Caves Valley Partners has set May 8 as the date for its next community-input meeting on its proposed Royal Farms gas station at York Road and Bosley Avenue.
The meeting is on track to be especially heated thanks to the fact that Baltimore County hired a contractor to chop down 30 trees on the site — including seven large, mature trees — despite the fact that a county resolution said the trees should remain if possible, and the county’s own rules would have required Caves Valley to get a variance if it wanted to remove the trees.
Because gas pumps are not allowed at the site under current zoning laws, Caves Valley applied for a Planned Unit Development (PUD), which allows the council to approve non-compliant uses for land if the proposed project will “achieve substantially higher-quality development than a conventional development or provide a public benefit that would otherwise not be obtained.”
Opponents have said the area has plenty of gas stations (there is an Exxon on the opposite corner) and that a huge, 24-hour gas station is in direct opposition to the county’s own plans for downtown Towson.
The community-input meeting will be held at 7:00 PM on May 8 at the conference center at Sheppard Pratt (6501 N. Charles Street, Towson).