Neighbors Fear Pool Plan Would Leave Them Soaked

UPDATED—On the corner of Bosley Avenue and Towsontown Boulevard is a small patch of forest, not even an acre, with a tiny stream running through it. Most drivers pass by and think little of it. But Heidi and Carroll Cook are among those fighting to hold on to the bit of nature that's right in their backyard.

Depending on who you ask, the patch is either a "green ravine" or a drainage gully. Either way, it's slated to be leveled in current plans for the Towson Swim Club. The pool, set to open next year at that corner, has not yet broken ground. The plan must first be approved by the county's design review panel, which will hold a hearing on Wednesday at 6 p.m. in the Jefferson Building at 105 W. Chesapeake Ave.

The Cooks' Old Bosley Avenue yard is right next to the swim club's lot, and they have been in discussions with club officials since learning in July that plans at the time called for the area to be filled up and a sidewalk to be installed near their fence.

"I told them they didn't know what a gut punch was," Carroll Cook, 60, said.

The Cooks, both schoolteachers, don't have a problem with the pool itself—most neighbors don't, they say—but they do take issue with the impact the swim club may have on their downtime and how they enjoy their own pool, which Carroll Cook recently decorated with a "Yellow Submarine" mural on its floor.

"It's definitely our little haven back here, which we can only enjoy during the summer, because that's when we're off as well, when they want to use their pool as well," he said.

Club officials agreed to move the sidewalk, install a privacy fence and try to keep some of the trees near the Cooks' fence, but Carroll Cook said he is a little skeptical.

"We had a landscaper look at it and say 'Good luck,' because once they start backfilling and what not, there's … no guarantee that what they say is right," he said.

Swim club board member Chris Parts, a West Towson resident and the lead architect on the project, characterized the "green ravine" as a "man-made drainage swale" and an area neglected by the county and residents. Parts added that the swim club had an ecologist verify that there were no protected species or resources there.

"Once we confirmed that it is not a regulated nature preserve, but developable land, we explored how we could best use the pool for recreation space and retain a buffer for neighbors," Parts said in an e-mail. "It is not simply a lot with trees on it that will be filled in, but it will be an area of green lawn surrounded by landscape buffers."

The design review panel, part of Baltimore County's Office of Planning, is a board of nine area architects and land planners. They last heard a plan from the swim club at their July meeting. According to minutes, the panel urged pool officials to take a look at, among other things, the location of the pool house, foot paths and the possibility of preserving some of the trees in the patch.

Southland Hills residents challenge the current plan, seen in the photos on the right, because they believe losing the trees would mean losing their buffer against noise, light and traffic from the pool, Towsontown Boulevard and Towson University.

Elizabeth McHenry, 62, lives a couple of houses down on Old Bosley Road and plans to testify at Wednesday's hearing. She supports the pool, but is unhappy about losing the ravine.

"If you spend time on the block, going up and down, eventually you'll hear ambulances, you'll hear trucks and traffic and if you stay long enough, you're going to hear the football team and the band and everything else. And it's a little bit of a buffer from all of that," she said.

Politics are adding to the drama. Outside McHenry's house, the Cooks' house and several other Southland Hills houses, one sees three competing signs. One sign each for 5th District County Council candidates Bill Paulshock and Gordon Harden, both Democrats; and David Marks, a Republican. Mike Ertel, the other 5th district candidate, is also the swim club's president, and the message they want to send to him is clear. But with the primary election on Tuesday, there's a chance that might soon become a moot point.

Parts expressed frustration with the residents' disputes, saying, "There are currently at least 76 neighbors in Southland Hills and many more in West Towson and surrounding communities who would greatly wish to have the pool and the lawn."

Heidi Cook said she hears "a lot of word on the street" against the community's outcry.

"We're being accused of standing in the way of progress, that we are blocking the swim club from getting what they want," she said. "But I don't think people fully appreciate what the destruction of this will mean to us."