Client/Builder/Developer:  Greenebaum Enterprises
Location:  Maple Lawn Boulevard, Fulton, Howard County, Maryland
Market: Mixed Use – Residential, Retail
Size: 605.3 acres
Zoning: MXD-3
Density: 3,140 residential units (single family attached and detached), over 1.7 million square feet of office space, and over 181,000 square feet of retail.

Maple Lawn Farms is a mixed-use community strategically located between Columbia and Silver Spring, Maryland next to Route 29, between MD Rte. 216 and Johns Hopkins Road. It was designed to be a “smart growth” community where residents live within walking distance of shopping and dining, work and recreational activities.  Maple Lawn Farms had long been a working farm that was to be developed conceptually as a Traditional Neighborhood Development within a phased mixed-use subdivision. This early planning was critical to establish project densities and a framework for a business district, where the majority of the office and retail areas would be located, and its relationship to five residential neighborhoods to be built around it. Maple Lawn would go through the longest Planning Board approval process to date, taking into consideration, the many concerns of the adjacent subdivisions, neighbors and regulatory agencies. In the end, the project’s approved Comprehensive Sketch Plan established twelve construction phases and the amount of development that could occur in each. The site had a number of physical features to consider, among them, a PEPCO right-of-way, the Hammond Branch of the Little Patuxent River, and variable topography.  Of particular concern for the GLW team was that the planning, design and subsequent construction had to allow for the farming operations to continue on land to be developed in later phases of the project.

GLW has extensive experience navigating through the Howard County entitlement process. In 1996, GLW, along with a team of design professionals, began the process of land planning and engineering to create a new town community called Maple Lawn that wove together a fabric of various types of market driven residential dwellings with required services and amenities for not only its residents but also neighboring communities.  The various components of Maple Lawn are interconnected by an extensive pathway system within a dedicated public open space of over 187 acres. Our designers crafted open spaces with appropriate siting of stormwater management facilities, sensitive treatment of environmental areas (steep slopes and stream valleys), and passive and active recreational facilities such as plazas and squares, playgrounds, and a dog park. A community recreation center was located as a central focal point and included a 14,000 sf meeting facility and a 5 acre park with formal gardens, a fountain, tennis and basketball courts, playground, picnic pavilion and open recreation space.