Cars and Progress Passing Burtonsville By
Residents Say Neglect Hides Area's Potential

By Katherine Shaver
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 8, 2008

To hear some Burtonsville residents tell it, their community is the Rodney Dangerfield of Montgomery County: It gets no respect.

The past few years have been especially rough, they say, bringing about a feeling that Burtonsville is being overlooked and passed by.

First came an overpass built two years ago that sent Route 29 traffic over Route 198 and turned their crossroads community into a highway exit. Then came the death in February of Marilyn Praisner, their representative on the County Council for 17 years and a key political champion.

Late March brought more bad news: The popular Dutch Country Farmers Market, a community landmark for 20 years that attracts shoppers from across the region with its fresh food, announced it will be moving in the summer to Prince George's County.

Eileena York, a meeting organizer who recently founded a Burtonsville civic group called Citizens Involved, said residents feel like the county's "orphans" in a community that has become downright "dumpy."

"We don't have a strong voice in this county," said York, who has lived in Burtonsville for 16 years.

As Stuart Rochester, a longtime local civic activist, put it: "Burtonsville has a lot of potential, but I think it's suffered from neglect and a lack of clout."

County officials said they're doing what they can to spruce up Burtonsville at a time when budgets are strapped and other aging areas, including Wheaton and the Piney Branch area of Silver Spring, are also clamoring for revitalization projects.

County Executive Isiah Leggett (D), who has lived in Burtonsville for 17 years, noted that losing the Amish market will be "quite painful." He said officials worked hard to keep it but couldn't find commercial space that met the market's needs.

Leggett said the county has helped Burtonsville in the recent past by building a library and community center and installing sidewalks along Old Columbia Pike. He said he and Praisner led the push to set aside $500,000 over the next two budget years for projects to revitalize the community.

But significant improvements, such as easing traffic jams on Route 198, will take far more money than governments now have, he said.

"There's no question it needs revitalization," Leggett said. "The question is the cost and timing of it."

Roylene Roberts, chief of neighborhood revitalization for the Department of Housing and Community Affairs, said the county is about to hire a consultant to conduct a $60,000 study of ways to improve Burtonsville. The kinds of projects that could be built with the $500,000, she said, include a streetscape design that gives communities a sense of place.

The consultant will have two meetings May 29 to solicit ideas regarding the Burtonsville redevelopment study, at noon with the business community and at 7 p.m. with residents. Both will be at the East County Regional Services Center, 3300 Briggs Chaney Rd., in Silver Spring.

"When you go to Georgetown, the sidewalks are different, the lights are different, the benches are different," Roberts said. "You know you're in Georgetown."

Indeed, it's the lack of a community "soul" that some Burtonsville residents say troubles them most. They say their once-rural crossroads community at Montgomery's northeastern edge has grown into another chunk of suburbia without a "village" feel. The closest they've come to a town square, they say, are the picnic tables outside the Amish market, but those will disappear when that shopping center is torn down and replaced this year.

Although some residents say they were drawn to Burtonsville's convenient location and country feel, the fact that it is bisected by two busy roads leaves them stuck in their cars even for short distances, when they'd prefer a walkable town.

Chris Jones, president of Bethesda-based BMC Property Group, is redeveloping the Burtonsville Shopping Center where the Amish market operates. He said Burtonsville, situated between Washington and Baltimore and on the borders of Howard and Prince George's counties, is a prime business location. Its residents, like many in Montgomery, are well-educated and relatively affluent, he said.

However, Jones said, the area became so choked with traffic that officials limited new development there for years. Redevelopment gets expensive, he said, because the county often requires developers to improve roads and follow time-consuming regulations. Meanwhile, he said, an inflexible master plan doesn't allow for the kind of mixed-use retail and residential development that some residents are calling for.

The area also doesn't have the kind of population density or transit systems that make redevelopment projects profitable, he said. Without tax breaks or other government incentives, he said, many developers won't venture to the area.

Jones said his new shopping center will be "very nice" but won't have the "Main Street" feel he'd envisioned because he couldn't persuade public officials to grant him more commercial zoning.

"Development can happen in Burtonsville, but government has to encourage it," Jones said. "They have to say this is something we want. There's been no will to do that."

Piera Weiss, who oversees planning issues for the Burtonsville area, said eastern Montgomery's master plans were last updated in 1997. Mixed-use residential-retail developments weren't considered because they weren't common then, and they weren't an issue that residents or developers raised, Weiss said. The county also usually targets such high-density developments around Metro stops, which Burtonsville doesn't have.

As for public funding, Weiss said, "The county has to know what it wants to do before it gives the tax breaks to do it."

Others said local businesses and landlords should do more.

Lynn Martins, owner of Seibel's, a popular Burtonsville restaurant since 1939, said more property owners need to spruce up, as she's done with a garden and fish pond.

"We as business owners have a stake in how our community looks," Martins said. "I think we have some responsibility as well. We can't pass it all off on government."