Towson Overlay Bill Won't Move Forward

Baltimore County Councilman said Tuesday he will pull controversial legislation to create two zoning overlay districts, including bordering West Towson.

Marks floated the bill, introduced at Monday's council meeting, as a compromise to satisfy the rezoning requests of property owners along the west side of Bosley Avenue.

"It won't be considered and the zoning change will be considered on its merits," Marks told Patch.

The bill would have created one overlay district bounded by Joppa Road, Bosley Avenue, West Chesapeake Avenue and Central Avenue in West Towson. The other would be near the East Towson neighborhood, bounded by Virginia Avenue, East Pennsylvania Avenue, East Towsontown Boulevard and Jefferson Avenue.

The districts would have roughly matched the locations of two blocks of properties up for the county's quadrennial rezoning process. Six of the seven upzoning requests along Bosley Avenue were made by the Charles E. Brooks Law Offices. Attorneys Brooks and Jean M. Kozlowski run a practice at 610 Bosley Avenue, one of the properties in the requests.

The requests seek a change from residential office to office residential zoning, which would allow more development, including, for the sub-category OR-2, "accessory commercial uses."

Marks' overlay district would have allowed all the uses under the OR-2 zoning except banks, drugstores, restaurants, taverns, car rental businesses and wireless infrastructure.

"What I was trying to do was to try to find a compromise that would allow some of the zoning changes on Bosley to proceed in a manner that would satisfy the community," Marks said.

But in meetings with community leaders in Southland Hills and West Towson, Marks found that was a non-starter.

"The reaction I got from the neighborhood is that they would prefer a planned unit development," Marks said, referring to the county zoning procedure that can be done outside of quadrennial rezoning, and requires more community input.

Community leaders told him, he said, that he's the fifth councilman who had been presented with zoning requests on the Bosley Avenue properties over the years. It's currently unknown what Brooks and Kozlowski would have planned.

, a West Towson resident and vice president of the Greater Towson Council of Community Associations, said residents worry about commercial creep changing the character of the community. And since many community associations don't hold meetings over the summer, Glikin pointed out, a single zoning bill quietly passed during the summer doldrums to help a single group of property owners is not the way to do things.

"We also believe that the PUD process is the way to go with this, not a special zoning bill to accommodate one person's needs," Glikin said, adding that if the owners wish to make needed improvements to the property, "That goal certainly could be accomplished through a PUD and we would be more than willing to consider that process."

The residential office zoning was established, Glikin said, for neighborhoods like West Towson and the wrong sorts of changes risk stripping away "that community look and feel that the residential office zone was designed to provide."

Glikin also complimented Marks for "giving the communities a voice and making the decision he did" in pulling the bill.

The Baltimore County Planning Board recommended keeping the current zoning on the properties. The county council will review zoning plans this summer and vote on final zoning decisions by September. Marks said he's "still debating" what zoning to ultimately recommend on that property and other pending zoning requests in Towson.