Reader Note by Roald Schrack: Update On MHP Meeting
Oct 16, 2009 8:00 - 2 Comments
The Montgomery Housing Partnership held a meeting on Wednesday night to inform the community about the status of the Beall’s Grant II proposed affordable housing development. Neither Cindy Cotte Griffiths nor I were able to attend, but Rockville central reader Roald Schrack sent along the following report:
Report on Oct 14, 2009 Meeting help by Montgomery Housing Partnership
This meeting was held to inform the community of the coming application by MHP to Rockville for certification for the revised form of Beall’s Grant II. Since the original application was rejected, MHP has worked with the community, specifically the West End Citizen’s Association to make Beall’s Grant II acceptable in size and appearance. The original level of 109 apartment units has been reduced to 74. The original height has been reduced from 4 stories to 2 ½ on Beall Ave and 3 stories on North Washington. An floor of parking garage has been removed. The appearance on Beall has been modified to make the building look like separate townhouses, including separate entrances on Beall. Although the new design does not supply the number of parking spaces required, MHP believes they will be given a variance on the parking space requirements under a new zoning law.
The real conflict still exists though because WECA wants MHP to sign a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) covering all the points of discussion between WECA and MHP during the last several months. MHP does not want to sign the agreement while it is still under litigation ( having to do with the impact of children of residents of BGII on Beall Elementary School). BUT MHP will want the Mayor and Council to sign a letter of support for BGII before they sign the MOA so they can get a funding agreement from the state This problem will be faced by the newly elected M&C sometime in December or January. From the comments of WECA representatives at this meeting it looks like Rockville is in for continuing disagreements in the search for affordable housing in the city.
Roald Schrack
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I was at that meeting and have been deeply involved in this issue from the beginning.
I appreciate this report but feel it needs some clarification and important details to place this in context.
1. MHP does NOT have to sign a MOU with a citizen organization to build this building or to get a letter of support from the mayor and council. It is not under ANY obligation to do this-no developer in the history of Rockville, I believe, has ever been held hostage by a lay citizen group with no legal power in this way. MHP actually has, let me remind everyone, the legal approval, an approved site plan, to break ground TODAY on a 109 unit building.
So to say that MHP wants a letter of support before signing the MOU assumes this is somehow a requirement. It most certainly is NOT.
2. MHP DID sign the MOU. They signed it the very NEXT day after it was signed by the WECA committee but they added an addendum that the committee rejected. The most important provision in the addendum was that the deal was off if the lawsuit continues. That makes sense and is reasonable-especially given that 3/4 of the litigants are ON the WECA committee. Of course, the committee rejected the addendum.
3. The committee considers the MOU unsigned. However, MHP has repeatedly said, and expressed Wednesday night, that they are following the MOU. What MHP presented Wednesday night — the height, shape, design, setbacks, ingress, egress-all were the same was what the committee saw in April.
4. The committee does not represent WECA. Let me repeat: the committee does NOT represent WECA. This committee of some 15 people is a tiny percentage of the 1,600 members of WECA. Let me further state that the committee does not represent the “community.”
This is an important point. The planning rules require a developer to share plans in an attempt to get buy-in from neighbors. By law, only those property owners who live within 1,500 feet of a project are to be notified to attend a meeting like the one Wednesday. It is called a pre-application meeting, which is held before a site plan (in this case an amended site plan) goes before city staff. Once an actual application is submitted, another meeting is held-a post application meeting. Again, only nearby neighbors are notified and encouraged to attend.
5. There were a few residents of BGI in attendance Wednesday night. There was not ONE single resident from N. Adams, the street most directly impacted. They did not serve on the committee, either.
6. I make this point about the narrow role of the committee and WECA because Dennis Cain, Melanie and Kevin Zaletsky, Bridget Newton and others said Wednesday night that “not until there is a signed MOU will you have community support.”
This is false. As I said that night, the community is not monolithic. They do not speak for me, they do not speak for “the community, they do not speak for the neighbors. The numerous changes are sufficient to win support. Concerned citizens need only to review the site plan to see that.
7. WECA, this committee in particular, has played games with the community and its membership. In June, WECA members voted 62-1 to support the provisions in the MOU, the support the redesign. The MOU said that if it was signed, WECA would, afterward, support the application before the planning commission and Mayor and Council. The motion to approve the MOU was very straightforward and did not in anyway give approval for a WITHDRAWAL of support.
Because in the committee’s view the MOU was unsigned and thus invalid, Susan Prince went before the Mayor and Council a few weeks later and said WECA was withdrawing its support. There was no WECA meeting and no vote to authorize her to say that. This was a fully unauthorized position and one that was so controversial it was the subject of a sunsequent WECA board meeting. But no matter-the damage was done, and the Mayor and Council was never given correct information that the WECA membership, in fact, did not withdraw support.
8. FInally, don’t kid yourself, folks. This WECA committee, and the “Stop Beall’s Grant” people are not done. They have no desire to see this building EVER break ground. Their strategy is to raise red herrings, small points, and demand they be addressed, thus slowing down the process. Look how successful they’ve been so far!
This was on display Wednesday night. Apparently there was an addition of less than 5 new parking spaces to the plan shown Wednesday night. The committee members IMMEDIATELY seized on this and accused MHP of already deviating from the design that was the basis for the MHP-no matter that 99,9% of the design was exactly the same! No matter that insufficient parking could be an issue.
When it was announced that MHP was withdrawing from an upcoming mayor and council agenda its request for a letter of support, the stop beall’s grant committee sent an email with the subject line “community victory.” It was celebrating this delay! And urged supporters to stay vigilant and marshal forces again to oppose the letter request when it comes up again.
Thanks, Theresa, for the clarification. It was very sad to attend this meeting, because it was a display of the complete lack of progress on the part of the outspoken opponents in their evolution beyond obsessively nit-picking details. It was as if there was a script from which everyone was reading their lines, and I felt that I’d seen this tragicomedy performed several times before.
The degree of belligerent hostility against this project by a handful of individuals is, frankly, bewildering. I don’t understand why these few people feel so threatened and terrified by the prospect of living in the same zip code as an apartment building. I’ve seen people who live ten miles from a nuclear reactor act less paranoid, especially over the course of several years.
The fact that this small band of shrill people have anointed themselves the representatives of hundreds of households in the West End is rather appalling.