Council Supports Historic Preservation Guidelines For Greenwich Forest

The Montgomery County Council voted Tuesday to support historic preservation guidelines for Bethesda’s Greenwich Forest neighborhood set forth by homeowners in the community.

The vote follows and compromise between homeowners in the 71-home district, with some strongly supporting historic designation for the neighborhood and others worried that the move would mean an increased burden for those seeking to make changes or improvements to their homes.

“These are hard conversations, and passions run very high on both sides,” County Councilman Roger Berliner (D-Dist. 1) said at Tuesday’s hearing. “There are those who firmly believe this is the right course of action and others who believe their property rights are being infringed upon in ways they fundamentally object to.”

The Montgomery County Planning Board, the Historic Preservation Commission and County Executive Isiah Leggett have all recommended that a portion of the neighborhood near Wilson Lane and Hampden Lane be included in the county's master plan for historic preservation in order to protect it as a historic resource. Developed by famed Washington-area developer Morris Cafritz between 1926 and 1949, the neighborhood is known for its natural landscaping, mature trees and Tudor Revival and Colonial Revival architecture. Designation as a historic district would require homeowners to undergo a review process with the county Historic Preservation Commission before making certain changes to the exterior of their properties, according to Clare Kelly, research and designation coordinator for the Montgomery County Planning Department's historic preservation section.

The council put “into the lap of the community” the challenge of developing a compromise of how best to preserve the community, Berliner said. “They worked so, so hard and they came up with something that has broader consensus – though not unanimous,” Berliner said.

Following a public hearing before the council that drew intense discussion from both sides of the debate last fall, a committee comprised of homeowners both in favor of and against the historic designation met over the course of eight months, working to compromise on a set of historic preservation guidelines. The guidelines would inform HPC on the approval or denial of applications for work permits to make certain building or landscape modifications within the district.

Though the committee was able to compromise in order to develop those guidelines – drawing on feedback from the larger community -- not all on the committee supported them. Two committee members didn’t support the guidelines because they said they could be used in conjunction with other HPC rules, rather than as a standalone guiding document, according to a minority opinion submitted to the Council.

“The entire premise was to create community specific guidelines that would be the sole basis for evaluating what could be done to a property in Greenwich Forest. It was the expectation that this very directed approach would eliminate the permitting uncertainties often associated with working under the county’s historical guidelines,” the document read.

Also at issue was the exclusion of two homes from the historic district. The community initially proposed leaving out the two homes – at 8003 and 8001 Overhill Road – because one home was newly constructed and the owners of the other objected to the designation, according to a Council packet. However, leaving out the homes could jeopardize the district’s eligibility for the National Register of Historic Sites, meaning the remaining 69 homes may not be able to receive state historic preservation tax credits, historic preservation officials said at Tuesday’s hearing.

“If you exclude one of those houses from that period of significance, then it becomes a rather arbitrary boundary if you’re not including all of those historic homes that meet those criteria,” Kelly said.

The Council voted to to include the district on the historic preservation master plan, using the community’s historic preservation guidelines, and include the two homes in the district.