Gaithersburg residents create own plan for smart growth

Development

Gaithersburg residents create own plan for smart growth

by Pam Lindstrom • October 5, 2011 12:11 pm

Filling a void of vision for a livable, sustainable future for Gaithersburg, my neighbors and I created our own plan for managing growth along the MD-355 corridor. It was met with great interest by City officials, who are trying to figure out what to do with it.

View down Frederick Avenue. Photo by the author.

Along Montgomery County's MD 355/Metro Red Line Corridor, a string of walkable town centers surrounding Metro stations is finally taking shape. But north of the Shady Grove Metro station, Gaithersburg is distinguished by its doughnut-shaped city plan.

Sprawling suburban office parks, with a few mixed-use "Town Centers" around the edge, are the doughnut, and the central MD 355/Frederick Avenue Corridor is the hole. The latter is a strip of gas stations, underused commercial centers and fast food restaurants in the midst of an ocean of asphalt. The road itself is a car-dominated commuter route with dominating power poles, insignificant sidewalks, and no quarter for bicyclists.

A new draft of the City's Land Use Plan retains this vision. Yet if the smart growth planned for the Red Line corridor is to extend through Gaithersburg, the Frederick Avenue Corridor is where it must go. Like the Corridor through Bethesda and Rockville, Frederick Avenue is quite thickly hemmed in with older residential neighborhoods.

Any plan to urbanize the Corridor needed to pay close heed to the borders. Rather than just commenting on the inadequate city plan, my activist friend and neighbor Judy Christensen and I decided to work with our neighbors to prepare our own plan.

Charette participants work on the Citizens Plan. Photo by the author.

The neighbors responded. We organized three charrette meetings in spring 2011 with pro bono help from Scott Knudson of Wiencek and Associates, an architecture and planning firm with an office in the Corridor. Zoning lawyers representing some of the larger land and building owners in the Corridor also advised us.

The result, the Citizens' Plan, exceeded my expectations. The plan embraces transit-oriented smart growth in the corridor, sometimes literally in peoples' back yards. Residents want redevelopment of substandard buildings, better retail we can walk to, and Frederick Avenue rebuilt as a multi-use urban boulevard. We accept that considerable planned density is necessary to make all this financially feasible.

The Corridor needs more primary businesses and affluent residents to patronize the higher-end retailers. The Plan thus calls for medium-height mixed-use buildings along a narrow corridor with ground floor retail in a limited area. Greenways and alleys separate the Corridor development from the neighborhoods along the current borders between the two. Creative traffic calming is invoked to permit but discourage traffic on the residential side streets.

The Citizens' Plan's final map.

The highlight of the Citizens' Plan is the New Downtown for Gaithersburg, a concept we resurrected from plans dating back to the 1960s. City officials didn't want to sacrifice their historic Old Town for a major modern downtown, but they identified the perfect place for a New Downtown: about a mile north of Old Town, in the empty space at the intersection of Frederick with Quince Orchard Road/Montgomery Village Avenue. As happened at most of the County's designated "corridor cities," large-scale retail, including Lake Forest Mall, came to dominate the New Downtown, and the idea of a real downtown was forgotten.

But we liked the old plan and reinstalled the New Downtown in the Citizens' Plan. The downtown core is west of Frederick Ave, where the tall buildings would be visible from miles away. The proposed Frederick Avenue Bus Rapid Transit line runs directly into the main public plaza.

The Citizens' Plan seeks to inspire redevelopment of the Corridor in a way that protects and enhances the adjoining neighborhoods. It generated enthusiasm among the residents who worked on it. The draft plan was widely circulated through the neighborhood email lists; the only responses we got were positive, and even appreciative.

We presented the Citizens' Plan to the Gaithersburg elected officials and Planning Commission in July. They were also enthusiastic, and instructed the planning staff to figure out how to incorporate our concepts into their official plan. We also had a discussion at a Planning Commission meeting in September.

While we were unable to do the broad public outreach and host the kind of extensive dialogue we envisioned, the Citizens' Plan has already succeeded. Better than telling officials, we have shown them what a plan for smart growth looks like, and shown that the public will embrace such a plan if they are empowered to shape it to suit their needs.

To read the Citizens' Plan, visit the City of Gaithersburg website and look through the list of Land Use Plan Exhibits for the Citizens' Plan.

15 comments

Tags: Gaithersburg, Maryland, Montgomery, planning, Smart Growth

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First: nice plan! I'm commenting to critique, but you should know I'm supremely impressed at the planning and what was pulled together.

In that light, I'm concerned about the amount of parking, its reliance on a conceptual BRT line running through the middle and its distance from the MARC station.

by OctaviusIII on Oct 5, 2011 1:33 pm • link • report

Wow that is incredible! I am really amazed and thrilled that you were able to pool the resources to do this. I only wish that all communities were so willing to get involved and invoke intelligent, smart growth planning.

by Eric on Oct 5, 2011 1:41 pm • link • report

This is awesome! It's encouraging to see citizens taking their neighborhood and quality of life into their own hands. I would really like to see this in action- anyone know of other communities where enough willpower might be present to do the same kind of thing?

by Margaret on Oct 5, 2011 1:52 pm • link • report

I live in Observatory Heights and think this plan looks fantastic! Since the plan focuses on Frederick Avenue, is it assumed that the group supports the master plan for Olde Towne?

As things stand now it is less than ideal to walk or ride a bike to Gaithersburg Square or the Lakeforest area. Extending a bike-ped route to the western side of 355 south of Diamond would make it much easier for us to get over to that area. Something in the Water/Diamond/Chestnut area would avoid much of the traffic on Frederick, like the rest of the bike-ped route does, but still make it easy to get across the railroad.

Great work!

by Jeremy on Oct 5, 2011 5:55 pm • link • report

I have written extensively to local officials encouraging the revival of the Downtown Gaithersburg plans. I very much like that local citizens are like minded. One addition to this plan would be a spur of the Corridor Cities Transitway that would pass through the new business district with stops at the redeveloped fairgrounds and lakeforest mall on its way to the Montgomery Village center, which is also due for redevelopment into a town center/downtown that could serve the 35,000 people that live in the village. Most of the right of way for the spur is present along Montgomery Village avenue and the cost would be low compared to the ridership that serving the Village would bring. The upcoming Gaithersburg East master plan update will be a great opportunity to encourage this essential infrastrucutre package and put into motion the Downtown Gaithersburg plans.

by Cyrus on Oct 5, 2011 8:35 pm • link • report

I think this plan is a great start. One thing I might suggest is redevelopment of the entire fairgrounds property as an anchor of any furture revitalization efforts. This, coupled with a new MARC station at Perry Parkway would be the most straightforward approach to implementing TOD in Gaithersburg. Perhaps the nearby Metropolitan Grove station could then be closed.

This, of course, assumes bidirectional all-day MARC service sometime within our lifetimes.

by Reza on Oct 5, 2011 8:59 pm • link • report

I think this is a great plan. As someone who lives walking distance to Lakeforest mall I wish this plan was reality.

I just don't see how this can happen, there are way too much private land that would need to be redeveloped to have this happen.

I mean, for example, while Lakeforest mall isn't doing as well as Montgomery mall or White Flint it has recovered quite a bit from where it was and I just don't see them tearing down most of it.

by Andrew on Oct 5, 2011 10:20 pm • link • report

The Montgomery County Fairgrounds in Gaithersburg has long been envisioned as a possible Red Line Metro stop. It would be great to have the Red Line extend north at least to stations in Old Town Gaitherburg and the fairgounds site.

by FormerG'burger on Oct 6, 2011 11:41 am • link • report

*headscratch*

Why get on the Red Line and slog through 15+ stations before Metro Center, when MARC Regional Rail service could give you a quick 6 stop trip to Union Station? Close the Garrett Park and Washington Grove stations, and then add a station at Randolph Road or Nicholson Lane to serve White Flint. People who want to continue down the Red Line could easily transfer at Rockville if necessary.

by Reza on Oct 6, 2011 3:47 pm • link • report

If you are heading to Dupont Circle, for example, your options would be to take MARC to Union Station then take the 5-stop trip back to Dupont or switch at Rockville and pay nearly full Metro fare + MARC fare. Less optimal than just taking Metro straight in.

by Jeremy on Oct 6, 2011 4:13 pm • link • report

@Reza

There's a big TOD being built at Metropolitan Grove (which may soon have a Corridor Cities Transitway station as well) as we speak.

I like the idea of giving Gaithersburg a proper downtown and emphasizing Route 355/Frederick Avenue/Rockville Pike/Wisconsin Ave/etc. as the Main Street of Montgomery County. I feel like the county's plans for Germantown Town Center and the Great Seneca Science Corridor, while promising (IMO) they undermine the importance of 355. I'm not sure how long it'll be before Lakeforest Mall and the Fairgrounds bite the dust, but this is a good start.

I do wonder if there will be demand for development here AND at Great Seneca and Germantown Town Center and Watkins Mill Town Center and the new Kentlands Downtown (whenever that happens) and Crown Farm and Shady Grove. But if I were to place a priority on where to build, I'd say build up in downtown Gaithersburg and Shady Grove and let everything else wait.

by dan reed! on Oct 6, 2011 11:15 pm • link • report

@dan reed:

Good point, I forgot about the CCT station and forthcoming development there. The I-270 new interchange at Watkins Mill Road would also help improve connectivity in the area.

@Jeremy:

I guess in my fantasy world (as long as we're talking about hyptothetical Metro extensions) that WMATA, MARC, VRE would finally integrate their fare structures so that one transfering between the services would not have to pay separate fares for each leg of their journey.

by Reza on Oct 7, 2011 1:54 am • link • report

Reza, if your goal is to improve access to transit, why do you want to reduce access to transit by closing stations?

Pam, this plan looks great. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens next.

by Miriam on Oct 7, 2011 8:51 am • link • report

I was, along with Judy Christensen and Pam Lindstrom, one of the three organizers of the Gaithersburg Citizens' Charrette, in which about 40 city residents participated. Judy, Pam, and I spent a lot of time with our volunteer architect, Scott Knudson, developing the plan map and the principles and text of the Citizens' plan.

I wholeheartedly support the plan map. However, I ended up issuing a minority report that includes a more detailed discussion of the plan and its principles. The minority report, called, "An Urban Vision for the Frederick Avenue Corridor and for Gaithersburg's 'New Downtown' City Center Urban Core, is available on Gaithersburg's Master Plan webpage as Exhibit 29 for the proposed Land Use Plan at http://www.gaithersburgmd.gov/Documents/masterplan/Ex122_130.pdf .

In addition to a more detailed text about the Citizens Plan and its principles, the Minority Report includes a history of Frederick Avenue and, perhaps most importantly, the Charrette's Transportation Plan. Appendix B, "A Comprehensive Transportation Plan for the Frederick Avenue Corridor and 'The New Downtown' City Center Urban Core" The Transportation Plan begins at Page 27 of the Minority Report. I would be very much interested in seeing your comments on the Frederick Avenue Core/Gaiithersburg New Downtown Transportation Plan, which is an ongoing project.

I generally agree with Pam's characterization of Gaithersburg's current master plan as a doughnut with a hole at the center, but must point out that Gaithersburg has a small historic and waslkable town center at what the city calls "Ole Towne Gaithersburg."

As a 20-year resident of the Kentlands, a neotraditional New Urbanist neighborhood, who has been involved one way or another in the development of Kentlands, since 1988, I disagree passionately with Pam's trivialization of Gaithersburg's New Urbanist Corridor. Kentlands is perhaps the largest and most successful New Urbanist community in North America. Almost 9,000 people live in Kentlands and Lakelands, its New Urbanist extension and twin, and the community has about a half-million square feet of commercial development, most of which is walkable. .

Plans are on the books for a large, transit-oriented, walkable Downtown Kentlands, which will, in addition to the three bus lines that already provide transportation for the community, be served by the future Corridor Cities Transitway. Along with Kentlands, the CCT will also serve three additional New Urbanist centers existing or now under construction in Gaithersburg, Washingtonian Center, Crown Farm, and Watkins Mill Town Center, as well as King Farm in Rockville and the Shady Grove Metro Station planned new urbanist development. A link to the Downtown Kentlands plan can be found about 2/3 of the way down on the Gaithersburg Master Plan page at
http://www.gaithersburgmd.gov/poi/default.asp?POI_ID=664&TOC=664; Kentlands Boulevard Commercial District Special Study Area .

Thanks,

Richard Arkin

by Richard Arkin on Oct 7, 2011 4:49 pm • link • report

Hey, does anybody else remember when at the conclusion of the Lakelands charette, Andres Duany said that he didn't want the Corridor Cities Transitway going through Lakelands and Kentlands because he didn't like "smelly old buses?" Ah, good times. It's nice to see a new urbanist so enlightened.

by Alison Bowser on Oct 21, 2011 1:18 pm • link • report