La Plata, MD – The desire by Charles County Commissioner President Peter Murphy [D] Tuesday, July 18 to open a dialogue on placing the county-owned portion of the now-defunct Indian Head Technology Park in environmental easement opened up discussion, and it was lively.
There was a determination made in 2005 that the preservation of 2,250 acres of land immediately outside of the Town of Indian Head would have a negative economic development impact on the community. As a concession, the state agreed to give the 50 acres for joint state-county industrial development.
“It has come to my attention that there is some property the county owns in the Indian Head Technical Park area that may be of some concern to the Charles County Conservancy or the Maryland Department of Environmental Trust,” Murphy said. “I wanted to have a discussion to direct staff to move forward, to have a discussion to see if there is any value into putting that land into a conservation easement.
“Today is not about making any decisions,” Murphy stressed. “This is just about an opportunity to have a discussion.”
“I have no desire,” said Charles County Commissioner Bobby Rucci [D-District 4]. “I think we’ve preserved enough land already.”
“As a commissioner from District 2, I am vehemently opposed against it,” Commissioner Debra Davis [D-District 2] (pictured above) noted. “We are all well aware of what happened with the Chapman Landing site. We designated that and zoned it for economic development. That is a commitment we made to our citizens and the state and to go back on that is disgraceful, that we would make that deal and go against it.
“It could adversely affect Indian Head,” she suggested. “It could adversely affect any development at the airport. We need economic development on that side of the county and we needed it yesterday.
“I can’t even believe we’re even having this conversation,” Davis said.
“The land in question was owned by an entity, Facchina, to market,” County Commissioner Ken Robinson [D – District 1] interjected. “They were the experts. The county had a study and the results came back, wrong place and wrong type of development. I think we’ve been down the road of trying to market it that way and the town is several miles away.”
“The purpose to today’s discussion is to address something we’ve always been accused of, of not being transparent,” Murphy said. “Today, we’re doing the opposite. We’ve been approached about this. It is simply the opportunity to have a conversation. The concerns that are raised today we can discuss as it goes forward. It is premature for anyone to make any judgments. I don’t think there is any harm at all to having an open discussion.”
“Just because you say its transparency doesn’t make it transparent,” Davis quipped. “We’re going to feign as if we had a real dialogue. The dialogue should be what are we going to do with that tech park, not putting it conservancy.”
Contact Joseph Norris at joe.norris@thebaynet.com