Developer plans nearly 2,000 homes in northern Anne Arundel with a coal plant next door

A prolific developer wants to build a sprawling new residential community in northern Anne Arundel County in the shadow of a coal-fired power plant on land once identified for conservation.

Elm Street Development, which has developed hundreds of homes nearby since 2014, wants to expand across Fort Smallwood Road into roughly 322 acres of woods and wetlands that straddle northern Pasadena and Curtis Bay, extending to the Patapsco River.

The land separates the smokestacks of the Brandon Shores Power Plant, Maryland’s last coal-fired plant, from the birder’s paradise of the state’s Swan Creek Conservation Area.

Elm Street’s plans call for building 1,927 homes and a grocery store-anchored shopping center there. While the project would add much-needed housing in the region, it has also sparked concerns about impacts on roads, schools and the environment, raising questions about recent efforts to conserve the long-fallow land.

During a March public meeting, several dozen community members lamented that anyone would consider building a project of that scale on the parcel. They cited the power plant just to the south, as well as the Maryland Port Administration’s dredge containment facility and a county sewage treatment plant within a mile.

County Councilman Nathan Volke, who represents the district, said the area needs a grocery store, but many residents living nearby believe building on this land will only hurt the community.

“The additional housing is not something I’m excited about,” he said.

The development requires clearing 200 acres of forest and disturbing tens of thousands of square feet of wetlands and multiple streams. The developer has filed applications with the county for those approvals. County planning officials recently asked Elm Street for further revisions.

Longtime Curtis Bay resident John Garofolo recently wrote a letter to County Executive Steuart Pittman, urging him to take action.

“With the significant pollution we have in Curtis Bay, we literally can’t afford to lose it to development,” he wrote of the land.

Elm Street did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Why here?

This land is currently owned by CSX Realty Development, a subsidiary of CSX, one of the nation’s largest freight railroads and the corporate heir of the old Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. The B&O gathered thousands of acres across this swath of Marley Neck between South Baltimore and Pasadena around the turn of the last century.

The railroad held the land for industrial development, creating future business for itself.

But most of the land remained unused — until nearly two decades ago.

CSX won approval in 1990 to rezone 610 acres along Marley Neck Boulevard for nearly 2,300 homes, but work didn’t get started until 2008, albeit slowly during the recession and housing crisis.

In 2014, the railroad brought in Elm Street, which has constructed hundreds of homes and townhomes in the nearby Tanyard Cove and Tanyard Shores neighborhoods.

Acting as representative of CSX, Elm Street sought last year to rezone the Brandon Shores parcel from industrial to mixed-use, citing a 2024 railroad directive to find development “opportunities for underutilized landholdings in this corridor,” the Sept. 26 letter said.

CSX declined to comment.

In the letter, Elm Street said its plans for the parcel would bring more diverse housing options to the area, where there’s expected to be a deficit, and new commercial amenities. The Brandon Shores acreage is easier to build on and requires less remediation than other area parcels like the land under the Brandon Shores Power Plant, which its operator, Talen Energy, plans to retire in 2031, the developer said.

Elm Street described its plans as more flexible and less harmful to the neighboring Swan Creek Conservation Area than new industrial development.

“The zoning offers a unique opportunity to further enhance and expand upon environmental features located at Swan Creek Wetland Area,” said Elm Street, adding that while industrial alternatives still may be considered, they likely wouldn’t be “favorably received by the community.”

The County Council incorporated the company’s request into a wider zoning bill after reviews by county planning officials.

Keep it green or build

Pittman included the parcel in his 2022 green infrastructure master plan as a place he thought should be conserved. That plan, however, doesn’t protect the land.

The initiative came out of campaign promises to change course from previous county administrations, which he described as acquiescing “willy nilly” to developers on environmentally sensitive land.

In a recent phone call, Pittman said he would still love to see the area protected from development.

He also said he wasn’t aware that the land’s zoning had changed and that developers wanted to make it a new suburb. He said he learned about it from Garofolo’s letter.

Garofolo wrote that residents near the Brandon Shores property already suffer from high levels of pollution. Such concerns, he said, should be taken more seriously by the county.

“No new homes should be considered in this area,” he added.

Pittman acknowledged those concerns and said the Office of Planning and Zoning had denied Elm Street’s latest requests for waivers to the county’s environmental code, suggesting in his newsletter that the project is dead for now.

But in fact, the office is still considering the proposal and has sent it back to the developer to revise, asking for plans less disruptive to the environment.

“The laws are supposed to protect, but we’ll see how far that goes,” Pittman said.

Alice Volpitta, a water quality watchdog for the nonprofit Blue Water Baltimore, believes the Swan Creek wetlands help absorb industrial pollution. Encroaching on those wetlands would limit their ability to act as a filter for the community and adjacent Patapsco River, she said.

“It doesn’t make sense from a logistical perspective,” Volpitta said of additional housing development.

“Instead of rolling these back and trying to help the people already facing environmental injustices, we are putting more people there,” she added.

Elm Street has until Sept. 11 to revise its request, at which point the county’s zoning office will review it again and possibly request further revisions until a decision is reached. The cycle would restart for the developer’s final site plan, which, if approved, would move to the permitting process.

Based on nearby developments, it could be a decade or longer before any housing is built there.