Germantown Plan Goes to the Planning Board Thursday: Room for 5,300 More Homes, Taller Buildings, Fewer Road Lanes

Montgomery Planning’s first full draft of a new plan for Germantown would make room for nearly 5,300 more homes, allow buildings as tall as 145 feet near the MARC station and along MD 355, and take lanes off six streets, according to the working draft the Planning Board takes up Thursday, Nov. 12.

What’s in it

• Room for about 5,300 more homes
• 15% affordable in most new projects
• Bigger buildings, up to 145 feet
• Office parks opened to mixed use
• Fewer road lanes, 4 interchanges dropped
• 3 more I-270 crossings
• BRT on MD 355 replaces the CCT
• A new park and an Upcounty shelter idea

The details

• Housing: The recommended zoning is “expected to accommodate nearly 5,300 additional residential units,” on top of about 8,200 homes in the plan area now (page 58). That is a measure of what the zoning would allow, not a forecast of what will be built.
• Affordable homes: At least 15% of homes in new projects of 20 or more units would have to be moderately priced dwelling units across most of the plan area, above the county’s usual 12.5%. Inside a new transit-oriented overlay near the MARC station, the Transit Center and the Milestone park-and-ride, the requirement would be 12.5% (pages 59, 61, 156).
• Taller buildings: The Milestone and Neelsville Village shopping centers would be rezoned to allow up to 145 feet, and heights near the MARC station would range from 90 to 145 feet, with a required half-acre “Station Square” (pages 130-131, 142).
• Office parks to mixed use: Office-zoned properties other than Montgomery College would be rezoned to allow a mix of uses, and the 2009 plan’s development caps would be removed (pages 42-43).
• Roads: The draft drops four planned interchanges (Observation Drive at Ridge Road, and Frederick Road at Ridge Road, Germantown Road and Middlebrook Road), recommends rebuilding I-270 cloverleafs as tighter diamond interchanges, and reduces lanes on Century Boulevard, Crystal Rock Drive south of Aircraft Drive, Locbury Drive, Scenery Drive, Waterford Hills Boulevard and Wisteria Drive (pages 71, 75).
• New crossings: It calls for three new crossings of I-270: the Dorsey Mill Road bridge, a Waring Station Road connection to MD 355, and a Century Boulevard link to Seneca Meadows Parkway (page 70).
• Transit: Bus rapid transit on MD 355 becomes “the transit spine to replace the CCT,” with dedicated transit lanes proposed on six roads. The draft also calls for studying a Red Line extension to the Town Center, a third MARC track and relocating the Germantown Transit Center (pages 85-86).
• Parks and services: It proposes a new active park at the former Walter Johnson Farm site or near the Upcounty Regional Services Center, and asks the county Department of Health and Human Services to explore an Upcounty emergency shelter (pages 93-95, 119).

Thursday’s vote and the hearings

Planning staff are asking the board to accept the working draft as the public hearing draft without changes and to set public hearings for Dec. 16 in Germantown and Dec. 17 in Wheaton, according to the staff report. If the board agrees, residents can sign up to testify starting Nov. 16, according to the plan website.

What the plan is

The Germantown Sector Plan Amendment covers about 2,650 acres and would replace the 2009 Germantown Employment Area Sector Plan (working draft, pages 1 and 3). That plan projected employment growing from about 15,000 jobs to more than 68,000 and relied on the Corridor Cities Transitway, which the state dropped in 2019; the draft says those assumptions “did not materialize” (pages 13-14).

Schools

Montgomery County Public Schools projects surplus seats in 2031 of about 450 at the high school level, 420 at middle school and 900 at elementary school in the area’s schools, according to the draft. Planners estimate that at 80% build-out the plan could add 370 to 470 high school, 260 to 330 middle school and 550 to 680 elementary students, and wrote that the surplus “will be able to accommodate” them. Both sets of figures are estimates (pages 121-122).

What changed, and what isn’t done yet

Planners dropped a proposed rezoning of single-family homes on Boland Farm Road after “concerns raised by neighborhood residents,” according to the staff report (page 5). The staff report also says the travel-model analyses of intersections and road segments are not finished and will be added before the public hearing (page 8).

What happens next

If the board accepts the draft Thursday, the hearing record would close Dec. 30, the board would hold work sessions from January to March 2027, and the plan would go to the County Executive and County Council in April 2027, according to the staff report (pages 7-8). The item is on the board’s Nov. 12 agenda, and the meeting streams live on YouTube.

Still unanswered

• What will the unfinished traffic analyses show for the streets that would lose lanes?
• Where would the roughly 5,300 homes go, district by district?
• What would the new I-270 crossings and a Transit Center relocation cost, and who would pay?

We have not yet put these questions to Montgomery Planning; this story will be updated with any response.

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