Dread and Defiance in the Connector's Path
As Road Nears Approval, Those Who Would Make Way Have Many Questions

By Katherine Shaver
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 26, 2006

Christy and Ben Graybeal have reluctantly started scoping out nearby neighborhoods. Eve Burton said she won't leave her home without a fight. Floyd Ray Lashmit plans to hire a property appraiser, saying, "Anyone who wants to throw me out of my house, I don't trust."

As Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) recently renewed a promise to begin building an intercounty connector through central Montgomery County and western Prince George's County by year's end, people living in the highway's path have begun to contemplate when they might be forced to sell their homes, pack up and move.

The Federal Highway Administration approved the state's final environmental impact study of the highway this month and is expected to sign off on the project in the spring after a public comment period. That would require property owners to begin reaching purchase agreements with the state, finding new places to live and vacating neighborhoods that many said they had planned never to leave.

"We're still hoping the public will realize that destroying our neighborhood isn't fair and isn't right, and maybe we can be saved," said Christy Graybeal, 29, who stands to lose the 60-year-old home that she and her husband have painstakingly refurbished over the past six years.

Monika Mahabarara's day-care center in the Longmead Crossing community is on the list of properties to be purchased if the intercounty connector is built along the state's preferred route. However, Mahabarara said, she's in limbo because she hasn't heard officially that her business would go.

"They haven't told me anything yet," Mahabarara, 34, said. "It's very frustrating. Every day and every night, I'm thinking, 'What's going to happen?' "

The state can't buy property in the intercounty connector's path until the Federal Highway Administration approves the six-lane toll road with a "record of decision." However, those who have watched the proposal's progress over the past couple of years say it seems a done deal, unless opponents delay or defeat it with a legal challenge. After decades of debate, federal and state highway officials have been working closely together to streamline the road's most recent environmental review.

To keep the highway plans moving while awaiting final federal approval, the state has begun appraising properties that would need to be bought. The Maryland State Highway Administration's chosen route would require buying almost 1,400 acres, including 52 homes and 11 businesses, from almost 500 property owners, state officials said. The number of people who would lose their properties is smaller than it would be in similar densely populated areas, they said. Because the preferred route lies mostly within both Montgomery's and Prince George's master plans, highway officials said, much of the area has not been developed.

Buying land along an 18-mile stretch between Interstate 270 in Gaithersburg and the Route 1 corridor in Laurel is a major part of the $2.4 billion project. An estimated $393 million would be spent on property along the route and land nearby that would be preserved to offset environmental damage caused by the highway.

Chris Larson, director of the state highway administration's Office of Real Estate, said the state will begin buying land as soon as federal approval is received. The highway's westernmost section, a seven-mile stretch between I-270 and Route 28, would be built first. Larson said construction would begin by year's end even if property purchases are pending.

"We'd have to work around them," he said.

A Creeping Realization

For many of those in the highway's path, the notion that they will soon part with their homes and neighbors is increasingly real -- and increasingly emotional.

Burton, 52, said she and her husband, Roger Metcalf, hope that environmental groups will fight the proposal in court or that public officials will reject the highway as too expensive before their family is forced to leave their Derwood house of 23 years.

"I don't plan to leave this home, period," said Burton, who runs library programs for children. "Have you heard of civil disobedience? We don't plan to be displaced from our home."

She said she didn't know what form their protest would take. But, she said, "Personally, I'm prepared to fight this to my last breath, and I hope Governor Ehrlich knows that."

Burton's neighbor, Lashmit, 79, called the state's plan to buy his home "sickening." In addition to hiring a property appraiser, Lashmit said, he's considering moving to North Carolina if he loses the four-bedroom house that he has lived in for 50 years.

"I don't want to stay here anymore," said Lashmit, an accountant. "It's been very peaceful until these people came along and are aiming to throw us out."

Neil J. Pedersen, Maryland's highway administrator, said the state appreciates the emotional stakes of uprooting residents.

"I wish we could build highways that didn't impact people at all," he said. "But given that there are impacts associated with any major highway project, we want to try to help them as much as we can in relocating. . . . We try to have as compassionate a process as possible."

The intercounty connector has been a divisive, sensitive issue for about 50 years. Supporters say the highway is badly needed because motorists traveling east-west have few options outside the congested Capital Beltway. As a result, highway supporters say, roads once lightly traveled have become crowded and unsafe. An intercounty connector, they say, would cut travel times and provide a key link between Montgomery's biotechnology corridor along Interstate 270 and the I-95 corridor, including Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport.

Opponents say the road would not alleviate traffic jams and would devastate streams, wetlands, parkland and wildlife habitat. When finance costs are included, the highway is estimated to cost $3 billion, making it one of the most expensive transportation projects in the country. Critics say the money would be better spent on options that spur people to get out of their cars, such as improving rail and bus service.

Determining the Value of a Home

For those living where the highway would go, the opposition is far more personal.

Federal and state eminent domain laws allow the government to seize private property to build highways or expand roads, and the U.S. Constitution requires fair compensation.

In Maryland, a private appraiser hired by the state determines a property's "fair market value," based on recent sales of similar homes in the area. The state then reviews the appraisal and makes an offer to the property owner. The offer could exceed the appraised value if the state determines that the owner would need more money to buy a comparable home, Larson said.

An owner who accepts the offer would sign a contract, proceed to settlement and receive a check. If the property owner rejects the state's offer, the state can still seize the property in two ways.

For vacant land, the state can ask a county's board of property review, a three-person panel appointed by the clerk of the Circuit Court, to decide the "just compensation" to be paid. In most road projects, Larson said, that occurs in about one-third of the cases. For land with a home or business, the state can ask a Circuit Court jury to decide the value. Fewer than 5 percent of cases involving homes or businesses end up in court, he said.

Larson said the state aims for residents to find a new home and vacate their property within one year of the state's offer. The state tries to help people relocate, he said, but it could seek an eviction notice from a court if a property owner refuses to cooperate.

"Our goal is to make this as easy on the property owner as we can, not to just rush them out," Larson said.

Christy Graybeal said she and her husband, Ben, 32, have yet to get a return call from the appraiser whom the state hired to determine the value of their home. Their new kitchen would be just about in the center of the intercounty connector, the couple said.

Christy Graybeal said home prices in the area are depressed because buyers know that a highway probably will run nearby. That makes her worry that an appraisal based on recent home sales in the area will come in lower than what would be needed to pay for a comparable home elsewhere. She said she and her husband wonder where they will find such a house -- one on an acre in a community with a quiet, country feel and reasonable commutes for both of them. Christy Graybeal is a graduate student at the University of Maryland, and her husband works as a structural engineer in McLean.

"We drive around and look at neighborhoods and try to imagine if we could live there, but so far we haven't found any," Christy Graybeal said. "We like the quiet of our neighborhood and the openness. Houses aren't jammed together. I don't know where we're going to find that."

She said she and her husband also worry that if they reject the state's purchase offer and end up in court, they could be forced to spend thousands on legal fees.

State Sen. Leonard H. Teitelbaum (D-Montgomery), a connector opponent, said he plans to introduce legislation that would require the state to reimburse property owners for legal expenses if a court determines that the state undervalued their properties by 10 percent or more.