After years of fighting developers and officials with lawsuits, closed-door negotiations and public complaints over promised amenities that have yet to materialize, residents of Clarksburg Town Center are turning on each other.
Clarksburg Town Center, a planned development community in northwestern Montgomery County, veered off track years ago when residents noticed buildings far taller and closer to the street than site plans for the area allowed. Some joined together to become the Clarksburg Township Center Advisory Committee, spending their free time poring over documents to see how the plans had come to be altered.
Amy Presley, the head of the group, says she and others including Kim Shiley and Lynn Fantle have sacrificed their time and their livelihoods to spend an average of 40 hours a week trying to achieve what the community residents were promised when they bought homes there.
The Town Center developer, San Diego-based Newland Communities, had agreed to improve amenities throughout the neighborhood instead of paying a fine — but the developer and the leaders of a residents group areat it again, suing each other after an arbitrator ruled on the case.
The group’s leaders say the developers are reverting back to a strip-mall-like concept for the community’s retail center, rather than a top-of-the-line shopping center that residents expected.
Some other community residents, however, have had it — they know the developer’s plans aren’t perfect, but they say they don’t care. A Wednesday night meeting among the developers, group leaders and other residents exploded into tears and curses, and Montgomery County police say things got so heated they asked Presley’s husband to leave to collect himself.
“At first you think they are trying to help the community, but what I now feel is that these people have gotten a little publicity and they now fancy themselves as the Erin Brockoviches of Clarksburg,” Ronda Shackelford said. “I am sick of all of these filings that delay our retail. I’m sorry if they cannot have all of the particular stores that they feel will be good enough for them,” she said in an e-mail to The Examiner.
Emily Lederer, a stay-at-home mom, says she “doesn’t care about punishing” the developers anymore.
“I don’t want to crucify the group,” Lederer said. “They’ve done a wonderful job in working diligently to get us a great neighborhood plan, but a lot of us just want to move forward.”
