Forest Glen Metro project on hold

Officials say they’ll work to address community concerns before reconsidering residential development at station

As residents continued to raise concerns about pedestrian safety in and around the Metro area, and county officials worried the project may not mesh well with the surrounding single-family detached homes, however, WMATA has stopped the talks with developers.

The next step for WMATA is to continue working with Montgomery County and the State Highway Administration to ensure community concerns, specifically pedestrian safety, are addressed before any other plans are formulated, Bottigheimer said.

Community members are happy that the Metro property will remain untouched for now.

‘‘We were very encouraged to hear them talk about pedestrian safety,” said Adam Pagnucco, a member of the Forest Estates Community Association. ‘‘That’s what we want to hear.”

The nearby Forest Glen Road and Georgia Avenue intersection was named the most congested intersection in the county, according to the 2006 Highway Mobility Report, which was released by the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, and some residents have called for a tunnel under Georgia Avenue.

Pagnucco said residents were concerned about the already congested intersection getting worse with added housing and the school system being inundated with more students than it can handle. He said nearby Oakland Terrace Elementary School already has several portable classrooms and is about 300 students over capacity.

Paul Gordon, president of the Forest Estates Community Association, sarcastically called the intersection ‘‘our favorite intersection of death.”

Gordon said that while the association hasn’t taken a formal stance on the development, he would like to see factors such as parking, pedestrian safety, traffic concerns and school capacity addressed before another project is planned. He would also like community associations to be part of the planning early in the process.

In addition to the community and county concerns, Bottigheimer said a lack of revenue for WMATA also played a part in the decision to halt planning.

‘‘We got proposals that were generally consistent with the zoning and that did not seem to generate enough value,” he said.

While Bottigheimer said there is no indication that higher density would have brought WMATA more revenue, the Forest Glen Metro station is unique in that it is the only Montgomery County station that does not have zoning that would allow higher density.

The county has created Metro Station Policy Areas around Metro stations that give developers the right to build with 10 percent more density than allowed by the local sector plan.

A zoning text amendment introduced in February would have allowed for more density at the Forest Glen Metro, as well as increased workforce housing in all Metro Station Policy Areas. However, the County Council voted against the amendment in April.

Bottigheimer said that even if developers had more density to work with, the project at Forest Glen might still have been put on hold.

‘‘It gets more expensive to build a building the bigger it is,” he said.

Natalie Cantor, director of the county-operated Mid-County Regional Services Center, agreed with WMATA’s decision to hold the project.

‘‘My concern was the amount of traffic that could be generated in the abutting community,” Cantor said. ‘‘... We need to study how this can be done in a manner that takes the existing community into consideration.”