Montgomery County committee adopts edits to Clarksburg Gateway plan, sets 8‑acre park goal

The Montgomery County Planning, Housing and Parks Committee unanimously approved staff edits to the Clarksburg Gateway Sector Plan during a Feb. 11 work session and adopted a goal of eight acres of new parkland to be delivered as a constellation of connected parks across the plan area.

Ms. Dunn, county planning staff, opened the session and summarized the environment chapter, noting that “the entire plan area is in a special protection area or referred to as an SPA,” and that the plan’s environmental goals include protecting Little Seneca Creek and expanding forest canopy. She told the committee the plan recommends meeting or exceeding existing SPA and environmental guideline requirements and that stricter measures could be triggered later if monitoring shows they are needed.

The committee discussed several technical proposals. On buffers from I‑270, staff described an approach that keeps a requirement for a noise study, a sound wall or berm, and a 50‑foot native tree buffer while allowing exceptions. Council staff recommended that, when exceptions are granted, any residential use impacted by the exception should be set back at least 125 feet from the I‑270 right‑of‑way (roughly 200 feet from the nearest travel lane). Artie Harris, chair of the Planning Board, told the committee the board prefers language that “should consider” a 125‑foot setback to preserve flexibility in site‑specific review.

The committee also reviewed the plan’s climate resilience recommendation to require 35% green cover. Council staff explained prior master plans measured the 35% threshold in different ways and proposed computing the requirement on a tract or net‑tract basis while excluding environmental buffers and certain rights‑of‑way from the base calculation. Staff proposed removing a redundant clause that created confusion about what counts as green cover.

Parks officials pressed for language that produces usable park amenities rather than undeveloped land. “We have 37,000 acres of parkland in Montgomery County,” Mittie Figueretto, director of Montgomery Parks, told the committee, and argued the county needs capital and implementation language that helps convert dedicated parkland into activated facilities. Figueretto recommended setting a goal of eight acres; the committee adopted the staff edit and the single goal of 8 acres to be provided as a constellation of parks across the plan area.

On wildlife crossings, council staff recommended removing a specific recommendation for a costly wildlife overpass spanning I‑270 (recommendation 15(d)) because it lacks precedent and a fiscal impact assessment; the committee accepted the staff recommendation to retain a general wildlife‑crossing objective while removing the explicit overpass language.

The committee also considered historic preservation recommendations. Planning recommended listing the Community of Faith United Methodist Church and Cemetery and the Clarksburg Heights Subdivision in the Master Plan for Historic Preservation, and recommended not listing the Comsat Laboratories building; the plan states mitigation steps if the Comsat building is not preserved. The committee accepted council staff’s edits and the planning board’s recommendations without objection.

Where the plan suggests a potential recreation center, council staff suggested the reserve school site at Lithicum East Elementary be considered as a possible location; the district council member and parks director supported keeping that nonbinding suggestion in the plan.

The committee took these actions by unanimous voice support and will forward the recommendations to the full council as its report on these plan sections. The committee will hold a third work session on Feb. 23 to address neighborhood recommendations, zoning and implementation.