County adds to Legacy Open Space

One controversial Wheaton site was not approved for protection under the Legacy program.

Legacy Open Space is a 10-year initiative to acquire or protect land outside of the county parks system. Planning staff compiled Thursday’s recommendations from a winnowed-down list of 17 sites nominated during the last two years for protection.

Those approved were the following:

*The 300-acre Beverly property in Poolesville’s Broad Run Watershed to protect the site’s forest.

*Wild Acres, the Grosvenor Mansion property near Fleming Local Park in Bethesda. The designation does not affect a special exception that allows nonprofit offices to operate on the property.

*The Hickey-Offut site in Bethesda, to protect 3.6 acres of forest linked to Rock Creek National Park.

*Ireland Drive, the National Park Seminary Carriage Trails in Silver Spring. The board approved recommendations for the county to work with the U.S. Army on a protective easement for Ireland Drive that signals the interest to maintain the trails as accessible public open space.

*The Selden Island site south of Poolesville in the Potomac River, adding protection through an archaeological easement.

Those not approved for Legacy designation were:

*The Edson Lane Forest site in Bethesda. Staff said the site didn’t meet criteria as the ‘‘best of the best” of its kind.

*Wheaton’s Montgomery College of Art and Design property now being planned for townhouse development.

Only three of five Planning Board members were present, and no public testimony was taken.

The county has $14.47 million in Legacy Open Space expenditures planned for fiscal 2008 and 2009 combined, according to county budget documents. The program launched in 2001 has a $100 million total budget divided over 10 years.

The program is one of several resources available for county land acquisition.

Planning Board Chairman Royce Hanson said Selden Island seemed like a ‘‘slam dunk” for Legacy protection. The board pointed out that the island is in a flood plain and has no development potential.

Impending development was the issue for the Montgomery College of Art and Design property.

‘‘We really see an opportunity for some very nice passive open space on areas that are currently being used as passive open space,” Brenda Sandberg, Legacy Open Space director, told the board at Thursday’s meeting.

Sandberg said Legacy Open Space staff wanted to protect the wooded and wetland areas on the campus along Georgia Avenue. A junior-sized soccer field and a playground could be added to the site, she said.

If the site is developed into a 27-townhouse, $5.4 million development as planned, a ‘‘significant area” of the site’s canopy would be destroyed, she said.

‘‘There’s a need for fields in the area,” Hanson said. But ‘‘we are presenting ourselves with extraordinary costs imposed on Legacy Open Space, which it seems to me is not the appropriate way to go ... and I don’t think this site is the appropriate way to cure this.”

Hanson suggested the county could build a pedestrian bridge across Georgia Avenue to give neighbors more access to nearby open space for ‘‘cheaper than we can buy the land” at Maryland College of Art and Design.

Planning Board Commissioner John Robinson implied during his vote that the county could use other funding sources in its budget to acquire the property.

Some sites presented to the board were originally nominated for Legacy designation by residents wanting to protect the property.

‘‘I’m under the impression that [Legacy Open Space is] used as an opportunity to stifle development,” said Commissioner Allison Bryant.

Bryant worried that Legacy designation ‘‘holds up the process [and] helps to diminish the value of the land to the contract purchaser because there’s no guarantee they’ll be able to do anything.”

Legacy Open Space advisory group and staff members said the nominations must go through a multi-level approval process to prevent the program from use as a leverage tool instead of as a means of valuable land protection.

‘‘If we couldn’t consider properties unless they were nominated by the owner, we couldn’t do planning,” Sandberg said.