Residents Step Closer To Saving Community

Council to Cast 1st Vote On Lincoln Park Plan

Rockville officials are taking steps that could lead to adopting a plan to preserve the unique character of Lincoln Park, a historically African American community established in the 19th century.

The Lincoln Park neighborhood plan, and a companion conservation plan, would preserve the streetscapes, the canopy of old trees and other unique characteristics of the 82-acre neighborhood. The proposal includes a special zoning tool that would limit the height and overall size of new houses.

Mayor Larry Giammo and the City Council are scheduled to take the first of several votes required to adopt the plan during the Dec. 18 council meeting.

When officials began studying the idea of a Lincoln Park preservation plan four years ago, residents said they were delighted to go to meetings and be involved. A handful of new houses had been built that were larger and taller than many of the 208 existing single-family homes, many of them one-story bungalows and cottages built by the owners. They wanted a solution.

The community, just off Rockville Pike east of the Rockville Metro station, was the only one in Montgomery County that had residential land for sale to African Americans following emancipation, residents of the community said. It is recognized as the county's first community of African American landowners.

Among the neighborhood's 900 or so residents are people who have lived there all their lives and who want the place to stay intact.

"I love this neighborhood," said Fran Hawkins, president of the Lincoln Park Civic Association. "It's just that my family is here. A lot of them moved away, but a lot of them are still here. And I love this place."

The plan that ultimately could be adopted is being criticized in Lincoln Park for lacking a solution for buffering the community from an adjacent industrial park, which is the source of truck traffic, noise and pollution, according to members of the neighborhood task force who worked on the plan.

The proposed solution, which the city's planners worked on for years, involved the city's annexation of the 10.5-acre Westmore Industrial Park and its redevelopment as a residential neighborhood of townhouses and single-family homes.

The application for annexation was withdrawn last week by the property owner, who cited an inability to work out a compromise with the city, according to Scott Ullery, the city manager.

Without that component, the plan is a shadow of the one the community had envisioned, said Wilma Bell, a resident of Lincoln Park and member of the task force.

"We supported the annexation because only by annexing it into the city could the property become residential," said Bell, referring to the industrial park. "We wanted residential on the property because of all the surrounding industrial uses. And since that didn't happen, it's a devastating blow to the neighborhood."

Commercial trucks trying to get from the industrial park to Gude Drive routinely cut through Lincoln Park. An estimated 440 trucks pass through the neighborhood on North Horners Lane on a typical day, and cut-through traffic is listed as a major problem in the final draft of the neighborhood plan prepared by city planners.

The annexation and redevelopment project was snagged on an arcane aspect of zoning, Ullery said. The redevelopment would have required the council to approve an exception to the city's zoning code to allow single-family homes on land zoned only for residential townhouses, Ullery said.

"The council needed to do that, and that just hasn't been in the cards to date," he said.

Ullery said he is hopeful residents will try to look at positive aspects of the plan.

"I know they're disappointed about [the] withdrawal of the project from annexation, and I know at least some that are blaming the city," Ullery said. "I would say that their plan is a really terrific plan and the [annexation] is just one part of it. . . . I would encourage them to not throw the whole thing out because they're not getting everything they want."

Jim Wasilak, the city's chief of planning, said the plan that the City Council could vote on this month does address one of the more vexing issues identified by residents on the task force: the tear-down phenomenon.

"The intent is to keep the neighborhood in more or less the same character by putting some specific limitations on size of new houses," he said.