Baltimore County's Planning Board will meet Thursday to discuss whether changes should be made to the county's open space requirements for new developments.
Currently, developers must include 1,000 square feet of open space in their projects for every residential unit they're building. If a developer can't include sufficient space, they can ask the county for a waiver and pay a fee instead. Those fees -- which vary based on the type of zoning -- are used to buy and develop county parks.
Many Towson-area community and recreational groups have raised concerns that developers are paying relatively small fees for waivers of open space requirements.
Caves Valley Partners, developer of the proposed Towson Row mixed-use development on York Road, for example, is scheduled pay an open space waiver fee of $55,000 if the project is approved. Towson Row is planned to include 1 million square feet of offices, stores, apartments and a hotel.
The Baltimore County Council directed the Planning Board to study the issue of open space waiver fees in 2013. The board's staff recently completed a report that recommends keeping the current open space fees in place, including several exemptions to the fees such as in town-center zoning areas and for student housing projects.
The Planning Board will meet at 4:45 p.m. Thursday, with a public hearing on the open space waiver fees scheduled for 5 p.m. The meeting will be held in the Jefferson Building, 105 W. Chesapeake Ave. in Towson.
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