Site struggle over proposed MontCo biotech 'city'
By: Bill Myers
Examiner Staff Writer
October 4, 2009
Twenty years ago, Liz Banks turned to Johns Hopkins University to save her family's farm.
Now, her family is fighting to save the farm from Johns Hopkins.
Banks had retired to her ancestral Belward Farm in Montgomery County after decades as a schoolteacher. But in 1989, she was hit with a massive property tax bill. Rather than sell the land to developers -- who were offering upward of $54 million -- Banks sold it to Johns Hopkins for $5 million.
On one condition: The university would only use the 108-acre, West Gaithersburg farm for a small, "Jeffersonian" campus, nephew Tim Newell said.
That was then. Now, just four years after Banks died -- still raising cattle on the land -- Johns Hopkins is leading a charge to convert Belward Farm and thousands of other nearby acres into "Science City," a 60,000-jobs campus for biotech companies and research academies. If the university has its way, some 15,000 workers will be working on the Belward Farm site in a few years.
"The people whom my aunt had turned to protect the farm from development have become the developers they wanted to protect her from," Newell told The Examiner. "They've been running roughshod over everybody."
Hopkins spokeswoman Tracey Reeves declined comment. University real estate executive David McDonough didn't respond to requests for comment.
The Montgomery County Council is already weighing Hopkins' Science City proposals. A council vote on the matter could come up this month. The university and its friends have been given a big boost by the Obama administration, which is ladling out billions in public grants to "restore science to its proper place."
The Interstate 270 corridor is already one of the nation's richest veins for biotech research and commerce. Science City advocates say their plans will solidify the advantage and make it a world center. Critics, including Montgomery County Council Chairman Phil Andrews, say they don't oppose biotech development in the area, but they do object to the scale and speed of the development.
The battle over Belward Farm has injected accusations of bad faith into already contentious community meetings.
Caught in the middle is Newell, 51, a New Jersey gardening supplier who spent his summers on the farm and now has become a reluctant lobbyist for the family. Newell said he has made 32 trips to Montgomery County to fight against Hopkins' plans.
He say he feels overmatched: Johns Hopkins has hired all kinds of high-powered lobbyists, including former Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce President Rich Parsons and the Maryland lobbying heavyweight law firm of Linowes & Blocher.
It has been a bitter lesson for the family, Newell said.
"In May [Johns Hopkins' officials] honored the family on its Founders' Wall," he said. "They honor the family's gift, but they readily ignore the restrictions on the gift."
