Commissioners weigh Ridenour Way mitigation, cost and feasibility as Nells Acres builds out

County staff presented updated maps and a progress report on Nells Acres and the planned Ridenour Way parallel route, prompting extended discussion among commissioners, planning staff, and public‑works representatives about cost, feasibility, emergency access and how to coordinate mitigation with the Maryland State Highway Administration.

Staff showed aerials and master-plan lines for two planned parallel streets (the southern alignment identified as Ridenour Way and a northern alignment identified as Dickinson) and said those lines date to master-plan work going back to 1977. Staff said the Nells Acres developer agreed to produce engineering drawings and provide roughly $220,000 toward design for a Ridenour connection; planning staff tied additional building permits beyond an initial 50 to progress on those plans so the county could ensure mitigation occurred.

The project’s history drew scrutiny. Commissioners noted approvals and conditional uses for the property dating to the late 1990s and 2005, and they questioned how a project with a long approval history could still generate traffic and safety concerns under current codes. Staff said the county had used a mitigation approach that allowed the developer to proceed with staged permits while engineering and right‑of‑way work continued; the developer reached a point where the county considered using developer-submitted plans to advance the county CIP project rather than require the developer to complete construction drawings first.

Staff reported that the Maryland State Highway Administration initially approved a developer-proposed “Maryland T” at Progress Way and Maryland 32 as mitigation, but the State Highway Office of Traffic and Safety later opposed the T and recommended a fee in lieu. Staff said that shift leaves the county and the developer to negotiate the mitigation’s final form or to reassign funds to other projects.

Commissioners pushed for clearer cost and acquisition numbers before the county spends additional CIP funds. Staff referenced a recent county construction estimate for the short Ridenour segment in the neighborhood of $2,530,000 (staff offered to circulate the latest cost estimate) and said the planning report presented the developer’s engineering contribution and the permit-control mechanism that limited initial building permits to 50 until plans reached a certain level of completion.

Emergency-service access and neighborhood impacts were raised repeatedly. Commissioners and staff said the county engages Fire & EMS and volunteer emergency associations on plan review; they also raised concerns that a new connector could divert traffic through narrow local streets and change access patterns for existing residents and churches. Staff said the developer had met with local churches and that the county would continue to consult emergency services before advancing construction.

To better quantify options, staff recommended using a small planning grant available through the Baltimore Metropolitan Council to fund preliminary engineering and right‑of‑way analysis for Ridenour and Dickinson. Staff said the BMC program could provide about $60,000 of study funding with a $12,000 county match for a feasibility and cost estimate; commissioners asked staff to return with an outline of options for spending the BMC funds and for property-acquisition and construction-cost estimates before committing further CIP funding.

No board decision to obligate construction dollars was recorded in the meeting. Commissioners directed staff to return with a menu of options and cost estimates, including right‑of‑way acquisition scenarios, and to engage State Highway on whether fee‑in‑lieu mitigation could be used smarter to leverage state improvements to Maryland 26.