Regency Centers Westbard hearing moved to December 13, 2018

The Montgomery County Planning Board public hearing on Regency Centers' redevelopment plans for about 20 acres along Ridgefield Road and Westbard Avenue is expected to be postponed until December 13, 2018. That is often a strategy by the board and developers to depress turnout, as peak holiday shopping, travel and parties will be fully underway that week. The same approach was used to ram through part of the Little Falls Place plan in December 2010.

Residents who took time to attend a Development Review Committee meeting on the plans in July found they had been played by Regency and the Planning Department, who had worked out a private agreement in advance to not air any dirty laundry in public. Problems identified by the DRC were instead addressed offline in private meetings.

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Problems continue to surface despite the veil of secrecy, however. The newest is that one of the two postage stamp-sized green spaces planned for the Westwood Shopping Center site - "Springfield Neighborhood Park" - would be located on an easement belonging to the neighboring Kenwood Place condominiums. Kenwood Place also has perpetual rights to another easement containing 45 parking spaces in the current lot of the shopping center.

Parking capacity is in question. And the Little Falls Watershed Alliance has noted that Regency is not currently planning to deliver the level of on-site stormwater treatment that the developer and planners had promised during the Westbard sector plan process, and during earlier phases of the development process. Instead, Regency is seeking a waiver from part of those provisions.