Court Opinion

ID: 9699529
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 20:30:52.483967+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:44:02.232787
License: Public Domain

Hammond, J.,
filed the following dissenting opinion.
Judicial acquiescence in an agency’s perversion of the zoning process has constrained me to dissent. The Board of Zoning Appeals, in reclassifying the Halle property misconstrued its basic and fundamental function and place in zoning, and the affirmance of its action by the Court of Appeals will perpetuate its misconceptions and so foster bad zoning at the expense of good.
The strong presumption of the correctness of original zoning and comprehensive rezoning led the Court of Appeals to the now firmly established rule that piecemeal or individual change can validly be made by a zoning board or agency only if there is presented to it strong evidence either of mistake in the basic zoning or of a substantial change in the character of the neighborhood. In the instant case a consideration of the testimony before the Board and its opinion makes it entirely apparent that the Board granted the request for rezoning for high-rise apartments because it thought the Halle site was an appropriate place (an “ideal site”) for elevator apartment buildings under the criteria of the Planning Board which were established two years after the comprehensive rezoning and felt there was need for such apartments in that part of the County, and that it justified the effectuation of its beliefs and feelings by finding “changes” that simply had not occurred or are not changes at all.
Mr. Gavrelis of the Planning Staff of Baltimore County testi*243fied that the “subject property comes closer to meeting the locational criteria established by the Planning Board in locating apartment zoning than have other recent requests for apartment zoning elsewhere in this area * * although he testified further that he and the Planning Staff found neither original error in the zoning map nor substantial changes in the physical character of the neighborhood.
In light of the views of the Planning Board, if the Halle property had been rezoned for apartment use as part of a comprehensive rezoning, either in 1957 or subsequently, there could be no just complaint that this was not appropriate and sound zoning, made with a view to and a consideration of the overall good and needs of that part of Baltimore County community and the property rights of the owner. But the Board of Appeals was not created to rezone piecemeal as if it were zoning originally or rezoning comprehensively. Suitability of a site for a particular use and a general need for that use are all important in basic comprehensive zoning but they are not controlling, or indeed properly persuasive, in determining under the purposefully restricted standards of original error or subsequent substantial change whether a reclassification of that site legally can be granted. To the Board of Appeals, as experts, has been confided the delegated function of determining whether there has been presented to it strong evidence of original error or substantial change. Its expertise is to be devoted only to deciding these two questions, not to the exercise of land planning and comprehensive rezoning. Just as war has been said to be too important to be left to the generals, so original zoning or comprehensive rezoning (in the guise of individual rezoning or otherwise) is far too important to be confided to a rezoning board or to any body except the elected legislative representatives of the people, acting in the exercise of the full plenary legislative powers confided to the municipality. The right and power of the Board to make individual reclassifications is to enable the rectification of mistakes, original or subsequently developed, which a reasoning mind reasonably could find to have been proven and which have made the classification of the particular property incompatible with that of the adjacent or close community, so that its use under its existing classi*244fication would be inappropriate and inharmonious in relation to the other actual uses in the neighborhood. The Board of Appeals cannot lawfully rezone to accomplish what it thinks would have been more desirable original planning and zoning or what it thinks good comprehensive replanning and rezoning would achieve or to permit the highest or best or most profitable use of land, yet this is precisely what it has done in the instant case with the judicial blessing of the Court of Appeals, and a seamless web has been torn.
It can be demonstrated that no substantial change in the character of the neighborhood occurred since 1957. (There is no real claim of original error.) There can be no doubt that the location of the Beltway was fully known to and considered by the County Council in 1957 when it adopted the Third District map. Only the locations of the access and exit ramps for Park Heights Avenue and Stevenson Road were then undetermined. Knowing that the portion of the Halle land now involved would be north of the Beltway, the Council kept it zoned R-40 and R-20. Beyond question a wide busy road like the Beltway is a natural dividing line between land zoned for individual homes and land zoned for more intensive uses, both in fact and in law. “It would be difficult, to say the least, to think of a more logical line of demarcation between the industrial and commercial zones to the east and the residential zone to the west of this barrier [Harrisburg Expressway].” Hewitt v. Baltimore County, 220 Md. 48, 60; Kaslow v. Rockville, 236 Md. 159. In Stocksdale v. Barnard, 239 Md. 541, 548, we said in reference to the same situation on York Road:
“In Shadynook Imp. Assn. v. Molloy, 232 Md. 265, 192 A. 2d 502, we held that the existence of apartment uses on one side of the street does not alter the use of the land on the opposite side [for individual homes], and therefore the street is an appropriate line of demarcation.”
Woodlawn Area Citisens Association, Inc. v. Board of County Commissioners for Prince George’s County, 241 Md. 187.
The fact that part of the Halle tract was taken—at a full price—for Beltway use does not change the character of the *245part remaining or of other adjacent and nearby land north of the Beltway. All such land north of the Beltway on both sides of Park Heights Avenue still remains wooded and undeveloped, except by occasional individual homes on large lots. One has only to drive the Beltway to know that hundreds of individual homes line both sides of it in various areas, and its presence does not necessarily change the character of abutting land from that devoted to individual residences to more intense uses. There are no unusual circumstances here that would alter this general rule and make the Beltway, of itself, constitute a change in conditions. See MacDonald v. County Board, 238 Md. 549. See also Greenblatt v. Toney Schloss, 235 Md. 9.
The availability of a public water supply and of sewerage are not changes in the character of the neighborhood. They may permit use of the property for apartments, a fact which would be of significance in considering rezoning as part of a comprehensive change, but they do not change the character of the neighborhood as one suitable for devotion to individual homes, and thus are not significant in determining individual change. Individual homes need and use water and sewerage. MacDonald, supra. Availability of public water and sewerage makes the Halle site potentially more profitable and is analogous in this respect to the need for apartments claimed by the applicants for rezoning. “That there may be a need for additional apartments in this immediate vicinity * * * fails to show anything more than that an R-A use would be more profitable than an R-6 use * * *,” Shadynook Imp. Assn. v. Molloy, 232 Md. 265, 272; “a mere increase in population does not prove a change in the character of the neighborhood to justify another type of zoning,” County Comm’rs v. Fairwinds, 230 Md. 569, 572. See also Pahl v. County Bd. of Appeals, 237 Md. 294.
The comprehensive rezoning by the Board, unsupported by any evidence of original error or subsequent substantial change in the character of the neighborhood should have been reversed. I agree that Judge Turnbull had no basis for denying the special exception the Board granted for elevator apartments.