000 and for single-family houses about $650,000. Almost all the first houses to be constructed--about 60, Greenebaum said--have been sold; two are occupied.
If the latest proposal is ultimately approved by the Zoning Board, which will probably examine it after the Planning Board, the number of homes would grow from 1,116 to 1,634, including townhouses, condominiums, apartments and single-family houses.
Greenebaum says he wants to create a community where residents can live, work and play. He was inspired in part by James Rouse's Columbia, just a few miles north, and by Kentlands, a development with a small town feel near Gaithersburg in Montgomery County.
He said he wants Maple Lawn to become a shining example of smart growth, which concentrates development in areas with existing public services, such as water, sewer and roads, rather than scattering it throughout open space and farmland.
"We want to do this in exactly the right way, " Greenebaum said this week. "Any reasonable person who sees it, even in its early construction stages, understands that this is something special.
"If someone moves into one of those houses, their children, starting at age 6 weeks through high school, can actually be within walking distance of their home and their parents' place of employment," he said. "There is hardly any place in the world that you can say that."
Neighbors who enjoy a semirural existence, many of them living in suburban-style houses on large tracts, say Maple Lawn really is something else--a new city that would lack the schools, roads, public transit and other amenities needed to make it an anti-sprawl, self-contained community.
