After careful consideration and lengthy discussion of more than a decade, a final fine tuning of the Rockville Pike Neighborhood Plan by the Mayor and Council on Monday, July 18, cleared the plan for adoption at their Aug. 1 meeting.
The final plan weighs in at more than 130 pages and is the city’s vision for turning 2 miles of “architecturally nondescript automobile-dominated strip” into an “attractive and vibrant neighborhood for shopping, living, and working,” while maintaining the city’s distinctive identity, according to the plan’s executive summary.
Regional projections indicate that the 328 acres covered by the plan will have 11,800 residents and 13,900 jobs by 2040, and will account for about 40 percent of the city’s population growth and a third of its employment growth over that time period. In 2015, the area had 3,530 residents and 9,050 jobs.
If adopted Aug. 1, the document will update a portion of the city’s 2002 Comprehensive Master Plan and replace the 1989 Rockville Pike Neighborhood Corridor Plan. The Aug. 1 meeting is the last time Rockville’s Mayor and Council will gather before their summer recess.
Input has been central to the plan’s development, as has engaging and notifying residents and others through community planning meetings, a public planning charrette, meetings with neighborhoods, businesses and other civic groups.
As well as the deliberations of the Mayor and Council and Planning Commission, “The plan is the product of an intensive community planning initiative that has incorporated input from citizens, private and public sector leaders, government agencies, consultants, City staff, and other stakeholders,” the executive summary states. “Extensive outreach and publicity efforts have been made throughout the planning process to maximize public knowledge about, and participation in, development of the plan.”