Yes. The two overarching visions of the Comprehensive Plan are to preserve the county’s rural character and direct growth to designated areas. The town centers are the designated growth areas as called for in the 1983 Calvert County Comprehensive Plan. To meet the Comprehensive Plan visions, one objective is ensuring our town centers are attractive, convenient and interesting places to live, work and shop.The current Comprehensive Plan update draft aims to better define town center boundaries by considering existing land use patterns, the size of the core community, the roadway network, utility extension policies, preservation priorities and environmental constraints.
New boundaries would simply include areas that naturally enhance the town centers; that is, the boundary now follows the natural parcel boundary lines. Redefining these boundaries will make future development in these locations more predictable and better identified with the associated town center. Using this method, the town centers of Solomons, Huntingtown, Lusby, Owings, Prince Frederick and St. Leonard would expand. Dunkirk Town Center is not expanding.
While the plan draft recommends expansions of some town centers, it does not automatically expand the boundaries. That can only be done through zoning amendments which involves a full public process.