Rethink College Park

Terp Weekly Edition, a radio program on WMUC, aired a 3.5 minute interview (3.1 MB, mp3) with Doug Duncan last week discussing his goals for East Campus.
In the interview, Duncan held Silver Spring as a model for redevelopment in College Park. The downtown Silver Spring development, which he helped orchestrate when he was Montgomery County Executive, transformed the downtown from a mere “pass through” to a real destination. Duncan implied that the main goal of the East Campus development project is to give the city a strong town center, since, as he aptly put it, “College Park does not have that.”

Duncan is optimistic on the town’s potential for attracting business, since the “market is already in place.” When confronted with criticisms that downtown Silver Spring is bland and dominated by national chains, Duncan acknowledged the need to build a town with “unique character” and a “healthy mix of local and national” businesses.

Whether or not this mix comes to fruition is hard to tell, but when glancing at the project’s list of retail tenants, there are quite a few familiar faces.

As the East Campus Redevelopment Project moves through the public participation process, it is valuable to look at how other universities have integrated mixed-use facilities into their campuses. Over the next week and months we hope to profile many similar projects.

The University of Central Florida (UCF) recently put the finishing touches on a $300 million mixed-use athletic village, located on its Orlando campus.

UCF, with an enrollment of over 48,000, has long struggled to create a pedestrian-oriented collegiate experience for its students due to its unfavorable location on major state highway. Because of this, the university became interested in creating a destination for students, alumni and local-area residents that would serve as a hub of activity for the campus and surrounding area. The result of the university’s effort is a mixed-use project that features 2,000 student beds, 83,000 square feet of retail, 3 parking garages, a 10,000-seat arena and a 45,000-seat football stadium. Dining options alone include Maggiemoo’s Ice Cream, Subway, Papa John’s, and Nature’s Table Cafe.

Design Principles
Founded in the late 1960’s, UCF features a radial campus with its student union acting as the central hub of activity. Paths radiate out from the union to connect academic buildings and residential nodes. Unlike East Campus, UCF did not have to deal with a state highway separating its project site from its existing campus.

1. Connectivity: UCF made it a point to connect this district to the existing campus by removing an unimproved parking lot between the project site and the student union. The parking lot was converted to a pedestrian mall with the new arena as its terminus.
2. Adaptive Reuse: Although significantly larger in scale than the Pocomoke Building, UCF retrofitted its old arena to house locker rooms and athletic offices.
3. Strong edges: The retail portion of this project clearly defines the public space on the street and creates a pedestrian-friendly environment.
4. Unique district: The village has a different character than the existing campus, which creates psychological transition from academia to residential life. The parking garages retain the character of the residential buildings and blend in well.

Missed Opportunities
1. Green building: The athletic village was designed before UCF adopted standards requiring LEED certification for all new construction.
2. Transit: Orlando is at least 50 years behind D.C. in terms of mass transit. Because of the lack of rail, the athletic village is served by automobiles and shuttle buses. This may be an opportunity realized sometime in the future.

Although the UCF athletic village houses different uses than the proposed East Campus project, the underlying ideas and goals are the same. UCF created a pedestrian environment to provide a destination for students, faculty, alumni and neighbors alike. UCF has finished its district, and Maryland can learn from its success.

> UCF Stadium Master Plan Amendment

Will the East Campus Redevelopment project be connected to Old Town College Park with through streets? While the issue is far from settled, rumors have emerged that there are city residents advocating for both blocking and keeping open to traffic the streets connecting East Campus to Old Town to vehicular traffic. We think closing the streets would be a mistake: enhancing connectivity would ease pressure on the intersection of Route One and Paint Branch Parkway, enhance the project, and if designed and managed intelligently would not negatively impact the residential streets.

In November 2006, well before any plans for East Campus were released, we published a list of ten principles for the development of the site. In our list we argued Old Town should be connected both to Paint Branch and also (by implication) the East Campus project. We have heard that there are Old Town residents advocating both for and against such connections, and hope this debate can become more public before any decisions are made. Luckily Foulger Pratt’s plan emphasizes connectivity and a widespread consensus exists that bicycle amenities and paths should be expanded.

Adding connections in both this area and elsewhere could add options and ease bottlenecks by creating a more permeable street grid.

The East Campus public Community Steering Committee meeting on Transportation will be held October 8th, 7:30 p.m., Atrium Room (1107) of the Stamp Student Union.

> East Campus Transportation Meeting Agenda

The Birchmere announced this week it has plans to open a new 500 seat music venue as part of the East Campus development in College Park. Although its not scheduled to open until 2011, the Birchmere will provide a much needed improvement to the College Park music scene.

While it may attract larger acts, the Birchmere will also cater to the local crowd. As part of the plan, it will operate a stage for up-and-coming artists in the D.C. area, and will partner with the University of Maryland’s School of Music to develop and nurture future performers.

The Birchmere has been open in Alexandria, Va. since the 1960’s, but its new location promises to draw many residents north of the District. The theater has been visited by acts such as Lyle Lovett, Shawn Colvin, Dave Matthews, and Emmylou Harris.

> See the University Press Release 

Public-private partnerships have become increasingly popular methods of financing infrastructure and redevelopment projects. The structure of such partnerships is simple: the government supplies the land and a private company builds and maintains a highway or development that benefits the public. Not too far from College Park, the Commonwealth of Virginia has struck deals with private companies to build and maintain highways in exchange for toll revenue (e.g. the Greenway, I-81). Montgomery County has partnered with private developers to create large projects to revitalize downtown Silver Spring (Ellsworth Drive) and downtown Rockville (Rockville Town Square). Here in College Park, the East Campus redevelopment project is a public-private partnership between the University and the Foulger-Pratt development company.

Public-private partnerships are good vehicles for providing public goods with little or no expense to the taxpayer. These hybrid partnerships become controversial, however, when private interests conflict with public interests. One such controversy erupted in downtown Silver Spring this summer. The project, developed as a public-private partnership between Montgomery County and the Peterson Companies, is centered on Ellsworth Drive, a street that now serves as a pedestrian mall in downtown Silver Spring. Guards of the developer allegedly stopped a resident from taking photographs on the street. The developer’s assertion that it had the right to limit photography on the street provoked the ire of local photographers, who asserted that Ellsworth Drive is a public place where photography cannot be prohibited outright. This is an especially relevant contention since Foulger-Pratt, the developer chosen for East Campus, is part of the development team that tried to limit photography on Ellsworth Drive.

With symbolic timing, dozens of photographers gathered on Ellsworth on July 4^th to assert their right to photograph in a public place. Cleverly, the developer moved quickly to diffuse the situation by holding a photo contest the same day. The Montgomery County Attorney eventually determined that the provisions of the public-private partnership classified the streets and plazas as “Public Use Space,” (Sec. 59-A-2.1, Zoning Ord.) rendering the controversy moot. In a public place, photography, leafleting and demonstrations are a public right (even if permitting procedures are required). The controversy ended quickly as the terms of the partnership clearly stated the public’s continuing claim to the space.
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As Route 1 redevelopment progresses with the East Campus and other projects, there may be opportunities for the public sector to use tax increment financing as an incentive for developers. Tax increment financing, a form of a public-private partnership, is an agreement between a developer and municipality in which future tax revenues are used to subsidize infrastructure or other public amenities.

The idea is that certain projects have such positive economic impacts that municipalities are willing to provide financial incentives to the development community in order to help the projects get built. Because the municipality is borrowing the money, it receives discounted rates on bonds from financial lenders. The money is then used to fund improvements to the project site, which can range from land acquisition to infrastructure improvements.

The municipality realizes that the development will increase its tax base over the life of the project. A percentage of the increase in tax revenue collected within the district is then used to pay off the bonds used to finance the improvements. In Prince George’s County, tax increment financing is typically, if not always, used for specific project sites rather than districts, so the percentage of the increase in tax revenue from each particular project is used to pay its bonds.

Although this method of financing appears to some as a solution to all of Route 1’s problems, too much tax increment financing can be risky for a municipality or county to undertake. Some issues with the financing methodology include the over-allocation of future tax revenues and the unpredictability of future tax revenues. All things aside, if used correctly these partnerships can have positive economic impacts on entire communities.

With the public input process well under way, more and more information is being released about the East Campus project.

On a mild weekday afternoon this past August, I decided to take some pictures to capture “before” images to contrast with the rough renderings that Foulger-Pratt released last spring to the general public. I parked my car in Lot OO by the Shuttle-UM bus depot and walked down currently existing Greenhouse Road where it intersects Campus Drive. From there I walked to the intersection of Route 1/Baltimore Ave and Paint Branch Parkway where a planned 12-story hotel would anchor the new development and provide a gateway to the East Campus for those traveling southbound on Route 1. The current view of this corner includes the campus mail facility.

Compare that to this image from the conceptual drawings released by Foulger-Pratt/Argo Investment of the same location.

Click read more for more before and after comparisons.
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Yesterday University Vice President for Administrative Affairs Doug Duncan released the list of members of of the East Campus community steering committee that will be participating in a series of topical public meetings this fall. Three of the 40 members are students, and 17 are affiliated with the University of Maryland. The newly update schedule has been added to the sidebar to the right.

For the truly curious, the complete schedule and all 40 committee members are after the jump. This information and other data to support the public process will be posted to the university’s East Campus website.

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