More than 600 homes, new retail space and the threat of overburdened roads and schools are all too much for the New Town property now occupied by the historic Plinlimmon farmhouse, some residents say.

The county held two community input meetings on the Planned Unit Development, after residents criticized the first one as lacking in information.

Two weeks ago, several residents met with community planner David Green and Debbie Risper, legislative aide for Councilman Ken Oliver, to again discuss their concerns.

Several community leaders say they will keep pressing officials to enforce existing zoning instead of making an exception for the project.

As a PUD, the Plinlimmon project must be approved by the Planning Board instead of going through the county's regular development process and is not required to conform to existing zoning.

In addition to concerns over traffic and schools, the residents claim the community would derive no benefit from the project, as is required by PUD legislation passed by the county last year.

J. Michael Collins, a Reisterstown resident, said developer Steven Weinstein plans to build three ball fields as the community-benefit piece, but the land under the planned fields runs over an interstate gas line, restricting anything from being built on it.

"Basically what we are going to have is 14 acres of grass that the county is going to be responsible to cut," Collins said. "We are tired of our communities getting beat up by developers."

Robert Hoffman, the attorney for Weinstein, said he believes his client is only forbidden to grade and build structures on the portion of land with the gas line, but it can be used for ball fields.

"As long as you can stay within the requirements, it is usable open space," he said.

George Harman, president of the Reisterstown-Owings Mills-Glyndon Coordinating Council, said veering from the current zoning worries neighbors.

"Everyone is very concerned when a development comes in with as much as 50 percent more housing units than the zoning allows," he said.

The 104-acre property currently is zoned for a maximum of 3.5 homes per acre.

"What benefit is there to the community?" he said, adding that he believes PUDs get approved by the county too soon after the community input meetings.

"We would like, as a community, to see a stronger or more direct opportunity into the process before it gets to the community input meeting step. That seems to have maybe been a shortsighted element of the PUD process."

At the second community input meeting May 28, Weinstein showed residents a revised version of his plan. It includes a reduction in the number of homes from 750 to 642, a 2.2 increase in open space and a 50 percent decrease in retail space, to 12,000 total square feet.

The revised version, however, has yet to be seen by the Planning Board.

Hoffman said he is unsure when engineers plan to send the revised version to planning staff, but they do intend to submit it.

County officials had many issues with Weinstein's original plan and requested a long list of changes during a Jan. 14 development review hearing. They wanted him to reduce the number of housing units, increase the amount of open space, improve the quality of building materials and redesign several roads.

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