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The East County Citizens Advisory Board drafted a letter last week pushing for immediate action by the County Executive to increase biotech presence in the area.

Currently, plans for a science and technology community by developer Percontee and an East County Science and Technology Center are stalled due to master plan limitations and legal issues. Taking the same stance as Councilmember Nancy Navarro (D-Dist. 4), the board is pushing for the Route 29 Corridor Land Use and Mobility Plan to be pushed up from 2013 to this fiscal year in order to accommodate the businesses and population increase brought about by biotech communities.

Biotech facilities in East County would be located along Route 29 near Cherry Hill Road. Located near the future site of Washington Adventist Hospital and the expanded Food and Drug Administration campus, officials say the corridor needs a revised master plan to accommodate the influx in people living and working in the area. Specifically, bus rapid transit and other traffic accommodations are necessary along Route 29, officials say.

Planning Department Director Rollin Stanley has said he believes his staff can take on the extra work of revising the master plan this year, should the council decide to push it up. The council will revisit master plan schedules in April, he said.

The East County Science and Technology Center is also currently stalled in litigation after the project's former developer Republic sued the county executive's office for $20 million for pulling the plug on its contract, said Steve Silverman, director of the county's Department of Economic Development. By pushing up the master plan, development of the center could move forward as soon as the court case is completed, hopefully in conjunction with plans for Washington Adventist Hospital, which is relocating to White Oak, he said.

The letter from the East County board was drafted in large part as a clarification of a November letter pushing for the same thing, which received backlash when many readers interpreted the letter as pitting East County against West County, where biotech plans like Gaithersburg-West are getting attention from the council. Board Chairman Bill Strassberger said it was never the board's intention to create an East-versus-West argument in the county, but rather to ensure the council was moving forward with biotech plans in White Oak and surrounding areas.

"It's not that we have issues with Gaithersburg-West," he said. "It's that we want to see some of the road blocks lifted that are keeping things from happening in East County. The council and the county executive could and should do things to make this move forward."

Discussions about moving up the Route 29 mobility plan started roughly a month ago, when Navarro was at a planning board luncheon and asked Stanley if he thought his staff could handle a pushed-up timeline for the plan. He said he thought it would be possible, spurring a flurry of conversations about revisiting the plan immediately as the county council moves closer to its April master plan meeting.

"Everybody's saying, ‘You don't have to worry about it, you've got things coming, too,'" Strassberger said. "And yes, we do, but in some ways, we don't. Percontee is developing these plans, but they can't move on anything until there's a master-plan amendment. We have verbally received assurance that it could be moved up from 2013 to 2011. That doesn't mean development will move tomorrow, but it does mean it could move sooner."