Planners share recommendations for land use, zoning, design, environment and open spaces, and transportation
Silver Spring, MD –Staff from Montgomery County Planning Department part of The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, presented preliminary recommendations for the Ashton Village Center Sector Plan to the Montgomery County Planning Board during their public meeting on April 16, 2020. The recommendations address multiple ways for properties to retain the community’s rural village character, better connectivity for pedestrians and cyclists, creation of public gathering spaces and the addition of attainable housing.
Review the Planning Staff report and watch the recorded presentation from the meeting.
Planners will now take the comments from the Planning Board and create the first draft of the plan. Staff will then bring that draft back to the Planning Board for additional comments. Residents can still weigh in on the recommendations by contacting lead planner Jamey Pratt by email or by phone at 301-495-4588 or by submitting public testimony at the Planning Board’s public hearing and work sessions in the fall.
- Working Draft preparations and presentation to the Planning Board – Late Spring/Summer 2020
- Planning Board public hearing and work sessions – Fall 2020
Learn more at www.montgomeryplanning.org/avc.
About the Ashton Village Center Sector Plan
The Planning Department initiated the Ashton Village Center Sector Plan in April 2019 to focus on the properties on the four corners of the intersection of MD 650 (New Hampshire Ave) and MD 108 (Ashton Road / Olney Sandy Spring Road), as well as the properties just west of the intersection around Sherwood High School. Since then, Planning Staff organized a kickoff meeting, got approval from the Planning Board on the scope of work, hosted a design workshop with stakeholders from the community, and held several other community meetings.
The Sector Plan reflects many of the community’s requests and uses a guiding framework based on three plan neighborhoods: the village core, the residential edge and the rural buffer. This Sector Plan follows the 2015 Sandy Spring Rural Village Plan, which evaluated similar issues in the nearby village of Sandy Spring.
The village core neighborhood is the heart of the village and is slated for improvements to streetscapes, open spaces, connections, traffic operation and development. Planners envision the village core as the vibrant, walkable center for community life in Ashton.
The residential edge neighborhood contains a mix of single-family detached houses and townhouses to provide a transition between the village core and the more rural areas surrounding the village core. The rural buffer neighborhood continues the recommendations of previous master plans to preserve the rural entries to Ashton and Sandy Spring and to provide a separation to keep the two centers distinct.
Planning Staff recommends establishing consistent mixed-use zoning within the village core and including design tools that allow for the removal of the Sandy Spring-Ashton Rural Village Overlay Zone. According to planners, these changes would lead to a modest increase in allowable residential development to accommodate more housing options, such as townhouses, duplexes and residential over retail, and additional retail opportunities at the MD 650 and MD 108 intersection.
These suggested additions along with keeping New Hampshire Avenue at 108 at two lanes, limiting commercial building heights and recommendations to add porches, stoops, dormers, front gables and other traditional residential elements to commercial buildings would be consistent with Ashton’s historic village aesthetic.
Since there are limited public gathering spaces in Ashton and a small number of green spaces within the existing residential developments, staff recommends transforming some of those private places into public spaces ranging in size from ¼ to 2 acres. Staff also identified opportunities for future trail connections that would provide better access to the Underground Railroad Experience Trail and the larger Northwest Branch Park system.
Other recommendations include efforts to increase equity. In addition to recommending more attainable housing for the area, planners are pushing to complete a transportation infrastructure of better signage, crosswalks, sidewalks and bike lanes along MD 650 and MD 108 for those not using automobiles.