Just what Urbana doesn’t need.

Gaithersburg became a defacto suburb of Washington in 1873, when the B&O railroad built a station there and commuters began using the precursor of MARC’s Brunswick line to ride to and from Washington. For about the next century, Gaithersburg was the end of the Washington metropolis. Then in the 1970s, suburban sprawl finally passed far-flung Gaithersburg, and Germantown began to develop as the new end-of-the-world. In the 1980s and 90s, Maryland did better at controlling leap frog sprawl than Virginia, so that even in those fast-spreading days, Germantown remained the edge of the built-up area. As of the 2000 Census, the population of the next town out, Clarksburg, remained below 2, 000. One had to go all the way to Frederick before reaching anything of notable size.

And then things began to change. Clarksburg Town Center and the Villages of Urbana began construction, and suddenly the 15 miles along I-270 between Germantown and Frederick began to transition from rural to suburban. But still, that transition has up until now been relatively benign, as such things go. Both Clarksburg and Urbana share at least some walkable new urbanist qualities, and their combined population probably remains below 10, 000 (that’s a guess, but it seems reasonable). There have been no shopping malls or power centers in either; no pending edge cities to push growth yet further out, nor any big draw to bring shoppers from further in.

Well get ready to rethink life in the upper I-270 corridor, because Frederick County just approved a giant outlet mall in Urbana (link fixed). 600, 000 square feet on more than 200 acres. Think Leesburg Corner and Hagerstown Prime.

BeyondDC loves cheap shopping as much as anyone, but an outlet mall in Urbana will be the anchor for the biggest round of sprawl Maryland has seen this century. One big mall will induce a succession of strip centers and subdivisions, so that before long Urbana and Clarksburg look pretty much like every other suburb in America. As a result of this, the rural tier between Frederick and Germantown will disappear forever. More people will drive further to shop, live and commute than they do now, resulting in more pollution and more congestion. And with a hearty helping of strip malls all the way to DC, Frederick itself won’t seem so far away psychologically, and can probably expect a bump in its own demand for new housing.

Isn’t Maryland supposed to be the Smart Growth state? What happened?