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The Planning Board voted Thursday to recommend Nicholson Court as the location for a potential new MARC station in White Flint, overruling a staff recommendation that put the station off of Old Georgetown Road, closer to the White Flint Metro stop.

The Planning Board, minus absent Commissioner Joe Alfendre, voted unanimously for the site at a work session Thursday. The Board is beginning to vote on individual elements of the White Flint Sector Plan as an avenue to approving the entire plan, which is redeveloping the planning guidelines to be used in the area surrounding the White Flint Metro for the next 30 years. Once the Board approves the plan in its entirety it will move to the County Council for consideration.

The Nicholson Court site was seen by the Board as providing better access to transit for both new residential developments in White Flint and existing neighborhoods that could lose use of the Garrett Park MARC station if a new one is established in White Flint.

The Maryland Transit Administration has said it has no plans to locate a new MARC station there, but the county is still allocating space for one in the 30-year sector plan.

Planning staff preferred the site off Old Georgetown Road because it is closer to the current Metro station, and Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission transportation analyst Dan Hardy said the intent was for the MARC station to serve commuters into White Flint from points north.

Board Vice Chairman John Robinson said he preferred the Nicholson location because it creates a "double coverage" hub for commercial and residential transit in the sector, a sentiment echoed by other Board members.

"I think the staff recommendation is too White Flint-centric," Robinson said of the Old Georgetown site, noting that MARC does not need to be immediately next to Metro because "natural market forces will kind of force people on to the Metro one way or the other."

Also factoring in the decision was the fact the owner of the Old Georgetown property opposes building the station, versus the general support of most property owners on Nicholson Court, who would enjoy an increase in the size of a development they could build by hosting the station. The Nicholson Court site currently has small-scale commercial buildings but would be converted by developers into a large residential development; the Old Georgetown Road site is undeveloped but may also be slated for a future residential project.

The work session was the first in which the Board made clear its preferences on individual elements of the White Flint sector plan, but began with a caution from Chairman Royce Hanson that "Every decision will be firm and tentative."

No decision was reached on the location of another major site in the sector boundary—that of a new elementary school. In anticipation of roughly 410 new elementary students expected to come into the sector area over the 30-year development timeframe, which envisions 9,800 additional residences, the county is seeking to reserve a spot to build a new elementary school.

The spot recommended by staff is adjacent to the White Flint Mall at White Flint Park, just off Orleans Way. That site was supported by Joseph Lavorgna, acting director of the department of facilities management Montgomery County Public Schools.

Lavorgna said setting aside a site for the school in the sector plan is imperative.

"We want to be sure the site is dedicated to the school system so we know the site can be built."

Use of the Rocking Horse Administrative Building, a 17-acre former school site just outside the sector, while a popular concept with some involved with the sector plan, is not popular with MCPS because it would displace administrative activities currently housed there and require a realignment of school cluster boundaries because it falls outside the Walter Johnson Cluster, Lavorgna said.

Hanson and Robinson supported the White Flint Park site and allowing for the possibility of using Rocking Horse, but Commissioners Jean Cryor and Amy Presley balked at the small size of the White Flint Park site and the potential for a school there to disrupt the park's current uses.

"I really would like to take this White Flint site off because it doesn't meet our needs," said Cryor, advocating for the recommendation of the Rocking Horse site. "I'm not going to go along with two options."

The split Board decided to defer the decision until Alfendre was present to cast a tie-breaker.