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The Montgomery County version of the Takoma/Langley Crossroads Sector Plan will be postponed a full year according to planners last week, but Montgomery and Prince George's county planners will still be able to work together on the bi-county project.

Montgomery County planners announced the delay just after their latest work session with the Planning Board Sept. 24 in Silver Spring, the same day planners in Prince George's County received approval from their own Planning Board to move forward with presenting their plan to the Prince George's County Council. Officials in both counties are hopeful that the plans will be able to match at the zoning stage of the project, but the Montgomery County Council simply cannot get to working on the sector plan this year, according to county senior planner Melissa Williams.

"It actually doesn't have anything to do with the sector plan, it has to do with working our way into the County Council's schedule," she said when reached for comment Monday. "We sent up a lot of sector plans this year, and the council just didn't feel like they would be able to get to them all in a timely fashion."

Williams hopes the plan will be approved by the Planning Board and sent to the council by September 2010. Neither she nor Prince George's County senior planner Aldea Douglas believes that Prince George's County's plan to move forward will seriously hamper the counties' ability to coordinate on the overall plan, which includes parts of both counties and Takoma Park.

"We were just informed of this change last week, so I'm not sure how we're going to work this out yet," Douglas said when reached for comment Monday. "It may not be that [the plans] are linked up in the end, but our policies are always going to be coordinated with [Montgomery County] … every step of the way."

Planners hope the Maryland Transit Authority's Purple Line, a proposed 16-mile mass transit line that will run through the Crossroads, will spark redevelopment on University Boulevard and New Hampshire Avenue over the next 20 years.

Douglas added that, even after the council approves the sector plan, Prince George's and Montgomery county planners still need to work out a sectional map amendment that will include important zoning changes that will affect both counties, so much of the work the two counties need to coordinate closest on will not be restricted by the temporarily lopsided plan approvals.

Meanwhile, the Montgomery County Planning Board approved most of Takoma Park's recommended changes to the sector plan Thursday, including the city's suggestion to reject a trail along the Long Branch stream valley.

City environmentalists strongly opposed the county's original recommendation to consider placing a trail along the stream valley, a move city environmentalists warned would harm one of the city's only remaining untouched wooded areas. The Planning Board also deleted mention of a street connecting Hammond Avenue to New Hampshire, a move that city residents and officials feared would increase the amount of dangerous cut-through traffic on residential side streets bordering the Crossroads.

Despite quick progress early on, the board and city planners stalled regarding the city's seemingly conflicting desire to increase business density along the New Hampshire Avenue corridor while at the same time avoiding overcrowding residential units.

Many city residents who live in the neighborhood just behind the businesses along New Hampshire are afraid that the city will overcrowd their houses by rezoning the land to allow for more density, according to City Councilwoman Donna Victoria, whose Ward 6 includes the Crossroads.

"I've been getting letters expressing concerns like ‘I don't want to live next to a 7-Eleven and a liquor store,' and that's really not what we're looking at," Victoria said after she and Mayor Bruce Williams provided feedback to the board. "[Residents] don't want to be suddenly thrown into a business area."

Planners hope that by designating the area as commercial/residential, single-family homes in the Wildwood Drive neighborhood would gradually give way to slightly taller mixed-use buildings, followed by full-size business and office buildings along New Hampshire.

Planning Board Chairman Royce Hanson cautioned the city against attempting to appease both residents and businesses in the transition. If the entire block is rezoned, building heights and other standards could not be selectively applied.

"We're dealing with conflicting objectives [here]," he said. "You're talking about designating the entire block [commercial/residential] but keeping the building heights compatible with single-family homes."

Hanson eventually resolved to shelf the rezoning issue for a later discussion, a prudent move according to Victoria, who said many residents in the Crossroads need to be included in future discussions to dispel their misconceptions and have their concerns addressed before the plan can move forward.

While the work session was not open to public testimony, the board did recognize representatives of area management companies, including Robert R. Harris, a lawyer representing a number of businesses in the area.

Harris brought up a common concern expressed by property owners at previous hearings that, because the outcome of the sector plan depends so much on the Purple Line sparking development, it does not make sense to unnecessarily limit businesses by rezoning areas of the Crossroads before the MTA's project is under way.

"These businesses are [just] holding on; they're not thriving," he said. "Don't do anything that would make it harder for them to survive."

Planning Commissioner Joseph Alfandre disagreed with Harris's approach in favor of examining the bigger picture of maintaining the long-term economic sustainability of area businesses during the transition. From his perspective, Alfandre is more concerned with how the board can hope to both redevelop the area and sustain its current economic stability.

"That is the next level," Alfandre said. "How can we fulfill the terms of the Master Plan without killing the economics of the area and allowing it to grow?"

Because Montgomery County will not present its plan to the council until next year, the schedule for future Planning Board work sessions is in flux, but Williams hopes the next meeting will happen some time in late November or early December.