LEONARDTOWN — Sixty townhomes planned for a vacant lot on Bay Ridge Road in Great Mills can be sold as individual homes after the St. Mary’s County Planning Commission unanimously approved the project’s subdivision Oct. 19, and drivers leaving the neighborhood onto Route 5 should eventually get a second exit lane as part of the deal.
The commission voted 7-0 to grant preliminary approval to Bay Ridge Estates, a 60-lot major subdivision near Bay Ridge Road’s intersection with Point Lookout Road, or Route 5, just south of Great Mills Road. The vote came with three conditions, including one written at a commissioner’s request to require that Bay Ridge Road have two exit lanes at Route 5, one for left turns and one for right turns.
The approval is the second time the commission has signed off on the project. Planners approved its concept site plan unanimously on Aug. 19, 2024, after an earlier concept approval from about 2019 could no longer be renewed, according to Chris Longmore, who represented the applicant. Subdivision approval lets the developer sell the townhomes as fee-simple lots. Without it, Longmore said, the project could still be built as rentals.
The project
The site is about 6.6 acres zoned Residential High Density inside the Lexington Park Development District, according to the county’s 2024 concept site plan staff report, which lists Eugene N. St. Clair and John L. Wathen as the property owners. The 60 townhomes would sit in 10 buildings of up to six units each, on a private loop road named Bay Ridge Circle, with a tot lot required as a condition of the earlier approval.
- Density: 9.08 units per acre, county staff said Monday, within the zone’s base range of 1 to 10. The district allows up to 20 with purchased development rights.
- Traffic: The 2024 staff report estimated about 352 daily trips and 33 trips in the evening peak hour, under the 50 peak-hour trips that trigger a required traffic study. The applicant had one done anyway.
- Schools: The same report projected about 13 elementary, 6 middle and 9 high school students and found seats available.
- Sewer: In 2024, the Metropolitan Commission reported its Forest Run pump station was at capacity, with upgrades expected by 2026. Building permits are not to be issued until those upgrades are built and accepted, the report said.
Traffic at Route 5
Most of the commission’s questions were about getting in and out. Bay Ridge Road is the only way out for the existing Bay Ridge neighborhood, which one commissioner estimated at about 150 homes, and the new townhomes will add to it.
Today, the road meets Route 5 with what Longmore described as essentially one lane in and one lane out, poorly marked. The developer agreed in 2024 to add a second exit lane so left-turning drivers can stack without blocking those turning right. Longmore noted the intersection gets heavy evening traffic when workers leave Webster Field. He said the commitment was not formally written into the 2024 approval, so a commission member asked that it be spelled out as a condition this time, and the applicant agreed.
The county’s director of public works and transportation told the board the intersection operates at a level of service A, the highest rating, and that the county’s adequacy review found no needed upgrades for Bay Ridge Road. The department did find the existing striping inadequate, and said the developer’s plan would improve on it. The county tests road adequacy at the first public road a subdivision connects to, he said, and a second exit is required only when more than 75 lots feed that road from a single development.
A second way out may come later. Longmore said a planned development behind the Bay Ridge neighborhood is expected to connect to Great Mills Road once it is built, which could pull some traffic away from the Route 5 intersection. No timeline for that connection was given.
Base noise and the new state law
One commissioner asked whether the developer would add soundproofing, since the site sits in the 60-65 decibel noise contour for Naval Air Station Patuxent River. The applicant’s attorney said he was not aware of any plans to do so. The Navy’s comments did not restrict development there, a county staff member noted.
The county plans a January workshop on new rules tied to the Navy’s 2026 Air Installations Compatible Use Zones study, but a county official said those changes will not apply to Bay Ridge Estates. Under a new state law that took effect Oct. 1, the project is locked into the regulations in place on that date, the official said.
That law, the Maryland Housing Certainty Act, says a housing development application is governed by the rules in effect when a complete application is submitted, according to a legal analysis by the firm Ballard Spahr. Once a project has all its approvals, it also gives developers a vested right to build for at least five years.
Sidewalks also came up. Wayne Hunt of Little Silences Rest, the project’s engineering firm, said sidewalks are planned along the site’s Route 5 frontage and into the Bay Ridge neighborhood, and will connect toward Wolf Trap Street, where the school bus stops. The county public works director said the neighborhood’s existing stormwater pond, which will receive the new development’s runoff, needs maintenance and must be shown to have enough capacity.
The conditions
- All road improvements required by the state and county must be completed with the use and occupancy permit, and Bay Ridge Road must have two exit lanes at Route 5, one left and one right.
- The developer needs a Board of Appeals variance to disturb a small stream buffer on the property.
- A sight-line easement requested by the Department of Public Works and Transportation is needed before the final plat is recorded.
No one from the public testified. The project still needs final site plan approval from county staff and the stream-buffer variance from the Board of Appeals before construction.
