Contributor Opinion by John Britton: Thoughts On The District Court House (Redux)

>The following contributor opinion about the new District Court House is by Rockville City Council member John Britton. (Hyperlinks have been added.)

This past Monday evening, as reported in the Gazette, a number of residents came before the mayor and council to express their support for the proposed district courthouse on the site of the old library. Many of these residents characterized the mayor and council’s unanimous decision to oppose the current proposal as “hurried,” “ill-advised,” “unseemly,” and “pandering to a small group of activists.” I take exception to these characterizations. With respect to the action by my colleagues, suffice it to say, each based his or her decision on a review of the issues and a considered and thoughtful analysis of their impacts on the community.

With respect to my own decision-making process, these characterizations wholly miss the mark. Rather than react hurriedly to a so-called small group of activists (NOTE: I believe that close to 200 residents have signed the petition to oppose the courthouse), I based my conclusions on a thorough review and analysis over the past few months of the facts and history of the district court proposal. This included a review of the correspondence and the official documents submitted by the State, an analysis of the project description and architectural plans, a viewing of the presentation of the concept plan by the State representatives at the May 2005 mayor and council public meeting, and various public and private discussions on this matter. One may substantively disagree with the results of my review and analysis, but hurried and ill-advised they are not. Furthermore, having identified and, in my mind, verified legitimate community concerns as a result of the adverse impacts of the courthouse, I do not consider opposition to the current courthouse proposal “unseemly.”

I reiterate my public statement that the proposed district courthouse as currently configured on the library site is inappropriate. This does not detract from the comments submitted by Mayor Rose Krasnow who informed us that the State, County and City officials initially agreed to the use of the library site for the courthouse. I respect and defer to Mayor Krasnow’s recollection and interpretation of the events at that time. I respectfully disagree, however, on the consequences of such agreement. First, there is no legal document that binds the City to any course of action; there could not be such a document since the property at issue was not in the City’s control. Second, there could not be any agreement at that time to a particular project because the concept plan was not submitted until 2005. At the time of the earlier concurrence for the use of the library site, there were no plans and designs for the proposed courthouse on which to rely to understand the impacts of the building and its activities on adjacent neighborhoods and the community at large. Finally, despite the fact that the library use was classified as institutional and the courthouse would be similarly classified, the current courthouse proposal significantly increases the scope of such use to an unacceptable level. In fact, the early design of the courthouse appeared to pay more respect to neighborhood impacts and the city’s zoning requirements than the current proposal.

Implicit in everyone’s agreement to utilize the library site should have been an understanding of an appropriateness of the scale and scope of the project vis-a-vis our neighborhoods. Put differently, such agreement should not have been carte blanche for the State to do whatever it desired in total disregard for the impacts on the community. Unfortunately, the project as proposed violates contemporary norms of how a high density structure should approach a low density one and implicates serious parking, traffic flow, pedestrian safety and neighborhood encroachment issues that are unique to this site. Furthermore, in response to the City’s and the community’s concerns, the State committed to work with the community to resolve these issues, a commitment that was more potemkin than sincere in nature.

Put simply, there was a dearth of analyses of the impacts of the courthouse proposal and a myopic focus on the judiciary’s internal needs and agenda – all to the detriment of our community. For these and other reasons that I have previously expressed publicly and despite State expenses already incurred, I continue to find that it is not prudent to invest $70 million in a flawed project.

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