Politics & Government

Community Voices Concerns with Brickyard Road Project, Contributes to RFP

At Thursday's public meeting about the Brickyard Road Soccer Field project, many county residents had an opportunity to list details they would like to see in the RFP.

Many concerned citizens had an opportunity to offer input on the Request For Proposal (RFP) that will go out for the 20-acre plot of land on Brickyard Road at a , yet many said they felt county officials were still circumventing the appropriate government process.

In early March, the Board of Education currently used by Nick Maravell, who has on Brickyard Road for 31 years. After the county signed the 10-year lease in April following a , the Department of General Services is working to draft a RFP that will be prepared for solicitation of private non-profit developers.

The second public meeting about the Brickyard Road Soccer Field project invited attendees to voice their opinions, concerns or questions about the project in the gymnasium of the . They could also choose to break up into smaller groups to talk about details that should be included in the RFP.

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Attendees could sit in on work sessions and offer input about traffic and parking, operation of the fields, the fields’ design, complementary amenities or environmental impacts. 

The recorded comments received during the work sessions will be transcribed and some of the ideas will factor into the draft of the RFP, said Director of the Department of General Services, David Dise. Once transcriptions of the comments are finished, they will be available on the project’s website for the community to see, he added.

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“We are going to organize the input into core thoughts and list some of them as requirements in the RFP,” Dise said. “We got some great comments about what people do want to see and don’t want to see.”

Although there is not a timeline for the draft RFP’s completion, Dise said the final RFP will be posted online and will be advertised to private non-profit developers for at least 30 days. The project still needs to go before the Planning Board — something that County Spokesperson Patrick Lacefield said is "not happening anytime soon.”

While several soccer coaches and soccer families from MSI Soccer -- a league that has been accused of knowing about the county’s intentions before Maravell was informed -- attended the meeting, supporters of Nick’s Organic Farm came out in full force. Many attendees asserted that it is not a fight for soccer fields versus an organic farm—it’s a fight for a fair process and government transparency.

"It's not that we're against soccer and soccer people can not be against organic farming. That's not the issue," said Potomac resident Elie Cain. "The issue is the process here and we want that to be considered."


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