On Thursday night, about 20 people gathered at Adamstown’s Lilypons Water Gardens to share their frustrations about Sugarloaf’s priceless landscape management plan, a proposal to preserve and rezoning about 20,000 acres.
Frederick County’s Department of Planning and Permits recommends rezoning 163 properties. Most of the zoning changes in the Sugarloaf Plan are directed from agricultural use to resource conservation, allowing activities that are compatible with low-intensity uses and resource conservation.
Landowners who live in the Sugarloaf Mountain area said Thursday that the Down Zone will limit how the land can be used. Other development restrictions under the Sugarloaf Plan’s overlay zoning district would devalue their land, they said.
A few also shared the disapproval of county assemblyman Kai Hagen, D, who refuted claims that the Sugar Loaf plan would reduce property values.
“He has only one thing on his mind and that is to ‘preserve everything,’” said Rocky McIntosh, president of Macro Commercial Real Estate, of Hagen.
McIntosh said the Sugar Loaf plan would benefit homeowners living on smaller plots of land in the area, but would discourage those who own larger plots and “actually use their land.”
Hugh Gordon, an association executive at the Frederick County Association of Realtors, said Hagen “obviously doesn’t know much about real estate, except for telling other people what to do with their properties.” .
McIntosh and Gordon are also part of the Livable Frederick Coalition, which was formed in May to oppose the Planning Commission’s draft of the Sugar Loaf Plan.
In an interview on Thursday, Hagen said McIntosh, Gordon and the rest of the coalition used unproven claims that the Sugar Loaf plan would lower land valuations as a “fear-mongering tactic” to discourage community support. said to have been used as
“At many venues and in public testimony, the people behind the so-called Livable Frederick Coalition have repeatedly claimed that the plan will reduce real estate values in the area,” Hagen said in an email to the Newspost on Thursday. is doing.
“I have repeatedly asked them to provide reliable data and studies to support their oft-repeated claims. They have never responded,” he wrote.
Hagen said he believes property values in the area will rise rather than fall if the Sugar Loaf plan is passed.
Margaret Koogle, who owns and operates Lilypons Water Garden, said the Sugarloaf plan imposes homeowners association-like development restrictions on property owners in the area.
“Their ability to farm their land has been stolen with no compensation. For most farmers, their property is a home and a job,” Coogle said Thursday.
Others who spoke out during the meeting shared Coogle’s concerns, urging the county council to withdraw the plan to the planning commission for further changes or shelve it until after the November general election.
The council met six times with county planners last month to learn about the plan and discuss possible amendments. Council members will spend the next two months proposing changes to the plan and holding public hearings before voting on the plan in October.
Alderman Steve McKay, Republican, introduced 14 amendments to the Sugarloaf Plan. These include overturning proposed rezoning of about 100 assets from agricultural use to resource conservation.
“These rezoning offer little additional protection[compared to sugarloaf overlays]add complexity for both the county and landowners, and reduce subdivision and homebuilding opportunities,” he said. McKay wrote Wednesday in a post on his official Congress Facebook page.
Several people speaking at Thursday’s meeting said they supported McKay’s amendment.