The latest battle in a decades-long building saga at the Cedarday development is being waged over Harford County's plans to finally move forward with extending Cedarday Drive toward Route 136.
The county hopes to award a contract for the $2.3 million Cedarday extension project in July, chief highways engineer Jeff Stratmeyer explained in a lengthy letter dated Friday that was addressed to residents.
Cedar Lane begins as a fairly wide road off Wheel Road, between the Abingdon and Creswell areas, and turns into the equally wide Cedarday Drive, where a Baltimore developer who owns Caddie Homes originally got approval in the late 1980s to build more than 300 homes.
While Cedarday Drive is 36 feet wide and well-paved — "our standard for a collector road in an urban area," Stratmeyer wrote — the stretch of Cedar Lane that continues east to connect with Route 136 is a narrow, winding and largely unpaved road that is only 15 to 16 feet wide on average.
"The developer had no rights-of-way along Cedar Lane and this goes for the county as well," Stratmeyer wrote. "The county maintains a 'prescriptive easement' which allows us to maintain the existing roadbed from ditchline to ditchline. Any work beyond these limits requires us to obtain right-of-way from the property owner."
Homeowners in the upscale development, where a number of homes are valued at upward of $900,000, are not taking the proposal to extend their road lying down.
Dozens of residents came out in force during last week's county council meeting to oppose the plan to make Cedarday Drive a through street.
Although Councilman Jim McMahan noted at last week's council meeting that he has heard from a number of anonymous residents who support the extension, the majority of homes lining Cedarday Drive feature signs proclaiming, "Support Access, Fight the Bypass."
A petition circulated online at http://www.petitiononline.com/CEDARDAY had 156 signatures as of Tuesday.
"We believe that instead of using the residential Cedarday Drive as a bypass to Cedar Lane, the safety, property values and security of our community will be better protected by the county improving the much less populated and already existing Cedar Lane," that petition reads.
Although the Cedarday extension would provide better access between Wheel Road and Route 136, as well as to the county's Cedar Lane Park, no other developments seem to be in the works directly adjacent to the area.
According to county records, only the 92-acre property of Joseph W. Ayres, at the corner of Route 136 and Bynum Hill Road, is slated for any kind of development.
That property was approved in 2009 for seven lots, including one for a church that has been platted. The other lots have not been platted.
No other properties that are directly south of the Cedarday development, which include the 88-acre site owned by Morris Wolf and a 92-acre property owned by John and Leonard Schenning, seem to have anything planned.
The county council originally downzoned 132 acres of developer Haron "Hal" Dahan's 443-acre property in the late 1990s, which reduced the number of homes he could build, and amended the master water and sewer plan in 1999 to reflect no service to be planned for the 132-acre tract.
The council at the time was concerned about potentially breaching the development envelope, whose line was straddled by the Cedarday development.
Now, the county's highways department is planning to jump-start the road extension as part of a bigger project to improve Wheel Road and the surrounding area.
A community meeting is set to be held at 6 p.m. on June 21 at Patterson Mill High School to discuss the entire Wheel Road project.
Stratmeyer, in anticipation of another possible uproar at the meeting, tried to use his letter to assure residents that extending Cedarday would not create significant traffic or safety problems.
He said the speed limit will remain posted at 25 mph, residents will still be able to park along Cedarday and an 8-foot-wide hiking and biking trail has been incorporated into the design for the road extension to provide pedestrian and bicycle access to Cedar Lane Park.
He explained that the project is necessary because Wheel Road was laid out a long time ago, probably before the existence of cars, and is not suitable for current traffic volumes.
Also, upgrading Cedar Lane is not realistic because it would take years to obtain the rights-of-way and environmental permits, and a bridge over Broad Run is "nothing more than three old railroad tank cars with their ends cut off," Stratmeyer wrote, which would be unacceptable by current state standards.
"We determined that moving forward with the extension of Cedarday Drive would address the community's concerns for another ingress/egress from Cedarday," he wrote. "Delaying this project will push the Cedarday Drive extension into the next construction season, which would then push the Wheel Road project into the following construction season (summer of 2013). We believe Wheel Road simply can not wait that long and we need to move forward with its construction as soon as possible."
Stratmeyer also reassured that Cedarday will not be used as a detour route for Wheel Road, as the posted detour route for both phases of the Wheel Road closure will be MacPhail Road.
Ultimately, "Cedarday Drive simply is not conducive to high volumes of cut-through traffic once all of the Wheel Road improvements are complete," he said. Most major developments "heading toward APG would use other state or county roads. For those heading to the Festival to go shopping, I don't see any of the large developments having a desire to use Cedarday Drive. The Cedar Lane Park, however, will generate some additional traffic through your community. But again, I do not foresee this as being thousands of cars …"