Plant v. Board of County Commissioners

Digges, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The Prince George’s County Board of County Commissioners, sitting as the District Council, has denied an application to rezone for commercial use the 0.5 acre home-site of the appellants, Walter A. and Anna Lanham Plant of Lanham,, Maryland. The property’s location at the back edge of a commercial strip along a jumble of intersecting highways is both the reason for the requested zoning (good business spot) and its denial (serious traffic congestion). In reviewing this action, the Circuit Court for Prince George’s County (Bowie, J.) determined that the findings and conclusions of the District Council as based on the record were fairly debatable and hence not clearly erroneous.

The trial judge commented that the application might well have been granted were the choice his but we agree with and affirm his ultimate conclusion that in such a case the court may not substitute its judgment for that of the zoning authorities. ¹²² The subject property is located some 300-400 feet north of Defense Highway (Route 450) on the west side of Princess Garden Parkway, a narrow two lane road slated for widening in the near future. It is roughly square in shape and, according to the appellants, it is “sandwiched” between a 3.6 acre church complex on its north side and a 4.5 acre motel tract on the south. The motel, which is presently under construction, faces out on Defense Highway but its actual south and west property lines run with an entrance ramp to the Capital Beltway. The ramp itself begins at the Princess Garden Parkway corner.

The church property, which is L-shaped and consists of a parsonage and congregation hall in a park-like setting, also borders on the entire back line of the Plants’ home where it forms a common boundary with the motel property. The Plants’ and the church’s southern boundaries, then, constitute the line between the commercial land to the south and a rural residential area to the north along the west side of Princess Garden Parkway. The church, it should be noted, is a permissive use in an R-R zone. Section 13.1 Prince George’s County Zoning Ordinance (1968).

Across the street from the Plants on the east are two vacant residential lots and a small part of another lot which had been rezoned for commercial use in 1968. This lot is also vacant, though an automobile agency is planned for it, and for the most part it lies further to the south along the Parkway than the Plants’ property. Behind all three of these parcels, but not bordering on the Parkway, is a large undeveloped commercial tract which had also been rezoned to commercial in 1968. Above this on the north is a thickly populated residential area.

Below it on the south and facing on Route 450 is a row of older shops that extends from Princess Garden Parkway for a short distance to Lanham-Severn Road, which feeds into this crossroads at a shallow angle from the northeast and creates a fork with Defense Highway. According to an average daily traffic count from 1967, introduced by the appellants, 22,500 ¹²³ vehicles passed over this multi-laned segment of Defense Highway, while 3,350 utilized Princess Garden Parkway. In view of the population growth in the general surrounding area and the obvious trend toward commercial development at this intersection, the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission as well as its technical staff, the District Council and the Circuit Court all agreed that there had been a sufficiently substantial change in the character of the neighborhood to justify rezoning. Needless to say, the appellants have not challenged this conclusion.

The problem is, as we have noted recently in Messenger v. Bd. of Co. Comm’rs, 259 Md. 693, 704 , 271 A. 2d 166 (1970), “this merely permits the legislative body to grant the requested rezoning but does not require it to do so.” Although the Planning Commission and its technical staff recommended the commercial zoning only on the condition that the property not be developed as a drive-in or carry-out restaurant or as a service station, the County Commissioners determined that rezoning was not compelled “because it would increase the traffic congestion at the intersection of Princess Garden Parkway and Defense Highway.” Conditional zoning is permitted under §