The board approved the plan 5-0, placing a 12-acre meadow in the northwest corner of the property into the Legacy Open Space Program, a multimillion dollar county initiative to preserve natural and heritage resources.

The board also decided to keep the county's deadline to purchase a nine-acre plot for a potential school site at 24 months, not 36 months, as many in the crowd had wished.

"It's more or less satisfying," said John G. Compton, mayor of Washington Grove, which borders the meadow to the northwest. "The planning board did pretty much what they should have done. This is an appropriate approval, as it should have gone forward all along, without quite as much controversy."

Plans for the Casey Property became especially sensitive in recent weeks when County Council members Steve Silverman (D-At Large) and Nancy Floreen (D-At Large) asked that dedication of the 12 acres be delayed.

They asked for the delay so that a council committee, of which they are both members, could consider the property as part of work sessions for the Shady Grove Sector Plan later this month.

Up to 6,350 homes and 7,000 jobs would help convert the area around the Metro station into a commercial and residential haven. The most recent draft of the sector plan recommends purchase of the nine-acre plot on the Casey Property for one of four elementary schools needed to support development around the Shady Grove Metro. Many who packed into the planning board hearing room considered the council members' last-minute involvement as an attempt to put the school onto the 12-acre meadow.

The property will now enter a site planning stage, during which the County Council will weigh in on the school site.

"You can be sure we will be doing whatever is necessary to see to it that the school goes on its own site, not on the Legacy Open Space," Compton said later.