Pulte Homes ‘Disappointed’ With Ten Mile Creek Recommendations

Pulte Home’s plans to build 1,000 homes near Clarksburg Town Center would be reduced to a little more than 200 homes under Montgomery County planning staff’s latest recommendations, The Washington Post reports. 

Planners cited the need to protect the Ten Mile Creek watershed and to fulfill the original vision of making Clarksburg a walkable urban village, The Post reports.

Lewis Birnbaum, president of Pulte’s Mid-Atlantic division, told The Washington Business Journal that the company was “highly disappointed.”

Planners recommended fewer changes to the Peterson Cos. plans to build 450,000 square feet of retail, dining and housing on 100 acres of land west of Town Center, The Post reports. Mary Dolan, chief of functional planning and policy for the county, told The Post that the Peterson development wouldn’t have a “depleting effect” on Town Center.

The Washington Post and Washington Business Journal stories are available online.

Environmentalists say the recommendations don’t go far enough to protect the environment. The Save Ten Mile Creek Coalition plans to rally in front of the planning board headquarters in Silver Spring on Thursday—the day planning staff is expected to present its recommendations for the watershed to the planning board, the group has said in emails to Patch.

The planning board and the Montgomery County Council has yet to vote on whether to approve the recommendations.

A draft of county planners' recommendations is posted at the Planning Board’s website, MontgomeryPlanningBoard.org.