Owings Mills to gain a 125-acre new
development at Delight Quarry.

Delightful Development

Owings Mills to gain a 125-acre new development at Delight Quarry.

A mixed-used development will be built at the Delight Quarry, in Owings Mills. The development will be a smaller version of the Greenspring Quarry in Pikesville. Both sites are owned by the Arundel Corporation.

Like the Pikesville project, the Owings Mills one will see residential and commercial buildings clustered around a quarry that is being allowed to fill in and become a lake.

Steven Koren, head of Koren Development Co., said that he has notified Baltimore County officials and County Councilmen that the plan, which dates to 1992, has been activated.

The Columbia-based Koren Development Company is partnering with the Sparks-based Arundel Corporation, just as it did with the Greenspring Quarry, officially called Quarry Lake at Greenspring.

Mr. Koren said he expects to review the plan with community leaders in early 2008, and to officially submit it to the county in February.

The 125-acre Delight Quarry site is bounded by Berrymans Lane, Franklin Boulevard, Red Run Boulevard and Nicodemus Road. It is near the newly-built Garrison police precinct/fire station and the Soldiers Delight Natural Environmental Area, a state nature preserve and public park, in what was once a rural area.

The development plan was originally proposed in 1992, and amended in 2002. It is subject to covenants that were reached with neighbors, including: the Soldier’s Delight Conservatory; a friends-of group; Berrymans Farm Community Association; Black Forest Neighborhood Association; Kiwanis Club of Reisterstown; and the Reisterstown-Owings Mills-Glyndon Coordinating Council (ROG).

George Harman, ROG president, said the plan now calls for 75 single-family houses, 66 townhouses and 150 elderly housing units, along with an office/retail “village center” and other commercial uses.

An earlier plan called for a slightly larger development –– 100 single-family homes, 120 townhouses and 256 apartments along with an 80,000-square foot village center and an eight-acre recreation area. However, after meeting with County Councilman T. Bryan McIntire (R-3rd), whose district then included the Delight Quarry, Arundel officials agreed to reduce the project.
Because of subsequent changes in councilmanic district boundaries, the Delight Quarry is now located in Countil Councilman Kenneth Oliver’s Fourth District.

Mr. Oliver, who has met with Mr. Koren, said the plan “was not approved under me. But from what I’ve seen of it so far, I like it.”

Mr. Koren said he is almost finished with the reclamation plan, a federally-approved plan that allows him to ready the land for another use.

“We have to take care of the slopes and the unstable material” that resulted from the site being used for mining purposes, said Mr. Koren, who undertook a similar process at Greenspring.

The zoning, a mix of low- and townhouse-density residential as well as business and office/residential, already is in place, he added.

The 23-acre Delight Quarry is filling naturally. Unlike the Greenspring Quarry, in which streams were diverted for that purpose, Mr. Koren said that existing streams in Owings Mills be left alone. He met with the County’s Department of Environmental Protection and Resource Management on the matter.

By comparison, the 258-acre Greenspring Quarry has almost 600 residences, a 40-acre lake and commercial uses.

After the Delight Quarry plan is submitted to the county, it will probably take 12 to 18 months to grade the site and install the infrastructure, he said. After that, construction can begin. Rather than being built in stages, he is shooting for one project, as happened at the Greenspring Quarry.

It is too soon to tell who will be building the residential and commercial portions of the plan, he said.

To learn more about Koren Development, please call (410) 740-1010.

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