Community groups are urging county planners to double-check and clarify the data written into the drafted Bethesda Downtown Sector Plan.
A letter sent to the Montgomery County Council on Friday lays out an array of suggestions, such as identifying top-priority parks projects and including development staging in the two-decade growth document. But as the full council prepares to take a crack at the plan, the groups are highlighting data accuracy as a central concern.
Reliable development numbers are "integral to having confidence in the plan," said Barney Rush, who helped draft the letter from the Coalition of Bethesda Area Residents.
Earlier versions of the plan estimated about 4.6 million square feet of additional construction could be built in Bethesda before reaching the plan's development cap of 32.4 million square feet. The county planning department recently lowered the remaining growth capacity by 400,000 square feet to 4.2 million square feet.
Planning Director Gwen Wright said this difference simply reflects the fact that projects are continuously emerging and evolving. The numbers in the plan will provide a snapshot of existing and proposed development at a specific time, but these totals will continue to change, she said.
Wright said she and county planners are confident in the data used for the drafted Bethesda plan.
"Our numbers for the plan have been checked and rechecked and then checked again, and we definitely believe that they are accurate," she said.
However, CBAR members have also pointed out some mathematical discrepancies in one of the plan tables and have taken issue with the school system's enrollment projections.
Wright agreed with advocates that a careful tracking system is needed to enforce the proposed limit on square footage. Monitoring will also be crucial if the council decides to move forward with staging, which would stop development at a certain point pending the fulfillment of specific goals regarding
