Rethink College Park

The last next East Campus Community Review Steering Committee has been rescheduled for December 10th. Here is the announcement from the university:

*There will be no meeting this Monday, November 19. The upcoming scheduled meeting to review guiding principles for East Campus has been postponed. Some members of the committee expressed concern with the draft principles that we sent recently, so it was decided to postpone the meeting to allow additional time to further develop the document prior to the committee discussion. We will announce the new date for the principles meeting as soon as it has been determined.
*The next meeting will be Monday, December 10 (at the regular time and place). This meeting will be a follow-up discussion on transportation (primarily traffic and parking).

And a copy of the draft principles that has been circulated is available online here.

If anyone knows the specific nature of the delay, please post a comment. Are the principles specific enough to be meaningful?

The university has pointed out there will be at least one more currently unscheduled meeting to finalize the principles.

The East Campus Community Review Steering Committee has been meeting since August to hear from the developers and their consultants about a wide variety of issues surrounding the project. We have encouraged our readers to attend these meetings (and many have) and I am an official committee member of this committee. The meetings are preceded by a “student focus group” between graduate and undergraduate students and university officials.

While we have published several items related to the project, I thought it was time for a summary of some of the news that has been discussed at these meetings. Most of the supporting documents have been posted to the East Campus website, and offer a variety of additional information.

Two issues were discussed at the previous (October 8th) meeting about transportation. First, several members of the committee strongly opposed vehicular connections between Old Town and the East Campus project. As I described in a previous post, I believe these streets should be open and strategies used elsewhere to control traffic would alleviate resident’s fears. Second, Foulger-Pratt announced they wanted to design the project choosing the Paint Branch Alignment for the Purple Line. The Maryland Transit Administration’s preferred light rail route is straight through the project, the location that makes the most sense from a planning point of view. The route through the project has been assumed in all the discussions previous to this month. We strongly feel the reasons cited by Foulger-Pratt are not satisfactory and will present a full description of why after Monday’s meeting.

Here’s a summary of some of the most germane issues discussed. All of this is subject to change.

City Demands
The “city” (it is unknown who precisely this means) has submitted a letter with requirements for the project to the University and the developer. This document has not been made public, making it difficult for us to evaluate the nature of the requests. It seems clear the project will need some type of public financing (such as a TIF) and will need city approval and support.

Parking
The parking garages will be embedded within blocks where possible. While they had released graphics showing precise numbers of spaces, they declined to discuss them at last week’s meeting saying they wanted to wait until the traffic study had been completed. The developers are negotiating with county officials about the scope of the traffic study they will complete.

Housing
Specifically for graduate students, the project will include 75 units of 2 bedroom graduate housing priced at $900 per person, and 75 units containing five bedrooms that will rent at $650 per person. This is similar to was it required by the RFP. In total, the project will contain roughly 2,000 units of housing, all rental, although not designed specifically for undergraduates. This housing will be priced at “market rate.”

Retail Mix
The “anchor tenants” at the project include roughly 175,000 square feet of retail. They are a movie theater (now perhaps replaced by the Birchmere Theater), a gym, book store, and grocery store. The preferred grocer mentioned is Whole Foods. There will also be a childcare center for children under 3 years old. Other tenants will include a variety of restaurants, neighborhood retail, and destination retail. There will be no bars in the project.

Other Considerations
The project will be under the jurisdiction of the UMD police. The developer has committed to a LEED Silver standard, although hedged about whether they would commit to applying to the USGBC for the official certification.

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. This is the second post in that series.

In August of 2003, Georgia Tech completed the much anticipated Technology Square project. This redevelopment effort was in keeping with Georgia Tech’s motto: “Progress and Service.” This campus expansion marked a paradigm shift in the way that Georgia Tech saw itself physically within the greater Atlanta community.

Historical Perspective
In the 1950s the Georgia Department of Highways constructed a six-lane freeway through the center of the city. This freeway, which would eventually carry Interstates 75 and 85, became a barrier between Tech and the dense urban neighborhood of Midtown to the east. It caused the neighborhoods on both sides to accelerate their decline in status. This decline had started with the construction of Techwood Homes, America’s first public housing project, just south of the Georgia Tech campus in 1937. Due to the barrier that the Interstate posed to both automotive and pedestrian traffic moving east-west through Atlanta, Georgia Tech’s campus expanded westward becoming, essentially, a suburban campus located in an urban environment. With the surrounding neighborhoods continuing to decline through the 1960s and 1970s, Georgia Tech cut itself off from the surrounding cityscape with tall fences and an inward orientation. The widening of the Interstate to 15 lanes in the mid-1980s worsened the division even though the Midtown neighborhood was finally beginning to become a sought-after address.

The opening of Tech Square in time for Fall Semester classes in 2003 was the first time in five decades that Georgia Tech had expanded to the east, and this shift was more than geographic; it was symbolic. By turning abandoned buildings and surface parking lots into hip sidewalk cafes and classroom space, Georgia Tech was breaking through the barriers surrounding it and committing itself to the redevelopment of Atlanta.

The Project
The Tech Square project is centered on Fifth Street, which is a major campus artery bisecting campus into northern and southern halves. It stretches for two blocks from the Interstate toward Midtown, ending at West Peachtree Street. It is linked to the main campus by an improved Fifth Street with wide sidewalks, bus stop turnouts, and bike lanes. The Georgia Department of Transportation completed work on the new Fifth Street bridge in the Winter of 2006-07, creating a new park above the Interstate on either side of Fifth. The Tech Trolley was instituted to link the main campus with Tech Square, and service on the route continues to the Midtown MARTA (Metro-type subway) Station. These shuttles run every 8 minutes throughout the day.

The development itself includes a new campus for the College of Management, the Georgia Tech Hotel and Conference Center, the Economic Development Institute, the Georgia Tech Bookstore, and a privately-owned office building. The entire area, which currently takes up three square blocks, includes street-level retail and is now one of the busiest parts of campus. This expansion of campus has proven popular not only with students, but also with office workers in nearby Midtown skyscrapers and local condo-dwellers.

Most shocking from an Atlanta perspective is the project’s pedestrian friendliness. Tech Square won the prestigious “Golden Shoe” award for pedestrian design in 2003. Wide sidewalks exist throughout the project, which also includes on-street parking and bike lanes. A large parking deck is wrapped by buildings to disguise it from the street. This deck will eventually allow for the demolition of older decks on the main campus.

Another part of the paradigm shift which has been signified by Tech Square is Georgia Tech’s commitment to the environment. Starting with the College of Management Building, all new construction on the Georgia Tech campus will be LEED certified. By reconnecting and redeveloping the surrounding neighborhood, Georgia Tech has begun to encourage walking and transit ridership (the nearest MARTA subway station, North Avenue, is only two blocks away at Third Street). Tech has also begun to incorporate urban-style campus elements to its traditional suburban feel (despite being only two miles from the city center). The LEED certification is just the most quantitative example of this new commitment. Georgia Tech has long prided itself on being a leader in the community, and with Tech Square, it has made a large step forward.

Missed Opportunities
Perhaps the biggest flaw of the project was the lack of housing. While the Hotel and College of Management keep the area busy during the day and into the evening, most shops close by 10 p.m. and afterwards the district is quite still. Tech could have kept Tech Square alive later and worked on its housing crunch by constructing dormitories on Fifth. Instead, the Institute chose to move the residential center of campus further south by purchasing the Georgia State University Village across North Avenue from Tech. There is still one parcel which has not been developed, and it could be residential in nature when construction occurs, but no plans have yet been made.

Why it Matters to Maryland
Technology Square is quite different from the proposed East Campus redevelopment in many aspects, but it also has many similarities. The biggest similarity is the demonstration of the University’s commitment to the community. College Park has long been host to UM, but this project has the potential to show that both parties realize how bound their futures are in each other. The East Campus redevelopment, like Tech Square, will help to reconnect the University symbolically and physically with the city of College Park. It will also provide a stronger physical link with the Metro station just as Tech Square did with MARTA. Most importantly, the East Campus redevelopment will bring students to College Park who otherwise wouldn’t have been there, and it will bring citizens of College Park to campus who otherwise would have never had the opportunity to interact with the campus. This project is about more than redevelopment; it’s about reconnecting two communities with a commitment to prosper together.

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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