October 2006

I hope that everyone is enjoying the beautiful fall weather. It’s a great time to take a walk by the beach or marina and enjoy the views of the bay. Soon the leaves will be gone and the cold weather will be here. Enjoy it while you can!

The latest news on the Beach Strip Lawsuit is that the court issued an order setting a schedule for the case. There will be a hearing on all open motions. This is the hearing that was originally scheduled for October 3rd and that we asked to be rescheduled for October 19th. The hearing will be on Monday, October 30th at 9:00 am at Anne Arundel County Circuit Court on Church Circle in downtown Annapolis. As a defendant you have the right to attend. However, you are not required to be there. The deadline for discovery and new motions is January 31st and the trial will take place on March 7th. Everyone should have received a letter from the court with this information. In addition, the court ordered us to post future court documents on the HSIA web site and include them in the Sea Breeze.

Last May, several hundred people showed up at a public meeting about a proposed development plan for the Hillsmere Center between Hillsmere Drive and the Mexican Café. Many were Hillsmere residents. Nearly all were angry about what the city was proposing. Well, it’s time to get involved again. The Annapolis City Council is about to annex the Samaras property (where C&C Liquors is located). The plan is to develop the front half as commercial and keep the back half as low density residential. However, the developer wants the entire parcel to be commercial. The most troubling part of this plan, for our community, is that experts provided by the developer at a recent City Council meeting recommended that Old Annapolis Neck Road be extended to connect to Hillsmere Drive. The plan that was rejected by residents at the public meetings in May showed several options for connecting to Hillsmere Drive. They all would cause serious traffic problems for Hillsmere residents. The plans showed the connection opposite the entrance to Quiet Waters park, or next to the library. The flow of traffic, especially the Key School traffic, is better than it had been before the additional turn lanes were put in place. Imagine what it would be like with a cross street breaking that flow. Imagine what would happen when people trying to avoid the traffic on Bay Ridge Road use the connection as a bypass. To make things worse, there is also a plan to connect Old Annapolis Neck Road on the other side as well. This connection would be at the entrance to Quiet Waters Park near Muddy Paws. If the road continued through then traffic trying to avoid Bay Ridge Road/Forest Drive traffic would become a nightmare. We could end up with a traffic light or, even worse, a traffic circle (which was shown as an option in the development plan). I’m not sure how we are going to address this issue. We may ask the city to have another public meeting to directly get the affected resident’s point of view. The Samaras developer has asserted that they have community support for their plan. This is clearly not the case. We will keep you informed. In the meantime, you can contact the following people to express your feeling on this issue: