Industrial operations eyed for Route 28

Leggett’s plan also includes relocating police offices and training classrooms to GE Technology Park campus

The property was annexed by the City of Gaithersburg in 1989. It borders the Kentlands and Lakelands communities, and is the largest undeveloped tract in the city.

Leggett wants to relocate the county’s liquor warehouse and the school system’s food warehouse to the site. Both of those operations are currently located in the County Service Park on Crabbs Branch Way in Derwood.

The plan unveiled Dec. 1 in Leggett’s State of the County address also calls for an existing six-story, 370,000-square-foot office building to become the county’s public safety headquarters in addition to housing other county offices.

The county police department headquarters would move to the building, along with Public Service Training Academy classrooms and the 1st District police station. The county Board of Elections would also be moved there.

In addition to the six-story building, there is also a 240,000-square-foot warehouse on the property owned by Finmarc Management Inc., which is leased to Giant Food Inc. for its Peapod delivery service. That building would be adapted to hold an expanded, climate-controlled primary warehouse for the Department of Liquor Control. The MCPS food warehouse would be built nearby.

Moving these and other operations from their Crabbs Branch locations would allow a crucial piece of the long-discussed redevelopment of 2,200 acres around the Shady Grove Metro Station to move forward.

For years, county officials have sought to move most, if not all, of its industrial operations from the service park. That relocation had most recently been envisioned for the Webb Tract, a 134-acre parcel bordering Montgomery Village and the Montgomery County Airpark.

Under Leggett’s plan, the Webb Tract is no longer on the table, and the MCPS bus depot at Crabbs Branch — which is home to more than 400 buses — would move to the Gude Drive landfill site. Two maintenance depots and the county’s day-laborer center would remain in the service park, according to the plan.

‘‘We’re committed to the option that does not involve the whole service park moving, so we’re not moving to the Webb Tract,” Leggett spokesman Patrick K. Lacefield said Monday night.

Developer AvalonBay Communities Inc. had been working with Gaithersburg officials on a plan to build three new office or warehouse buildings at the GE Tech Park, but those plans stalled this summer when city planners recommended denying the proposal because it did not conform with open space and conservation requirements.

Many residents of the Lakelands and Kentlands communities also opposed the plan.

Leggett is now negotiating with AvalonBay to buy the property, Lacefield said. Earlier plans for relocating the service park were ‘‘revenue neutral,” meaning they required no outlay of cash.

By ‘‘conservative estimates,” Lacefield said Leggett’s proposal is expected to cost about $2 million. ‘‘In something involving hundreds of millions of dollars, that is pretty cost neutral,” he said.

If the county acquires the land, it would still be subject to the city’s approvals process, said Greg Ossont, head of the city’s planning department.

Leggett’s proposal has caught residents in the communities surrounding the Tech Park off guard.

‘‘I didn’t know. There has been no communication with us about this,” said Mike Aubrey, a member of the Lakelands Community Association board. He said the homeowners group is ‘‘concerned to find out more ... [and] how we as a community can be involved in that process, how it would impact our residents.”

The outcry from residents in Montgomery Village helped convince the County Council to not move the school bus and maintenance depots to the Webb Tract. Leggett’s proposal does not involve moving those uses to the Tech Park.

‘‘There’s been a lot of question from the community and from the council on the Webb Tract,” Lacefield said. ‘‘... We don’t want to hold the whole project up based on one piece being extremely difficult.”

Still, Aubrey questions how well Lakelands will be heard in the process. Lakelands has a big voice with the City of Gaithersburg, he said, but not such a large one in the county.

Pat Labuda, president of the Greater Shady Grove Civic Alliance, which has been closely involved in plans to relocate the service park, was also caught off guard by Leggett’s proposal.

‘‘It’s a little confusing, but I was happy to see that they’re moving on it,” she said. ‘‘It’s just an industrial hole. They have a gold mine there and they’re just throwing trash on it, literally.”

She was not happy to learn that the latest plan does not involve moving the maintenance depots or the day-laborer center from the service park.

As for the Webb Tract, the developer is moving forward with its plan to turn the Webb Tract into a 1.2 million-square-foot complex of offices, warehouses and research space, said Chuck Ellison, vice president of the development firm Miller and Smith.

Lots went up for sale in October. Grading work is set to begin in January.

The proposal

County Executive Isiah Leggett’s plan to relocate several county operations to the 96-acre GE Technology Park in Gaithersburg:

A multi-use public safety headquarters, which would include a new police headquarters and a new 1st District police station

A new home for the Board of Elections

The primary warehouse for the county’s Department of Liquor Control

MCPS’s food warehouse

The county would hold on to any future development rights