← All documents

comprehensive plan working edits as of 03 15 2023

Other March 15, 2023 · 10 page(s)

View original PDF ↗ Meeting

Full extracted text

The document's complete text, exactly as extracted — not a summary. Use “Summarize this document” above for the short version.

previous section--a projected rate of growth of 1.65 percent per year on average, which would result in
about 714 new households by 2040.
At this level of growth, Centreville’s population would approximate 6,670 in 2040. As noted above, this
level of growth would keep public school enrollment well within current capacities at the elementary
and middle school levels. Highschool capacity would likely be exceeded, but only modestly and the
County Board of Education has ample time to plan for and adjust it deems necessary. At this level of
growth, the Town would need to expand its wastewater treatment capacity to 1.25 million gallons per
day.
A Plan for Municipal Growth
Objectives
1. To grow both in a measured way--through deliberate and strategic planning--to maximize the
benefits that accrue to both existing and future residents.
2. To grow only in a manner that assures essential public facilities and infrastructure remain
adequately sized and equipped with capacities to deliver exceptional services without
compromise to existing residents, institutions, and businesses.
3. To prioritize the protection, conservation, and even restoration of natural resource lands, and
the natural services they provide, as the Town expands its boundaries.
4. To bring about logical extensions of the Town, its streets, infrastructure, parks, and trails, and
connect future neighborhoods with those existing to form a cohesive community.
5. To preserve the growth area in farming and other open space and natural resource uses until
such time as annexation takes place.
Growth Area: Size and Location
21

A designated growth area is a planned extension of the municipal boundaries to encompass lands that
may be annexed in the future. Under Maryland planning law, properties must be within the growth area
to be eligible for annexation. This Plan’s growth area contains about 2,250 acres and is shown on Map
1.
MAP 1
The Growth Area, as drawn in the 2009 Community Plan, encompassed about 1,720 acres, nearly 390
acres of which are environmentally sensitive and thus not available for development. The updated
Growth Area is about 310 acres larger primarily because it now includes acreage previously planned as a Formatted: Highlight
“County Businesses Park” located on the west side of U.S. Route 301.13 and land along the Growth
Area’s southern boundary between Rolling Bridge Road and Symphony Village.
This Plan includes the planned business park in the Growth Area to signal the Town’s intention that such
development occur within the municipal limits under Town development rules. The Growth Area is
enlarged along the southern side so that it now follows the stream rather than the planned Taylor Mill
Road Extended. With this change, the Town could allow development to occur on both the north and
south sides of Taylor Mill Road Extended which would facilitate the upgrade of this road by the private
sector. Further, using natural features like a stream to establish the boundary is consistent with how the
Centreville growth area is drawn elsewhere.
22

Planned Land Use
The generalized land use plan for the Growth area is shown in Map 2 and each of the recommended
land use designations are described below.
MAP 2
3/1/23 Worksession: remove purple bubble @ 213, remove southwest side “growth area” completely.
23

Resource Conservation / Open Space
The Resource Conservation designation encompasses those natural resource lands that exist today
including wetlands, streams and their buffers, steep slopes, shorelines, and forested areas (See Chapter
IV, Natural Environment). The generalized land use plan also envisions an expansion of resource lands as
development takes place, through the widening of stream buffers and planned forest regeneration, and
the designation of lands for future conservation
area especially when connections can be made
between natural areas. As future neighborhoods
are developed, land along existing streams and
forest areas would be set aside for conservation
and parks and open space amenities could be
provided such as trails to link neighborhoods
together.
Complete Neighborhoods
The yellow areas on Map 2 show the location of the Town’s future neighborhoods. These areas would
allow for a diverse set of housing types, open spaces and parks, institutional uses, and, where
applicable, a limited amount of neighborhood level retail, office, and commercial service uses. As noted
in Chapter IV, Natural Environment, this Plan recommends substantial forest regeneration, clustering
home sites to minimize the coverage of the land in impervious surfaces, connecting areas with bike and
walking trails, using the stormwater practices designed to treat stormwater associated with the most
significant rainfall events, right-sizing the design of Town streets and infrastructure, and developing
renewable energy neighborhoods—that is, the Centreville neighborhoods of the future could be
powered by renewable energy sources. These goals may require approaches that are fundamentally
different than conventional zoning and subdivision procedures provide for.
To implement complete neighborhoods for the future, the Town would apply new planned unit
development (PUD) standards as recommended in Chapter VI, Land Use. The recommended PUD
approach represents a departure from the standard zoning districting in which each zone is set aside
primarily for one main use to the exclusion of most others. This PUD approach provides site plan
flexibility, as well as special requirements, on the use and development of land.
This Plan prepares for a future when neighborhoods may look substantially different than the
conventional single-family subdivisions now in Town. In the future, homes may be clustered in higher
density arrangements and in attached buildings which will leave more open space to be preserved.
Housing types and architecture are likely to be different than they are today too, and zoning,
subdivision, and infrastructure standards may need to be modified to guide development where energy
efficiency, affordability, and very economical utility delivery will be driving forces in community design.
24

It is important to clarify that this Plan does not envision a future of residential subdivisions covering the
entire growth area. Instead, it envisions pockets of well-planned and denser development
interconnected with major preserved open spaces. This will result in substantially less road mileage and
less mileage of public water and sewer lines to be installed and maintained. In the future, clusters of
residential development may even be able to exist without a hard connection the Town’s WWTP and
open spaces may accommodate community scale wind and solar projects to supply some portion of the
demand for residential energy.
This complete neighborhoods planning approach may require that the Centreville Planning Commission
have more discretion in the development plan review and approval process, and it will require that
future developers use more creativity in neighborhood design. More specific objectives to be achieved
by PUD’s in the Growth Area are as follows:
• To encourage cohesive, functional, and aesthetic use of open spaces including the enlarging
resource areas, connecting existing and planned open spaces on adjoining tracts of land, and
preserving of broad open vistas.
• To encourage flexibility in the design of neighborhoods and construction of buildings so they are
responsive to the unique environmental, cultural, and scenic resources that characterize a
property and its surroundings.
• To encourage intergenerational neighborhoods, where housing is provided to meet the needs of
area residents through many stages of life.
• To encourage innovations in the development of land to bring about very low impact and highly
energy-efficient patterns of development, especially in or near environmentally sensitive areas.
• To tie the development of land more closely to the goals and recommendations of this
Comprehensive Plan.
Employment Areas, Economic Development
Light industrial uses are recommended near the western side of the interchange of U.S. Route 301and
MD Route 304. This has long been planned as a site for a “County Business Park” since the 1988
Centreville Community Plan. Nearly 135 acres are so designated for office and light industrial use. This
does not include vegetated buffers and open spaces that have long been envisioned along the highway
frontage.
25

This Plan recommends the creation of a
Technology Enterprise District (TED) to be
reserved for master developed and
cohesively planned projects. Corporate,
business, and professional office
complexes, along with medical or
technology campuses are some uses
envisoned, contained within a parklike
setting. This area can strongly contribute
to the economic well-being of the Town
and region. This new TED is referenced in
Map 6, Future Land Use- CH.VI. This planned employment area can readily support a business park
and/or multiple light industrial uses.
With competent business park design and infrastructure planning, this acreage could readily
accommodate up to 1.3 million square feet of floor area and about 1,460 jobs10. Greater intensity of
development and/or a mix of office uses would increase the overall potential floor area and
employment. One of the objectives of encouraging a TED light industry at this location is that it can Formatted: Not Highlight
thrive without major downtown traffic congestioncausing truck traffic or commuting in Town.. It could
also contribute significantly to the Town’s assessable tax, supply a source of employment and economic
development to the larger area., and support the local agricultural sector by being a location for value
added industrial output.
This Plan recommends that the land in this area be reserved for employment generating industrial and
corporate office uses that may not be compatible elsewhere in Centreville and which can strongly
contribute to the economic well-being of the Town and region. The Plan recommends that the Town’s
Light Industrial District be evaluated and amended as needed for this purpose or that a new zoning
district be established to ensure that only light industrial and related employment uses are permitted;
not uses such as a gasoline stations, restaurants, convenience stores, institutional uses, or other non-
industrial uses.
per 2/1/23 worksession: Apple picture should be replaced with something In keeping with a Formatted: Highlight
"TED"district Formatted: Highlight
The Growth Area Plan also designates the interchange of U.S. Route 301 and MD Route 213 as a
potential employment area. This is a more conceptual designation meant to signal the Town’s potential
10 These estimates are arrived at by assuming at least 75% of the designated 134 acres designated for Employment Use on the Growth Area
Plan Map are developed; that such land develops at a floor-to-area-ratio (FAR) of 0.3; and that the uses generate one job per 900 square feet of
industrial floor area.
26

openness to considering uses that would contribute to economic development near this interchange.
The Plan recognizes that the area is outside of the planned Municipal Growth Area, however, this Plan
holds open the possibility that annexation may be found in Centreville’s best interests and the Town
may at some point decide to amend this Plan to extend its Growth Area and its water and sewer services
along MD Route 213 south to the properties near the interchange.
Commercial Areas – MD Route 304 Corridor
Commercial uses are recommended in the MD Route 304 Corridor, on the south side of Route 304
roughly extending from Vincit Road 0.75 mile eastward. About 35 acres of land is so designated on Map
2 . This would be a central commercial corridor for the Growth Area at a highly accessible location
intersected by the planned East Side Major Collector, which is visible on Map 2 but discussed in more
detail in Chapter VII, Transportation. Both the planned East Side Collector and MD Route 304 are
envisioned as future parkways and the arrangement of the corridor’s buildings and sites should take on
the character of parkway, with coordinated landscaping, trees, screening of parking lots, and buildings
along MD Route 304, generally set within a parklike environment.
A collector road running parallel to MD Route 304 is shown on Map 2. Its purpose is to interconnect all
future commercial sites and eliminate the need for multiple driveway connections to MD Route 304.
This collector street is mapped roughly 400 feet back from MD Route 304 creating a compact linear form
along the parkway. The Town will need to prepare a small area master plan and design standards and
adopt zoning and site development requirements to guide the development of this area to avoid
uncoordinated and sprawling commercial development.
MD Rt. 213 & 301 Interchange Formatted: Font: Italic
The interchange of U.S. Route 301 and MD Route 213 Is regarded as a gateway to Centreville in spirit, if
not in body. The Plan recognizes that the area is outside of the planned Municipal Growth Area,
however, this Plan holds that it is in Centreville’s best interests the Town should be Included In decisions
made by Queen Annes County regarding development at that area. Centreville may at some point
decide to amend this Plan to extend its Growth Area and its water and sewer services along MD Route
213 south to the properties near the interchange in the event that proposed development would
provide a direct benefit that fits the values and priorities of the Town.
(**modified and to be moved to last paragraph of section, 2/15/23)
27

Greenbelt
Figure 7 shows the planned
Greenbelt, carrying forward the
concept from the 2009
Community Plan. The Greenbelt
encompasses areas beyond the
Growth Area that are intended
to be left undeveloped through
the foreseeable future in open
space, natural area, and
farming. As an intact land use
zone, the Greenbelt creates a
unified edge to development
and ensures the Town remains set within a rural preserve of natural lands and agriculture.
Preservation of the Greenbelt in naturalized and farming uses also helps ensure the Town has space
available for treated wastewater spray irrigation allowing for the necessary increases in the capacity of
the municipal sanitary sewer system. One farming tract in the Greenbelt is currently being used as a
spray irrigation field. The use of other parts of the Greenbelt for this purpose is encouraged as needs
may arise.
Chesterfield
Rd.
MD Route 305
Little Kidwell Ave.
MD
Route 18
Coursevall
Dr. MD Route 304
EXHIBIT 23
312
etuoR
DM U.S. Route 301
.dR
egdirB
gnilloR
per 3/1/23 worksession: remove south-west growth area.
28
PG la n n e d
re e n b e lt
MD
Route 213
Taylor Mill Rd.
Resource C onservation /
O pen Space
C om plete N eighborhood
C om m ercial
Em ploym ent
Tow n Lim its (2022)
M unicipal G row th
Boundary
G reenbelt
G
Greenbelt
reenbelt
Greenbelt
Railroad Ave.
G
re
e n b
e lt
Greenbelt
G re e n b e lt
FIGURE 7

2/15/23 meeting: Amend to expand growth area boundary to include Tidewater Property
29

Promote the Vitality of Downtown
Downtown Centreville, the central business district, is the institutional center for the Town and Queen
Anne’s County. It is also the community’s traditional center for government, shopping, entertainment,
restaurants, and local professional and law offices associated with the courthouses. Downtown should
remain highly walkable.
• From a land use perspective, to promote the
preservation, upkeep, and adaptive reuse of
historic buildings, the Town should consider
incentives to encourage developers to rehabilitate
buildings and to incorporate residential
apartments on the upper floors were possible. In
this regard the Town should consider historic
districting and the use of State and federal
preservation tax incentives to encourage private
sector investment in and rehabilitation of historic
buildings19.
• Where feasible, without disrupting the historic
character, this Plan encourages the development
(and re-development where relevant) that seeks to
replicate the look of the west side of Pennsylvania
Avenue. Inclusive of new mixed-use commercial
buildings at street level withfeaturing commercial at street level and residential apartments
above, with an emphasis on attached buildings where possible. as well as stand-alone
residential buildings.
• As noted on the Future Land Use Map, this Plan recommends that the CBD be extended along
Water Street to Little Hut Drive and on both the north and south sides to Pennsylvania
Avenue.the north side of Railroad Avenue to Little Hut Drive, and the full length of the east side
of Pennsylvania Avenue.
Promote the Development of Complete Neighborhoods
This recommendation applies to the large infill tracts as described in Chapter III, Municipal Growth;
generally, tracts of 10 acres or more in size, which are designated on the Future Land Use Plan, Map 6.
19 The Maryland Historic Trust administers an Historic Revitalization Tax Credit Program consisting of three separate programs for buildings and
uses that are either listed on the National Register of Historic Places, are designated as historic properties by local (town) law or are within a
qualifying local (town) historic district.
52