Rethink College Park

Please join us in the lower level conference room at College Park City Hall tomorrow (August 27th). Let us know if we should expect you.

There is a question mark at the end of the title for good reason. After 2 years, 347 posts, 1,666 comments, 646 photos, countless emails, phone calls, public meetings, private conversations, and newspaper articles, Rethink College Park finds itself at serious risk of needing to shutter its doors. Financially, the website is sound and can go on indefinitely. Yet we continue to be plagued by an inability to recruit and retain additional staff. Aside from our reliance on an extensive network of people for information, this site has basically been kept afloat by 3 contributors: co-editor Rob Goodspeed, technology guru and writer Eric Fidler, and myself. Now that all three of us find ourselves living outside of College Park and removed from the day-to-day interactions that kept the blog posts flowing, we’re finding it extremely difficult to post the quantity and quality of information that the community has come to expect of us.

We founded this site on a basic premise that the community has a right to have full and true access to development information. Journalists in traditional local media outlets are ill-prepared and ill-suited to follow contentious, nuanced, and often multi-year land-use disputes. Government provides development documents, consistent with government in sunshine laws, but does little to present the information in an easily digestible form. Planning and zoning issues dominate local politics, especially in College Park. Yet what you often find in local politics is an incredibly low level of public participation, which makes it susceptible to the outspoken and overzealous rather than the reasoned and even-handed. The void of reliable and easily accessible public information only exacerbates the situation…. leaving the general public zoned out rather than informed and engaged.

We believe there is a consensus in College Park about the need for a more dense, walkable, livable, and transit-friendly built environment. It’s a consensus that has been building for well over a decade and it is reaffirmed each time someone drives down Route 1 and marvels at the fundamental incompatibility of our buildings and infrastructure to the basic needs of local students and residents. What was once a rural arterial highway has evolved into a congested and blighted thoroughfare engulfed in a sea of sprawl. The community has already envisioned Route 1 as a pedestrian-friendly urban boulevard and our goal has always been to help it realize that vision through greater access to information. With East Campus and several large developments making there way through the pipeline as we speak and a reopening of the Route 1 Sector Plan this fall, there has been no more critical time for Rethink College Park than now.

After some internal discussions, we’ve decided to call an open meeting in which we’ll welcome anyone to come an join to discuss the future of this project. We won’t consider attendance at this meeting as a signal of your willingness to play an active role in the future of the site, but your participation will be extremely useful in helping us chart a course for the future.

Please join us at 7:30 PM in College Park City Hall this Wednesday, August 27th in the Lower Level Conference Room.

As many are well aware, RTCP is in semi-hibernation mode at the moment. We’re planning on a kickoff meeting to discuss the future of the site sometime in May. Until then there are a couple tid-bits to report despite the dampened state of the real estate market. Thanks to everyone who continues to email and post comments about all the great changes coming to the city….

-> Starview Plaza - The Diamondback reports that Starview Plaza is progressing through the early stages of the approval process. The project, which sits just north of College Park Carwash, has languished for years (at least 5?) and the underlying land is owned jointly by the City and University. Originally planned as a hotel, the developer now plans a 500-bed mixed use student housing project with an impressive LEED Silver rating. As the Diamondback reports, there has been much debate over exactly what materials should be used on the facade. The Sector Plan requires 75% brick and as the Mazza Grandmarc debate showed us, the city and the county in particular hold tightly to that standard regardless of how visible certain parts of the building are. The choice is between hardyplank - a composite of recycled materials which helps a buildings LEED rating - and brick (an energy-intensive material) on the least visible parts of the building. Let’s hope the county council departs from its absolutist ways by avoiding unneccessary delays…

-> Campus Construction - The University has released an updated campus construction map, which shows progress on several different projects we’ve blogged about over time. The new journalism building is progressing, the Tyser Tower expansion at Byrd Stadium is underway, and improvements to the Southwest quad and in front of the business school are coming to a close. Also, North Gate Park, a project mired in bureaucracy, funding constraints, and development SNAFUS for the better part of four years is scheduled to start construction this summer. North Gate Park is a joint venture between the city and university and was designed by undergraduate students. 

-> Parking - Recognizing the serious burden that parking requirement place on private developers of student housing, UMD-DOTS via the university’s strategic plan has agreed that students at select off-campus housing complexes can park on-campus. This is a smart move that we think could pay serious dividends by encouraging more student housing. Building lots on Route 1 are small and shallow, thus making the provision of suburban-style parking ratios extremely difficult for dense mixed-use projects. Hopefully the city/county can capitalize on this new policy to implement their Transportation Demand Management plans.

-> Purple Line - There are signs that Campus Drive advocates are making serious inroads. More to come shortly.

I just posted to the urban planning portal Planetizen a short article explaining some of the philosophy behind Rethink College Park. The article is based on a presentation I gave last semester to a student group. After describing some of the challenges to implementing Smart Growth in College Park, I attempt to evaluate our success, concluding “new tools and an engaged approach could supplement conventional modes of professional practice.” I invite readers to contribute their comments.

> Smart Growth at the Grassroots: Rethinking College Park

“Our task is simply…to arrange the pieces in a constructive way with a decent respect for man and nature instead of improvising frantically and impulsively with each new thrust of growth as if it were a gigantic surprise beyond our capacity to predict or manage.” ~ James Rouse (1967), prominent real estate developer

Reorienting

Every once in awhile it’s refreshing to step back and take stock of the broader picture. We have the great fortune, after spending a substantial amount of time researching the issues that surround development, to be able to draw on a wide array of ideas and trying to come to some basic conclusions. With the start of the new year, recent and expected political realignments across the board at the local, state and national level, and RTCP’s 2 year anniversary rapidly approaching, it seems like now is as good of time as any to look back and, more importantly, look forward.

The History

In 1997, Maryland, the fifth most densely populated state in the nation, boldly set out on a new course for development. Enough political agreement had accumulated to pass one of the county’s most aggressive anti-sprawl packages ever enacted by a state legislature. The 1997 Smart Growth and Neighborhood Conservation Act encouraged brownfield redevelopment, gave housing assistance for people to live near their work, prioritized and funded the protection of “Rural Legacy Lands”, and, most importantly, locally agreed upon “priority funding areas”(PFAs) where state money was approved to fund infrastructure.In effect, they wanted to encourage counties to plan for how and where to accommodate growth, stop subsidizing the meat and potatoes of sprawl (like roads, water, and sewer) and shift those burdens to developers and new homebuyers should they decide to ignore priority areas.

The strategy favored incentives over regulation and its champions, including then-governor Parris Glenndening, avoided a politically costly confrontation with the state’s powerful counties by refusing to wrestle any true planning authority from local government. Maryland’s highly touted program “Smart Growth” agenda became a model for other rapidly growing states, yet 10 years since its creation, experts seriously question the efficacy of even its strongest provisions.

Is it Working?

Most planners agree, including those at UMD’s National Center for Smart Growth, that the state’s programs are marginal at best and the most far reaching of them - the system of focused state infrastructure investment (PFAs) - has failed to really achieve any of the goals of the 1997 legislation:

• Mix Land Uses
• Take advantage of compact building design
• Create housing opportunities and choices
• Create walkable communities
• Foster distinctive, attractive communities with a strong sense of place
• Preserve open space, farmland, natural beauty, and critical environmental areas
• Strengthen and direct development toward existing communities
• Provide a variety of transportation choices
• Make development decisions predictable, fair, and cost-effective
• Encourage community and stakeholder collaboration in development decisions.

PFAs have proven to be an inherently weak urban containment tool (see PFA Maps). While most would agree that its for the better that the state doesn’t subsidize sprawl, developers and local governments picked up right where the state left off in 1997 and have been building heavily outside of PFAs. A 2005 MD Department of Planning (MDP) study reveals that between 1990 and 2004, about one-forth of households consumed three-forths of all land developed and that the average lot size outside of PFAs was 8.5 times larger than lots inside the PFAs. The trend was most pronounced in rural counties where MDP found that in Cecil County, 92% of development (in terms of acreage) occurred outside PFAs, while that number was 88% in both St. Mary’s and Charles County, and 84% in Queen Anne’s County. Even in densely populated PG County, a county with a huge PFA area, the percentage of developed acres AND parcels has been steadily increasing outside of PFAs in recent years. Statewide, as a percentage of developed parcels, development has actually increased outside of PFAs since the adoption of Smart Growth legislation in 1997. It’s a mixed bag on an acreage basis, with percentage of developed acres (outside PFAs) remaining relatively constant from 1990-2005. This all signals that sprawl-style development is alive and well, especially in those counties/areas with the most abundant natural resources and the least preparation, from a public infrastructure perspective, to accommodate growth.

A Cruel Disparity

Land preservation programs have proven to be incredibly popular statewide and nationally, yet a mirror effort to foster development in existing communities has few champions. The process in Maryland is straightforward - parcels meeting specific criteria are targeted, willing landowners are sought out, and deals are brokered to either purchase properties outright or purchase easement that permanently prevents development. Together these programs with local initiatives have protected more than 20% of Maryland’s 6.2 million acres. The State of Maryland continues to commit to protecting more land than is developed each year.

Yet these programs aren’t usually coupled with local zoning, thus allowing fragmentation of key conservation lands and irreversibly altering landscapes before conservation funding becomes available. Conservation funding isn’t sufficient to compete on a level playing field with developers and only in rare instances are developers able to overcome NIMBYism and build in densely populated ares. The forces of NIMBYism that stop, slow, or push growth at the local level are one of the forces responsible for causing growth in the outer reaches of the metropolitan region.

It’s a dire situation considering that the US Census predicts an influx of 1.5 million new residents in the state by 2030, which would mean another 580,000 households and 810,000 new jobs. The battles over sprawl aren’t fought just at the urban periphery, they are fought in a thousand different decisions in our cities and inner-suburban areas. What’s needed is political constituency that fights as vigorously for quality dense infill projects in existing communities as some groups do against sprawling development proposals in rural areas. Environmentalists are the natural constituency to fight against the latter. Unfortunately, in the case of the former as Dr. William Fischel of Dartmouth University points out: “Rarely are the social benefits of infill, higher densities, and especially regional institutional change sufficiently compelling as to draw the support of this dominant constituency.”

‘‘People like to say they’re for Smart Growth. They don’t always realize it means higher density and more mass transit and a more thoughtful process of development. Those all take more time and effort. But you end up with a higher quality of life.” ~ Mark Cook, College Park City Councilperson

The Anecdotal Evidence

*The Good*

—> As noted, overall Maryland’s land preservation programs have been fairly successful.

—> The State is now vigorously enforcing its 1984 Critical Area Law, which regulates development withing 1,000 feet of the bay and its tributaries. Note the rejection of the “Blackwater Resort” project on the Eastern Shore, a controversy which is probably responsible for a recent planned strengthening of the law.

—> Local experimentations such as Progressive planning and zoning in Baltimore County (Urban-Rural Demarcation Line), nationally renowned planning in Mongomery County, and a national model for Transferabe Development Rights in Calvert County.

*The Bad*

—> Inter County Connector and Route 32 – both exempted from Maryland Smart Growth Laws, are approved, and entering the construction phase. These two highways together, effectively bring limited access highways (a piecemeal resurrection of the 1970s outer beltway proposal) for the entire Baltimore-Washington corridor.

—> Residents of Columbia expect their downtown to be included in the eventual Green Line extension to BWI, but refuse to accept the requisite density to push the alignment their way.

—> Cataclysmic redevelopments (Silver Spring, Rockville Town Center, East Campus) come with many promises and heavy public financing demands, but the results can be less than desirable. Heavy on parking, poor pedestrian scaling, and about as organic as a Twinkie. Below is an illustration for a portion of the more than 5,700 parking spaces proposed at East Campus, here contained in two large underground garages.

*The (pretty) Ugly*

—> Purple Line: UMD and general NIMBYism throughout route. A small group of project opponents along the route have dominated recent discourse, despite the tremendous benefit it would bring to the region. The University of Maryland, a supposedly progressive-minded academic institution, jumped into the fray with their own alignment proposals and political games, challenging both state planning and the university’s own Master Plan.

—> More than 10 years after the completion of the green line, Prince George’s county has yet to develop most of its Metro stations. See this post on Metro developments and info about why there’s no dense development at the West Hyattsville station.

—> Visitors to Baltimore are encouraged by its apparent revitalization. Yet trips to the Inner Harbor and Baltimore’s recently gentrified inner historic neighborhoods cover up the fact that the city continues to hemmorage in terms of total population and housing vacancy as whole is still rising.

—> The real estate market has gone the way of the capital markets and several already approved projects are recieving higher scrutiny from lenders. What College Park project plans will crumble?

What’s So Special About College Park?

We’ve been asking one simple question since this site launced in the Summer of 2006 - If not here, then where? Considering College Park proximity to the booming Washington, D.C. real estate market and its location in a state renowned for its Smart Growth initiatives, we have a wide variety of capital, expertise and experience to draw upon. Consider the wealth of nearby planning and development case studies as proof that this region is at the forefront of urban planning and design - Greenbelt, Ballston (VA), Columbia (MD), the Kentlands (MD), Mongomery County planning department, and Reston (VA). For such a small city, College Park has had astounding access to resources - years and years of thoughtful planning initiatives (perhaps too thoughtful), an EPA technical assistance team, the National Center for Smart Growth, the University’s Architecture school, and the Smart and Sustainable Campuses Conference, among other collaborations. Add to that, the fact that College Towns are resoundingly pedestrian places and you begin to wonder: If we can’t grow smarter in College Park is Smart Growth hopeless?

Conclusion

In the 1700s we swept away the largely forested Maryland landscape, which was shaped by eons of natural forces and 30,000 years of Native Americans influence. We replaced that landscape with a new regime of increasingly mechanized agriculture. Then suddenly in the 1950’s, with the help of the interstate highways, cheap energy and automobiles, the FHA, and the mortgage interest deduction, we found ourselves using our farms to grow houses, people, and fortunes rather than crops. Now 50 years of subdiving, speculating, and expanding to the far reaches of the metropolitan region has brought our towns to an unthinkable limits of distance from job centers (see development patterns in MD over the years). Today we are faced with a new reality - one of low density, pervasive sprawl, hour-long commutes, a rapidly growing population, and the harsh reality of limited opportunities for new highway capacity. Now we’re presented with yet another bout of huge changes and two distinctly seperate courses - do we focus on infill sites in the suburbs to make way for high density redevelopment or we continue to decentralize our homes, our jobs, and our communities at the expense of our quality of life?

Should we amend our Smart Growth legislation? Probably. It’s clear that changes in prices and incentives are necessary, but not sufficient to achieve more compact development. Changes in coordination, planning, and zoning are necessary, but not sufficient for building more livable, transit-friendly urban environements. Atrociously poor funding of public goods and infrastructure combined with our impossible expectations of developers have created a situation where the constraints to building in dense urban areas act to propel development. What people need to realize is that there are real cost constraint to development projects. Shallow lot sizes, expensive land, burdensome and unpredictable approval processes make infill development expensive, risky, and difficult. What’s paramount in planning new structures and their retail spaces is how they relate to the sidewalks, streets, and the general surroundings. When we look at the bigger picture, specific architectural styles, building materials, traffic concerns, bedroom and parking ratios, and environmental features no longer seem so important and in many cases present regulatory constraints to achieving the desired built environment. We have to ask ourselves: How can we expect more infill development if we expect too much of infill developers?

The balkanization of planning decisions leads to a veritable race to the bottom where those jurisdictions with the most lax rules end up with the most quantitative - but qualitatively poor - growth. Regional decisionmaking, like many planners advocate for, leads to less democracy and public participation, and a system destined to crumble under its own design. There’s the rub - how do you design a system with more public participation, more home rule, and more dense development, while avoiding the tendency for growth and development to migrate to those places least prepared for it?

I’m comfortable in saying that we’ve proven here at Rethink College Park that changes in bottom up understanding and information are not peripheral, but essential to rethinking how we handle development. There is no need to build consensus around the fact that places like Route 1 need dense development - that consensus already exists. The central theme we see running through everything we blog about here is that politics and planning make strange bedfellows. So we’ve experimented with different combinations of advocacy, journalism, politics, and planning - all to varying degrees of success. Confronting NIMBYism, facilitating stakeholder understanding, and overcoming the political vagueness of planning decisions. Rethink College Park has been our attempt to fill these functions - all of which have no clear place in existing institutions. We believe they are a critical pieces of the puzzle to realizing smart growth.

“The architects of power in the United States must create a force that can be felt but not seen. Power remains strong when it remains in the dark; exposed to the sunlight it begins to evaporate.” ~ Samuel P. Huntington

Inspiration provided by…

—> Rob Goodspeed and his unparalleled expertise on the importance of hyperlocal blogging to urban planning

—> Dr. Gerrit Knaap’s “Requiem for Smart Growth”

–> We made Planetizen’s list of Top Ten planning, design, and development websites for 2008!

–> Also, there was a nice little article in the Gazette the other week summarizing our efforts.

Last fall we completed our first-ever reader survey. We would like to thank the roughly 65 people who completed the survey while it was open. We appreciate your feedback and continued support. Part of the reason we have not posted it until now is the tiny size of Rethink College Park contributors. A lack of writers (not technology, funding, or even recalcitrant leaders), remains our biggest ongoing challenge.

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The City of College Park has granted RTCP $500 through their community services grant program. The money will go towards supporting our hosting costs, and fees associated with some of the services we use such as Flickr.

We will also use some of the money for an advertising campaign and material to promote the site more widely in the new year.

We appreciate this city support and the continued support from our readers. Our biggest challenge remains identifying volunteers to contribute photos and writing to the site in order to keep the website up-to-date. If you are interested in helping in the new year, please contact Rob or me.