With farms disappearing, there is little ‘rural’ to preserve

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

I find it disturbing that the Sandy Spring Ashton Rural Preservation Consortium, which claims to be trying to preserve Ashton, is so vehemently opposed to the development of the Ashton Meeting Place when some of its own members have sold off much of their land to housing developers, which created the need for a shopping center.

Over the years, farms such as the Cedars, Auburn, Mount Airy, Clifton, Spring Lawn, Crestleigh (now Avonleigh), Tanglewood and others have been sold to make way for housing projects. The former owners of some of these properties have lined their pockets, and are now crying foul when a developer is trying to meet the needs of a community that is bursting at the seams with housing.

Ashton is being sold farm by farm, lot by lot, by the very people who are saying they are trying to preserve it. This is what is destroying the rural character of this town. Without farms, how can you even call Ashton a rural town?

I have lived here for more than 45 years, and have seen this town change from a sleepy crossroads village to a bustling town.

I would love for things to be the way they were, but they are not, and the sooner we all start living in the present, with our eyes on the future of this town, the better off we will be.

Tedd Conner, Ashton