Progress toward a cleaner Chesapeake Bay can’t always be measured in nutrient loads alone. In Cambridge, MD positive change seems to have occurred at a certain boiling point of citizen upset.
Cambridge is a small Eastern Shore city on the banks of the Choptank River that gained notoriety only a few years ago for approving a massive resort development near the fragile Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge. Now the city is becoming a beacon of green civic consciousness.
"It’s almost like a 180-degree change," says Bill Giese, a community activist.
The city’s approval of the mega-development called Blackwater Resort was actually the catalyst for the change, Giese says. Already frustrated that their town was turning into anywhere USA with strip malls and franchise restaurants, citizens resisted the resort. With significant help from citizens throughout Maryland and even beyond its borders, they fought back with 4,000 emails, 100 letters and rallies of resistance.
Ultimately, the state negotiated a settlement with the developer, and purchased most of the land in 2007. The majority of the 754 acres was preserved, much of it restored to native marshland. That restoration was finished this past winter. The settlement allowed the developer to construct nearly 700 homes, but those houses have yet to be built in the weak real estate market.
But perhaps the more impressive victory has occurred almost unnoticed since the battle against the resort. Citizens lobbied to radically alter the future blueprint of their city. What has emerged is a Comprehensive Plan that features a "green belt" preventing unchecked future sprawl development around the town, in-fill and mixed-use development inside the city’s borders, and a commitment to revitalize the city’s significant waterfront. The plan preserves the city’s existing border, committing the city to no annexations or extensions of sewer and water beyond that border.
This is "smart growth" development that restores and creates dynamic communities instead of vapid subdivisions and same-old shopping opportunities. Sprawl drains tax dollars, makes us live isolated and dependent on our cars, and also degrades the Bay. Sprawl is responsible for ever-increasing nutrient pollution to streams, rivers and the Bay itself. Concentrating development in a creative way brings us together, unchains us from our cars, and let’s us walk and bike to shops, restaurants and parks. The surrounding countryside also is preserved for our enjoyment.
The Cambridge Planning and Zoning Commission approved the Comprehensive Plan in May. The city council is expected to vote on the concept in the coming months.
"I was extremely impressed the city took this step," says Giese, a native of Dorchester County, and a land owner adjacent to the city.
Giese takes me on a tour of Cambridge where tangible and still unseen changes are underway. We drive down Egypt Road where the resort was planned: 3,200 homes, golf course, hotel, conference center and retail center. Instead of fertilized fairways, however, much of the land is now planted with native trees, shrubs and grasses, thanks to a multi-million investment by the state. Part of the tract also has been preserved as farmland.
We head downtown, a historic business district that declined along with the seafood industry. Many storefronts are still shuttered along the southern portion of the main street, but further north is evidence of a new vitality: cafes with sidewalk dining, brightly painted shops and flower boxes along the street. The scent of steamed crabs wafts over from restaurants on Cambridge Creek. This is a city with promise.
Giese, who has been active with many citizens in shaping the Comprehensive Plan, said previous town fathers mistakenly allowed much of the city’s waterfront to be "walled off" with condominium projects. The Comprehensive Plan calls for increasing public space along the water, something that could help lure more tourists as well as residents, Giese says. The plan would ensure opportunities for both commercial and recreational maritime users. Rather than directing development outward into the farms and open areas beyond the town’s borders, the idea is to re-create Cambridge as a thriving, dynamic community.
City leaders will have to be disciplined to stick to the plan, to say "no" to box stores or other sprawl projects that drain downtown business, Giese says. But a new mayor, and other city politicians who have taken seats since the public revolt, are showing real leadership.
"They’ve turned down some projects that five years ago would have just rolled through," Giese says.
One needs to thank Bill Geise for this. He needs a national award. He kept at it over the long haul never giving up.
Posted by: John Koontz | 06/30/2010 at 05:47 AM