Bill Huttenloch knows development is coming to the Melwood-Westphalia section of Prince George’s County. It would be silly to think that builders and planners would pass over more than 6,000 acres of mostly woods and rolling farmland just east of the Beltway and north of Pennsylvania Avenue.
But the 67-year-old didn’t think his 2.5-acre homestead would fall right in the crosshairs.
According to a master plan put together by the Prince George’s County Planning Department, a road isgoing to be built where Huttenloch’s house now sits.
His situation sums up Westphalia’s predicament: How do you bring growth and development to an area without completely erasing its history?
“We don’t want it to be anything,” Huttenloch said of the house, which he built 30 years ago. “We want to be left alone.”
Neighborhoods such as Melwood, Little Washington and Westphalia have been carved out of the region in recent decades, but much of the sector remains rural, with tobacco farms, barns and manor houses. At least one house in the area, Melwood Park on Old Marlboro Pike, dates back to the 1700s.
Huttenloch is intimately familiar with the land in the region. In his youth, he helped with harvests at neighboring farms. Huttenloch built his house and joined the Forestville Volunteer Fire Department. He settled into life away from it all, but was still close enough to the Beltway to commute and close enough to Andrews Air Force Base to watch Air Force One depart.
But Westphalia started changing, Huttenloch said. Rural roads became dumping grounds for trash, stolen cars and, in March 2005, the body of an exotic dancer from Bethesda.
Then came the plans. In 2002, one county proposal envisioned Huttenloch’s plot as a retention pond. A few years later, developers showed up on his doorstep and those of his neighbors with buyout offers.
Huttenloch now can drive through the former farm fields and point out which neighbors sold and when. On Jan. 3, Sandler at Westphalia, a limited-liability company out of Virginia Beach, spent more than $63 million to buy about 480 acres of land in the area. The company paid $75,000 to $191,000 an acre.
Developers want to build about 3,600 homes on a 757-acre parcel. There are plans for a town center with retail. The county’s master plan calls for as many as 15,300 residential units in the region. Zoning hearing placards now crowd deer and tractor crossing signs along the road, the clearest indication of all the change coming to this quiet corner of Prince George’s County.
“This is the last place close to the Beltway like that,” Huttenloch said.
