Clarksburg Intentions Vary From Its Reality

Planning Procedures Under Investigation

Clarksburg was Montgomery County's model of the 21st-century suburb.

"The final frontier" is how the county's 1994 master plan described it: a series of quaint subdivisions built around a pedestrian-friendly town center with specialty shops, cafes, trails and a grocery store.

People bought in. Home buyers, drawn by low interest rates available to buyers at the time and relatively moderate prices, flocked to the tiny northern Montgomery community, where horses and livestock outnumbered residents as recently as 10 years ago.

"We were buying into a lifestyle and an ideal," said Lynn Fantle, who in 2002 purchased a $400,000 house in Clarksburg Town Center.

But the road to the reinvented suburb has gotten bumpy. There are numerous signs that Montgomery officials were ill-prepared to oversee the pace and scope of change in Clarksburg, where the population has nearly tripled to 5,500 in the past five years. In 20 years, it is expected to reach more than 40,000.

Last week, the county acknowledged that hundreds of homes in the new Clarksburg Town Center were built in apparent violation of height and setback requirements. There is also evidence that a planning staff member improperly altered a site plan to show that developers were complying with the regulations.

Officials announced that an outside investigator will be hired to review the county's procedures for approving subdivision plans.A planning department report recommends the developer and builders be fined about $1.2 million. Residents want a much stiffer penalty.

There are other problems. Roads are crowded, and some of the planned walkways have been turned into streets. Officials said the developer has allowed new owners to move in without occupancy permits from the county. Residents said units priced for low- and middle-income buyers, which developers are required to include, have been concentrated in one area, which would violate county regulations.

Montgomery's Fire & Rescue Service has warned for months that a tragedy is waiting to happen in Clarksburg because the fire station serving the town is too far away.

Last week, it took firefighters nearly 14 minutes, twice the acceptable standard, to respond to a family that had suffered carbon monoxide poisoning, according to County Council member Michael Knapp (D-Upcounty).

Residents said they are waiting for the amenities they were promised -- the retail, the cafes, the upscale grocery shopping. They charged that the developer, Newland Communities of San Diego, is trying to build a conventional suburban strip mall with a Giant supermarket.

"It says in the master plan these shops should be places of distinction where people can congregate," said Carol Smith, who bought a townhouse in 2003. "Who wants to go get groceries in the Giant and then sit on the sidewalk and talk to neighbors?"