The role of Chevy Chase's exclusive Columbia Country Club in
orchestrating opposition to the Purple Line has been
unmasked by a leaked March 24 letter from
club president J. Paul McNamara. The letter reveals a plan
to "launch a grassroots campaign to identify and
organize a broad and diverse coalition of opponents to the
current proposal for the Purple Line."
"The only grass roots at Columbia Country Club grow in
the fairways," commented Karren Pope-Onwukwe, co-chair
of Prince
George's Advocates for Community-based Transportation.
The club charges an initiation fee of $70,000.
The schemes revealed by the McNamara letter are only the
most recent in a chain of deceptive tactics used to keep the
Purple Line off abandoned railroad tracks that adjoin the
country club's golf course. The club initially tried to
exclude the public altogether by creating a nature reserve.
When that gambit failed, the golfers reversed course and adopted the
disguise of hikers and bikers who want to preserve trees
along their trail.
In a January 13 letter to
the Montgomery County Council, club president McNamara
identified himself not as a golfer, but as a "trail
user" who "would be distressed to see this natural
Trail degraded and the surrounding mature forest
destroyed..." McNamara is chairman of Potomac
Capital Advisors, which is currently promoting a
plan to build factories and warehouses on 94 acres of
Frederick County farmland.
The
McNamara letter does not reveal how much the club is
spending, but the expenditure will not be small. Not enough
money could be found in an annual budget of more than ten
million dollars, and the club is therefore drawing from its
capital reserves.
