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In White Flint, the old maxim changes to "If you fund it, they will build."

According to county planners, for the new 30-year plan for the area around White Flint Metro Station to work as intended, Rockville Pike must be redeveloped into a boulevard. For that to happen, a street network must be built for traffic to use while the Pike gets its makeover. And for that to happen, somebody has to pay for it.

The board decided at a work session Thursday that public entities for financing infrastructure improvements in White Flint—the thing that will, in theory, pay for it—must be decided within a year of the sectional map amendment approval to ensure the Pike, the road network and other catalysts to plan's success are built. The sectional map amendment is a comprehensive zoning update that outlines which zones in an area will remain the same and which have changed.

With the current estimated timeline for sectional map amendment approval, the County Executive and County Council will have to work together to establish the mechanisms—such as bonds or special assessment districts—within about two years.

Planning staff originally wanted financing tools to be established as a prerequisite to the first stage of plan development.

But concerns raised by developers and Commissioner Joe Alfendre—also a developer—that the inter-agency cooperation needed to establish financing mechanisms could stall the ability of land owners to move forward with redevelopment plans led to a considerable chicken and egg discussion about how to stage and finance the plan.

The concerns stem partly from previous encounters with the County Executive's office, which opposes the staff-preferred Tax Increment Financing mechanism. TIFs, as they are known, use increases in tax revenue resulting from improvements in an area to pay off bonds issued for improvements there. The executive's office objects to TIFs because they can be risky and would isolate some of the tax revenue in White Flint rather than spreading it countywide.

Planning Board Chairman Royce Hanson said meetings with the county executive that have been taking place since November have only firmly established that some kind of funding mechanism is needed.

"It's not a secret. Everybody has agreed there has to be a funding mechanism," Hanson said. "I guess that's progress."

Hanson advocated for keeping the establishment of the public financing mechanisms a prerequisite because the reconstruction of Rockville Pike and the street network that will support diverted traffic during that reconstruction is essential, and unlikely to occur through the county Capital Improvement Project budget alone. He said establishing the entities to finance White Flint had to be done with a deadline.

"I don't see a funding mechanism on the horizon without a hammer on it that says by such and such a time there has to be a funding mechanism or we forget this stuff," Hanson said.

Don Briggs of Federal Realty, which has significant property holdings in the area, said he agrees with the proposed financing tools, but worried that waiting on the bureaucratic process for government agencies to enact them effectively would extend the sector plan process while developers spend money on site plans they can't get approved.

"I think what you are removing by making that a prerequisite is the ability for the people to come forward with their plans," Briggs said.

The board settled on the one year window as a sort of grace period. However, Hanson said in spite of the time frame, it would be better to get it settled in "30 days" after the sectional map amendment, than in 12 months.

The Planning Board has given itself until the end of July to finish the White Flint Sector Plan to send to the County Council for the next step in the approval process.