Another Vision For Shady Grove

In the past, the council has concentrated more on redeveloping areas closer to the District, such as Bethesda and Silver Spring. Now its focus has shifted to the Interstate 270 corridor, where new houses have not caught up with the boom in office construction, said Karen Kumm, the county's lead planner on the Shady Grove project.

"If we had more housing, we'd have people closer to their jobs," Kumm said. "We've been doing concentrated growth inside the Beltway. . . . But the 270 corridor outside the Beltway is the next frontier."

The master plan has been four years in the making. Council members said they have delayed a vote until November because they are waiting for the county's Office of Legislative Oversight to report on what went wrong in Clarksburg.

"I think council members, and I'm one of them, are interested to know what the OLO's assessment is on why Clarksburg happened and what implications it will have on this type of development, which is at least as complicated or even more so," said council member Phil Andrews (D-Gaithersburg-Rockville).

An earlier version of the Shady Grove master plan called for an additional 4,800 homes, but planners thought there was room for more. Under the revised plan, apartments and condominiums would be built around the Metro station. Neighborhoods farther from the station would have a combination of apartments, condominiums, townhouses and houses.

Current residents in the area said they are open to more housing, but they want the plan to include additional parks and a community center. Putting so many homes in a compact area would clog roads and crowd schools, said Kay Guinane, co-president of the Greater Shady Grove Civic Alliance, a neighborhood group.

"You're supposed to create a sense of place and community," she said. "What they have done is create human warehouses."

Kumm said the proposal allows for the council to decide later if a community center should be built. It also includes a school, three parks, three ballfields, and five acres of fountains and sidewalks around the Metro station. Twenty percent of each development would be set aside for public use, such as gardens, she said.

Some council members said they worry that the Clarksburg controversy will be used as an excuse to delay efforts such as the Shady Grove master plan.

"This has nothing to do with Clarksburg," said council member Steven A. Silverman (D-At Large). "Clarksburg is about the failure to properly implement a master plan. It is not about smart planning."

Council members are talking about requiring Shady Grove builders to reduce by 50 percent the number of car trips that would be generated by their residential developments. One approach would be to run free shuttle buses to and from the Metro station.

The council also wants to set a strict schedule for when builders would have to complete certain requirements. If a company did not meet the deadlines, it would not be allowed to advance to the next stage, council members said.

"The Shady Grove plan is a new way of doing planning business in the county," said council member Nancy Floreen (D-At Large). "There are different rules for how a community can evolve."

There is at least one skeptic on the council. Andrews said he does not believe the community can handle the additional density and traffic.

"I think the [planning department] has gotten carried away with the desire to put housing around the Metro and given inadequate consideration to what is already there," Andrews said. "It's too much for a community that's already developed."

Labuda is also concerned. She has owned her house on Briardale Road off Shady Grove Road since 1972. She raised six children in the four-bedroom house with her husband. Back then, her road was unpaved, and the community was rural. Now Shady Grove Road has become one of the noisiest in the county, with trucks regularly driving to the nearby waste-transfer station.

She and some of her neighbors hope that they can persuade the council to make concessions. They want fewer houses and more amenities. "This is our final window of opportunity," she said.