Plenty of Room to Grow

It is the last untouched piece of Pasadena.

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Hundreds of acres of undeveloped land sit on the Marley Neck peninsula.

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Few cars travel the two twisty roads that cut a swath through the land, and traffic doesn’t back up behind lights here as it does on other parts of the Pasadena peninsula. The only lights are at either end of Solley Road and Marley Neck Road.Bordered by industry on the north and communities to the south, the peninsula is isolated, a quiet threshold to the housing developments that have flooded Mountain Road in recent years.

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But the charm may soon be over.

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Even as residents along Mountain Road fight against more houses that would further clog their already overcrowded schools and streets, residents in Marley Neck are fighting for development.

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“We’re not going to be able to keep this area from growing,” said Del. Mary Rosso, D-Pasadena, who lives on the peninsula. “So, what’s the best way to do it? Just because we’re a peninsula on the water doesn’t mean we can’t plan.”

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Area politicians and residents are throwing their full support behind two projects that would bring thousands of houses, confident that any traffic, sewer and school problems will be easily overcome.

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At the same time, other developments are building their way up the peninsula from Mountain Road and plenty of unused land, zoned for residential use, lies waiting for a buyer willing to find a way to put in the houses.

 

Fighting industry

The battle cry is simple: Residents want the houses in, the factories out.

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But the adequate facilities law, which requires the area surrounding proposed developments be able to support the increase in traffic and students, has stalled two big developments for more than a decade. The overcrowded schools have kept Tanyard Springs and Tanyard Cove from getting beyond the first step in the subdivision process.

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The 3,000 houses and townhomes both developments would bring over 20 years, many of those sitting on Marley Creek, are the best thing that could happen to the peninsula, developers argue. And residents of the older communities surrounding the proposed houses couldn’t agree more.

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To those who have lived in the area for so long, the extra traffic and people wold be a welcome vista compared to what they wake up to each morning-t eh smoke stacks of Baltimore Gasy and Electric belching thick smoke into the air.

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“This has been the community’s idea,” said Jane Nes, who owns the 150 acres on which Tanyard Springs would sit. Her development would bring in about 541 townhouses in the first phase, with another 1,000 to 1,500 houses in later stages.

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“Homes here will help perpetuate our community,” said Casper Hackman, a longtime Solley resident whose home sits across from the land BGE uses for fly ash fill. “We wanted those homes to offset BGE.”

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Fly ash, the byproduct of the company’s coal-burning Brandon Shores and Wagner power plants, has been the center of a long-running battle between the utility mogul, the community across from the fill, and Mrs. Nes.

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“You can’t hold up progress so you choose what will better suit the community and the residents,” Mr. Hackman said.

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That means planned housing communities and commercial businesses instead of the industry.

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In recent years, residents have watched while industrial parks, the Millennium Organic Chemical plant and warehouses have moved in. Patchwork industrial companies have sprung up near residences. And then the latest threat, the proposed Pasadena racetrack at the end of Kembo Road, motivated residents to action.

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“The thing is to de-industrialize this area of the peninsula,” Mrs. Nes added. “There’s more and more pockets of residences. This is a land planner’s nightmare, this peninsula,” she said.

 

Political support

But it’s a politician’s dream.

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The entire surrounding communities support the new development – they want the sewer facilities, the new school and the parks and open space the developers promise.

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And with community support comes political support. All the area’s representatives support Tanyard Springs and Tanyard Cove, as long as the developers could meet the adequate facilities law.

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“CSX (the developer of Tanyard Cove) is smart growth,” said Del. Joan Cadden, D-Brooklyn Park. “Everything else has been a patchwork quilt, especially in our area, which has wreaked havoc.”

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The two communities are planned and laid out with gradual changes and have been designed with community input, she said.

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Mrs. Rosso, a longtime active environmentalist, said she, too, is a strong advocate for Tanyard Cove and Tanyard Springs, a project she calls a “little Columbia.”

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“I’m not a growth person, but I thought what we’re getting is spot planning,” she said.

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The two projects seemed a good solution to her, she said.

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As further proof, Mrs. Cadden said no one from the Marley Neck communities has asked her to help preserve open space like she’s fighting to do on the Mountain Road peninsula.

 

Housing boom

Housing developments are already on their way in, though, creeping up the peninsula from Mountain Road.

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The new 78-home Willow Run community sits perched on the dividing line between the older Freetown and Stonehaven communities and the area that opens into still-undeveloped space.

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The project took Mandarin Homes about six years in the planning process before building started in late 1997, said Milt Horn, the company’s president.

That community has had few complaints from nearby neighborhoods, he said, mostly because it addressed concerns raised by citizens and took a newer approach to developing.

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“We take what we have to and only what we have to and I think you’ll find that in this day and age, most developers follow that,” Mr. Horn said. “Development gets blamed for issues that are not necessarily tied to development.”

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The development is just one of m any that could pop up in the next few years. Developers own several large chunks of land but have not yet started the subdivision process.

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The older Silver Sands community off North Shore Road, for example, has another parcel reserved for future development. The subdivision process hasn’t started yet, and developers likely will have to wait for school issues to get solved before they start.

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Hanover-based landowner Peter Castruccio said much of his nearly 100 acres surrounding Silver Sands will be included in that development. Trinity Homes owns another 20 acre3s just north of the Willow Run community that could hold up to 40 homes. That project also hasn’t started the subdivision process.

And west of Solley Road lies land owned by Browning-Ferris Industries, the company that owns the landfill between Solley and Marley Neck, and CSX. Both have hundreds of acres zoned residential use.

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In addition, the single-family home development Spring Ridge just off Solley Road on Freetown Road is under review by the county. That parcel’s 7 acres could hold up to 35 units.

 

Watching the change

Through it all, one landowner has watched the land around him change to residential land while his 17-acre plot has remained industrially zoned, a leftover from when he bought the land 30 years ago. Robin Pecora bought the W-1 zoned land when nothing but open fields surrounded the area.

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Since then, other communities have surrounded his plot. He would like to sell it, or develop it, he said, but it’s hard with the wrong zoning.

“That area in that period of decades has gone through a period of cycles,” Mr. Pecora said.

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Originally published February 6, 1999

The Maryland Gazette/ Capital Gazette Newspapers