The battle over the Gaithersburg West Master Plan has reached its home stretch, two years after far-reaching plans started taking shape to create an 800-acre "Science City" between Gaithersburg and Rockville over the next 30 and 40 years.

Nearly 100 people signed up to testify at the Montgomery County Council's hearings last week. The draft approved by county planners this summer would add 12 million square feet of commercial space and nearly 6,000 residences in and around the Shady Grove Life Sciences Center, already the state's largest node of biotech research, with 200 firms arrayed in nearly 8 million square feet and 3,300 residences.

The council is scheduled for several work sessions before approving Gaithersburg West's final layout by the end of the year.

Supporters and opponents sparred for more than two hours in a packed auditorium at the first hearing Sept. 15. Supporters called Gaithersburg West a launching pad for economic prosperity and scientific breakthrough; opponents said it is an ill-conceived roadmap for flooding the area with traffic and spoiling the community's suburban nature.

Critics tried to convince the council to rewrite the County Planning Board's version of Gaithersburg West, which would allow nearly 8 million square feet of commercial space to be built before requiring any road or intersection improvements. Even with the most generous estimates for carpooling and mass transit ridership, that would put 15,000 more drivers on roads, which includes the intersection of Great Seneca Highway and Muddy Branch, one of the most congested in the county.

It would also allow Johns Hopkins University to build a 4.5-million-square-foot research campus on the Belward Farm, a 107-acre swath of open space off Route 28 and Muddy Branch Road.

County Executive Isiah Leggett wrote Sept. 11 that construction of research, office, retail, academic and health care space should be limited to 18 million square feet instead of 20 million square feet to keep the plan from being stymied by infrastructure costs.

Rallying behind the slogan "Scale It Back," the critics urged the council to focus the density in the core of the Life Sciences Center, around Shady Grove Adventist Hospital and Hopkins's 36-acre campus on Medical Center Drive, so that construction on Belward can be kept to a minimum.

"Belward farm is not appropriate for a high-rise commercial complex — not now, not in 30 years, not ever," said Donna Baron, director of the Gaithersburg-Rockville-North Potomac Coalition, one of two civic groups sparked by Gaithersburg West. "It is surrounded by residential neighborhoods that were designed and built with dead-end streets that end in cul-de-sacs. The residents cannot get out of their subdivisions without their cars, so the area, by design, will never be transit-oriented and will never be able to handle the outrageous traffic you are proposing."

More than a dozen business and biotech leaders framed Gaithersburg West a linchpin for the county's economic future, calling the County Council to allow enough density to make the Belward more likely to lure federal research agencies and secure federal funding for the proposed Corridor Cities Transitway, a mass transit line that would have three stations in "Science City" on its 14-mile course from the Shady Grove Metro station to just south of Clarksburg.

Anything less, and the county's biotech industry will fall behind its domestic and global rivals, said Scott Zeger, Hopkins' vice provost for research.

"The Gaithersburg West Master Plan is a road map to make Montgomery County a world-class center for discovery and learning about people's health through a unique partnership of government, industry and academia of which Johns Hopkins would be proud to be a part," he said.

Though a daunting prospect for neighbors, the density called for in Gaithersburg West is needed to create "a critical mass to unite government, academia and industry," said Montserrat Capdevila, a Hopkins graduate student and president of the Johns Hopkins Biotech network, a professional student organization.

"Opponents say ‘Scale it back.' But I say don't scale back my dreams — or your economic future. ‘Scale it back' is the voice of yesterday, not the voice of tomorrow. It is the voice of those who already have everything, not the voice of those who are still seeking an opportunity," she said. "… When I find the cure for ovarian cancer one day, do you want me to do it here in Montgomery County? … Today I ask, give scientists the tools we need. Give us a place to research, live, play and collaborate. Keep me in Montgomery County; I promise you will not regret it and I guarantee I will make you proud you did."