The Montgomery County Planning Commission Board has approved construction plans for a development on a plot of land right across from WJ.

The Rock Spring Centre (RSC) will be located in the northeast quadrant of the intersection of Rock Spring Drive and Rockledge Drive and will include a 17-story tower, a 20-story tower and more than 3,100 parking spaces. These towers will include retail, office, restaurant and garden apartments. Construction is due to start in 2013, with a likely extension to 2015.

What people in the community are worried about is how the new center will affect the landscape of the area.

“I would welcome the Planning Board to come sit in my car with me when I am running errands, picking up and dropping off kids at a nearby preschool, and Holy Cross, or trying to get down Old Georgetown Rd at 5:00 p.m. and tell me then that there is no need for concern over the traffic impact and that not much has changed since 1999,” said Jennifer Gentile, who attended the meeting at the Montgomery County Planning Commission Board.

Construction is innately tied with traffic, so this issue of traffic congestion on Old Georgetown Rd. and surrounding side streets was addressed at the meeting.

“The plans for RSC date back, in part, to 1992,”said Lynda Grahill, another parent who attended the meeting. “The last approval, for which time runs out in 2013 unless the extension is approved, dates to 1999. These approvals give RSC ‘permission’ for about 4,000 ‘trips’ in the evening rush hour — that’s another 4,000 cars on the road in front of WJ.”

There was also a public hearing with the Montgomery County Council on March 1 to discuss legislation that would allow developers with currently approved plans another two years to get final approvals and start construction.

“Of five people offering public testimony at the public hearing, I had the lone voice of dissent on the extension,” said Grahill.

Being so close to WJ, the landscape around the school may appear to look as it did during the school’s renovation.

The Maryland Department of Transportation has weighed in, declaring that RSC cannot be built without a fence, with a minimum height of six feet, erected down the length of Rock Spring Drive in the median.

“That’s a huge fence in the middle of road in front of WJ — just so you students feel a little more like prisoners I suppose,” said Grahill.