MVF Board Balks on Eastgate Pavilion

First, Montgomery Village’s top representative in the state legislature withdrew her support. Then, the Montgomery Village Foundation shelved the idea. Now, the proposal to build a picnic pavilion in Martin P. Roy Park is all but dead.

The $60,000 proposal has over the last few months sparked protest from residents in surrounding Eastgate, who say that the pavilion will be a magnet for crime. The project arose at Eastgate's request nearly two years ago, and funding is already in place as a split between the Montgomery Village Foundation—which owns the park—and a portion of state bond money.

The Montgomery Village Foundation’s board of directors was ready to revisit the issue Thursday night at its monthly meeting. MVF staff had recommended examination of a different spot in the park—a few yards from the park's parking lot on Cinnabar Drive—but board vice president John Driscoll instead called for the pavilion to be taken off the board’s agenda.

His motion passed 8-1, sending up a round of applause from two dozen neighbors to the would-be pavilion.

“We are all for improvements to the community. … No crimes are committed between first and third when the kids are playing. We love it. It’s what happens in the remainder of the time,” said John Horton, a member of Eastgate Homes Corp.’s board of directors. “… There has been guns, arrests, drug deals, all kinds of things like that—crack pipes found—and we felt that a structure provided in a dimly lit area in a corner of the park would just give a haven for these kinds of activities to happen.”

Montgomery County Police Lt. Steve D’Ovidio, an Eastgate resident, went to the meeting armed with crime data from the park and surrounding neighborhoods. He said the pavilion would have “just been inviting trouble.”

“I know the district. I know that park,” he said. “It has problems. It’s getting better. That being said, as you’re making things better, you don’t want to put something in there that’s going to set you back. We’ve gained ground. We don’t want to give it back.”

In the face of those arguments, Sen. Nancy J. King had decided earlier in the week that she will tell fellow lawmakers to withdraw the state’s share of the money when she returns to Annapolis in January.

MVF board president Bob Hydorn, who cast the sole vote against abandoning the project, and bristled that King, a close friend, had put political priorities ahead of the community good.

"Senator Nancy King was more concerend with three or four dozen votes than helping to try to move the entire commmuntiy of 40,000 residents forward," he said.

In an interview before the board’s decision, King said that she had embarked on the project under the impression that it had the community's support, but changed course once the contrary became clear.

“It’s not anything that I want to shove down people’s throats,” she said. “I have not heard from one single person that wants it. The bottom line is, it’s a luxury. It’s something added that’s not absolutely necessary. If we were talking about something that was for public safety, that’d be one thing. But this isn’t that. They just don’t want it.”

King has been in touch with the Montgomery Village Foundation about finding somewhere else to put the pavilion. To qualify for the approved bond money, a site would need to be found before January, she said, and the project would have to be identical in scope and size.

“For anything else, we’ve got to go through the whole process all over again,” King said.

After the MVF board backed off, Thursday night’s meeting evolved into a discussion about outreach and community involvement. While the Montgomery Village Foundation featured the project in their twice-monthly newsletter, Eastgate residents said they only heard about it in the last few months and could find no record of Eastgate having ever voted on the issue.

Board members urged the residents to use the issue as a springboard for getting more involved in Montgomery Village affairs.

“We need to take this energy and say, ‘Where are we headed?’” said Mark Firley. “… I think we could get a lot more accomplished.”

The board closed the pavilion discussion and moved on to its 2012 budget and the publication of a seminal report on the Village’s long-term future.

Nearly all of the anti-pavilion residents left the meeting.