The following analysis feature was part of a special magazine-style publication called "Delmarva Millennium, Volume II, published in December 1999 by Thomson-Chesapeake.

It was titled "Growing Pains -- Can Delmarva's quality of life survive?"

By Terry Plowman

Imagine, if you can, all the people in Maryland's Worcester and Wicomico Counties and on Virginia's Eastern Shore.

 
 
 
 

This aerial photo of Fenwick Island, Del., is just one example of how people are crowding onto the Delmarva Peninsula.
 
 
 
 
 

Imagine a crowd equal to that number -- about 165,000 people -- moving to Delmarva. That is how many morepeople will call the peninsula home by 2020, according to population projections. And that's just permanent residents -- the annual tourist population, already in the tens of millions, is also expected to increase.

What will be the effects of that population growth?

Well, for one thing, it will be great for businesses, because all those people will buy things -- clothes and cars, food and furniture, telephones and TVs. But they won't be just consumers of goods -- they will also consume land, water and space on local highways, in schools and on waterways.

While contibuting to the region's economy, they will also contribute to its air pollution, water pollution and the "visual" pollution that can result when one poorly planned housing development after another sprawls across the rural landscape.

It may sound grim (and it is to many conservationists), but those who write growth-management plans are hopeful, even optimistic, that Delmarva can head off at least some of the negative effects of the projected increase in its population.

Managing growth

"Nobody can afford the old way of doing things," says Mark Gradecak, a planner with the Upper Eastern Shore office of Maryland's Office of Planning. He's talking about the rapid development of Delmarva's historically agricultural lands. "We're experiencing a new way of doing business [regarding development]," he says, as he runs down a list of government tools available to address the Shore's growing pains: "smart-growth" policies, new county comprehensive plans, revised zoning ordinances, farmland preservation programs, planning "visions" and the like.

"I'm optimistic that these tools will be effective," Gradecak says. But he notes that government has to find a balance between the public good and private property rights, an issue that is at the core of most debates over development. When government tries to restrict development in certain areas, for example, some property owners may feel cheated of their right to use, or sell, their property as they wish -- especially when zoning laws (or easy-to-get exceptions to those laws) have previously allowed development on those lands.

Using government tools to preserve a state's quality of life while protecting citizens' property rights isn't easy. "Finding that balance is an art," Gradecak says -- and many Delmarva residents believe that the peninsula's future hinges on that art.

State planners in Delaware recently discovered how difficult it can be to forge a vision for the the future when they released a plan designed to guide development in the 21st century. Some officials and citizens in Sussex County, Delaware's largely rural southern county, blasted the plan, which outlines where the state will support development with taxpayer-funded "infrastructure" (roads and sewer systems, for example). They said the state's development plans are too restrictive and unrealistic, given that Sussex County is one of the fastest-growing counties on the peninsula -- its population, already the highest of any county in lower Delmarva, is expected to grow by almost 24 percent in the next 20 years.

But David S. Hugg III, Delaware's planning coordinator, defends the plan, saying that the state's designated growth areas would more than accomodate projected population increases. Hugg says Sussex County has planned for more development than it needs, and he maintains that managed growth is the only way to protect both the state's economy and its quality of life in the 21st century.

'Smart growth'

Delaware's plan for managing growth joins other state and county plans on Delmarva that call for limits on "suburban sprawl" -- that effect of population growth so vividly described by Edward T. McMahon in Land Development magazine: "Since the 1950s, the centrifugal forces of sprawl have blurred the distinction between city and countryside, taking all the elements that once made up human settlements -- homes, schools, shops, offices, factories and so forth -- and flinging them randomly across the landscape."

Planners in almost every county on Delmarva are advocating a radical departure from this development pattern. They encourage (or in some cases require) future development to be concentrated in areas that are already developed, where roads, schools, sewer systems and such already exist. They advocate limits on large-lot, single-family-home developments, instead suggesting mixed-use clusters -- a concept that combines homes, apartments, stores, offices and open space in a sort of traditional "village." But despite the popularity of this idea among planners, many Delmarva counties have zoning laws and other restrictions that make the cluster concept difficult to implement.

Some average citizens have a hard time imagining that this idealistic concept will come to pass on Delmarva. For example, Joe Meyers, a Sussex County resident 20 years ago and now an annual summer visitor, thinks a more realistic vision of the southern half of the peninsula is one of a giant megalopolis, as developing areas outside towns such as Salisbury and Berlin, Md., Seaford and Georgetown, Del., and the peninsula's oceanfront resorts spread out and begin to merge. It may take 50 years, but it's inevitable, Meyers predicts.

The changing landscape

Even with planners' efforts to curb sprawl on Delmarva, conservationists would be dismayed to learn that thousands of acres of the landscape is already designated for development. Although most of those designated acres surround existing developed areas, where construction is a familiar sight, it will still be startling when houses, stores or other structures appear in previously open or forested areas. This change in Delmarva's scenery is one of the few certainties in its future.

Just as it was startling years ago to see a row of high-rises appear on the Ocean City, Md., skyline, or the hundreds of outlet stores on farmland along Route 1 near Rehoboth Beach, residents may be surprised to discover that current zoning already allows future development in areas that look rural today.

Few citizens pay attention to the arcane work of planning commissions, but if they did, they would see maps in most Delmarva counties showing designated development zones extending far out from town centers.

One example of an already-developed area that is destined for even more development is the Route 1 resort corridor between Lewes and Rehoboth Beach, Del. A study by the Citizens Coalition, a Lewes-based non-profit watchdog organization, found that until 1996 one million square feet of retail space had been built along Route 1, and another million square feet was built by 1998. Yet, at least 1.7 million square feet of retail space could still be built along Route 1. "Sadly, the unfettered growth continues," says Mike Tyler, president of the Citizens Coalition. "And it's robbing coastal Sussex of its sense of place."

But others, like Bill Lingo, of Lingo Real Estate in Rehoboth Beach, see development on Delmarva in a more positive light. A Sussex County native, and a broker of many of the land deals that have spurred construction along Route 1, Lingo maintains that commercial development provides a brighter future for year-round residents. "Local kids used to have to leave the area to find decent jobs, and people who grew up here couldn't afford to stay here -- now there are more job opportunities and available housing. There are also more opportunities for older people to supplement their income," Lingo says.

Lingo, who has also brokered many of the sales of open lands for protection by state agencies, points out that Delmarva's booming economy helps generate government surpluses that can be used for such purchases. "There's more (government) money to protect natural areas, to buy development rights, and to help build sewer systems that protect our groundwater," Lingo says.

And he maintains that the resort area's tourism industry and second-home markets have in fact improved the area's quality of life by replacing noxious industries such as fish- and clam-processing. "Just ask the old-timers in Lewes," he says, "and they'll tell you that what kind of day you had depended on which way the wind was blowing."

Is there a limit?

If there's one point on which growth's proponents and opponents agree it is that Delmarva's population will undoubtedly increase. Where their points of view diverge is on the question of limits.

Proponents of growth say a balance can be achieved between the negative effects and the economic benefits of population increases. People concerned about uncontrolled growth are skeptical of that view. Environmental writer and Delmarva resident Tom Horton writes in his 1987 book Bay Country: "I wonder sometimes whether the boomers of such continued progress wouldn't have sunk Noah's Ark, trying to add more cabins on the deck."

Can Delmarva grow, can its standard of living improve, without ruining its natural attractions? Horton writes: "More people (come to Delmarva) seeking the best of both worlds -- and scarecely one among them does not earnestly subscribe to balancing the developed with the natural. It is a curious kind of balance, though, that must be refigured, however minutely, every time another soul is added to the watershed. Each time it is struck anew, we seem to be left with a little more concrete and a little less nature."

Today, Horton's 1987 observations about growth on Delmarva remain timely. "But I hope they're not timeless," he said recently.

Horton says he's pessimistic about the short-term outlook for Delmarva because of the current trend toward overdevelopment of open space. "I'm hopeful in the long term though, because a greater number of people see there is a better way to do things. (The problem is) I don't see that kind of thinking in the forefront," he says.

That better way, according to Horton and many planners on Delmarva, is more compact development that incorporates open space and clustered housing -- but builders often say that buyers prefer widely spaced single-family-home developments. Horton believes that would change if home buyers saw well-designed, innovative examples of more compact development.

"Unfortunately, there's not a single example that really demonstrates how lovely living could be in a more compact setting," Horton says. The answer, he says, is a new look at restrictions that work against cutting-edge cluster developments -- for example, some zoning laws prohibit mixed uses, some building codes require too-large dwellings and some fire companies fight against narrow streets or structures built close together. "We need a fundamental shift in the way we think (so that) 'compact is good,'" Horton says.

Although the argument over Delmarva's development continues, those on both sides may be finding more common ground as the 21st century approaches.

John Burris, president of the Delaware State Chamber of Commerce and an outspoken booster of economic growth, makes no bones about the need to "wake up to the fact that we can't develop every acre of land and still preserve our quality of life."

"We are clearly aware that one of the biggest ingredients in good economic growth is a good quality of life," Burris says. "It's critical that we find a balance."

Burris cautions that mistakes made today will have long-lasting effects. "The way Delmarva looks in 2010 or 2020 depends on how government today handles land use and infrastructure. We have to be smart in our growth -- we can't have growth for growth's sake."

But Burris notes that making the tough decisions about land use, about sprawl, about how to manage Delmarva's inevitable population growth will require one thing: "a lot of political courage."

And that's one thing that conservationists worry is in short supply as Delmarva approaches the 21st century.

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