The shortcoming of current zoning laws are well known and they often prohibit good development. No wonder, then, that Planned Unit developments (PUDs) have become a popular method to get around what the basic zoning code would require.
PUDs were initially a tool to allow better quality development by trading setback, density and height requirements within a larger area consisting of a number of parcels possibly even within different zoning classes. The price for a PUD was stricter oversight and more community participation. However, over time PUDs have degenerated both in the City and in Baltimore County to be a process for giving developers and land owners higher yields on their land with little in return and are frequently applied even for the tiniest specks of land.
The Baltimore County requirement for a “community benefit” allows PUD applicants to essentially bribe the community with promises which might have nothing at all to do with the quality of the proposed development.
Kudos to County councilman Tom Quirk for throwing a wrench at this type of cozy deal making in the case of the Thistle Road PUD. In this case a group of “workforce” townhouses is proposed in the middle of nowhere halfway between Catonsville and Ellicott City at the entry of an access road into the Patapsco River valley, Thistle Road. If you are on Thistle Road you could be somewhere in the Appalachian mountains, so windy, steep, wooded and beautiful it is. This, of course, means that any development at its entry point needs to be equally beautiful or that there should be none at all. The existing zoning for “major business” there is even more misguided.
The PUD rules should be tightened by the County (the City is currently comprehensively overhauling its entire zoning thicket) to truly enable quality development. It would be wonderful if a reformed County PUD regulation could produce a trailblazing best practice development such as Anneslie or Stoneleigh were in their days instead of adding uninspired run of the mill development which, unfortunately, has been for too long already the prevailing pattern in the County.
Tom Quirk’s County Council colleagues would be well advised to work on reforming the PUD laws instead of protecting the already broken process.
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