BRUNSWICK - A generation or two ago, the railroad was king in this Frederick County town. For a time, half of Brunswick's population either worked for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, with its locomotive maintenance shops and vast freight yards, or for businesses that served the trains.
The downtown was small but bustling. Old-timers remember movie houses, clothing stores, a hall that held dances once a week.
Today, there is no place to catch a show, buy a coat or cut a rug - not without heading toward the malls of Frederick or the shopping centers of Charles Town, W.Va., more than a dozen miles away. The train still rumbles through, stopping only to pick up and drop off the commuters who use Brunswick as a way station.
Bordered by communities that are struggling to control development, Brunswick is itching to grow. The city of Frederick has had a moratorium on new homes for more than a year because of water troubles; Washington County recently blocked growth on its rural border with Frederick County, fearing spillover.
But residents here, fearing that Brunswick (population 5,000) will continue to wither, voted this summer to double its size by annexing 455 acres of farmland that will become a 1,500-unit housing development in a town that has just 1,900 homes.
"Doubling is pretty huge," said Carroll Jones, mayor since August 2000 and a councilman for 10 years before that. "[But] we are stuck where we are if we don't."
The pros and cons
The fight over annexation was fairly pitched, pitting neighbor against neighbor. Some, like Jones, said they saw it as the city's only opportunity to prosper. The tax base in Brunswick is just too small to support new businesses, and even many of the old businesses. Stores don't want to locate here because there isn't a customer base to make it worth their while, he said.
"We have a downtown that, like a lot of small towns, is dying," said Wayne Allgaier, a physician and the chairman of the Brunswick Economic Development Commission. "There have been efforts to revitalize the downtown, but nothing ever works. Nothing seems to stick."
Those on the other side - calling themselves Citizens for Sensible Growth - worry about the changes the development will bring: crowded schools, more traffic, city-like problems. Many said they weren't against growth, but against so much growth so quickly.
They wonder about who will move into the Brunswick Crossing homes, which are expected to sell for $225,000 to more than $400,000 each. There could be a Brunswick of haves and one of have-nots. The median household income, according to the 2000 Census, was $46,513, and Brunswick's houses have a median value of just over $100,000.
"There are very few people in Brunswick who could afford to move out there," said Lee Zumbach, a business and computer teacher at Brunswick High School for 33 years. "It seemed like [the developer] was building a closed community without a gate."
"A 1,500-home development didn't kind of fit in here," said Kent Axline, a roof mechanic for Montgomery County schools.
The MARC train is one of the things that makes Brunswick ideal for growth, observers say. Just look at the commuter lot - it has 650 spaces and, on a weekday, there are cars as far as the eye can see.
Development site
Louis J. Iaquinta, president of Olney-based IKO Development Inc., has joined with Pleasants Development in Clarksburg to work on the new development. Iaquinta said that about five years ago he was looking for land in Virginia or outside Frederick for a major development; he stumbled upon Brunswick.
The site consists of two tracts owned by families who have worked the farmland for decades.
Leon B. Enfield is 69 years old. His father bought the family's 204 acres in 1944. They used to raise dairy cows, and Enfield still grows barley, wheat, alfalfa and a little corn. He isn't certain where he and his wife, Shirley, will go in three years when the first dirt is turned. But they were ready to move on, he said.
He chose IKO Development because he trusted Iaquinta's vision for the community - one with family homes and housing for seniors, offices and shops, and a motel.
Iaquinta has promised to listen to residents as work proceeds. He is aware that 43 percent of residents voted against the development. "We want to do projects that the people in town will be happy about and proud to have as part of their town," he said. He also wants to link the new and the old, not create two Brunswicks with different sets of interests, he said.
"This is going to be new housing. They'll be coming from out of town. There will be as many of them as there are of us," Allgaier said. "The challenge for the City Council is to get these people integrated. I think it'll spark up the town."
Jones said Brunswick couldn't afford growth on a smaller scale. An annexation of 282 housing units is under way. It will use the last of the wastewater capacity the town has, Jones said. That is why they had to pursue a project of the magnitude of Brunswick Crossing. It will require $12 million to $14 million in infrastructure improvements - something the city can't afford. The only way to make it worthwhile to the developer is to build a large development.
"You can't do a small project and pay for that," Jones said. "Personally I would like to have something that was smaller, but it's either we do this or we do nothing."
Once ground is broken in two or three years, the developers can build as many as 175 houses a year. But the project won't be approved through the city's Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance unless Brunswick Middle School is expanded, the mayor said.
On main street
It's lunchtime on West Potomac Street - Brunswick's main drag - and there is barely a soul to be seen. At Mommer's Diner on the corner of Maple Avenue and Potomac, there is only one customer in the whole place, down at the end of the counter with an empty plate before him and Divorce Court on the television set. Jessica Miller, 20, works here part time. She was born and raised here, as were her parents.
She looks forward to what the new development could mean: more stores, more things to do, more people to talk to.
"There's no skating rink, no bowling alley, nothing for kids to do here," she said. Skateboarders, she said, get ticketed by police. Only the city pool, which obviously isn't open this time of year, offers any real recreation, she said.
John Hammer, who owns a 4,000-square-foot antique shop down the street, doesn't think his business will survive to see the new homes start going up. To Hammer, "it's a million years away."
Several hundred people used to frequent his shop on weekends, but that was before Sept. 11 and before the economy started to sour. Now he figures he gets five to 10 customers on a Saturday or a Sunday.
There used to be five or six places to browse for antiques - enough to make a day trip worthwhile - but only two are left. And both could be gone soon.
"It looks like a ghost town," the 54-year-old Hammer said. "If we don't get some more people out here, we might have to move closer to Frederick."
Across the street at Express Hair, the expansive salon is mostly empty. Owner April House is tending to Sharon Good's dark tresses.
"I voted against it," Good said of the annexation. She has lived in the area her entire life and raised a son here, a 23-year-old who won't be returning. The town doesn't have a lot going for it, she concedes. But she is fond of it; she likes living in a small town.
"Everyone's moving from D.C. up - they probably think it's going to be cheap," she said. "I wouldn't mind seeing a few more restaurants, of course. But that's too many houses."
It could be worth the sacrifice, Zumbach said, if Brunswick Crossing is the last development and the area's farmland remains undeveloped instead of becoming the canvas for sprawl. But he isn't sure that the town won't one day bleed into the suburbs of Frederick.
"It's just beautiful country out here," he said. "If there's no real planning, they'll just keep on growing, and in 20 years our kids will be living in some Rockville."