July 26, 2010|By Larry Carson, The Baltimore Sun
Like a legislative version of the decade's greatest hits, the Howard County Council is to vote on nearly every hot-button issue the county is facing before ending its legislative season Thursday.
The council heard witnesses on a range of topics — from land-use issues involving the downtown Columbia plan and Doughoregan Manor to a major new tennis facility, school crowding and residential wind turbines — until nearly midnight Monday. Council members finished the hearing Tuesday afternoon. Votes are scheduled July 29 before the annual August recess.
Dozens of tennis fans, including many children, most carrying rackets, filled the standing-room-only hearing space at school board headquarters Monday night to support a long-planned private, championship-grade tennis facility at what will become Troy Hill Park in Elkridge.
"I'm a tennis player, and I can't wait for this to come," said Grace Kubofcik, co-president of the county's League of Women Voters. The bill asks for council approval of a 40-year lease on 14 acres of county land near the proposed park's entrance, which would be on Mansion Lane next to a business park that sits between Interstate 95 and U.S. 1, just north of Route 100.
A private group called Howard County Tennis Patrons Inc. plans to build an 8,000-seat tennis stadium, 12 indoor courts, 18 lighted outdoor courts, a clubhouse and offices that they say will benefit the county in several important ways.
"It will bring high-profile tennis tournaments to Elkridge," said John Byrd, acting county recreation and parks director. It will also help the county begin work on the large regional park much earlier, added another witness, David Grabowski, a county planning board member who lives in Elkridge. County high school graduations could also be held there free of charge, he said.
Art Tollick, president of the tennis group, said the project "will be the premier tennis facility in the Mid-Atlantic." He added that a major women's tennis tournament is already scheduled for July 25, 2011. He said the facility is expected to bring $69 million in income for county businesses such as hotels and restaurants in the first three years of operation, and could produce $4 million in rent for the county over a decade.
Every group represented at the hearing supported the plan except for the Columbia Association, which operates 24 outdoor and nine indoor tennis courts throughout the planned town. Chief Operating Officer Rob Goldman said tennis earns CA $1.7 million in revenue annually in fees and he fears the loss of $500,000 a year after the new complex opens.
"I don't feel there's enough demand to fill all these courts," he said, adding that the county would subsidize the nonprofit by covering any deficit, taking only a percentage of revenue as rent and plowing half that back into the facility. That's unfair competition, he said.
Another bill that received strong support despite some criticism was one that would allow a popular farm stand to remain at Bethany and Old Frederick roads, even though it is no longer part of an existing farm.
Kim Taylor, who runs the Harbin farm stand, said the family business began in 1958 with tomatoes and just grew over the decades. The family gave up farming a dozen years ago when fields were squeezed out by highways, new homes and hungry deer, which combined to make crops unprofitable.
"We love what we do," Taylor told the council, despite complaints from some neighbors that the stand has become too broadly commercial. Their old farm is now a highway interchange, her husband Michael Taylor said, and the produce stand provides the family's primary income.
Other bills involved much larger pieces of land than the 1.29 acres the Taylors use.
Some residents who live near Doughoregan Manor were critical of an agreement negotiated between the county and Camilla and Philip D. Carroll, who own the historic 892-acre Colonial-era estate, though the contract did get support from county officials, preservationists, civic groups and business interests. The agreement, called a developer's rights and responsibilities agreement, is the first in the county of its kind. It would cement a complex deal that would allow the Carroll family to develop 325 new homes on 221 acres of the estate and preserve the rest. The county would be given 36 acres to expand a park at the estate's northeast corner, just off Frederick Road.
The council has already approved extending water and sewer lines to the development property and paying $19 million over two decades to preserve 500 acres as farmland. In council members' other role as the zoning board, they are now considering a zoning change that would allow the project. But Harry Carnes, speaking for the Chateau Ridge Lake Community Association, and Christina Delmont-Small, another critic, said questions about traffic congestion, the cost of wastewater treatment and the agreement's technical sufficiency and longevity need to be answered.
