Update: The video of this meeting is here. Public appearances start at about 7 minutes into the video; the Mayor & Council discussion immediately follows.
Watching tonight’s Mayor and Council Meeting, I note that several members of the Council, responding to comments from the public, explicitly referred to the County’s Property Use Initiative website, stating that they found the County’s description of the City’s response (“The City of Gaithersburg has not opposed our proposed uses. Some officials voiced support, other cautious support and others were non-committal.”) to the GE Tech Park proposal not to be completely in line with reality, which is pretty much what I had thought from the dialog in previous meetings. From the discussion in tonight’s meeting (I’ll put up a link to the video when such is available) it appears that the City continues to have discussions with the County on this topic, and is attempting to obtain firm assurances on issues such as the viewshed of Lake Placid and compensation for the lost tax base — although the County has yet to agree to anything of substance.
Also, I received the following email from Kentlands resident Richard Arkin in response to my previous post on this subject, pasted in here with permission:
I have not had the opportunity to analyze as thoroughly as you the county’s new “Property Use Initiative” PR websites and video. In my own brief review, however, I did notice some other deceptions and downright falsehoods in its postings.
If the county did indeed say “The property is I-3 zoning which permits the County to uses including office, warehousing and manufacturing,” then it has made a statement that is absolutely false. The city’s I-3 zone (and the property is, indeed, in the city and subject to the city rather than county, zoning ordinance) does permit certain office, warehouse, and manufacturing uses, with limitations. However, “public [i.e., government] buildings and uses” do not permit “on-site parking or storage of trucks, either within a building or on the exterior, or motor vehicles other than automobiles for employees and customers of the facility are allowed” and expressly prohibits government warehouses and delivery operations of any kind by stating “No distribution uses are allowed. For the purpose of this section “distribution uses” is defined as the primary use of the property for the “collection and transfer or dispensing of personal property or equipment to public or private recipients.” The only basis for the county repeatedly making the statement that what it wants to do is permitted is because the county takes the position that zoning laws do not apply to it. The state and federal governments do not, as a matter of policy, violate local zoning laws, but the county apparently does.
If the county also said that moving the District 1 police station into the GE Tech Park site does not take it out of District 1, then that statement is also false. County Police District 1 ends at Darnestown Road. The entire GE Tech Park subdivision is within county Police District 6.
But wait, there’s more in addition to these false statements and the deceptive statements in the website:
Another deceptive aspect of the website is its separation in their flowchart of the Finnmarc-owned parts of the GE Tech Park from the Gaithersburg Realty Trust-owned segments of the GE Tech Park and placing the Finnmark property with an ownership but not location designation next to the Casey Tract on their chart. The GRC segment, in contrast is labeled with the location, GE Tech Park, but not the ownership and is separated physically on the flowchart. The overall deceptive impression left is that only office locations will be located in the GE Tech Park, while the liquor distribution warehouse will be housed in an industrial Finnmarc tract somewhere near the Casey Tract.
In addition, the individual “sites being considered” listing (which should really be labeled as “sites pre-selected without comparison to other sites”) says that the so-called Finnmarc site is “adjacent” to the GE Tech Park (somewhat more revealing than the flow chart labeling), but fails to note that it is part of GE Tech Park. The sites are labeled as being on Route 28, although the areas to be developed are not very close to route 28 and are adjacent to and very visible from Lakelands and Kentlands.
I am sure there are others that will turn up on further examination, but I wanted to share these with you and your readership now.
Thanks.
Dick Arkin
In a later email, Mr. Arkin added:
It also troubles me greatly that the county is using as one of its prime justifications its plan to develop a Kentlands-like New Urbanist community on the parcels now occupied by some of the facilities they seek to move to GE Tech Park. The city’s master plan for GE Tech Park contemplates what would be an extension of Kentlands and Lakelands into the tract. So it seems to me that what the county plans to do is akin to robbing Peter (Kentlands, Lakelands, and North Potomac) to pay Paul (the Shady Grove sector).