A weeklong planning event could produce a new Baltimore County zoning classification that residents of its eastern shores said would protect their bucolic life from increasing development pressures.
County planners are organizing a seven-day “charette” scheduled for September to determine whether a new coastal zoning category could protect the lower Back River Neck Peninsula?s rural character, officials said. With most of the waterfront protected Chesapeake Bay wetlands ? meaning major new construction is unlikely ? community activist Ron Belbot said the process would target infill development.
“This is for all the existing building lots that aren?t built on, or summer homes right on the water where people want to build 400,000-square-foot summer McMansions,” said Belbot, who will chair a steering committee on the project. “We are enthused about it and going to try to make it work.”
If the process leads to a new zoning category, it will be the county?s first in about four years, said Jeff Mayhew, Baltimore County?s chief of community planning. The community also could opt to create an “overlay district,” an additional zoning requirement that is placed on an area but does not change the underlying zoning that can be applied countywide, such as business or residential.
The classification will be narrowly tailored to the peninsula?s unique character, but could be applied to other coastal areas such as Essex, Middle River or Bowleys Quarters in the future, he said.
“Once we come up with it,we can say, ?Does this fit and is the community accepting of it in other areas?? ” Mayhew said.
Councilman Joe Bartenfelder, a Democrat who represents the area, said the project is about being proactive. No substantial development is on the horizon, and he wants to keep it that way.
“It?s going to permanently put that rural stamp that it has now,” Bartenfelder said. “Intact is the best way to put it.”
