A local development group that stirred up a hornet’s nest with a mass mail-out this week in an attempt to garner support for their project has withdrawn its request for text amendment changes to the Prince Frederick Town Center Zoning Ordinance.
A copy of Bargo LLC’s letter addressed to the Calvert County Planning Commission and Calvert County Commissioners was sent to The Bay Net by Mark Davis, the developer’s attorney.
In the missive, the developers expressed disappointment that the mail-out was deemed “misleading” and opined that their application for text amendment changes would likely be denied.
A joint public hearing on the request was scheduled for Tuesday, May 1 at Calvert High School Auditorium. According to a Calvert County Government press release, the hearing, which was to have been conducted by the county commissioners and planning commission, has been cancelled
Bargo submitted their request for changes in the zoning ordinance late last year, stating they had an opportunity to bring a home improvement retailer to Prince Frederick if tweaks to the zoning measure were approved.
“We have reached this difficult decision for several reasons,” Bargo LLC members Randy Barrett and John M. Gott Jr. stated in the letter to county officials. “First, we understand that the recent survey which was sent to Calvert County households from St. Leonard to Huntingtown has been construed to be ‘misleading’ by a small number of county residents. Although it was certainly not our intention to be misleading or unclear in this survey, this perception and overheated rhetoric by some in the county has clouded the real issue of this application. Unfortunately, the conversation regarding the text amendment has shifted from one discussing the merits of the amendment and the benefits which could be realized by the county through its adoption to one decrying what some perceive, improperly in our opinion, as a defective survey. As a consequence, we do not believe that a rational, reasoned conversation and discussion regarding the merits of our proposed text amendment can occur in the present environment.”
Barrett and Gott also cited the recommendation the Department of Planning and Zoning submitted in its staff report, which they felt would have led to the application’s denial and referred the issue back to the department for “further study.”
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