Expressing fears about worsening traffic and suburban sprawl, most Howard residents in the standing-room-only crowd who attended Thursday night's county planning board hearing strongly opposed the Carroll family's proposal to develop part of historic Doughoregan Manor in Ellicott City.
The nearly 300-year-old estate belongs to descendants of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, a signer of the Declaration of Independence.
After an earlier deal fell through, the Carroll family wants to cluster new homes in the northeast corner of the 892-acre property to raise millions of dollars to preserve and restore the rest of it.
The vigorous opposition - so many people attended that the hearing will continue Feb. 4 - contrasts with community acceptance of an earlier plan to use the land for an Erickson retirement community of 2,000 apartments. That plan died last year with the collapse of the senior housing market.
County planners support the family's proposal to extend public water and sewers to 325 new homes that would be clustered in one corner of the estate. If the utility extension is granted by the county zoning board, said Carroll family attorney Sang Oh, the land could be rezoned.
Others testified to the estate's value to the state and the nation.
Orlando Ridout, chief of research for the Maryland Historical Trust, testified that as the only home of a signer of the Declaration of Independence still in family hands, Doughoregan is "unique" and "significant to the nation as a whole." It is the only designated National Historic Landmark in Howard County.
David Albert, a neighboring landowner and resident, said the family should get special consideration because of the Revolutionary War role played by Charles Carroll and the family's devotion to preserving the estate.
"But for Charles Carroll above all others, we wouldn't be here. We wouldn't be having this discussion," he said.
But critics who live nearby said the new homes would produce too much traffic, overload the county's sewers, set a zoning precedent that could lead to more sprawl in the western part of the county, and give the Carrolls millions of dollars without providing any public access to the private estate.
"This is a gift to the owners at the expense to Howard County residents," Victor A. Illenda told the board of the Carrolls' plan to put 500 acres into the county's Agricultural Preservation Program in exchange for more than $15 million over two decades.
Oh argued that clustering the new homes and preserving land west of them would stop development expansion forever.
Illenda, president of the Chateau Ridge Lake Community Association, and many others in the crowd said they do not believe suggestions by Joseph Rutter, a former county planning director working for the Carrolls, that the family's plan would produce much less traffic than the Erickson plan, and that the Carrolls join them in opposing the opening of Burnside Drive, which now dead-ends where their neighborhood meets Doughoregan.
If the new homes can be concentrated in one part of the estate, the Carrolls say, they can preserve 90 acres around the 282-year-old manor house and a dozen other historic structures in addition to the 500 acres submitted for Agricultural Preservation. Their plan would also give 36 acres to Howard County to expand a nearby park. Another 75 acres are already in preservation.
If not, the development would spread modern homes using wells and septic systems across the estate, threatening its historic isolation, Oh said.
The Carrolls are offering a written, detailed agreement to guarantee that their plan would be carried out.
But nearby residents have hired attorney Katherine Taylor, who told the board that the rezoning request is illegal and should be denied.
In other action, the board split 2-2 on whether to recommend rezoning of land for a mixed-use project near the Dorsey MARC train station along Route 100 at the Anne Arundel County line.
Several board members said the issue should be put off until a new general plan is written and the county undergoes comprehensive rezoning.