Walk to the end of New London Drive on the east side of Brickyard Road and the pavement just stops. No barricade, no turnaround, just asphalt giving way to trees about 400 feet past the intersection. It has looked that way for as long as most people driving past can remember. That dead end is not an accident of road planning left unfinished. It is the reason a cluster of homes tucked off Brickyard Road, including the estate lots of Mazza Woods, have stayed as quiet as they have.
That is about to change, and the reason has nothing to do with a highway project or a developer buying up the neighborhood. It comes down to three new houses.
Two Roads In, By Design
The privacy that defines this stretch of Potomac is not incidental. According to the Montgomery County Planning Board's own staff report on the matter, the area currently has only two points of access, a structural fact that has shaped everything from delivery traffic to how emergency vehicles reach the far end of the community. A neighborhood with two ways in and out behaves differently than one with three or four. Fewer cut-through options mean fewer strangers, fewer wrong turns, and a slower, more predictable rhythm of who's actually driving down your street.
That two-access layout is also incomplete. New London Drive exists today in two segments between Brickyard Road and Natelli Woods Lane, with the western stretch terminating approximately 400 feet east of Brickyard Road. It has sat unfinished long enough that most residents likely think of the gap as permanent.
The Case That Started With Three Houses
The completion of that gap traces back to a single property: a 6.64-acre parcel at the intersection of Brickyard Road and New London Drive, described in county filings as sitting southwest of the Rock Run Stream Valley, southwest of the TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm Golf Course, and southeast of the River Falls Community Center. The owner filed to subdivide that single lot, which held one house and a detached garage, into three.
The Planning Board approved the request under Administrative Subdivision Plan No. 620230150, known in the case file as Brickyard Estates. The resolution is specific about what triggered the road completion requirement: the new lots would be configured to create three parallel lots fronting the new street connection of New London Drive to Brickyard Road, a layout the Board found preserved the most existing tree canopy of any alternative it reviewed.
Here is the timeline, pieced together from the public record:
| Date | Milestone |
|---|---|
| March 28, 2023 | Applicant files Traffic Exemption Statement for the subdivision |
| February 2024 | Planning staff issues its report recommending approval |
| April 2024 | Planning Board approves Administrative Subdivision Plan No. 620230150 (MCPB No. 24-029) |
| February 2026 | Montgomery County issues a building contractor license tied to a Brickyard-area LLC at a New London Drive address |
The Math Behind "Fewer Than 50 Trips"
It would be easy to assume a new road connection means new traffic pressure on a street that has never had to handle much of it. The numbers say otherwise, at least for now. The applicant's traffic exemption statement showed the three-lot subdivision would generate fewer than 50 peak-hour person trips, with a maximum of two net-new person trips in the morning peak and three in the evening peak. Because that falls under the county's threshold, the project was exempt from Local Area Transportation Review and further transportation adequacy analysis.
Three new households generating two or three extra trips at rush hour is not going to change the character of Brickyard Road. What it does is complete a piece of road grid that has been sitting half built for years, and once a road is built, it stays built regardless of how many trips triggered its construction. The three houses are the mechanism. The permanent second connection into the neighborhood is the outcome.
What Construction Looks Like From the Driveway
The approval spells out exactly how this gets built, and it is worth knowing before survey stakes and construction crews show up unannounced. New London Drive currently has no drainage or pedestrian facilities along the property frontage, and the same is true of Brickyard Road itself. The new connection will be built to a total right-of-way width of seventy feet and will include a 5-foot sidewalk along the property frontage on New London Drive, something neither road has today.
The county also tied the timing directly to the builder's own permits. Before the applicant can pull a building permit for the second of the three new homes, they must obtain construction permits and post bonds for the construction of New London Drive Extended, with MCDOT approval. And before that second home can legally be occupied, New London Drive must be constructed and open to traffic with MCDOT and MCDPS approval. In other words, the road doesn't get finished on its own schedule. It gets finished because someone wants to move into house number two.
That is likely why Montgomery County's business licensing records show activity now rather than in 2024, when the case was approved. A building contractor's license was issued in February 2026 to an entity tied to Brickyard Road, listing a New London Drive address in Potomac. Nothing in the public record confirms road construction has started, but a contractor license appearing at that address roughly two years after approval is the kind of signal that suggests the project has moved from paperwork into active building.
Why the County Wanted This in the First Place
None of this happened because Brickyard Road needed more capacity. The Planning Board's own language frames the benefit almost entirely in terms of the people who already live there:
"The low-density nature and relative seclusion of the neighborhood means that most beneficiaries...will be residents."
The stated rationale leans on two things. First, walkability. Completing the connection will significantly reduce walking and biking distance and time to access points and communities to the west, a nod to both the 2002 Potomac Subregion Master Plan and the county's newer Thrive 2050 policy, which recommend the completion of new road connections to improve access, particularly for cyclists and pedestrians. Second, emergency access. County planners noted the new connection would function as a third access point for contingencies, reducing driving distance in an emergency, on top of improving bike and pedestrian routes across what is currently, per the same filing, a major hurdle for cyclists and pedestrians.
What This Means If You're Already Here
If you live on Brickyard Road, New London Drive, or in the Mazza Woods enclave nearby, the two-access layout you've grown used to was never a permanent feature. It was a gap in the grid that the county always intended to close, and a three-lot subdivision finally gave it a reason to. The traffic impact from the houses themselves will be negligible. The sidewalk, the wider right-of-way, and the permanent second way in and out are the parts that outlast this one project.
None of that changes what makes this part of Potomac worth living in. It just means the seclusion has a shelf life tied to county paperwork rather than to the land itself, and that paperwork is now a couple of years old and showing signs of movement. If you want to track it yourself, the Planning Board's staff report and the final approval resolution are both public documents, and Montgomery County's contractor licensing data updates as new permits are issued.
If you have questions about how a project like this could affect a home you own or one you're watching in this part of Potomac, I'm happy to talk through what I know. Ted Duncan has followed this stretch of Brickyard Road for decades and can help you separate what's actually changing from what just looks like it is. Let's Connect.
