Rethink College Park

Although university officials have discussed some opportunities for public input in the project, the university has announced no details about public involvement in the unprecedented East Campus Redevelopment Project. The project will redevelop roughly 38 acres of university land on Route 1 that will house hundreds of students, faculty, and staff and include millions of square feet of offices, shops, and potentially a hotel and conference center.

A select group of development companies has been invited to complete detailed proposals (“RFP Part B“) for university officials to use to select a final winner. University officials say the identity of the applicants and finalists is secret, saying disclosure would violate procurement rules and threaten the selection process. The selection of the group of finalists and the final winner of the contract will be made by an Evaluation Committee, with the assistance of hired consultants. The membership of the Evaluation Committee has been kept secret, presumably also to protect the selection process. As far as we know there are no students on this committee. Although two student representatives were added to a “Steering Committee” last summer, this body seems to have little decision-making authority and a smaller “subcommittee” has no students.

University officials have asked the finalists to prepare detailed land use and development plans including at “at a minimum” the following for their final proposals:

• Locations, layouts, square footages, and other characteristics of retail, office, entertainment, hospitality and related uses. Neither a model, nor renderings is required, but proposed building heights, massing plans and densities should be clearly delineated throughout the site. Typical elevations would be helpful.
• Locations, unit sizes, descriptions and price points of housing uses
• Location, layout, function and programming for streets and other public spaces
• Circulation including transit, automobile, bicycle and pedestrian circulation within the site and connecting to key points outside the site should be shown.
• Pedestrian, bicycle and vehicular connections to Metrorail, M Square, Main Campus and the City of College Park.

We are concerned it may be difficult to include genuine public input in the project if the public is presented with polished plans. Planning professionals know the quality of input can depend on how the public is approached, and in general rough models and hand drawings elicit more and better quality feedback than polished computer graphics. In order for public input to be meaningful, university officials and the final development partner must also be clear about what aspects of the design are open to modification.

We are in dialogue with University administrators about their strategy to involve the public once a final partner is selected — currently tentatively scheduled for February 28th, 2007. If you have ideas on how to engage the public in east campus (or would like to help) we would love to hear from you. We are convinced that an aggressive and wide-ranging effort to involve the campus and College Park community in this project is not only the right thing to do, but will ultimately result in a better East Campus design.