Urging A Plan for Growth
O'Malley Officials Push State Initiative

By Miranda S. Spivack
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 5, 2008

For more than 30 years, Maryland has had a law on the books requiring officials to write a plan describing how the state should grow and develop. But with most land-use decisions made locally, and with little public pressure to create a wider vision for Maryland, no one sat down to write it.

This year, that could change.

The administration of Gov. Martin O'Malley (D), concerned about the potential effect of unchecked growth on the water supply, greenhouse gases and the Chesapeake Bay, has been quietly setting the stage for the creation of a statewide plan to guide development.

If officials succeed, Maryland will become one of a handful of states to knit together ideas from traditionally feuding factions and create a blueprint for what the state should look like two decades from now.

"One of the problems we have had in Maryland is getting the growth to go where we want it to go," said Richard Eberhart Hall, the state's planning chief. "Just because we have mapped smart-growth areas and identified them doesn't mean there is as much growth there as we would like to see."

For example, planners would like to see growth along sections of the Interstate 95 corridor between Washington and Baltimore where there are train and bus connections to the two cities but development has been slow. Similarly, in Montgomery County, development along Metro's Red Line has lagged behind what has occurred along Metro lines in parts of Northern Virginia such as Arlington's Ballston neighborhood.

Hall said the purpose of a state plan is not to dictate local development from Annapolis but to establish guiding principles that discourage sprawl and promote clusters of development near transit, water supplies, schools and other amenities.

"There are some groups that are sensitive about a big plan that pays no attention to what they are doing and tells them what they should be doing," said Hall, a career planner appointed by O'Malley to the state post last year.

"That's not our intention. We want to articulate state policy, how it manifests itself on the landscape and how it all comes together," he said.

That may assuage groups such as the Maryland Association of Counties, whose members exert substantial influence over land use.

"Traditionally in Maryland, local land-use decisions have been made at the local level," said Les Knapp, a lobbyist for the organization. "That's not to say we don't want a state plan, we just don't want one that usurps our authority."

The surge in gas prices this year, now more than $4 a gallon and rising, may be just what the planners need to gain support for their efforts. Within a matter of weeks, the market has presented immediate and painful financial incentives for residents and developers to combat suburban sprawl.

Many commuters in the Washington-Baltimore corridor are beginning to rethink life in the typical suburb, where spread-out neighborhoods often lack sidewalks, stores are rarely within easy walking distance of houses and the roads are inhospitable to cyclists.

Housing sales have slowed across the region because of other economic forces. But with the rise in gas prices, the slump has been especially pronounced in some far-flung suburbs where jobs and shopping are more than 30 minutes away by car. And there is increasing pressure to find housing for the wave of new residents coming between now and 2030, when Maryland is expected to grow by 1 million people.

"The bottom line is, this is about finding a place to put those people," said Karl Brendle, the planning director for the city of Laurel, an area of substantial expected growth.

State government can help things along by subsidizing public transit and providing incentives to developers to build bike and walking paths. The state also can restructure taxes and offer subsidies to encourage development that is more energy-efficient and less car-dependent, popularly known as "smart growth," a concept that gained currency during the administration of former governor Parris N. Glendening (D).

Government will need to move quickly to catch up with demand, said Frank Hertsch, a lawyer and engineer who heads an engineering firm that works with builders and developers.

"You can't direct people to live in an area unless you meet the infrastructure needs," such as schools, libraries and transit, he said.

Hertsch said it would be unrealistic for a Towson or a Rockville to develop their own light-rail systems, which should be funded regionally or at the state level.

A state plan might aid in those efforts, he said.

Stuart Meck, a planner who heads the Center for Government Services at Rutgers, the state university of New Jersey, said Maryland is ripe for a state plan to promote smart growth. The state's disparate incentives and regulatory systems have had limited success at promoting denser development near mass transit, protecting farmland and preserving open space.

"Did it really physically change the characteristics of growth in Maryland? It really didn't," he said.

A key reason, Meck said, is that the state needs to push for even denser development around transit and other designated growth areas to realize the goal of preserving open space.

Brendle said he is eager to see what the state plan might entail. He sits on a statewide task force convened by O'Malley that is starting to lay the groundwork for the state plan.

"If the state continues the way it is going, you are going to continue to allow the development of farmland. That's senseless," he said.

Laurel is in the throes of several redevelopment plans aimed at accommodating growth in the area, where about 22,000 jobs are expected to be created at or near Fort Meade.

"We are trying to grow from within," Brendle said.

In exchange for development rights, the city insists that developers contribute to public transit and other amenities, including "people places" that residents can walk to, he said. The city also urges developers to set up their own bus networks that feed into the MARC commuter rail service and intercounty bus services.

John Kortecamp, an official with the 1,200-member Home Builders Association of Maryland, said he's optimistic a state plan is viable.

"Maryland is a state with a very strong tradition of local control," he said. "It would be difficult to do anything to run counter to that, and probably not advisable."

Kortecamp said his organization is interested to see the results. "In concept, as long as you have a state policy that is supposed to guide growth, it helps to have some architecture that helps articulate what path that should take."