Residents of the Annapolis region, who chose to live here principally for its tranquility, have been witnessing a steady acceleration of residential and “mixed-use” multi-story development. There’s a perception that much of the construction has taken place with little consideration of what impact such activity has on traffic, various additional facets of infrastructure, and other quality-of-life issues.
It’s not too difficult to find large, newly-built condominium and apartment complexes dotting the city and its environs. Four of the most visible examples are: GrandView at Annapolis Towne Centre, the unmistakable towering structure in Parole that can be seen from miles away; the Maris Apartments on Holly Avenue, rising behind the Double T Diner, between West Street and Route 50; the complex covering the corner of West Street and Chinquapin Round Road, which was built in 2006 on the former site of Johnson Lumber Company and re-sold in 2017 for $76.5 million—now known as Bell Annapolis on West; and Bell’s ”sister” property, Regatta Bay off Housley Road. Each of these large-footprint housing facilities is marketed as providing upscale residences with such amenities as clubhouses, fitness rooms, swimming pools, sweeping views, and even an outdoor putting green for the occupants of Regatta Bay. The question here is: Can the city’s infrastructure and population support the growing scope of such development?
Current and Comprehensive Planning
Few residents of this area probably know that the City of Annapolis and Anne Arundel County are both due for an update of their Master Development Plans, which are rendered every 10 years, the last one for Annapolis having been issued in 2009. When asked about the city plan due in 2019, Sally Nash, Chief of Comprehensive Planning, told What’s Up? Media that work was “just getting started” and that she is “aiming for 2020.” She also noted that the county is also in the beginning stages of revamping its own decade-to-decade plan.
Nash points out that representatives from the Departments of Planning and Zoning, Public Works, Recreation and Parks, Transportation, and the Office of Emergency Management and Environmental Policy will be involved in the technical aspects of the plan. It will also encompass (as did the one 10 years ago) the four “Opportunity Areas” of West Annapolis, Bay Ridge, Forest Drive, and Outer West Street. She stresses that population growth estimates will continue to inform recommendations for “future development density.” While the plan is for the city, Nash says, “we have to take into account that we are part of a much larger region that drives our population and economic growth.”
How much of the 2009 city plan will be “grandfathered” into the new document? “Much of it is relevant today,” Nash says. “We will evaluate this plan section by section and bring forward the policies that still resonate,” she assures. “We will also look at sector studies and other plans that have been done in the past and consider recommendations from those plans, as well.”
Recommendations in Chapter 3 of the 2009 plan, titled “Land Use and Development,” began with an evaluation of current (then) land use and existing conditions before moving into objectives for the four designated “Opportunity Areas.” Those objectives provide limited statistical analysis and somewhat ambiguous language, of portion of which reads thusly:
Through 2030, residential and commercial growth will largely be directed to mixed use development projects in designated Opportunity Areas shown in this Plan. With one exception–the Katherine Property [colloquially known as the “Crystal Spring” property]–these areas are presently in land intensive, but not land efficient, commercial uses.
The development of Opportunity Areas will increase the supply of commercial space in the City.
The development of Opportunity Areas, through their layout and design, mix of uses and residential densities will promote efficient and cost-effective public transit.
The redevelopment of lands in the Opportunity Areas will advance and promote ecologically sound approaches to urban development, and result in improved environmental conditions.
Channeling residential and commercial redevelopment into appropriate Opportunity Areas can relieve pressure for inappropriate use of buildings in the Historic District.
The plan further stated, “Since only three percent of Annapolis’ developable land is vacant, by necessity, future development in the city will consist of the gradual redevelopment of existing properties and the gradual build-out of scattered vacant lots.”
With a decade-by-decade population growth rate averaging six percent since 1980, the question became; Can the city redevelop and infill its limited vacant land to accommodate the potential influx of new residents in a responsible manner? In 2009, the plan also stated, “A slowing growth rate had also been predicted due to the built-out nature of this mature city. However, that assumption is being challenged by the recent infill and redevelopment activity seen in the city’s housing. With the conversion of the old hospital site to residential units, the redevelopment of Inner West Street to include higher density residential units, the prospect of annexed land, and the trend of building on small infill sites around the city, it is likely that the population will grow more than traditional models would predict. Market conditions, as well as city land use policies, will determine if this will continue beyond the above-mentioned projects.”
We wondered about the exact function of the plan and how specific it can possibly be, given the decade timeframe it covers and broad generalizations. According to Nash, the new plan “will focus on the big picture, but make some recommendations for particular communities” and will reflect input from the public, too. “Public participation is a key component of the comprehensive plan,” Nash stresses, and “we will be using traditional methods to seek input such as public forums, as well as using new technology to do outreach through Google surveys, interactive websites, and online forums.”
Nash also told us what might be new or different in the new plan: “The focus of this plan will be on healthy, resilient communities,” Nash emphasizes. “We will look at how new technologies are changing our cities, like intelligent transportation systems, and how new threats, like climate change, will impact us in the future.”
The list of projects currently under way (or about to be so) in the monthly updated “Current Planning and Development Review” compiled by the City of Annapolis indicates that we haven’t seen anything yet. The most recent review update available at this writing lists 46 different projects in the city and its surrounding area. For the purpose of this report, we highlight less than half that number, dealing only with those we think will have the most potential impact locally.
141 West Street, a 31,852-square-foot four-story “boutique” condominium building with 2,892 square feet of retail space on the first floor, 24 residential dwelling units above that, and 39 on-site parking spaces. The project’s website deems them “sophisticated condos with a splash of pizazz” and “fabulously quirky.”
424 Fourth Street, a restaurant with 77 seats, just up the street from the Boatyard Bar & Grill in Eastport. It’s in an existing building, but 77 more people on that street will still squeeze an already tight area.
1415 Forest Drive, a proposed two-story 2,986-square-foot footprint addition to the existing one-story 4,057-square-foot commercial building, evidently the site of the current Kenwood Kitchens and Baths building across from Gemini Drive.
1503 Forest Drive, one of the largest proposed construction projects at 18,900 square feet of office space and 2,780 of retail.
979 Bay Village Drive (off Bay Ridge Road, near Arundel on the Bay Road), an 88-unit full-service assisted-living center—Bay Village Assisted Living & Memory Care—containing 72 assisted living units and 16 memory care units, set to open in Fall 2019, according to its website.
9 Elliott Road, on the west side of Elliott Road at Hilltop Lane, a residential planned development of 45 single-family attached townhomes on 4.973 acres.
2625 Masque Farm Road/Spa Road and Forest Drive, continuing care community—315 independent-living apartments, 48 healthcare nursing beds, 28 cottages/duplexes, and Maison Court (40 units). Pending forest conservation plan and other applications, named Villages at Providence Point.
Bembe Beach Road, Chesapeake Grove at Bembe Beach would be a residential development proposing 42 units, with revisions to the original plan under review.
Lincoln Drive and Chinquapin Round Road, a proposed 13,200-square-foot commercial building fronting on Lincoln Drive for retail office space and a warehouse.
Chesapeake Avenue (Eastport), a proposal to redevelop an approximately 2-acre portion of the Eastport Shopping Center site (6.75 acres) with a proposed project consisting of 98 rental apartments with retail and/or commercial uses on the ground floor. Includes a proposed parking garage.
Park Place, JBJ Management Company, Inc., proposes adding a second hotel with 139 rooms on the Taylor Avenue side of the property currently occupied by the Westin Hotel, retail, and other mixed-use spaces.
745 Annapolis Neck Road, a residential planned development of 44 single-family homes and 86 townhomes, named Parkside Preserve.
103 Solomon’s Island Road, a planned unit development including retail, multi-family, and townhouse uses. 90 residential over retail units and 68 townhouses are proposed, to be named Parole Place.
Milkshake Lane, a residential planned development with 7 single-family homes and 19 townhomes, with construction under way, near the Genesis Spa Creek Center (off Hilltop Lane).
2010 West Street, mixed-use development with 42 units and 2,400 square feet of commercial, named Towne Courts.
If you haven’t heard of some, or many, of these projects, you are not alone. But there is a public notification protocol that should be followed. The public is to be notified in a variety of ways—starting before the Planning and Zoning Department even receives the application. Nash explains, “Most projects are required to hold a community meeting. Once we have an application, there are additional notification requirements, such as posting of the property and a mailing to adjacent property owners within 200 feet depending on the application. We also have an online permit and project center where the public can search for information about a particular project.”
The bigger the development project, the more likely that it will be recognized publicly and/or face scrutiny. It is the smaller scale project(s) that may pass undetected by the larger public domain.
Whatever Became of “Smart Growth?”
When the Maryland legislature passed the Smart Growth and Neighborhood Conservation Initiative in 1997, it was ostensibly an effort—championed by two-term Governor Parris N. Glendening—to put state funding behind “incentives to direct growth,” or more specifically, to change the way government looked at economic development and its environmental, infrastructural, and aesthetic impact.
We caught up recently with Governor Glendening—who now heads Smart Growth America and teaches a master’s degree course at Johns Hopkins University—to ask him how smart growth has stood the test of time over the past 22 years. In a wide-ranging and sometimes free-wheeling exclusive interview from his home just outside Annapolis city limits, Glendening expressed his pride in how smart growth has worked. But he also offered his opinion on how it has not been implemented properly and even used as a label for projects that aren’t “smart growth.” However, he does express hope with new city, county, and state legislature leadership in place.
“If I were to describe what’s going on right now in this area relative to smart growth, I would call it ‘The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly’—to use the title of an old movie,” the former governor began. “In terms of development here, I see some very good projects. One example is the [Westgate Circle] project on the property directly across the street from Park Place. That was the type and level of development that should be here. It was well-designed, and it was proportional to the size of the surrounding community, including the residential area immediately behind it. Another is the old hospital site downtown. It really doesn’t come down to a question of growth or no growth. The question should be about the quality of growth and where we locate it.”
Glendening has strong feelings about some of the highest-profile and controversial projects still being considered and contested. “This brings me to the bad and the ugly,” Glendening continued. “That is, in part, the debate on the Eastport Shopping Center. . . If I could wave a magic wand, I would tear down the whole shopping center and put retail all the way to sidewalk, [with] one to two stories of residential directly over it—a mixed-use walkable complement to the rest of Eastport. The challenge is that the residential increase is being considered somewhat by itself. The density is largely dictated by the design and what I call the context of the immediate area. The residential-only proposal has the potential to be a good project if close attention is paid to scale, context, and design.”
Glendening’s hope for the future lies in the new overseers of the city, county, and state. “The former mayor and county executive were not very attuned to these issues,” he attests. “That clearly was one part of the change that occurred in the [recent] elections. Both the new [Annapolis] mayor and the [Anne Arundel] county executive ran on the principles of smart growth. I will be bringing some of my colleagues from Smart Growth America to meet with County Executive Steuart Pittman and his staff to go over how you can have a strong economy but maintain and even improve a strong environment. I’ve also talked to Mayor [Gavin] Buckley, who, by his own example, knows how to revitalize a business district. And I’m excited that the new state senator, Sarah Elfreth, is really big on the environment and how to strengthen and make more workable the Critical Areas Commission. So, I’m optimistic.”
The Quiet Waters Model
After a contentious debate in the late 1980s and early ’90s over development of what eventually became Quiet Waters Park, arguably the—or at least one of—crown jewels befitting a state capital, the preservationists won. Led by Anne Arundel County Executive O. James Lighthizer, who is now head of the American Battlefield Trust, the effort precluded development of the Annapolis Neck tract along the South River into just another housing subdivision.
Often criticized at the time for his spending proposals, Lighthizer is credited with creating the $18 million park on 336 acres, referred to by The Baltimore Sun in December 1990 as “the last major parcel of undeveloped waterfront land near Annapolis.” But it didn’t come without a fight. Not only was Lighthizer under fire for proposing the park in the first place, but he also took heat from local residents over the proposal for the park to host major concert acts as part of its appeal—a plan that was eventually scaled back. The battle for Quiet Waters raged for more than two years, but Lighthizer and his supporters came out on top in the end. Lighthizer even has a gazebo named after him in the park.
In total, Lighthizer was responsible for adding 1,484 acres of park land and boosting public waterfront land in the county by 67 percent—a large amount of land saved from development but also meaning less taxable real estate. For much of the local population, that seems to be okay.
Weighing the cost and benefit of open space versus development is what planning is all about. As Annapolis City and Anne Arundel County embark on their efforts to assemble a new comprehensive development roadmap over the next year, it is the duty of civic-minded citizens to make their concerns heard.
