Final Clarksburg Proposals Are Given Approval

The Montgomery County Planning Board approved final plans yesterday for Clarksburg Town Center, the last chapter in a dispute that led to regulatory and political changes in the county.

The board agreed to a proposal from developer Newland Communities for one underground garage with extra spaces and for more surface parking instead of the two garages that had been previously approved.

That means Newland will provide about 1,000 parking spaces instead of the staff-recommended 1,240. Both amounts are substantially less than county parking rules recommend, but the rules can be waived by the board. The community is expected to have about 1,200 residences when it is completed, with about 195,000 square feet of retail in a downtown designed to resemble a small village.

"This has been a long trek for everybody," said Royce Hanson, Planning Board chairman. "We would like to see no further hearings but a lot of dirt flying. We look forward to getting on with the building."

The board also decided to allow Newland to vary the size of shops that would line the village streets, allowing some to be 43 feet deep and others to be 60.

The dispute that brought Clarksburg to prominence began in 2004, when three residents -- Lynn Fantle, Amy Presley and Kim Shiley -- found that Newland and several builders had strayed from approved plans.

The retail core, they said, was supposed to be a small walkable village, but Newland had modified the plans to build a strip suburban shopping center. As residents learned of the changes, they found other problems, including buildings that were too tall and too close to the road and to neighbors.

The disputes led to hundreds of hours of hearings at the Planning Board, eventual mediation and arbitration that lasted for almost two years, and changes in regulations and in local politics. They also prompted the resignation of several planning staff members and reorganizations at several county agencies that oversee development. Presley was ultimately appointed to the Planning Board. She recused herself from yesterday's vote.

The Planning Board approved detailed plans, including a second garage, last year. But Newland officials returned this year, saying that they had been unable to persuade a major retail developer or a grocer to locate in the community and that the two garages were a big part of the problem.

In a session last month, the Planning Board had said it would insist on the second parking garage and shops 60 feet deep unless there were good reasons to change that. Hanson said yesterday after hours of discussion that he thought the changes made sense.

The board had an easier time disposing of other issues, swiftly approving a new sports court, the widening of a swimming pool and a plan for the developer to spend $1 million in promised funds for landscaping.

The next step is for Newland to find a retail developer to build the downtown. Douglas Delano, a Newland vice president, said he expects to spend the next few months trying to line someone up. "We are pleased," he said after the board unanimously voted to approve the new plans. "Now we will have something to show a developer."

The conflict over parking illuminated a broader debate under way in many suburbs: How much parking is enough in communities such as Clarksburg that lack public transportation other than slow-moving public buses?

Planning commissioner Joseph Alfandre, who developed Kentlands, a Gaithersburg development that looks like a small town, said he would be inclined to build less parking than more. The board approved more spaces than the developer wanted (914) but fewer than recommended by the planning staff.

"I think it is a good plan, and it works," Alfandre said.

Board member Jean Cryor said she voted for the plan with trepidation: "I am not nearly as optimistic about this as my colleagues are. I think this plan is still flawed, and it is being put together with a lot of hope. I do not think there is enough parking here to make this work."

Fantle, a leader of the Clarksburg Town Center Advisory Committee, the community group that unearthed problems several years ago, is worried, too: "I still think it is underparked."