A 107-unit, $55 million development is an act of trust. The most reliable evidence of what a development team will deliver is what it has delivered before. This page reviews the public record on the previous projects tied to the people behind the Burdette proposal: the engineer of record, the named developer, and the man behind the financing. County hearing transcripts, court records, corporate filings. Where the record is an allegation rather than a finding, we say so.
The applicant of record is Olympus Real Estate, LLC. The county's development database identifies the applicant as "Olympus Real Estate LLC (contract purchaser Brian Gallagher)." The January 27, 2026 Development Review Committee agenda lists "APPLICANT: Brian Gallagher; ENGINEER: Dean Packard." Those two men, one the named developer and one the engineer of record, are the people this page is about.
The paperwork also contains a wrinkle worth knowing. The traffic study's scoping form, signed by county and state staff, names a different developer, "Brian Kim; AGC - Damascus, LLC," and the project's noise study says AGC contracted the work. The full paper trail is on The Case page. Here we stick to the two principals the county's own agendas name.
The engineer of record on the Burdette proposal, Dean Packard, PE, is the managing member of Garrett Gateway Partners, LLC, the developer of a 19-unit "Design for Life" townhouse community at 7009 Garrett Road in Derwood. The conditional use was granted in December 2016. Nearly a decade later the project is still not finished, and since February 2024 it has been under a county show-cause enforcement proceeding, OZAH case CU-16-11, over unfinished construction the county deemed unsafe. Packard has appeared throughout the proceedings. The transcripts are public, and they are best read in his own words.
"I made a terrible mistake of signing over all the rights and responsibilities to Legend Builders, which doesn't absolve me from any responsibility, but it removed the control of the development of the site from my ability."Dean Packard, CU-16-11 show-cause hearing, July 12, 2024
"Over a million and a half dollars were lost due to a hundred different reasons, including, you know, the economic conditions and so on and so forth. And it got to the point where all the money ran out of Garrett Gateway Partners."Dean Packard, CU-16-11 show-cause hearing, July 12, 2024
In December 2024, with the county estimating about $1,037,000 still needed to finish the site against roughly $100,000 in bonding, an amount the county's witness called "off by an order of magnitude," Packard promised the hearing examiner that within 30 days the lights would be on, the concrete poured and repaired, and the paving top-coated. He added: "I'm just praying to God every day everything keeps going the way I hope." The examiner was unconvinced: "You told me certain things were going to be done by this date and they weren't."
"We used the first funding to pay for attorneys and legal costs to get all these agreements in place and to pay for the paving and the underground wiring and everything that we did before. So all that's been paid and taken care of, and now we need the next $50,000 to move forward."Dean Packard, CU-16-11 hearing, December 19, 2024
"I'm just praying to God every day everything keeps going the way I hope."Dean Packard, CU-16-11 hearing, December 19, 2024
"You told me certain things were going to be done by this date and they weren't."Hearing Examiner Kathleen Byrne, CU-16-11 hearing, December 19, 2024
"There's still a hole in the ground waiting for the Pepco meter can. There's still no lights."Josh Kaye, Montgomery Planning staff, CU-16-11 hearing, December 19, 2024
By January 2026, Packard told the examiner there had been "no amenable progress," that "all the money is in Mike Hines' account, and it's dedicated solely to finishing the work," but "it's not in an account that I have access to," and that Hines "is not a part of Garrett Gateway Partners." A drop-dead date of July 1, 2026 was set: finish, or the county would call the bonds and finish the work itself. Packard said on the record: "If July 1st is a drop dead date, I have no excuse whatsoever if it can't be completed by July 1st."
There is a second public record attached to the project's money. In August 2025, the Maryland Securities Commissioner issued a final order against Michael Hines, the man Packard named as holding the project's completion funds, and his company L.I.G. Group. The order found that Hines raised $50,000 from an investor for the Garrett Road project's Phase 2, promising a $450,000 return plus 15 percent monthly interest, and spent the money on personal expenses including child support, tattoos, and cash withdrawals. It concluded he violated the state's securities fraud, broker-dealer, and registration laws, and imposed a cease-and-desist order, a $55,000 civil penalty, and a permanent bar from the securities business in Maryland. The order was entered by default: Hines never answered it. It does not name Packard himself, but it does reach the Garrett Gateway orbit: it identifies Garrett Gateway Partners II, LLC as the owner of the Phase 2 properties at 7000 and 7004 Garrett Road, and found that $251,645.58 flowed from that entity into LIG's account in March 2025 and was withdrawn for Hines's personal expenses. Corporate filings add one more link in the chain. A state resolution moving Partners II's principal office to Packard's Rockville engineering office, and changing its resident agent from Universal Communities LLC to Michael Hines personally, was signed by Dean Packard himself as the LLC's authorized person, certified under penalties of perjury. The order does not name Garrett Gateway Partners LLC, the Phase 1 townhouse developer, or Cashell Estates, and it is an administrative finding, not a criminal conviction.
It was not completed. On July 21, 2026, the hearing examiner ordered the county to pull the right-of-way and sediment control bonds, ordered Packard to cease all completion work except streetlights, fees, and landscaping maintenance, and barred him from applying for a Phase II conditional use until the property is cured. Two days later Packard emailed the examiner appealing the bond seizure and asking for a three-week stay. Whether the bonds were actually seized is not in the public record. The October 2, 2026 hearing outcome has not been posted.
In his own emails to the county, Packard has written that the LLC is "financially defunct" and that he has "personally lost all my savings, retirement." Under oath he put it this way: "we are currently in a dissolved position of functioning on paper at this point." The corporate registry backs up the picture. His engineering firm, Packard & Associates LLC, is currently forfeited in Maryland. The forfeiture dates to October 2022, nearly three years before the first Burdette application was filed, which means every Burdette filing that names the firm as engineer was made while the firm was forfeited. (The firm was also forfeited in 2019 and reinstated in 2021.) Garrett Gateway Partners LLC is active but not in good standing, with annual reports overdue for 2025 and 2026. The engineer of record on the Burdette proposal operates through a forfeited LLC.
When a Maryland LLC fails to file its annual report or pay what it owes, the State Department of Assessments and Taxation proclaims the forfeiture of its right to do business in Maryland and its right to the company name (Md. Code, Corps. & Ass'ns §4A-911). The state's own business portal puts it plainly: "A forfeited entity may not legally conduct business in the state."
There is a criminal penalty attached. Anyone who "transacts business in the name or for the account of a limited liability company knowing that its right to do business in Maryland has been forfeited and has not been reinstated is guilty of a misdemeanor," punishable by a fine of up to $500 (§4A-919). Note the knowledge requirement: the statute punishes knowing conduct, and no prosecution may be brought after the company reinstates.
The law also sets a limit worth stating honestly. Forfeiture "does not impair the validity of a contract or act of the limited liability company," and does not stop the company from defending itself in court (§4A-920). A forfeited LLC is operating illegally, but its contracts are not automatically void.
General information about Maryland law, not legal advice, and not an accusation against any person.
Court records show 13 tax and unemployment liens tied to Packard or his firm, filed between 2003 and 2018, all satisfied or closed. The large court judgments from the Garrett Gateway fallout, including $708,814.58 to Legend Builders, ran against the company, not against Packard personally. From 2022 to 2024 Packard also held the land-development seat on the county permitting agency's advisory committee while appearing as Garrett Gateway's representative in these same show-cause hearings; the committee is advisory only and the record shows no violation, but the overlap is a matter of public record.
The developer the county's records name on the Burdette proposal, Brian Gallagher, was identified in a 1998 Montgomery County court record as president of Bri Mar Development Inc., of 16630 Georgia Avenue, Olney. That company's track record is the most documented chapter of his development history. That same year, Brimar's Olney property was foreclosed: the foreclosure was filed March 18, 1998, the sale occurred November 4, 1998, and was ratified May 24, 1999.
The foreclosure and the fight that followed, a mechanic's lien dispute between the new owners and an unpaid materials supplier, Redland Genstar, were verified in a published Maryland appellate opinion, Redland Genstar, Inc. v. Mahase (2004). The court held the supplier's lien was extinguished by the ratified foreclosure sale. The opinion never names Gallagher or any Brimar principal. Brimar itself qualified as a foreign corporation in Maryland in December 1998, mid-foreclosure, and forfeited less than a year later.
The court record around Gallagher in the years that followed includes money judgments, all with Gallagher as defendant: a $579,555.22 bank promissory note judgment (1993, satisfied 1998); a $140,430.26 judgment (1993); two 1996 confessed judgments totaling over $420,000; a $42,419.86 note judgment (2001); and a $20,000 judgment against Bri Mar itself (1998). Two 1997 federal tax liens at the Brimar address, for about $784,000 and $45,000, still show a docket status of "Entered" with no satisfaction recorded; a historical "Entered" status does not establish that anything is owed today. A 2001 lawsuit against Gallagher and Brimar alleging breach of contract, fraud, and misrepresentation was dismissed years later for want of prosecution, with no verdict and no judgment: an allegation only, never proven.
The name Olympus has appeared in Gallagher's orbit before. An "Olympus Real Estate Group, LLC" was formed in 2004 at Gallagher's Tavenner Court address and forfeited in 2006; it applied to rezone 4.7 acres in Silver Spring in 2010. A 2007 vendor suit named a similarly styled "Olympus Real Estate Holdings LLC," which was never registered in Maryland under any status; its $1,725 judgment was never paid and expired in 2019. These are public-record facts about names and filings, not findings about anyone's conduct.
The money behind the Burdette proposal runs through Brian Kim. His own professional biography confirms he was Portfolio Manager and Underwriter at the Housing Opportunities Commission of Montgomery County, the county's public housing agency, from February 1999 to July 2008, where he managed a $360 million bond portfolio and underwrote low-income housing tax credit and tax-exempt bond deals. Since September 2010 he has been a principal of Cornerstone Development, LLC, and he is the principal of CDC Capital, LLC, a for-profit Ellicott City firm specializing in tax-credit deals that frequently partners with public housing authorities, including HOC.
On the Damascus project, the state's financing records put Kim's entities at the center. Maryland DHCD's pipeline names CDC Capital as the sponsor behind a projected $3.5 million in Rental Housing Works gap financing, listed with the standard disclaimer that it is "not a reservation or commitment of funds." A February 2026 state notice proposed up to $33 million in private-activity bonds naming AGC Ridge Road LP as owner and operator; no issuance has been found since. The total development cost in the state pipeline is $54,981,273 for 107 units. Kim is the resident agent of AGC Ridge Road LP, and his firms, Columbia Concepts LLC, and AGC are all anchored to one Fulton address. He is also behind the Long Reach Village Center redevelopment in Howard County, announced by the county executive in December 2025.
Two things the record does not show. First, no public document links Kim with Brian Gallagher; that connection rests on attendee accounts of the applicant team, not on paper. Second, the research found no controversies, defaults, lawsuits, or negative coverage for Kim, CDC Capital, Cornerstone, or AGC Ridge Road LP. His career path, from running bond finance inside the county's housing agency to developing tax-credit projects with public partners, is a matter of public record. What anyone concludes from it is up to them.
Nothing here alleges wrongdoing by any person. Dismissed lawsuits are allegations only. A lien filed decades ago and marked "Entered" is not proof anyone owes money today. The CU-16-11 enforcement case concerns a different project in Derwood, not the Burdette proposal, and the county never revoked that conditional use.
This page is not about who these men are. It is about what their projects did: one development unfinished after a decade of enforcement hearings, its own manager testifying the money ran out; one company foreclosed, its suppliers left to fight over the remains. In every field, past performance is how professionals are evaluated. Development should be no different. When a team asks a town to trust it with one of the largest residential projects in the town center's recent history, its previous work is not a smear. It is the most relevant evidence available.