At this week’s meeting, the City Council will consider approving a letter with comments on the Adelphi Road Sector Plan and Proposed Sectional Map Amendment.
M-NCPPC staff attended our City Council Worksession a couple of weeks ago to provide a briefing on the Adelphi Road-UMGC-UMD Purple Line Station Area Sector Plan and recommendations including proposed zoning changes.
The plan area is small, comprising only 102 acres of mostly unincorporated land except for small areas in the City of Hyattsville and the City of College Park. The County Council initiated the plan in November 2020 and the preliminary plan was released to the public in October 2021. A joint public hearing with the Prince George’s County Planning Board and County Council will be held on January 18, 2022, with final approval anticipated between June and October 2022.
The Council also heard from the Council members and the community.
The letter recognizes that the plan is based on a vision that is inconsistent with Plan 2035 (County General Plan), inadequately addresses environmental, transportation, and public facility issues, and recommends zoning changes that are not justified, and thus strongly asks the Planning Board and District Council to defer action on the Plan.
The plan’s land-use policy preserves 3.94 acres in Reserved Open Space (ROS) which is a surprisingly small amount and the only environmentally sensitive area recommended for open space in the land use map. The letter asks to revise Map 6 to show existing parks and open spaces including Guilford Woods.
On transportation and mobility, the letter says that the Plan does not include a transportation or traffic impact analysis, and the Plan does not demonstrate how the proposed new development will impact traffic conditions.
The letter asks to include traffic impact analysis of proposed new development and other transportation information about the impact of the Purple Line. On the Natural environment, the letter asks to recognize the Guilford Run Watershed and opportunities in the plan area to address serious downstream flooding, investigate the discovery of a new species of carnivorous worm in Guilford Run and its relevance, determine if removal of trees in Guilford Woods will create a network gap in the Green Infrastructure Network, Expand conservation areas, increase the size of the proposed Guilford Run Stream Valley Park, and modify zoning recommendations to protect these sensitive areas, Require onsite preservation of trees to satisfy the Woodland and Wildlife Habitat Ordinance.
[City of College Park]