“I’m an environmentalist,” said Kabat, one of the owners of Shady Mile. “I’m not for paving paradise. But this isn’t paradise, it’s an epicentre of commerce,” he told The Bay Net.
Plans to develop the Shady Mile Drive area of Rt. 235, opposite the Best Buy shopping center, have been in the works for some 18 months now.
In November 2005 the St. Mary’s Board of County Commissioners voted 4:1 to recommend the area be rezoned commercially as part of the new Lexington Park Master Plan. Richard Kabat of Next Summers LLC, the owners of the Shady Mile property, says the decision last November was the culmination of a series of public hearings, which involved hundreds of residents, as well as staff reports.
“Once the Master Plan has changed zoning maps have to change to match it,” Kabat told The Bay Net. Kabat, like other owners of property affected by changes to the master plan, has now asked to rezone the property as CMX (commercial).
On August 8, Kabat told The Bay Net, the planning commission met jointly with the county commissioners and there was “virtually no opposition.” However, according to Kabat, in the few days before the planning commission voted on the matter a group of concerned citizens began to protest the changes. The planning commission met on August 28, and, in light of new objections, voted against rezoning Shady Mile. The opposition, says Kabat, arrived just before the vote – removing the possibility of debate and conversation – and they are “only a small group from a limited geographical area [behind the proposed commercial land].”
The Board of County Commissioners uses the decision from the planning commission as a recommendation when they vote on the issue. That vote, says Kabat, was scheduled for November, after the general elections. That was until the board voted (3-2) to move the decision to tomorrow morning. “On Thursday I got a phone call saying the decision would be made on Tuesday at 9:30 am,” Kabat told The Bay Net.
Kabat is disappointed because he would like the chance to discuss and work with those objecting, and also to let the community at large know more about the project. “The vocal 100 that appeared at the planning commission meeting do not represent the majority of county residents,” says Kabat. “In only two days [since learning of the rescheduled vote] over 500 county residents signed a petition in favor of the proposed rezoning and retail development.” The petition was one initiated and circulated by a group of supportive citizens calling themselves “Shop St. Mary’s” and using the slogan “We Deserve Better.”
The Shady Mile property is currently zoned RMX. Development under the current zoning would be more intense than what Kabat and Next Summers, LLC are proposing under the CMX zoning. Either way, says Kabat, the property will be developed. “It won’t stay a vacant field,” he told The Bay Net. “It’s too valuable and too strategically circulated not to be developed.” Kabat says the alternative plan for development involves 10 stories of condos and office space, up to 100 feet. That office space and residential development, argues Kabat, would bring more traffic and more people to the area, than the commercial plan which would serve people already using the roads. In addition the buffer zone between future residential buildings and the ex