A developer wants to build 46 townhouses for people ages 55 and older on Montgomery Road in Elkridge, but residents from nearby communities say the development is a bad fit for their neighborhood of single-family homes.
Joseph E. Link, vice president of residential development for the Elkridge-based H & H Rock Companies, presented his conceptual plan for an age-restricted housing community on a 12-acre site off Montgomery Road at a pre-submission community meeting Wednesday, Sept. 7. His plan includes building 46 two-story townhouses, each 28 by 60 feet, with basements and two-car garages integrated into the main level.
The meeting, held at the Elkridge fire station, was attended by nine people, most of them residents of Rockburn Manor and Rockburn Run, communities that sit on either side of the proposed development.
"Townhouses do not belong between these two communities," said Robert Garner, president of the Rockburn Manor Homeowners Association. "(In) the community to the right you have $700,000 houses and (in) the community to the left, you have $500,000 to $600,000 houses."
While Link said he did not yet know the selling price for the townhouses, Garner, a Realtor, speculated they would cost in the $300,000s.
"The feeling and the look of the community is single-family (detached homes), not townhouses," Garner said.
Mike McKeon, who also lives in the 18-home Rockburn Manor community, agreed.
"We're looking for something that resembles our property, that looks nice, that helps us maintain our property values," he said.
Next to the homes in their community, McKeon said, the townhouses would look "pretty cruddy."
He added: "We know you're going to build, and we don't have a problem with that, but we just want it to be nice."
But Link cautioned that it's hard to know based on a conceptual plan what the townhomes will look like.
"At this stage, we don't have a designated or specific builder, so architecture becomes a little problematic to come up with a specific look," he said.
He conceded that he does not plan to build the single-family detached homes the neighbors would prefer.
"It really doesn't make sense from a practical standpoint," Link said. "It's a very low number relative to the costs involved."
Sang Oh, Link's attorney, said the development will not affect the property values of neighboring homes because as an age-restricted community, it's not in competition with market-rate homes. He added that it's not uncommon throughout the county for townhouses to sit next to single-family detached homes.
Link held a pre-submission community meeting to present these same plans last year. But after a year went by without a hearing before the county hearing examiner — the next step in the process — he was required to hold another.
He needs the hearing examiner to grant him a special zoning exception because townhouses are not allowed by right in R-20 (residential) zoning districts. Oh said a hearing will likely be scheduled for December.
McKeon said he and the others wasted their time attending the second meeting because the plans had not changed since they aired their complaints at the first meeting.
"We were coming here to see something solved," he said. "What we're seeing now is you haven't bothered doing anything."
Garner said he also worried about the additional traffic the new development wold bring. The Rockburn Manor homes are on Montery Road, the planned access road for the development, and Collett Court, also accessed from Montery.
Garner also contended that the age-restricted townhouses won't sell.
"I oppose the 55-and-older (project) because we don't need it," Garner said. "We have a saturation of 55-and-older (developments)."
In response, Oh said: "The reality is that if there's not a market for this, it won't get built."