In town hall meeting fashion, residents of Calvert’s southernmost communities gathered Tuesday evening with a majority of speakers voicing opposition to a proposed residential development project that would add nearly 300 dwelling units on a 26.23-acre parcel.
Since it was revealed earlier in the decade, the project known as Lusby Villas has raised the hackles of owners whose existing homes are a short distance from the proposed development.
Tuesday’s session at the Southern Community Center in Lusby was billed an informational meeting. County government staff conducted the meeting, which was attended by two county commissioners and three members of the planning commission.
Mary Beth Cook, planning and zoning director, explained to attendees critical of all the commissioners from both panels not being present that the limits were intentional, since having one more of each present would constitute a quorum. That would technically make the meeting an unadvertised public hearing.
All five of the officials who were in attendance offered comments to the crowd of around 200.
“Your input has not been considered,” Commissioner Mike Hart (R) told the audience, adding, “Lusby can’t handle this because you don’t have the infrastructure.”
Throughout the meeting, the project, which is being developed by Quality Built Homes on land owned by John Gott Jr., was criticized for its potential adverse impact to the Lusby town center’s traffic, public schools, water and sewer, stormwater management, safety and property values.
The project’s location is in Lusby’s village residential/office district, Cook said.
The parcel is fronted by Lusby Parkway, which is linked to Rousby Hall Road (Route 760) and Village Center Drive, which is connected to H.G. Trueman Road (Route 765).
During a May 15 planning commission meeting, three planning commission members voted against approving the project’s preliminary subdivision plan until a review of its traffic impact assessment.
During the public comment segment of Tuesday’s meeting, David Bury of Chesapeake Beach stated the Lusby Villas traffic impact assessment “is too old to be acceptable under county policy and must be updated.”
Bury added the traffic assessment also fails to meet state highway guidelines and “does not project traffic volumes out to the correct design year for the design year.”
In updating the county’s adequate public facilities ordinance in 2022, the county commissioners decided that a traffic intersection’s level of service grade must be a grade C or better, even in town centers. Bury said that an updated assessment of two Lusby intersections — Route 760 and Route 765 and Route 765 and Appeal Lane/Town Center Drive — with the new policy applied, “would require developer-funded intersection remediation or a six-year delay.”
Lusby Villas would be comprised of several three-story apartment buildings, a community building, fields, sidewalks, a swimming pool and nearly 600 parking spaces.
Lusby resident Tracy Malloy labeled the proposed construction of several apartment buildings “putting lipstick on a pig. We are worried about our home values. The land isn’t big enough to build what they are building.”
“We don’t have room to build another wastewater treatment plant,” Lila West said. Noting that the tract was “environmentally sensitive,” West suggested the county government should offer to buy the land from the developer.
“We are not anti-development,” Ted Haynie of Solomons said of his organization, Friends of Mill Creek. He added that the proposed development would have adverse impacts to the watershed.
John Toohey, a Lusby resident and current chairman of the planning commission, said 20 years ago he would have opposed the Lusby Villas project. However, seeing the struggles of the county’s aging population as well as young adults finding an affordable place to live in Calvert, Toohey declared, “Some days you rent.”
Toohey said apartments might be the remedy for county residents looking to downsize or prepare for home ownership.
Another planning commission member, Christopher Gadway, stated, “There is currently affordable housing in the county already.”
Gadway said his research shows there is a percentage of Calvert’s housing available for rent with the monthly cost being less than the proposed rates for an apartment in Lusby Villas.
Chris McNeilis, a local real estate agent, opined that the questionable data of the project’s traffic study “is really what the grumbling is about. There very much is a shortage of housing for seniors.”
McNeilis admonished county and state officials for not improving the Lusby area’s infrastructure.
Planning and zoning officials said the Lusby Villas project is now at the third and final step in the approval process.
It received conceptual site plan approval in 2021 and preliminary site plan approval with conditions this past May. It will be back on the planning commission’s plate during the panel’s Aug. 21 meeting.
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