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Residents Find Small-Town Vision Blurred
Amy Presley, Carol Smith and Kim Shiley say Clarksburg Town Center's retail plans counter promises of a "classic town."
(By Katherine Frey For The Washington Post)
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He noted that developers often use new urbanist language -- promising "pedestrian friendly streets" and "town centers" -- but deliver something more conventional.
"I don't think it's going to be at all like Kentlands. Kentlands is another order of quality," Steuteville said. "Frankly, if the home buyers thought they were going to get Kentlands, they didn't take a close enough look at the plans."
Altered Plans
By now, several of the homeowners have looked very closely at the plans.
Presley, Shiley and others have compiled huge piles of documents showing how the project -- started by one developer, sold to Terrabrook and eventually to Newland Communities -- has been altered, often without public input.
Montgomery officials have conceded that some of the buildings at Clarksburg Town Center were built about five feet taller than permitted on approved documents and that some building-setback limits were violated.
The neighbors, citing their research, claim that additional major changes were made to the approved plans -- moving condominium buildings hundreds of feet from a valley to a ridge, removing a road in one place and adding one elsewhere -- without public hearings. Their hope is to push the developer to amend the retail center plan to satisfy their new urbanist vision.
"The only thing I can tell you is that we are looking at all of these issues," said Rose Krasnow, chief of the county planning department's Development Review Division. "There's a lot of research that needs to be done."
The neighbors' discontent and ensuing sleuthing into building practices has had far-reaching consequences for builders across the county. But for the homeowners, their fight started -- and continues to be -- to see their small-town visions realized.
"I never thought it would come to this," Shiley said, referring to the partial building freeze. "There is a serious flaw in our planning process. But the critical part is that this flaw has allowed the developers to depart from the vision of a historically linked small town."
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