Montgomery County must scrap plans to build a public safety training academy in affluent East Village or place it just beyond theback fences of expensive homes — triggering inevitable protests — after losing a shot at a more isolated land tract.
Miller and Smith Inc., which owns the 130-acre Webb Tract where county officials have set their sights for the project, has already sold land more distant from the homes, a company official said, locking the county into a parcel that comes within 100 feet of a classy neighborhood.
Montgomery Village residents are already up in arms about the project, saying they feared the environmental impact of a proposed “burn building” where firefighters train in real-life flames.
Residents also condemned the idea of noisy driving tracks constructed to simulate high-speed chases.
“We’re going to fight to protect our backyards,” said Terry O’Grady, a founder of the Mid-County Citizens Alliance.
Some residents at the meeting pointed to the portions of property farther away as a better location.
But Chuck Ellison, vice president of Miller and Smith, said much of that land is already sold, and the company expects to sell more of the property in the next 10 days.
The company is holding off on selling the chunks of property nearest to the East Village homes as a courtesy to the county, which has expressed interest in buying them.
But Ellison said, “We’d always rather sell sooner rather than later.”
Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett’s spokesman Patrick Lacefield said, “It’s a free country, their land, and they can sell to whomever they want. … But we’re very interested in pursuing the property.”
He added that the county wasn’t feeling any pressure from the owners to move quickly.
The county’s plans are in the very early stages and are part of a much larger project to shift county facilities from areas that could be developed for housing and industry to less valuable property.
That idea, however, has set many residents in areas that would receive those facilities on edge.
They’ve described the county’s plans as favoring the development of future communities over neighborhoods that already exist.
