Montgomery County’s elected officials will take up a proposal to create a new zoning category that could have enormous effect on the county by making it easier to build high-density, mixed-use developments. The county’s economic development committee will begin weighing on Monday the creation of a special “commercial/residential” designation, under which developers could build high-rise shopping and living complexes without extraordinary legislation. The category is designed to smooth the way for the White Flint development but has big implications for development throughout the county. “In the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, there was this idea that you would put shopping over here and housing over there and have everybody drive everywhere,” said former Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce President Rich Parsons. The proposed category “is part of smart growth and new urbanism.” Real estate experts say consumers are demanding densely packed, “walkable” neighborhoods with close access to shopping and restaurants and are willing to pay serious cash to get them, even in a deep recession. That’s made the area around Metro stations — like the White Flint stop — inviting targets for developers hoping to climb out of the economic pits.
But making the new designation practical and appealing will require far more than updating county forms.
“One of the challenges is, how do you create flexibility in high-density design?” said development committee Chairman Mike Knapp, D-Germantown.
Among the problems is that the land around White Flint is already valuable, and it’s easier to convince landowners there that a bigger payoff awaits the massive construction ahead of them. Knapp said he was hoping to come up with a zoning formula that wouldn’t crush landowners in areas where “the underlying land values aren’t as promising.”
The county is in the midst of a winter that will reshape Montgomery’s map for decades, with massive big-ticket development projects like White Flint, the Bethesda Naval realignment and the so-called “Science City” proposal in the north of the county.
“We’re trying to come up with a zone that works everywhere, not just at White Flint,” Knapp said.
