Mazza Grandmarc Gains Press Attention, Renderings Surface
The Diamondback picked up today on the Mazza Grandmarc graduate housing story that we posted last Wednesday. We’re glad to see this project gaining some attention after languishing since last May. The Graduate Student Government is also poised to act. Apparently the developer, TDL Multifamily Developers of South Carolina, navigated 5 years of approvals before the project got sidelined.
The Diamondback article repeats county Councilman Dernoga’s issue with the Mazza developer’s eligibility for the public school impact fee waiver. They did get one important thing wrong about the fee waiver - it already exists and it is perfectly within the law for this project to receive it (the Mazza site is within 1.5 miles of the university).
In addition to the 630-beds, the developer was quoted as saying that he hopes the retail planned to front Route 1 will include a bank and restaurant (not represented in the site plan below).
Parking lot in the bottom of this image fronts Route 1 here:
From an accompanying Diamondback staff editorial:
The Prince George’s County Council is holding back approval for the construction of a 630-bed apartment complex at a ransom of nearly $1.7 million.
Given the circumstances, we find it difficult to disagree.
Click here to view our interactive project map
February 19th, 2007 at 11:05 am
The fee was $7,000 when it was established in 2004. The impact fee is also adjusted for inflation and will probably be approaching $8,000 per unit in 2008 or 2009 when building permits could first be obtained if the project were to pay such fees.
It is unfortuante that the story makes it appear that the fee waiver is dependant upon pending legislation. I told the reporter numerous times that the waiver was currently in place for this project and the pending legislation preserved the waiver.
February 22nd, 2007 at 9:58 am
Where along route 1 will this be situated exactly?
February 22nd, 2007 at 12:49 pm
http://www.google.com/maps?q=College+Park,+MD&ie=UTF8&z=18&ll=39.010931,-76.929805&spn=0.002418,0.006094&t=h&om=1
February 22nd, 2007 at 4:17 pm
Great, thanks. It might be helpful to include that location in the main article as well for reference.
February 22nd, 2007 at 4:17 pm
Oops, it’s there.. so either it was and I didn’t see it at first or it was added, haha.
March 2nd, 2007 at 7:31 pm
On March 1, 2007, a second law firm (Shipley & Horne, P.A) representing the project sent the County Council a letter asking for a hearing date and noting that more than nine months had passed since the site plan had been approved by the Planning Board and that the applicant had been unable to get the required hearing scheduled.