Regarding Philip Logan’s interview with the Spy, entitled Spy Chats A Mid-Shore Place in Transition: A Chat with Architect Philip Logan on Bellevue and Good Subdivisions
Unfortunately Mr. Logan is not aware of the growth or development emphasis in Maryland and Talbot County. The only criteria is the environment. There is no thought about the fabric of the community.
As examples:
Talbot Preservation Association in Talbot County fights every proposal with their environmental agenda. There is no compromise for Mr. Logan’s suggestions. Their agenda equates more homes with degradation to the environment. The Planning Commission and Council have no stake in supporting good development principles and upsetting the citizens.
This is the South. The locals tend to follow the “move heres”. After all, they are wealthy. They have been successful. They must know what is right. Even though these new citizens hide behind the environment, they simply don’t want growth and their influence pushes this agenda on the locals.
Maryland Critical Area law along with the Department of Environment laws make it impossible to develop in a socially responsible manner, in the County. They encourage traditional cookie cutter dispersed development. In one of the most dense development zones in the county, village hamlet, Maryland regulations restrict a home site to approximately three quarters of acre.
Talbot County, before the Talbot Preservation Association, had a very progressive village zoning ordinance. It allowed four houses per acre. But there was a catch. The property had to be rezoned to Intense Development, a critical area designation. There was, is no land in a village in the county with this designation. Getting it approved with the Talbot Preservation Association’s opposition would be impossible. Under the current zoning ordinance the County has no zone that could be more than one house per acre of gross site acreage.
These are the main impediments to Mr. Logan’s thoughts. There are many more. Like the Department of Public Works road requirements, just general opposition to everything by the Department of Health regulations, etc. Good development is a fight that will not be won in Talbot County.
Clint Wadsworth
Talbot County
Reed Fawell 3 says
The lands west of Route 50 and Easton by-pass combine qualities that make its areas of land, marsh, waters, and villages, singularly and collectively unique, and of irreplaceable regional and national importance, all this amid a estuarine ecosystem of extreme fragility, beneficence, and beauty, and unsurpassed historic significance on a grand scale.
This blessed reality now shows itself to impose many constraints, one being the increasingly obvious fact that the capacity of the road transport system within this magical area is nearly maxed out. And that, by reason of the area’s unique geography, there is no obvious way to expand that road capacity without destroying its acceptable function altogether. Indeed, now we are fast approaching the breaking point, given annual traffic increases over the past several decades, during which time there has been little development here at all. So we need find ways to eat traffic already in our future, not compound it.