St. Mary’s County commissioners rejected a proposed zoning overhaul targeting gas stations, vape shops and small discount stores at their July 28 meeting, sending the measure back to the Planning Commission after a Callaway gas station proposal set off more than two months of debate over how much control the county should exert over the types of retail businesses that keep opening along its commercial corridors.
The proposed ordinance would have amended Chapter 285 of the county code to make fuel sales, now generally allowed by right in commercial zones, subject to conditional use approval by the county’s Board of Appeals. It would also have created two new zoning categories, Use Type 76A for small-box discount stores and Use Type 77A for vape shops, carving both out of the county’s broader retail sales classifications and subjecting future locations to the same conditional review. Under conditional use review, the Board of Appeals would weigh whether a proposed business demonstrates genuine public need and whether it would adversely affect the balance of existing commercial development nearby — a higher bar than the by-right approval such businesses currently receive.
The idea originated at a May 12 commissioners’ meeting, after Commissioner Michael Alderson Jr. raised concerns about a proposed gas station in Callaway, a community he said already had three gas stations and a convenience store. “Here we have a county in which we have more fuel stations than people feel we need,” Lexington Park resident Marcia Greenberg later told commissioners at a July 14 public hearing on the proposal, one of several residents who spoke in support of tighter restrictions. Greenberg specifically criticized the prevalence of vape shops, calling them “predatory” and “harmful to young people and others.”
Deputy County Attorney John Sterling Houser, who presented the ordinance alongside Land Use and Growth Management Director Jessica Andritz, told commissioners the proposed standards were modeled in part on approaches other Maryland jurisdictions have used to address clusters of similar commercial uses. But Houser also flagged a structural weakness in the proposal during earlier discussion: the ordinance never defined what actually constitutes a “proliferation” of fuel stations, convenience stores or vape shops, leaving that judgment call to the Board of Appeals on a case-by-case basis without clear guardrails.
Alderson made his underlying rationale plain during commissioners’ time discussion of the issue. “I would like to see more things that will [be] more helpful through the community as opposed to a gas station or a vape shop,” he said. “When it comes to economic development, is that the kind of economic development this county needs?” He added that he didn’t want St. Mary’s County “to be known as a great place to come swing by, get gas and leave.”
Other commissioners voiced more caution about the proposal’s reach into private property rights. Commissioner Eric Colvin, who along with Alderson supported moving the underlying policy forward, acknowledged the tension directly during discussion. “It’s always a difficult balance of, ‘Well, I’m 100% supporting property rights,’ but at the same time looking out for the well-being in the community,” Colvin said. Other commissioners were more skeptical of imposing new conditional-use hurdles on otherwise legal businesses, and Commissioner Scott Ostrow sought additional information before backing the proposal outright. With the board split, commissioners settled on a middle path at the July 28 meeting: they voted to disapprove the ordinance as drafted and referred it back to the Planning Commission for further review — a step that keeps the underlying policy idea alive without adopting the specific standards Houser and Andritz had drafted.
The Planning Commission is expected to take up the referred amendment at one of its upcoming meetings, with county staff previously indicating a possible review as early as late August or September, though no date had been confirmed as of the July 28 vote. Any revised version the Planning Commission produces would need to return to the Board of County Commissioners for a new public hearing and vote before taking effect.
The debate arrived alongside a separate, related proposal the commissioners did adopt the same night: a new Community Reinvestment and Repair ordinance governing how the county will distribute more than $1.5 million in cannabis tax revenue, a measure that drew some of the same residents to the July 14 hearing to weigh in on both issues in a single evening. County officials have not indicated whether the fuel-sales and vape-shop question will return to commissioners before the calendar turns to 2027, leaving open, for now, whether businesses like the proposed Callaway gas station that prompted the debate will face new local review requirements or continue to be approved by right under the county’s existing zoning code.
