2006 Student Charrette Images Online
January 26th, 2007 | by Rob Goodspeed | Published in Downtown, East Campus, General College Park, Old Town | 7 Comments
Although it has taken a bit longer than we expected, we finally completed locating and uploading digital copies of many of the plans and drawings produced during the 2006 SGA College Park Charrette. We have created a library page for the event spearheaded by former SGA president Andrew Rose and containing a presentation he created summarizing the outcome of the forum and charrette events. That page contains one image from each team, all of the images are viewable through our Flickr account.
Many of the drawings contain ideas about how to better connect the College Park Metro Station to campus for pedestrians, ideas that could be threatened or complicated by the College Park Historic District now under consideration. Some of the teams also tackled East Campus – a project we expect the University to announce a development partner for this semester.
January 27th, 2007 at 1:44 am (#)
While concepts that connect the downtown area to the Metro by converting 50 percent of a residential neighborhood to retail are interesting, without or without a historic district, the concept is totally at odds to the long term plan the City has for the Old Town neighborhood.
Between East Campus, the Knox Box redevelopment and the revitalization of the Route 1 corridor, there is already a lot of space zoned for retail/commercial uses and certainly enough to meet future demand, even with population growth.
Future plans should take into account maintaining Old Town’s character.
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January 27th, 2007 at 9:35 pm (#)
The charrette drawings are interesting in that some hint at transit-oriented development (TOD) at the Metro station. Though such dense and focused development at existing transit assets is better for the environment, better for the transit system, and better for the general taxpayer, surely a TOD straddling both sides of the station would elicit the shrillest NIMBY howls ever heard.
Also, many of the drawings show Knox Road extending all the way to the Metro station, even though it currently stops one block short. If it did extend that one extra block to the Metro, one could see all the way to Route 1 from the station platform, thus visually connecting the far-flung station to downtown.
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January 28th, 2007 at 2:23 pm (#)
The heat is turning up on reconciling East campus concepts, purple Line requirements and campus preferences.
The east campus developer will be selected this month with their contract finalized by Summer 2007. Then there will be a one year period of finalizing a site plan. Can the University come to agreement with the State on a Purple Line alignment early enough in that one year period for the site plan development process not to be delayed? There is a lot of work that still needs to be done.
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January 28th, 2007 at 7:40 pm (#)
The University’s RFP specifically asked that proposers accommodate a possible Purple Line route through the development and that the proposers coordinate with the MD Dept. of Transportation on the possible alignment. I can’t imagine the University selecting a development partner whose plan excludes integration with a transit line the Administration officially supports.
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January 28th, 2007 at 8:37 pm (#)
I agree, the connection to the metro is both unlikely and unneeded although I do think extending Knox Road to the station and allowing for some spot retail would greatly benefit the community character and safety. The purple line and the associated TOD (East Campus) should be the priority focus. As I found at the charrette, architecture students don’t understand the term NIMBY.
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January 28th, 2007 at 11:50 pm (#)
The Post Office Building next to the station is leased space. Their is also warehouse space to the north that has been for sale. From time to time there are rumors that the lease is not to be renewed for the post office.
CSX would love to close the tunnel under Metro, to the south of the station, for safety reasons. CSX will not spend any money to improve the stop unless the tunnel is closed. If that were to happen east-west access would be cut off when the metrorail station was closed.
CSX has become ademant about this because in about 1999, a young woman rode her bicycle across the tracks and got her rear tire clipped by a slow moving freight train she failed to see. Everyone was sued and she eventually got a settlement to settle the lawsuit.
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January 29th, 2007 at 12:08 am (#)
That could be problematic once that Manekin condo building goes up on the WMATA parking lot. You would think a reasonable tunnel would be included in the M-Square project.
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