The Montgomery County Council voted Tuesday to pay $47 million for 127 acres of undeveloped land in Gaithersburg to house the workers who make public school lunches and the academy that trains police and firefighters.
The 6-2 vote by the council comes days after a council panel voted 5-0 to buy only half of the parcel, a field called the Webb Tract, along Snouffer School Road near Montgomery Village. Council members said they reversed course partly because the seller offered to reduce the cost by $225,000 if the entire property was bought by the end of September.
The vote is a victory for County Executive Ike Leggett, who pushed for the entire parcel to be bought as part of his effort to move county facilities away from the Shady Grove Metro Station so that more transit-oriented development can be built near the station.
Leggett said the council’s move will “significantly implement the urban village envisioned” by the county at Shady Grove
And relocating the current public safety training academy away from its current site in West Gaithersburg to make way for a proposed “Science City” is a key part of the planned bioscience research center backed by Leggett.
Council President Phil Andrews, D-Gaithersburg/Rockville, and Councilman Michael Knapp, D-Germantown, voted against buying the entire parcel. Knapp said he wanted to wait for more information on whether the cash-strapped county would be able to afford building a new training academy, which he said could cost as much as $125 million, while also funding expensive high school renovations.
“We’ve got to understand the costs before we jump into this,” Knapp said.
Councilman Roger Berliner, D-Potomac/Bethesda, did not attend the vote.
Leggett’s officials pledged that the new academy would not displace any planned school construction projects.
In addition to the $225,000 deal sweetener offered by seller Miller & Smith, council members said they were persuaded after a neighborhood group threw its weight behind the proposal because they preferred the county’s plan over potential commercial development.
The MidCounty Citizen’s Alliance, “while not in total agreement with the Montgomery County government concerning all aspects of development of the Webb Tract, believes the county would be a better neighbor than other possible tenants,” the group’s leaders wrote the council Monday.
