Just think what the Lutherville/Timonium area would look like if all of the development proposals presented to County officials were actually given the green light. There would be 400 apartment units being built at Lutherville Station, at the end of West Ridgely Road. Another 700 apartment units would have been built along Aylesbury Road, just north of the Bluestone restaurant. Plus, the owner of the Fairgrounds Plaza, where the Giant is located, requested to build 250-300 apartment units, which would have been allowed if a zoning change had been authorized, and the owner of Heaver Plaza made a similar zoning request that would have made possible a similar number of apartment units. Fortunately, Councilman Wade Kach has not favored any of these requests, but what would the area look like if all had been approved?
Certainly, York Road would see congestion beyond our darkest nightmares. All of the properties mentioned above are either adjacent to York Road, or within two blocks of it. Maybe ten percent of these apartment dwellers would use mass transit, a big if, but that still results in over 1,400 more cars daily on York Road! What about the impact on our schools? We are seeing new trailers added to Hampton and Lutherville Elementary Schools without the influx from this hypothetical development, and even if only 1 out of every 4 apartments featured school age children, that’s an additional 400 pupils in our schools. All of those proposed apartment locations are in the catchment area of Ridgely Middle School, so just imagine the hypothetical increase at Ridgely. There surely would be demands on the public recreational facilities and other public services, as well.
Now the above scenario is a hypothetical, but what if I told you that the County’s Planning Department is proposing to move this hypothetical one step closer to reality? Yes, the Master Plan 2030 is proposing to create three redevelopment areas, called core retrofit areas, or nodes, in the Lutherville/Timonium area. One of those nodes is located at the end of West Ridgely Road, the second is planned to be centered on Greenspring Drive and Aylesbury Drive, north of Business Park Drive and the third is proposed to be on Greenspring Drive, north of Timonium Road, in the vicinity of where Greenspring turns into Deerco Road. Master Plan 2030 says all of these nodes would be suitable for high density residential development, as well as commercial and institutional redevelopment. When focus groups were first assembled concerning the plan, citizens told the County staff that we did not want to see Timonium become more urbanized. That we wanted to retain the suburban character that had evolved over the last sixty years, but in my estimation, the Planning Department wants the exact opposite.
The County Council will be considering this Master Plan 2030 in either October or November of the coming Fall. When that takes place, if you are of the same mindset as me, you will need to tell the Council to reject the three core retrofit areas, or nodes, proposed for Lutherville/Timonium.
Eric Rockel
Vice President, GTCC