The Silver Spring Penguin

ROCKVILLE — The county’s planning board is cool with a proposed zoning change that gives buildings more height or density, as long as the extra space squeezes in workforce housing, a spokesperson testified before the county council Tuesday.

Greg Russ, with the planning board’s development-review team, said the proposal’s only problem was its crappy wording. According to the proposal, a project with workforce housing can score an additional 10 percent of its floor-area ratio, even if that tops the limits set in the county’s sector plans. However, the project won’t be allowed to top limits pinned to its zone.

If approved, the zoning change would back another rule that raised the roof for projects (one in particular) in Fenton Village. That rule, approved in late July, set building heights off Georgia Avenue’s east side at 110 feet max if they squeezed in workforce-housing apartments.

The change also backs additional height for Silver Spring’s library project on Fenton at Bonifant Streets. That county-led mixed-use project might need the extra headroom to replace apartments lost when it bought — and later demolished — the Bonifant Court apartments.

But the Montgomery County Civic Federation wasn’t digging the idea of more apartments, or more residents. Jim Humphrey, who testified on the organization’s behalf, said up to 85,000 new housing units can be built in the county without screwing with zoning laws.

Humphrey also suggested revising the master plan. A revision, he argued, would give planners a shot to study how much the existing infrastructure can take, and how much it would cost to build and maintain added infrastructure.

The county council’s planning committee mulls over the proposal in early November.