City planners will review townhouse plan

September 11, 2000

City planners will review townhouse plan

By DAN KULIN / Staff Writer

A proposed 72-unit expansion of the Eastridge Townhomes off Eastern Boulevard is expected to be discussed during a Wednesday meeting of the Hagerstown Planning Commission.

The proposed development would include 38 two-story townhouses and 34 one-story townhouses, according to plans submitted to the city Planning Department. Each single-story townhouse would have a garage, according to the plans.

The development would go on a roughly 13.5-acre wooded lot along East Ridge Drive and between Eastern Boulevard and Tracy's Lane. About 2.6 acres of the property would remain wooded under the proposal.

The proposal will be reviewed by the Planning Commission and ultimately will go before the City Council for approval.

Council's approval is needed is because the property is zoned C-2 commercial, and the developer is seeking approval of the Planned Unit Development, or P.U.D., overlay, for the development plan.

The plan was submitted by Masser Properties Inc. in Hagerstown. Masser President Stephen H. Pearl did not return telephone messages left at his business Thursday, Friday and Monday.

The meeting with the Planning Commission scheduled for 4 p.m. Wednesday at City Hall is a preliminary consultation. No votes on the proposal are expected at that meeting.

Bill Weikert, executive vice president of Fox & Associates, the Hagerstown engineering firm that did the site design for the project, said the development would be an extension of the existing Eastridge Townhomes development. There are 24 two-story townhouses in that development, which is across Eastridge Drive from the site of the proposed development.

Weikert said the Wednesday meeting will be the first step in what is likely to be a long approval process. Weikert said the earliest that construction of the new townhomes could begin would be next summer.

A Planned Unit Development overlay would mean that if the development plan were approved but the development not built, the property would revert back to the C-2 commercial zoning, Weikert said.

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