IMPACT ON TYPES OF HOMES IN PARKWOOD

This article, prepared by the PRA AHS Committee, discusses the types of housing proposed in the Planning Board’s Attainable Housing Strategies Final Report for neighborhoods such as Parkwood that have a zoning designation of R-60.  

If the regulations proposed in that report are approved by the County Council without amendment, then duplexes, triplexes, and possibly quadplexes would be permitted in Parkwood, in addition to single family homes.  Quadplexes would be permitted if Parkwood is determined to lie within a Priority Housing District (PHD) as currently defined, i.e., within a straight-line mile of a Metro or MARC station.  [More about PHDs in a forthcoming article.] 

The Planning Board also recommends creating a new optional method of development called the Attainable Housing Optional Method (AHOM) to provide opportunities for medium scale attainable housing such as stacked flats, small townhouses, and small apartment buildings on certain properties in R-60 zones that are within 500 feet of Thrive Montgomery 2050 -designated Growth Corridors . However, it seems unlikely that these additional  types of dwellings, i.e., stacked flats, etc. would  be permitted in Parkwood because it is not within the Growth Corridor boundaries. [pp31-32; dp32-33 **].   See this map of Growth Corridors.

Also of note is that the Planning Board is not recommending allowing the AHOM in R-200 zones, many of which are in wealthier communities, because the R-200 zones are generally  located outside of the corridor-focused growth areas identified in the Thrive report .  They are instead located in limited growth areas. [pp32;dp33**].  In addition, triplexes and quadplexes would be allowed only in R-200 zoned areas that were in Priority Housing Districts.  These limitations on what can be built in many R-200 zones have caused some residents to consider these constraints unfair in comparison to what can be built in R-60 zones such as Parkwood.

Finally, Parkwood would not be considered for “large scale” attainable housing developments, which include four- or more story, mixed-use live/work buildings, stacked flats, and small apartment buildings, again because it is not within one of the Thrive designated Growth Corridors. Given the larger impact and scale of these attainable housing types, the report states that this type of housing is most appropriate to be implemented after the full analysis and public engagement of either a local master plan process or a Local Map Amendment (LMA) process.[pp36;dp37**]  

In summary, if the Council adopts the currently proposed zoning changes, then duplexes and triplexes would be permitted in Parkwood, along with single family homes.  Quadplexes would be permitted if the Council agrees to the boundaries as proposed for Priority Housing Districts. However, stacked flats, small townhouses, small apartment buildings, and other large scale attainable housing developments would not be permitted.

The next article in this series will describe Priority Housing Districts.

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** Throughout this and subsequent articles, two page numbers will be used as references to the text of the Planning Board’s Final Report to the Council.  The letters “pp” will refer to the printed page number of the report.  The letters “dp” will refer to the digital page number of the report in PDF format.