Builders, home buyers look to Eastern Shore

That is changing now, as the demand for more - and cheaper - housing pushes developers across the Bay.

Stevensville, a rustic hamlet on Kent Island, is targeted by one developer for a 1,350-home, adults-only complex, just one of a handful of projects that could bring thousands of homes, people and cars to the shore's landscape.

Project opponents say the rash of construction is too much, too soon for an area of just under 2,000 people.(1)

"This will rip the heart out of Kent Island. Build this, and we're dead," said Amelia Hamilton, whose Stevensville home is close to the 562-acre construction site near both the Cox Creek and the Chester River.

But builders point out that local zoning codes allow for the Four Seasons project. And they argue that it is the kind of development that should be expected for the future.

The argument from developers is a simple one: people want new homes, and those new homes have to go somewhere.

Even the Urban Land Institute, a think tank that studies land use and planning issues, agrees that a "no-growth" attitude simply isn't realistic, said policy analyst David O'Neil.

About one-third of the nation's people live within a few hours drive of the Eastern Shore in a long belt of suburbs buckled by cities like Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Boston.

For decades, the farms and rivers of Maryland's isolated Eastern Shore were ignored by developers filling in the empty counties of New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland with ranch-style, split-level suburban homes.

Today, though, builders are advertising new Kent Island homes on Baltimore radio stations. Besides housing proposals like the Four Seasons, there are plans to increase the size of Chesapeake College in Wye Mills, and Talbot County is considering easing limits on so-called "big-box" stores like Wal-Mart.

As people flee from rising real estate prices in Washington and Baltimore, they are more willing to commute across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge from a home they can afford.

Carol Cordle, manager of the Frase's Country Butcher Shop in Stevensville, understands the appeal. She fled the strip malls and gridlock of Glen Burnie 11 years ago for the small town of Chester.

Now she is seeing the crowd follow, and her feelings are torn.

"The development will be great for business, but as far as living here, I'm with everybody else," Cordle said. "It's going to cause a lot of gridlock and traffic problems during the summer."

Holding the eastern footings of the Bay Bridge, Kent Island carries the thousands of motorists who use Route 50 on their way to the beach resorts of Ocean City and southern Delaware. When that Route 50 traffic bogs down, out-of-towners race through the local roads to get to the bridge. (2)

"A lot of people are moving over here because they like the slower pace. That's why I moved over here," Cordle said. "But Kent Island is really turning into a little Glen Burnie. Everybody is moving here to get away."

Armed with a petition containing more than 2,200 signatures, opponents of the project are watching the Queen Anne's Planning Commission. It must decide whether to approve a request to redesignate more than 370 acres where development is limited by regulations designed to protect the water quality of the Chesapeake Bay.

The builder, K. Hovnanian, a company headquartered in Red Bank, N.J., has already cut back the scale of the project from the original proposal of 1,500 homes, said Joseph Stevens, a lawyer for the company.

He also argued that the laws restricting building and construction around the Chesapeake Bay also have language allowing local planning commissions to allow such projects.

"The vital area is not a thousand-foot barrier around the bay," Stevens said.

Even so, K. Hovnanian has changed its plans significantly after hearing the concerns from the public and from state and county officials, said Robert Karen, who oversees K. Hovnanian's construction of adults-only projects.

There will be 300-foot to 1,000-foot buffers of trees surrounding the complex, (3) and plans for rental units and a grocery store were scrapped, Karen said.

He argued that the influx of older residents, who won't be contributing any children to the region's schools, will provide an economic boon to Kent Island.

Not everyone is taken with Karen's argument. At one public hearing of the Queen Anne's Planning Commission, held in an overflowing high school gymnasium, Jack Broderick, who has lived 25 years in Chester on Cox Creek, was one of hundreds who wore a silvery "Vote No" sticker.

There were an equal number of people wearing sunny yellow buttons, urging support for Four Seasons. (4)

"We're not against growth at all," Broderick said. "But I want to see growth that will add value to the community, and I'm concerned about project, whether its size will affect our quality of life here."