From Friends of Harford:
Legislation for HarfordNEXT, the latest Master Plan, has been sent to the County Council (Bill 16-016) for their review, amendments and passage or failure to pass the legislation.
Public hearing on the bill is June 7th at 6:00 pm at County Council chambers in Bel Air, 212 South Bond Street, Bel Air. There is only one hearing set for this bill.
If you want to speak about this bill, you MUST sign up in advance no later than 5:00 pm June 7th. You may email the at council@harfordcountycouncil.com or call (410) 638-3343 to inform them of your intention to speak. You can do that right now.
You may read the entire HarfordNEXT plan at: http://www.harfordcountymd.gov/1831/HarfordNEXT-Draft
If you would like a copy of your Community’s Plan, contact us and we will send you a pdf file containing only that section of the plan.
Every Community has changes. The Community Plans are for:
-Churchville/Creswell
– Edgewood
– Fallston
– Greater Bel Air/Emmorton/Forest Hill
– Aberdeen/Bush River/ Havre de Grace
– Joppa/Joppatowne
– Northern Tier
Each Community section runs between 5 to 10 pages with a lot of pictures – an easy read. Please take the time to read what the County has planned for your neighborhood.
We encourage you to read the entire plan and let the County Council know if you have concerns, think something should be changed, added or removed.
This is Ground Zero. This is where all planning for streets, parks, libraries, community amenities, public water and sewers, industries, shops and retail, new housing are envisioned for the future.
We urge you not to wait for a DAC or CIM meeting when the zoning is in place. Plan now for the future of your neighborhood.
Yes, the plan is very easy to read…theres a reason for that. There are so many generic softball statements that local Gov is used to filling trifolds with such as: potential, possible, encourage, explore. The gist of this plan is that if you live between Bel Air Business 1 and I-95 along either 924 or 24… please don’t complain because you haven’t seen nothing yet. They are going to continue to squeeze as much development, townhomes, condos, etc in there as they can.
Only when they have crammed up every square inch so homeowners who thought “nothing would be built behind me” are staring at the back of a box store or parking lot, will they fix their eyes elsewhere. They will continue to leave both Aberdeen, Edgewood, and Joppatowne in the dark for development even though any braniac would see that you have a public connection point there to DC….why not develop off of these areas with professional living and such. But what Harford has actually done is put a pushpin for the checkbox of “affordable housing” in these areas. This allows them to meet the state requirements and only when they have run out of room will they start to tackle the mess they made years ago with Move to Prosperity …. but no transportation. That was also well played because much like the light rail coming into Hunt Valley, why would Harford want to expand transportation from affordable living areas…its a natural barrier (no offense) but limiting the extent of mobility in these areas is a tactical maneuver.
Edgewood and Joppatowne are slowing gentrifying and that is a good thing, but the county still want to fill the pie crust of Abingdon and Bel Air till it overflows and has the oven on Hazard mode. This plan has a lot of copy/paste and “big wishes” with little detail. There are no committal statements and even less information about development on other parts of the “T”. This is highlighted by general statements about “state redevelopment funds for 40″…. only if the state acts will Route 40 and others even get looked at. Harford will not do this from the kindness of its heart or smart approach to developing around a transportation infrastructure.
This plan is or the same… Abingdon and Bel Air off 24… you will keep getting jam packed. For the rest of us I guess being able to get in and out without doing the traffic daily could be a consolation…if any. Oh and did I mention the outlets being built down in White Marsh for those in South Harford…. going to be real interesting to see where the local money goes for shoppers in south Harford with little development.