Zoning Approval

The redevelopment of the U.S. 1 corridor in Howard County is due a boost from federal approval of $18.4 million in Recovery Zone Facility Bonds for Howard projects east of Interstate 95. Part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the approval allows the county to choose projects whose developers can use proceeds of a bond sale tax-free, thus lowering construction costs, according to county finance director Sharon F. Greisz. The program gives counties and municipalities with more than 100,000 residents the authority to issue tax-exempt bonds in order to finance Recovery Zone facilities; it is not a direct funding program that allocates public dollars.

Developer David Cordish wasted no time after overcoming perhaps his biggest obstacle to building a slots emporium at Arundel Mills mall - winning zoning approval Monday night from a County Council that had avoided voting on it for 10 months. He said he filed paperwork Tuesday to begin the permitting process for the 4,750-machine facility and plans to start construction by the fall with the hope of opening a year later. "Now we go to work," Cordish said, speaking from his office at Baltimore's Power Plant, one of his company's projects.

Developer David Cordish wasted no time after overcoming perhaps his biggest obstacle to building a slots emporium at Arundel Mills mall - winning zoning approval Monday night from a County Council that had avoided voting on it for 10 months. He said he filed paperwork Tuesday to begin the permitting process for the 4,750-machine facility and plans to start construction by the fall with the hope of opening a year later. "Now we go to work," Cordish said, speaking from his office at Baltimore's Power Plant, one of his company's projects.

State officials have granted a long-awaited license for a proposed 4,750-machine slots casino at Arundel Mills mall, but Maryland's premier gambling project still needs local approval that was delayed again on Monday. The Anne Arundel County Council deferred a decision on a critical step for the initiative - zoning approval - just hours after it cleared an important hurdle. After impassioned testimony Monday night, the council chose unanimously to postpone voting on zoning measures because one member was absent with heart palpitations, another recused himself and a third resigned for a new position.

The first hurdle has been cleared to constructing a multimillion-dollar residential, office and retail compound along U.S. 1 in Jessup. The project will include about 250,000 square feet of commercial use, about 1,000 housing units and a site for a hotel. Construction of the first phase, which will include 50 homes, is expected to begin in about a year. Completion of the entire development will take between five and seven years. The property will be at the site of the 244-space Aladdin Village Mobile Home Park on U.S. 1, about 500 feet from the Route 175 intersection.

Driven by a seemingly insatiable demand, another age-restricted development is planned for Howard County. The Zoning Board gave unanimous approval to the initial application for the project, Cherry Tree Park, just east of U.S. 29 and off Route 216 near Fulton. The project will represent an expansion of and change for Cherry Tree, which has a small retail shopping center and 170 homes built or under construction. As originally planned and approved by the county seven years ago, the second phase of Cherry Tree would involve construction of more than 201,000 square feet of commercial office space.

The Maryland Health Care Commission yesterday gave unanimous approval to plans by Washington County Hospital to build a replacement facility just outside the city of Hagerstown. The hospital still needs to resolve a variety of local issues - zoning approval, water and sewer service and road improvements - before it can move ahead with the new, 267-bed, $235 million facility at the Robinwood Medical Center, a medical office complex it already owns. The city government, which favored a new site near the current one inside the city, had opposed the hospital's plans through state review for two years - a virtually unprecedented action by a local government.

New zoning to allow construction of 96 apartments for seniors at the beleaguered Oakland Mills Village Center was approved last night by the Howard County Zoning Board. The 5-0 vote represented an attempt to rejuvenate the east Columbia village and is preliminary to another vote scheduled for this month on zoning changes to allow 1,991 more new housing units to be built in the planned town - mostly in Town Center. The Oakland Mills zoning change considered last night, which would allow a total of 150 more units, was separated from the rest of the contested Rouse Co. proposal "because that [senior housing]

A plan to convert commercially zoned land next to Howard County's landfill to upscale senior housing in the Waverly Woods development near Ellicott City was approved, 4-1, by the Howard County Zoning Board late Wednesday. Only Christopher J. Merdon, an Ellicott City Republican, dissented from a plan that would allow 350 houses for active people ages 55 and older on the 680-acre parcel between Route 99 and Interstate 70 near Marriottsville Road. The housing would be built west of Marriottsville Road, south of Route 99, at the edge of the county's landfill and trash transfer station.

The Mullinix brothers wanted to tell a Howard County land-use panel why it should make legal a landscaping operation on one of their farms, but the Board of Appeals declined to hear the case last night. That didn't deter the Mullinixes' lawyer. He said they're going to keep operating. It's a sign of the case's complexity that attorney Malcolm Kane might have a leg to stand on. Eighteen years ago, the Mullinix family enrolled their 203-acre farm in Dayton in the state's agricultural land preservation program, which pays farmers to give up their development rights.