gaithersblog.net

Olde Towne Gaithersburg is home to City Hall, a row of industrial supply and second-hand shops, small businesses and 22 eateries for dining in and carry-out. It’s not a place that droves of young professionals head to spend an afternoon noshing and window shopping or lounging at a trendy pub.

Gaithersburg missed the boat during the development boom, says a city councilman who spent his life in construction. The problem is most clear in Olde Towne, where an absence of new buildings is glaring.

With the details of the proposed purchase of one of two major parcels finally in hand, a picture is taking shape of what impact County Executive Isiah Leggett’s “Smart Growth Initiative” may have on future capital projects, including schools, libraries and community centers.

Police arrested a 27-year-old man on Sunday for allegedly sexually assaulting a 50-year-old Gaithersburg woman in Malcolm King Park.

The victim, who was not raped, was not hospitalized, but “did have some bruising on her neck” after the man choked her, said Gaithersburg Police Sgt. Rudy Wagner.

Denis Ofelio Cuadra, of no fixed address, is being held at the Montgomery County Detention Center on $200,000 bond, a jail spokesman said. He is charged with first-degree assault, second-degree assault, robbery, third-degree sex offense and fourth-degree sex offense.

Neighbors to the Montgomery County Airpark continue to be at loggerheads with pilots and airpark officials over complaints that aircraft sometimes fly too low or in alleged violation of Federal Aviation Administration guidelines.

The state Court of Appeals has ruled that the Maryland-National Capital Planning Commission can join a legal dispute between the historic Town of Washington Grove and a nationally known developer over a 12-plus-acre land parcel the town hopes to preserve as a meadow.

One speaker after another told the Montgomery County Council Tuesday night the changes proposed to the county’s historic preservation law are a bad idea.

Sen. Jennie M. Forehand was in a committee meeting recently in Annapolis when former Del. Cheryl C. Kagan asked to speak with her. Kagan told the four-term senator she plans to run for her District 17 Senate seat in 2010.

Despite the challenge, Forehand (D) of Rockville intends to seek a fifth term.

More than 50 boosters and critics of the Gaithersburg West master plan laid out their best cases to the Planning Board for adding to or taming the scope of the county’s blueprint to transform more than 800 acres in Shady Grove into a live-work science and research hub.

The county’s cloudy financial forecast for next year is getting increasingly overcast.

On top of local budget constraints, the county would lose an additional $40 million to $60 million in state aid in fiscal 2010 under budget bills making their way through Annapolis, as state lawmakers work to close a $650 million budget gap next year. Before receiving $1.7 billion in federal stimulus funds, the state gap exceeded $1 billion.

Montgomery County received more than $4 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development last week to acquire and renovate foreclosed homes and rent them to county residents, County Executive Isiah Leggett (D) announced last week in Aspen Hill.

Two anti-illegal immigration groups are protesting a state bond bill that would pay for a permanent Wheaton facility for a Washington, D.C.-area nonprofit that gives business loans to Latinos and other low- and moderate-income populations, saying the program most likely serves illegal immigrants.