Appeals Court Hears Loyola Retreat Case

By Caryn Tamber

The battle over Loyola College of Maryland’s plans to build a religious retreat center in Parkton reached the state’s second- highest court Wednesday.

For more than five years, neighbors have been fighting a special exception for the retreat, saying it would hurt local farms, damage the environment and snarl traffic in northern Baltimore County.

While Loyola received a special exception to build the retreat, that decision was reversed last year by Baltimore County Circuit Judge Ruth A. Jakubowski – the ruling now under review by the Court of Special Appeals.

The main dispute at oral arguments was over what Loyola was required to prove about the proposed retreat’s impact on the neighborhood.

A lawyer for the neighbors, who call themselves Citizens Against Loyola Multi-use Center (CALM), argued that the 1981 Court of Appeals case of Schultz v. Pritts requires a property owner applying for a special exception to show that the impact of the proposed development would be no greater at the proposed site than it would be on other land zoned the same.

“I don’t think that’s what Schultz says,” Judge Sally D. Adkins told the lawyer, G. Macy Nelson of Towson.

A lawyer for Loyola, James A. Dunbar of Venable, argued that Loyola only had to prove that the retreat would have less impact on its surroundings than a college or school, in general, inherently would have in the same zone. There is no requirement to examine specific sites elsewhere in the zone, he said.

“Under that standard, it would be very difficult for a college looking to build a retreat off its campus to lose,” Adkins remarked.

Dunbar replied that Adkins was correct, and that that’s the way it should be. He told the panel, which also included Judges Mary Ellen Barbera and Timothy E. Meredith, that Loyola’s retreat would be “the most innocuous, lightest-footprint, least obtrusive use” possible under the “schools and colleges” special exception category.

Loyola has always argued that its students would go to the retreat for prayer and introspection, not for partying and joy- riding around the local roads. Loyola would use the building for less than half the year and mainly on weekends, the school has said.

Dunbar argued that CALM’s reading of Schultz would be almost impossible to meet, requiring a special-exception applicant to research acres of land in other parts of the county that are zoned the same.

“Just because it’s a rural area doesn’t mean you go all the way to Harford County,” Dunbar said. “That’s the analysis they want you to do.”

Baltimore County People’s Counsel Peter Max Zimmerman, who joined CALM in its challenge of Loyola’s special exception, argued that the Board of Appeals was at least required to consider the retreat’s potential impact on other sites in the “neighborhood” but that it did not. It did not even define the neighborhood, he said.

Barbera asked whether the Court of Special Appeals owes deference to the board in that respect.

“It’s up to the board, is it not, to determine what the neighborhood would be in an R.C. 2 zone?” She asked.

“Within reasonable bounds,” Zimmerman said.

Water issue

The parties also touched briefly on a second issue, the proper standard for calculating the retreat’s proposed water usage.

Zimmerman argued that the Board of appeals allowed Loyola to underestimate usage by taking an annual average. He said Jakubowski should have rejected that analysis as misleading because there will be a lot of water used during retreat weekends and none at other times.

(c) 2007 The Daily Record (Baltimore). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.