SILVER SPRING, Md. (Map, News) - Silver Spring residents are coming out with strong objections to the mixed-use downtown development that will house Montgomery County Park and Planning’s headquarters, complaining to the county executive that planners will soon ask for $9 million in design funds before the public has adequately weighed in.

Once finished somewhere around 2010, the SilverPlace Project will include 358 mixed-income residential units, retail space for shops, cafes, restaurants and a grocery store, as well as a new nine-story facility for Park and Planning.

Joe Anderson, of the Woodside Station Homeowners Association in Silver Spring, said his 200-home association is not against building the agency’s headquarters on Georgia Avenue as part of the development.

But the envisioned project design is not what many community members want and, in spite of this, the development is proceeding without needed citizen input, Anderson said.

And, he said, with Park and Planning serving as the benefactor and regulator, there’s a need for set citizen input in the form of a dedicated committee to balance out any potential conflicts of interest.

“We are asking that no further public monies be appropriated until a community advisory group has been appointed to participate in the design process,” the homeowners group wrote Wednesday in a letter to County Executive Ike Leggett. “This is the stage where community input can be most meaningful and cost effective in helping to develop the design specifications.”

Project Manager Mike Riley recently said Park and Planning would make a $9 million funding request to the County Council for preliminary designs, which is worrying residents even more.

Planning spokeswoman Valerie Berton said the Planning Board has made “no firm decisions about the design” and has yet to set a date about when to request the appropriation.

As for the conflict of interest allegations, Berton wrote in an e-mail to The Examiner that the Planning Board is committed to developing a model project that enhances neighborhoods within the central business district.

“[We] plan to go far and beyond what’s typical to keep the community involved,” she wrote.

The county’s Planning Commission purchased the land for the project nearly a decade ago and has since approved the basic development. Final cost figures and designs will not emerge until at least next year.

dlevitz@dcexaminer.com