Montgomery County Council Discusses Wheaton Sector Plan

The Montgomery County Council is waiting on details of a forest conservation plan for the Wheaton Westfield area before voting on the Wheaton Central Business District and Vicinity Sector Plan on Nov. 29.

The Sector Plan came before the full council this morning in a worksession that reviewed the recommendations of the Planning, Housing and Economic Development Committee.

The Sector Plan analyzes zoning, land use, environmental impact and transportation, among other things, in Wheaton’s Central Business District. It is part of a larger master plan and would shape redevelopment in Wheaton for the next 15 to 20 years. The last Sector Plan for Wheaton was approved in 1990.

Diane Cameron, the conservation program director for the Audubon Naturalist Society, praised the PHED Committee’s decision to include an amended version of the fourth overarching principle of the sector plan, one that now addresses the Sligo Creek and Rock Creek watersheds.

Cameron asked the council for a 20-foot increase in the width of the forest buffer area between the Kensington Heights neighborhood and the Westfield Wheaton mall. Cameron argued that because the area is not subject to the Forest Conservation Act, the only way to widen the forest buffer would be through the sector plan.

Françoise Carrier, the planning board chair, questioned the council’s authority to require the Westfield property to take these conservation actions if it is indeed exempt from the law. “I’m not sure if the sector plan is the right vehicle for this action,” she said.

The council asked for more information about the forest conversation plan from planning staff before it met again to discuss the sector plan.

Westfield and Wheaton
When Khalid Afzal, a community planner for the county, presented a brief overview of the sector plan, he emphasized that the Wheaton downtown area and the Westfield mall “are not well integrated.”

Montgomery County Executive Isaiah Leggett, in a letter to Council President Valerie Ervin in June, wrote, “As contemporary planning moves away from auto-oriented suburban shopping malls, the county is faced with the challenge of integrating Wheaton Mall, the longstanding icon and hub of Wheaton economic activity, into a town center that is knit into the surrounding communities.”

Leggett’s Fiscal Impact Statement for the sector plan shows that the county would gain $70 million if the Wheaton mall “develops more intensively.”

But Westfield is not keen on this degree of integration into the downtown area, said Carrier. Azfal added that Westfield’s current C2 zoning designation allows for only very limited residential use under certain circumstances.

Jim Agliata of Westfield said that the long-term plan for the mall is not to convert it into a city center as Wheaton becomes more developed. “It will always be a mall in our eyes,” he said.

The sector plan opens the possibility of future mixed-use zoning at Westfield Wheaton, but nothing more.

“This was sort of a compromise for the time being,” said Carrier, adding that the planning board has not quite figured out the best zoning approach to regional malls.