Residents, real estate officials say Sugarloaf plan would devalue their land | Council
Roughly two dozen people gathered Thursday evening at Lilypons Water Gardens in Adamstown to share their grievances about The Sugarloaf Treasured Landscape Management Plan — a proposal to preserve and rezone nearly 20,000 acres.
The Frederick County Division of Planning and Permitting has recommended that 163 properties be rezoned. Most of the zoning changes in the Sugarloaf plan are from agricultural use to Resource Conservation, which allows low-intensity uses and activities compatible with resource conservation.
Landowners who live in the Sugarloaf Mountain area said on Thursday that the downzone would restrict the ways in which they can use their property. Other development limitations under the Sugarloaf plan’s overlay zoning district would devalue their land, they said.
A handful of people also shared disapproval of County Councilman Kai Hagen, D, who has rebutted claims that the Sugarloaf plan would lower property values.
“He’s only got one thing on his mind, and that’s ‘preserve everything,'” Rocky Mackintosh, president of MacRo Commercial Real Estate, said of Hagen.
Mackintosh said the Sugarloaf plan would benefit homeowners in the area who live on small lots, but would hinder those who own large lots and who “actually use their land.”
Hugh Gordon, association executive for the Frederick County Association of Realtors, said that Hagen “obviously doesn’t know very much about real estate, other than what to tell other people to do with theirs.”
Mackintosh and Gordon are also part of the Livable Frederick Coalition, which formed in May to oppose the Planning Commission’s draft of the Sugarloaf plan.
Hagen said in an interview on Thursday that Mackintosh, Gordon and others in the coalition have used unproven claims that the Sugarloaf plan would lower land assessments as a “fear-mongering tactic” to dissuade community support for it.
“Over and over again, in many venues and public testimony, the folks behind the so-called Livable Frederick Coalition have asserted that the plan will decrease property values in the area,” Hagen wrote in an email to the News-Post on Thursday.
“On numerous occasions, I have asked them to provide ANY credible data or research to support that oft-repeated assertion. They have not responded even once,” he wrote.
Hagen said he believes property values in the area will increase if the Sugarloaf plan passes, rather than drop.
Margaret Koogle, who owns and operates Lilypons Water Garden, said that the Sugarloaf plan saddles property owners in the area with development restrictions that resemble those of a homeowners association.
“Their ability to farm their land is being stolen with no compensation. For most farmers their property is their home and their business,” Koogle said Thursday.
Others who spoke during the meeting shared Koogle’s concerns, and some called for the County Council to remand the plan back to the Planning Commission for further changes or to shelve it until after the November general election.
The council has met with county planners six times over the last month to learn about the plan and discuss potential amendments to it. Council members are expected to spend the next two months proposing changes to the plan and holding public hearings until they vote on the plan in October.
Councilman Steve McKay, R, has presented 14 amendments to the Sugarloaf plan, including one that he said would reverse the proposed rezoning from agricultural uses to Resource Conservation for about 100 properties.
“These rezonings offer little in added protection (vs the Sugarloaf Overlay), add complexity for both the county and the landowners, and diminish their subdivision and home building opportunities,” McKay wrote on Wednesday in a post to his official council Facebook page.
Several people who spoke at Thursday’s meeting said they supported McKay’s amendment.
Follow Jack Hogan on Twitter: @jckhogan