Zoning Hearing

A group of Highland and Clarksville residents has joined in opposition to a developer's plan to convert a rural turkey farm in Fulton into one of the largest mixed-use communities in Howard County since the founding of Columbia three decades ago.These residents have joined forces with the Greater Beaufort Park Citizens Association to fight developer Stewart G. Greenebaum's proposal to create a Columbia-style village of homes, offices and retail stores....

The Anne Arundel County Council will not vote on zoning bills that would allow slots into the county until at least December, further delaying and potentially derailing an already stalled bid to open what would be the state's most lucrative gambling parlor. Council members introduced two competing bills Monday night - one to permit a slots parlor at Arundel Mills mall and another shifting the location to an industrial area in the western part of the county - but by law cannot vote on either measure until after a public hearing scheduled for Dec. 7. The decision sets up a clash among the various parties involved in bringing slots to Arundel.

Is it a construction equipment storage site?Or is it a junkyard?That's what county zoning administrators will try to decide abouta site in New Windsor where Weller Bros. Construction Co. Inc. stores cranes and other heavy equipment.Yesterday, the Carroll Board of Zoning Appeals began hearing arguments in the case, which pits the company against a group of residents who live near the 0.7-acre site on New Windsor Road.In March 1990, the residents filed a complaint with the county zoning administrator, saying that the site has become overgrown and that some of the equipment there is inoperable and remains there indefinitely in violation of the zoning code.

Round three in the sparring match between Green Spring Valley residents and a corporate executive who commutes by helicopter opened yesterday before Baltimore County's zoning commissioner, with testimony from zoning, sound and engineering experts on the issue.Deputy Zoning Commissioner Timothy M. Kotroco, who oversaw the hearing, is expected to decide next month whether Rite Aid Corp. Chairman Martin Grass can legally take off and land from Helmore Farm, a thoroughbred horse farm near Greenspring Valley and Falls roads in highly restrictive agricultural zoning.

In an effort to placate neighbors, a Brooklyn Park substance-abuse treatment center has asked the county to indefinitely postpone a zoning hearing, scheduled for yesterday, that is related to plans to more than double the center's operations. The operators of Damascus House, a 17-bed treatment center in the 4200 block of Ritchie Highway a few blocks south of the city line, are planning to buy a property on nearby Edison Street and renovate a house there into a 15-bed facility. It also wants to build two four-bedroom transitional homes on the site.

A small parking lot on the Green Spring Valley campus of Villa Julie College has been ruled a zoning violation by a Baltimore County hearing officer who said he plans to decide this week how to enforce the matter.Stanley Schapiro, the hearing officer and assistant to the director of the county's Department of Permits and Development Management, ruled last week that the private college is not in compliance with its own development plan since it established a parking lot for construction workers near the administration building.

New grandstands are on the way at the Johns Hopkins University's Homewood Field in North Baltimore -- even though the construction pace may be one step ahead of the city's zoning process.A public hearing is scheduled for Tuesday before the city's zoning board on Hopkins' plan to enlarge the grandstands on the north side of the field on University Parkway. But ground was broken on the $2.3 million project early last month -- a month before next week's hearing.Hopkins wants to complete the 4,700-seat grandstands -- which will replace permanent and temporary bleachers -- by the opening of the lacrosse season March 1. The old bleachers have been torn down, and concrete pillars have been erected to support what will be a 32-foot-high structure.

A lawyer for a Pikesville methadone clinic told a federal jury yesterday that Baltimore County officials were motivated by stereotypes of drug addicts and had bowed to pressure from residents when they created a zoning law to keep drug treatment facilities away from neighborhoods. "This is a discrimination case," Steve Barber, a lawyer for A Helping Hand methadone clinic, said during opening statements in what is expected to be a three- to four-week trial. Jeffrey G. Cook, a lawyer for the county, told jurors yesterday that the 2002 change in the zoning law wasn't a biased attempt by legislators to block drug treatment, but rather "democracy at work."

If Les Jenkins has his way, a 32-acre stretch between Ritchie Highway and the Dover Road dump will be brimming with go-cart tracks, skateboard parks and other amusements he says are lacking in Glen Burnie. If certain residents and state representatives have anything to say about it, Jenkins will have to take his idea elsewhere. Yesterday, zoning hearing officer Stephen LeGendre heard from both sides about the proposed Les Jenkins Family Fun Park during a daylong hearing on whether to grant Jenkins a special exception to build an amusement park in a commercially zoned district.

A fast-track proposal to build one of the largest mixed-use communities in Howard County since Columbia was developed more than three decades ago has been derailed until winter.The developer of the 507-acre Iager Farm site in Fulton has postponed a July 27 public hearing before the county Zoning Board because it could not forge an agreement with area residents who questioned the impact of the 1,168-home project on local roads, schools and the tax base."We did everything we could," said Richard B. Talkin, a Columbia zoning attorney representing G&R Maple Lawn Inc., which had hoped to begin construction in 2000.