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The City of Gaithersburg has appealed a Montgomery County Circuit Court ruling that would allow a developer to build 200,000 square feet of office space on the 50-acre GE Tech Park, next to the Kentlands and Lakelands.

Last month, Judge Terrence J. McGann overturned a decision by the city's planning commission and its Board of Appeals that had barred AvalonBay Communities Inc. from building three one-story warehouses totaling 202,000 square feet.

AvalonBay, contract purchaser of the GE Tech Park, believes they should be able to build as much as 700,000 square feet of space, pointing to the 1989 agreement that annexed the land into city domain. In February 2007, they applied to build three one-story warehouses totaling 202,000 square feet.

The city planning commission denied the application that September. The city's appeals board upheld that decision in April, pointing to a 2006 master plan update that said the land needed to be preserved as open space and that the warehouses would be "incompatible and inharmonious with existing uses of the property and adjacent uses."

But Judge McGann wrote in his Nov. 26 ruling that "no facts are present in the record to support the Board of Appeals' decision."

The city appealed McGann's ruling Thursday with the state Court of Special Appeals and expects the case to take several months, said planning director Greg Ossont.

The GE Tech Park — former site of the National Geographic headquarters — is a centerpiece in Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett's "Smart Growth Initiative," which would create a "public safety headquarters" by moving the county police headquarters, the department of homeland security, the 1st District police station and other operations into the five-story office building on the property.

Leggett recently asked the County Council for $1.7 million to plan and design the "public safety headquarters" but Gaithersburg leaders decided to appeal Judge McGann's ruling "in case something happens where [Leggett's plan] does not go forward," said Mayor Sidney A. Katz.

The GE Tech Park is worth $64.2 million, according to a state assessment done in July 2007. City officials have said that allowing the 200,000 square feet of new space could increase the land's value by as much as $40 million.

One of the goals of Leggett's plan is that it will net the county $30 million over the next six years by balancing $485 million in costs against $515 million in savings and revenue for selling land.

Diane Schwartz Jones, project manager for Leggett's plan, said that the county has already accounted for the increase in the GE Tech Park's value.

Under the terms of a letter of intent signed in October, AvalonBay will be given rights to build 600 multifamily units on land near the Shady Grove Metro station pegged to see massive housing and retail redevelopment.