Montgomery County committee reviews ZTA 2502 to allow duplexes, triplexes and townhouses on defined corridors

Montgomery County’s Planning, Housing and Parks Committee met March 31 for a work session to review Zoning Text Amendment (ZTA) 2502 — the corridor-focused proposal that would allow duplexes, triplexes, townhouses and small apartment buildings in R40, R60, R90 and R200 zones that front specified corridors. Chair (chair) opened the session and said the committee would not take votes at the meeting.

The amendment’s sponsors framed the proposal as one tool to expand supply for workforce households. Council Member Natalie Fani Gonzales, a co-sponsor, said the measure reflects extensive outreach and “we must be building more housing, especially homes for people who are in the lower bracket.”

Council staff summarized the key development rules in the draft: eligible properties must have their front lot line on a qualifying corridor (a corridor must be at least 100 feet wide and have three existing travel lanes), the maximum density would be 1.25 floor area ratio (FAR) and the maximum building height 40 feet. The ZTA sets a 15% workforce-housing requirement for projects with three or more units, at or below 120% of area median income, enforced by the Department of Housing and Community Affairs (DHCA) under Chapter 25B; DPS cannot issue a building permit until required workforce-housing agreements are recorded.

Why the committee paused: safety, displacement and implementation questions

Committee members and planning staff spent most of the session probing how the map and rules would work in practice and where the ZTA might have unintended consequences. One planning-board–recommended amendment under review would remove “controlled major highways” from the eligible corridors; Planning’s David Anspacher said those roads are often four to six lanes at higher speeds and the board recommended removal to limit driveway access and safety risks.

Other high-impact choices under discussion included whether to include properties that front service roads (staff estimate ~630 parcels, roughly 25% of the ZTA universe) and whether corner lots should be eligible (staff recommended including them because they are often larger and present fewer curb-cut issues). Committee members noted those decisions matter: keeping service roads would preserve many more redevelopment opportunities, while excluding them would remove a large number of parcels from eligibility.

Consolidation, FAR and unit yield

Planning staff walked through how lot consolidation would work under the ZTA and ran site-yield examples. For example, assembling three 6,000-square-foot R60 lots yields about 18,000 square feet; at 1.25 FAR that produces about 22,500 square feet of developable area — a theoretical maximum that could translate to roughly 10–11 townhomes or a larger number of smaller rental units depending on unit size, parking, setbacks and site constraints. Planners emphasized setbacks, lot coverage, parking and the 40-foot height cap as practical limits that reduce the theoretical maximum unit count.

Affordability protections and concerns about displacement

The ZTA would use workforce-housing controls in Chapter 25B rather than create a new, separate program. DHCA chief of housing Summer Cross explained workforce units are priced by affordability calculations and that the program typically applies a 20-year control period for resale restrictions. Cross said the department generally sets an initial price using household size, interest rates, taxes and fees.

Several council members, including Council Member Giordano, worried the corridor approach could disproportionately affect so-called naturally occurring affordable housing and displace existing residents in lower-priced corridor neighborhoods. Planning staff said early sales-data analysis of applicable parcels (a small sample) shows average sale prices in the high-$700,000s to $800,000 range and that roughly 80% of applicable parcels are owner-occupied; staff committed to provide more granular corridor-level sales and occupancy data for the committee to consider.

Stormwater, tree canopy and parking tradeoffs

The committee also examined how stormwater, tree-canopy rules and parking requirements interact with increased density on small lots. Department of Permitting Services manager Mark Etheridge warned the county must meet state stormwater standards “to the maximum extent practical” and that if applicants cannot meet on-site standards the department routinely evaluates partial compliance, waivers and fee-in-lieu options to avoid denying otherwise approvable projects. Etheridge told the committee that if waivers were categorically disallowed it could prevent some projects from receiving building permits: “If we can't do it and they can't meet 20% of that requirement, we can't issue the building permit.”

Staff proposals include limiting the number of concurrent waivers and using payments-in-lieu in some cases, while preserving the planning board’s ability to require mitigation measures. The committee asked planning and permitting staff to describe precisely how any waiver sequencing or fee calculations would work in practice.

Process and next steps

Committee members agreed to gather more analysis before any votes: requested follow-ups included corridor- and neighborhood-level sales-price and occupancy data, graphics and three-dimensional diagrams showing what common consolidation scenarios would look like (R60/R90 examples and R40/R200 where relevant), an overlay showing where prior parking exemptions (ZTA 2310) would remove on-site parking requirements, and a clearer description of stormwater waiver and fee-in-lieu calculations.

The chair said the committee will pause formal action for the budget period and return in June with the requested materials. No formal action or vote was taken at the March 31 session.