Rethink College Park

We’re pleased to announce that a major (and in our view: reasonable) compromise was reached late last night on the impact fee waiver controversy. While everyone at the meeting agreed the boundary (that allows a county incentive for student housing) needs to be reduced from its original size (black line) to an area within the [...]

As anyone familiar with College Park’s neighborhoods knows, in some neighborhoods officials gone to great lengths to limit traffic on residential streets. Although most were developed with interconnected, gridiron street networks, over the years many streets have been cut off totally or made one way.
The result is what one local resident calls a “traffic labyrinth” [...]

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 [...]

While there is no quick-fix for community redevelopment, community beautification through art is relatively simple. The only ingredients are cheap materials such as paint and the spark of a creative mind. Let us take into account the current state of affairs in downtown College Park aesthetics.
The horizon is bland, squat, and nearly uniform. From [...]

The student body isn’t the only thing in town getting brighter. College Park now boasts a series of new lampposts lining Baltimore Avenue (Route 1) downtown. These lamps enhance safety (as we have written before) while adding a touch of needed elegance to the city.

Tomorrow at 11:00 a.m. in the Gallery of the Architecture Building, architecture and urban planning master’s student Brian Carroll will defend his thesis examining the Knox Box and downtown area of College Park. His thesis proposes a possible redevelopment of this area including changes to street alignments and the design of possible new buildings both [...]

Today’s Diamondback article about Santa Fe’s growing reputation as a live music venue reminds us of a gradual trend that we often overlook – College Park’s downtown is actually starting to take on the characteristics of a real College Town. Everyday another store seems to be extending their hours for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights, [...]

Today’s Washington Post includes a story about East Campus development, the first time the Post has reported on the project. The story summarizes the project rather quickly and mentions some of its goals, including the aim to increase the university’s supply of graduate housing.
The article also mentions the concern some current business-owners have as [...]