The developers of a controversial townhouse project on the Lower Broadneck Peninsula should be allowed to keep their zoning exception despite a county administrator's ruling in June that the developers should begin approval processes over again, their lawyer said yesterday.
"It's a question of time and money," said Harry C. Blumenthal, the lawyer for Woods Landing Joint Venture, developers of Woods Landing II. It would be unfair to force the developers to start over, he told the county Board of Appeals.
The company is appealing a June decision by planning chief Robert J. Dvorak, who said the developers, who have been through lengthy zoning hearings and a court fight, had to start anew in applying for exemptions and variances to build 114 townhouses on the 31-acre site near Cape St. Claire.
They also would need a waiver from the county's adequate facilities law, but it is unlikely that would be approved, because schools and roads in the area already are overcrowded.
The County Council exempted Woods Landing II from its critical area enforcement program in 1988. The Board of Appeals said in February 1993 that it was powerless to stop the development, but Judge Lawrence H. Rushworth ruled a year later that the project violated the intent of the critical areas laws.
After the court decision, Mr. Dvorak said the developers had to start over.
Yesterday, Mr. Blumenthal said his clients would have appealed Judge Rushworth's rulings had they known the alternative was to start from scratch.
Opponents said yesterday that they feared the development would create more congestion on the peninsula.
"The thing we are most concerned about is the overcrowding in the schools on the Broadneck Peninsula and the traffic," said Betsy Kulle, a member of the board of the Woods Landing community association, the 99-townhouse first phase of the development, which was started 14 years ago.
Robert Pollack, senior assistant county attorney, said the Circuit Court decision voided the county's approval of the project because the special exception granted in 1977, and extended several times, expired. The developers had to renew it, he argued.
"I don't believe this special exception goes on forever and ever," Mr. Pollack said during the three-hour hearing.