At the city council meeting last Tuesday, council members Marcus Afzali and Patrick Wojahn were able to get Route 1 Bus integration/consolidation on the agenda for the next City-University Partnership meeting. The idea originated from a 2008 City-contracted transportation study of Route 1 in College Park (RTCP discussion/ analysis HERE), which envisioned bus “super stops” around development nodes on [...]
The Washington Post revealed Thursday that former Prince George’s County Councilmember Thomas Dernoga privately solicited contributions totaling about $1 million from developers for charity during his 8 years in office. Such funds, which would normally be part of a formal developer or community benefits agreement, were instead extorted behind the scenes in a highly unethical [...]
The College Park City Council seemed to be taken off guard Tuesday by $350-600,000 in city speed camera funds that must be committed to “public safety” projects (including pedestrian infrastructure). The money must be committed in the next two months or it will be returned to the state. The relatively large sum (equivalent to 10% [...]
The following is a presentation I gave to my colleagues at UNC’s Department of City and Regional Planning last month. Included is some background on the beginnings of the RTCP as well as an honest assessment of the project’s impacts and takeaways. While the audience was composed of aspiring planners and academics, the presentation is [...]
From: President Wallace Loh Dear University of Maryland Community: Faculty, staff and students are invited to a town hall meeting, hosted by the President’s Office, to discuss the Purple Line light rail system. As you may know, the proposed transit line would run between Bethesda and New Carrollton, passing through Silver Spring, Takoma Park, the College Park campus, and Riverdale. [...]
UMD just released its much anticipated consultant study of Purple Line alternatives through campus. The study, produced by Hatch Mott MacDonald (HMM), a Canadian-based engineering firm, sheds light on UMD’s current feeling on a controversy that has consumed the campus for nearly four years. We reported a couple weeks back about our cautious optimism that [...]
The Varsity, a student housing project set to open Fall 2011, has just launched its leasing website. They appear to have taken a page from Mazza GrandMarc’s cheesy marketing campaign, but then they took it to a whole new level. They’re selling a lifestyle and experience rather than housing (complete with tanning beds, a game [...]
Local leaders have really put themselves in a quandary over the Book Exchange controversy. An array of officials who are reliably pro-smart growth have teamed up with Old Town Civic Association (OTCA) in an effort to quash the proposed 6-story project that could bring 830 student beds to downtown College Park—along with roughly 170 beds geared towards graduate students [...]
