Ashton Village Center Sector Plan to Launch

Planners will discuss possibilities of new zoning to preserve village character of business districts in Ashton and Sandy Spring

Silver Spring, MD – The Montgomery County Planning Department, part of The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, will launch the Ashton Village Center Sector Plan on Thursday, May 16, 2019 at a community meeting held at the Sandy Spring Museum from 6 to 8 p.m.

Planners will provide an overview of the planning process, examine a suggested boundary for the plan and allow interested local residents to voice their concerns about community issues. The meeting’s open house format will encourage informal conversations with Montgomery Planning staff about the planning process for Ashton Village Center as well as help inform how Montgomery Planning can best maximize residents’ involvement in the plan’s development.

RSVP to the May 16 meeting.

Learn more about the Ashton Village Center Sector Plan.

About the Ashton Village Center Sector Plan

The plan will evaluate land use, zoning, transportation, environment, design and other relevant issues in Ashton, a historic crossroads community east of Olney. This sector plan closely follows the 2015 Sandy Spring Rural Village Plan, which evaluated similar issues in the village of Sandy Spring, just west of Ashton. The Ashton Village Center Sector Plan will cover approximately 125 acres around the intersection of New Hampshire Avenue and Olney-Sandy Spring Road (MD 108).

One important focus will be a review of the Sandy Spring-Ashton Rural Village Overlay Zone in light of Montgomery County’s 2014 comprehensive revision of its zoning ordinance. Zones applied through the revision have enabled finer-grained management of land uses, densities and building heights than was possible under the previous ordinance.

The existing Sandy Spring-Ashton Rural Village Overlay Zone was created to ensure a “village scale” of development in the business districts of both Sandy Spring and Ashton. It limits uses, densities and building heights. The sector plan will reevaluate the overlay zone, as well as the current underlying zones in Ashton and recommend adjustments if needed to comply with the 2014 county zoning ordinance.

For more information, contact lead planner Fred Boyd at tel. 301-495-4654 or Fred.Boyd@montgomeryplanning.org.