By TOM STAUSS/Publisher
Eclipsing anything anyone had to say about greenbelts around Ocean Pines or jumpstarting efforts to dualize Route 589 was the low-key announcement of a major new development for the village of Showell just north of Ocean Pines. More on that later.

The occasion was the Nov. 29 public hearing on the draft revision of Worcester County’s comprehensive plan at the Berlin Middle School. Quite a few people, including representatives of the Ocean Pines Association, were present to offer suggestions and comments on the draft. All the usual county factions were there, lawyered up in some cases, but it was all quite civilized.

Property owners turned out in force to argue against future downzoning, as it’s no secret that the county’s planning commission chairman would like to eliminate residential estate zoning in favor of more agriculture. Property owners who might someday want to develop their parcels are not too keen on eliminating an important zoning category.

Some of our local greenies were there from the other side of the development fault line, somehow persuaded that Worcester County is losing its rural character. A more sober assessment is that this county is a long way from that. The draft comp plan skews more toward moderate growth than it does towards rapid growth, but in fact it’s a bit spare in the identification of potential growth areas, missing opportunities that pro-development advocates might suggest, such as along the fairways of the county’s numerous golf courses and old Route 113.

Ocean Pines Comprehensive Plan Advisory Committee chairman Art Sachs read into the record his panel’s comments on the draft, including a reference to preserving green space, a fictional greenbelt, around Ocean Pines. What that appears to mean is that the advisory committee doesn’t want any future residential or commercial rezoning of lands around Ocean Pines now zoned for agriculture.

The drafters of the pending comp plan are taking a slightly less extreme view. They in effect are saying that zoning along Route 589 should remain frozen until such time as the highway is dualized, a process that is taking place slowly and haphazardly. Short of real action to complete the dualization of this five-mile stretch of highway, there is little practical difference between the two approaches.

OPA president Glenn Duffy in passing mentioned that the OPA board supported Sach’s remarks, which in effect means the board is on record as endorsing the greenbelt concept, despite the reported skepticism of a number of directors.

Just prior to the public hearing, director Heather Cook mentioned that, in recent email among the directors, former OPA president Dan Stachurski argued that Route 589, parts of which he refers to as the “golden triangle,” is a natural growth area and that a “greenbelt” isn’t practical given pressures to develop. She suggested that Duffy’s prepared remarks would reflect the Stachurski view, but Duffy’s comments suggest that he didn’t get that memo.

Perhaps one has to read between the lines for the subtext. Duffy devoted his time to promoting the idea of jumpstarting moribund efforts to dualize Route 589, although his suggestions of more concerted lobbying for state planning activities and funding fell well short of the practicable.

Instead of bemoaning the lack of state attention to Route 589, local officials should be asking what the county, the OPA and local developers can do to solve the Route 589 dualization issue. A template for developer-financed dualization is already taking place with the South Gate intersection improvement project. That would not be happening were it not for the Pennington Commons shopping center project under construction there.

For those with an appreciation for irony, the Pennington developer has also planted a large number of trees along Route 589 to buffer an adjoining development of estate homes from Route 589.

The tree planting will be producing more greenery along Route 589 than anything that greenbelt advocates have produced or could produce in a hundred years of rhetorical excess.

If Duffy and the board are serious about Route 589 dualization, and there is reason to believe they are, they are probably well aware that dualization promotes new development.

So there appears to be a bit of disconnect between official pro-greenbelt policy and the advocacy of dualizing Route 589.

In another contradiction, part of Sach’s report commented favorably on the need for affordable and senior housing in the county. One promising but dormant idea for doing just that is a proposal by the Community Church of Ocean Pines to build an affordable housing project on land just off Route 589 north of Ocean Pines. The proposed site, near the church,  is currently zoned for agriculture. It’s owned by developer Allen Skolnick.

This area would have to be shown as a growth area in the comp plan and then rezoned for residential development if this welcome idea is ever to get off the drawing boards.

The notion of a greenbelt around Ocean Pines is incompatible with the need for more affordable housing in the county near its largest population center.

Now for the development “bombshell,” which has more potential, far-reaching impact on northern Worcester County than whatever does or doesn’t happen on Route 589.

That bombshell was the announcement, written up elsewhere in this edition of the Progress, that Perdue Farms’ wastewater treatment plant and 362 surrounding acres is under contract to be sold to a major regional developer, ADC Builders, based in Rockville with local offices in West Ocean City.

This wasn’t news in the sense that the pending sale was a total surprise. That Perdue has been seeking to find a buyer for the treatment plant and the surrounding acreage has been well known for a couple of years at least.

But it’s always important news when, in this slow-moving county, something that has been thought to be imminent actually occurs.

Of course, for the purchase to go to settlement much will have to fall into place. Given the delicate ideological balance on the county commissioners, and with an election year looming, it’s by no means a done deal. ADC is planning on an 18-month process to complete the purchase.

Securing an agreement with the county is a vital part of the process, and that means finding four votes among the commissioners to support a significant boost in population in and around Showell.

The developer is offering some inducements to encourage the commissioners to ratify the deal by identifying the property as a growth area in the comp plan and rezoning it for residential development.

Without rezoning, all the improvements to a wastewater treatment plant are for naught.

Inducements include offering to turn-over to the county an improved treatment plant free and clear, together with at least 1,000 equivalent dwelling units of treatment capacity that the county, not the developer, would control.

The plant would be upgraded to the tune of about $5 million before ownership would be transferred to the county, with few strings attached.

Shrewdly, the contract buyers are avoiding a protracted discussion with the county over recouping a fair return on that $5 million investment, or the purchase itself. They are not asking for any direct return at all from that part of their investment, simply the right to obtain wastewater treatment services for whatever number of EDUs is negotiated for the property.

It could be the proverbial win-win situation that would include everyone except those adamantly opposed to growth in that neighborhood.

Sooner or later, those opponents will surface. The dispute a couple of years ago over rezoning of nearby areas along Route 113 will be but a warm-up for the pending battle over Showell.

The proposed sale would give the county commissioners the opportunity to secure a goal that is often talked about but seldom acted upon, the need for more affordable housing to keep middle income people in the county.

ADC is offering to include a fair number of such units in whatever mix of single family and multi-family housing is finally approved.

An early indication of how this transaction will fare at the hands of county officials will be the fate of the proposed growth area for Showell in the revised comp plan now under review.

If the comp plan is adopted by the commissioners with the Showell growth area included, the table is set for the appropriate rezoning.

If Showell is excluded as a growth area, the Perdue treatment plant, rather than becoming the driver for future growth in the north county, will probably rust away to oblivion.

The “rudeness’ of Glenn Duffy

The Ocean Pines Forum, the local Internet bulletin board and video site that has begun to carry this column, has been posting blogs from a number of Pines residents who seem to believe that OPA president Glenn Duffy is rude to his colleagues on the board and to those OPA members who on occasion speak out during the “public comments” section of a typical OPA board meeting.

A couple of months ago, Duffy raised a few eyebrows when a speaker exceeded the five minutes allowed for pronouncements from the floor, prompting a sharp rebuke from the OPA president.

“What is it about five minutes that you don’t understand?” Duffy asked, gruffly, bringing that particular proffered commentary to an abrupt close.

There’s no doubt, when compared to his predecessor, Dan Stachurski, that Duffy runs a tight meeting and brooks no patience for gratuitous commentary, air-headedness, or certain orators who love to hear the melodious sound of their own voices.

It’s even possible to suggest that he worships Roberts Rules with the same degree of intensity as the book he cites with such devotion from the pulpit on Sundays as an Episcopal priest in Ocean City.

If it appears to some that Duffy occasionally crosses over the line of acceptable discourse, it perhaps only seems that way because his predecessor maybe was on occasion just too nice and tolerant.

The upside of brusqueness is that it shortens meetings, and who can object to that.

Two meetings a month fit board work load

The agenda for the special OPA board meeting on Dec. 6  at 1 p.m. in the board room will include public comments and action to select an architectural firm for the community center, followed by a closed session to discuss legal and personnel matters.

The scheduling of a special meeting, to be followed by the regular monthly meeting at the Country Club later in the month, recalls those hallowed days of yesteryear when two regular board meetings a month were the norm. One was the more informal work session held in the board room and the other was the more ritualized, formal meeting when decisions were made, public comments accepted and formal motions adopted or rejected.

Recently the board met for an eight-hour marathon and here we are, two months later, holding a special meeting around a specific topic.

There is growing evidence that the old “norm” of two regularly scheduled meetings a month fits a comfortable workload. Sometimes, reinventing the wheel produces an inferior model.

Meanwhile, though, the board is moving quickly through the steps that will lead to breaking ground on the construction of a new community center as early as next year. No recent word on land sales, however, suggesting that’s so far it’s been a straight line to dessert before the veggies are consumed.