The proposed 25-story apartment building that landowner David Hillman wants to put up next to the existing Lakeside North Apartments is “inappropriate for here,” said Brian Almquist. Almquist and his wife Donna organized an information session on the proposed building at the Greenbelt Fire Station hall on June 4. Over 100 people came during the four-hour session, Almquist said, using the signed petition to estimate. He had pictures of the proposed land use and facilitated discussions of what it meant to have a green belt and the value of woods. In their flyer, distributed ahead of the meeting, the Almquists state that current zoning regulations require the forested land to remain undeveloped. Most of the attendees were worried about the proposed project’s size, its effect on the city and its cost to the woodlands.
However, Almquist noted that not everyone who came was against the development. As noted in the News Review article on April 14, the plans for the 400-unit luxury apartments were presented to the council for consideration. While the council can voice support or dissent, the zoning issue is not the council’s to decide. Hillman, who is the owner of the Lakeside North Apartments, proposes to use underdeveloped land next to those apartments. When the apartments were built in 1963, they were zoned R-30, a zoning category that the county is now phasing out. To read the remainder of the story click HERE.
