Howard County's Planning Board delayed voting on a proposed development in Maple Lawn Thursday night, after opponents of the project said their concerns would take at least an hour to explain.
The development would bring 176 single-family detached homes to a 91-acre plot of land across the street from Reservoir High School in Fulton.
The proposal represents a significant departure from the original plans for the site, which were presented in 2013 and requested approval for an apartment complex with more than 1,000 units.
In addition to the homes, the developer of Maple Lawn South is proposing to build a clubhouse and pathways linking different areas of the site. An old farmhouse on the land dating from the 1830s and irreparably damaged by termites, according to an engineer hired to inspect the property, would be torn down.
Opponents of the project -- many of whom were involved in an effort to bring a handful of zoning decisions, including Maple Lawn South, to referendum in a case that ended last summer -- said they still had many unanswered questions about the plan.
Susan Gray, an attorney and Highland resident who represented the referendum activists in front of the Maryland Court of Appeals, honed in on a technical staff report prepared by the county's Department of Planning and Zoning, which she said did not offer a specific enough description of the criteria used to evaluate the project and recommend its approval.
Gray said she was concerned that developing the property, which is zoned residential environmental with the option of a mixed-use overlay, could harm the Patuxent River, which flows nearby. She also raised questions about the property's inclusion in the planned service area, which connects developments to public water and sewer services.
"This property cannot be developed unless it has public water and sewer," she told the Planning Board. "I want to know where it is that says this property was incorporated in the planned service area."
DPZ Director Marsha McLaughlin said the property was pulled into the planned service area in 2012 as part of PlanHoward 2030, the county's master plan for development.
Bill Erskine, the attorney representing Maple Lawn South, called Gray's questioning "a definite effort to delay" the project. He and Gray have argued opposing cases before -- Erskine was one of the land-use attorneys involved in rebutting the referendum case.
Gray, meanwhile, said she was taking advantage of her right to due process.
Planning Board members Bill Santos, Jacqueline Easley and Erica Roberts voted to continue the hearing on Maple Lawn South, and tentatively scheduled a special meeting on the proposal for Monday or Tuesday of next week.
"We're trying to make sure everybody is heard here," Santos said.
Also on Thursday night, the Planning Board voted to recommend a zoning regulations change that would reduce the commercial space requirements for developments in the Corridor Activity Center, which primarily applies to Route 1 projects.