Smart growth bill capitalizes on Maryland transit

The Maryland General Assembly may soon make a really smart move toward achieving really smart growth: It could adopt proposed land-use legislation enabling "State Rail Station Overlay Districts."

House Bill 948 would empower local jurisdictions and the state to plan for and permit increased density and more diverse uses within designated areas around rail stations throughout Maryland.

If enacted, the Maryland Department of Planning, in consultation with the Department of Transportation, would collaborate with counties and municipalities to delineate rail-station overlay districts and to make new master plans, design guidelines and development regulations for them. The new plans and regulations would supersede existing zoning, replacing out-of-date concepts and regulations that obstruct desirable, sustainable development.

The SRSOD bill's most basic goal is to foster vibrant, pedestrian-oriented, energy-efficient communities centered on transit. Overlay district development, at appropriately higher densities with mixed uses, would be located within reasonable walking distance of Maryland's rail stations. Of course, what constitutes reasonable walking distance will depend on the agreeability of the walk.

Another laudable goal articulated in the bill is to improve public services and the aesthetic quality of the public realm - streetscapes, open space, civic amenities, architecture - within overlay districts. The bill sets forth urban design aspirations and outlines strategies for financing them. It envisions establishment of dedicated county or municipal amenity funds with revenues derived from state and local allocation of density rights; from taxing private transfers of density rights, and from special SRSOD taxing districts and bonds that would be paid off by new sales tax revenue.

A jurisdiction's amenity fund could pay for improving storm water management infrastructure, street landscaping and lighting, underground utilities, parks, plazas and playgrounds. Funds also could be used for preserving unique structures or protecting valuable natural features.

The SRSOD bill wisely recognizes that each rail station site is unique and that a statewide "one size fits all" planning approach would not work. Sites vary in historic and cultural character, surrounding physical and demographic conditions, vehicle access, topography, climate and economic potential, so planning and regulatory flexibility is essential. The legislation contains no prescriptive standards or quantitative criteria, only the requirement that jurisdictions establish them for each designated SRSOD site.

The legislation anticipates that jurisdictions will implement an efficient design review and development entitlement process. Qualified planning officials and design professionals would evaluate the functional, technical and, equally important, aesthetic quality of proposed projects.

Rational analysis and informed value judgments about urban design, architecture and engineering would guide development - instead of conventional zoning regulations that typically are mute about aesthetics. In fact, a rigorous- but fair and expeditious - review and permitting process motivates project sponsors and architects to strive harder to achieve design excellence.

It seems fitting - and long overdue - for Maryland to enact this smart-growth legislation. After all, the term "smart growth" was first coined in Maryland. Neither a fad nor a political ideology, smart growth is simply shorthand for prudent, sustainable land use and transportation planning guided by principles that planners today universally embrace:

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'Net zero' house to be built in Maryland should produce as much energy as it uses

It sounds like an idea out of a sci-fi novel: a house that can produce as much energy each year as it uses. But most buyers aren't interested in houses from a sci-fi novel, and they aren't much interested in paying extra for them, either.

But a test house about to be built on a federal research site in Gaithersburg is designed to look like a typical home in the Washington area, and its inventors are going to great lengths to calculate how well the normal-looking sci-fi house would generate and consume energy when occupied by a family of four.

Groundbreaking is set for March 25, and construction is to begin in March or April, with completion expected in 15 months. Gaithersburg-based commercial builder Therrien Waddell Construction Group is the contractor, working with residential builder Bethesda Bungalows, which focuses on high-end "green" building.

The four-bedroom, three-bath house will be built with the latest in energy-efficient techniques and technology - plus redundant alternative-energy systems that will be tested later. It was designed by Building Science Corp. in Somerville, Mass. The two-story bungalow could be right out of Takoma Park, Hyattsville, Bethesda - or from Bethesda Bungalows' new-project files.

The 2,700-square-foot wood-framed house with detached, electric-car-ready garage will sit on a small hill on the north end of the campus of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, near Clopper and Quince Orchard roads. The location is next to the institute's engineering lab, where 50 or 60 scientists in the building environment division will monitor how the energy-saving technologies work when the home is in use. The $2.6 million research project was funded through federal stimulus money, after two years of preparation and design.

But no one will really live there. Instead, scientists will track what happens with a simulated family of four. "To simulate the family, the showers, toilets, lights and appliances will actually be turned on and off by computers . . . located in the detached garage," says A. Hunter Fanney, chief of the building environment division. "The computers will send signals to every device in the home to control its operation. In the case of water [used in the showers, faucets and toilets], the computer will actually open and close the water valves to extract the correct amount of hot and cold water."

Other automatically cycled appliances include a range with oven, a washer and dryer, microwave, dishwasher, and refrigerator with a door that opens and closes regularly.

Standing in for the parents and two kids, to generate body heat that will be factored into the energy-usage equation, "we'll have people simulators - devices that are similar in appearance to little hot-water heaters that will give off heat and moisture to simulate humans" in every room, Fanney says.

The "people" will be turned on and off on schedule, too. The two heaters in the master bedroom and one in each of the kids' rooms will go on at night when they're "sleeping" and off in the morning when they leave for work or school. Units in the bathrooms will cycle on and off, as will heaters in the family room, dining room and kitchen.

The house also will have a 1,518-square-foot basement, complete with people simulators.

If the notion of human simulators and computerized utilities sounds cutting edge, it is. But Fanney says much of the "net-zero" building approach is within many homeowners' grasp. Betsy Pettit, president of Building Science Corp., who served as the architect and building sciences consultant, agrees.

"In most buildings, you can lower energy usage by 40 to 50 percent by using existing off-the-shelf technology, if it's selected properly, installed properly and maintained properly, and attention is given to detail," Fanney says.

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