Rethink College Park

As we reported Sunday, the University View plans an absolutely massive phased expansion - 434 units (1,416 student beds) and a whopping 30,000+ S.F. of retail. The 1st phase is planned to take place by 2010 (directly in front of the University View) with the other phases (including a parking garage) materializing by 2012.

Special thanks to Councilmember Stephanie Stullich for getting ahold of these for the general public. Looks like we’re finally getting somewhere around here…

Elevations:

Site Plan:

Ground floor retail and amenity plan:

Existing locational charm:

As we’ve noted, the student housing landscape in College Park has changed dramatically in the past 6 months. Developers are falling over themselves to propose new projects.

Otis Warren/ Steve McBride (best known for building the University View) were at the City Council meeting last Wednesday. They are now proposing a 12-story, 154 unit (516 bed) student housing project directly in front of University View with 12,200 S.F. of ground floor retail (expected completion 2010). The site had previously been planned as an office building. This newly proposed building (previously called the University View Overlook) would house UMD’s Freshmen Connection program.

Warren/McBride are abandoning plans for a luxury condo building just north of the View (8400 Balt Ave). They acquired the Koon’s Ford Quicklane in front of that site and now are proposing a 9-story phased student housing project with 280 units (900 beds) and 18,040 S.F. of retail (expected completion 2012).

Also, the County Planning Board accepted the city’s downtown parking garage plan (w/ retail) for review and the commission now has 70 days to take action.

Pictures to come….

The Hilton Hotel is out and a mixed use 700 bed (250 parking space) student housing project is in. Mark Vogel’s architect easily lived up to their last work (pictured just below) for the site when the developer proposed this project to the city council earlier this month. According to a Diamondback article, Vogel plans to have a solid sit down restaurant on the ground floor. The city was receptive to the designs although they voiced a strong desire for LEED certification for the project. The parking ratio seems very appropriate for such a close location to campus and the type of tenant…

The Hilton project failed after county support for Tax Increment Financing (TIF) evaporated. Presumably this was because the county is expecting to use multipe TIFs for East Campus - a project which is widely expected to have it’s own hotel within a stone’s throw of Vogel’s project site.

Service began at the College Park metro station on December 11th, 1993. Since that time, only one Transit Oriented Development (the FDA building) has been built in the area. What’s the only other major construction project in the immediate area in the past ten years? A 1,345 space parking garage. Such is the plight of nearly every Metro station in PG County - heavy on parking, light on walkability. This of course is not the case in Montgomery County nor the Northern Virginia suburbs (Ballston Metro picture left), which have become national models for how to build on and around suburban transit stops. So why the discrepancy? The completely backwards state of PG County politics according to a Washington Post article earlier this month. The situation is probably compounded by notoriously poor leadership from WMATA.

According to a former metro board member:

“We really tried to develop those stations, but we just constantly ran into flak from the [Johnson] administration if it wasn’t what they wanted and it wasn’t the people they wanted,” said Smith, an architect. Metro would come up with a proposal to develop a site, have “its ducks in line, but if Johnson didn’t want it, they would tell us, ‘You can go ahead and approve it, but we won’t issue the building permits,’ ” Smith said. “It became ludicrous.”

So what do we have to look forward to at the CP Metro? That 1,345 space lot was built by WMATA in 2005 to facilitate a 500 unit condo building to be built by Manekin on the remaining surface lot (proposed building pictured in orange below). There has been no movement at all on that project that we have heard.

Of course we still have UMD’s gargantuan M-Square Research Park. One office building is nearly complete and the much lauded NOAA building is finally underway after more than a couple ceremonial groundbreakings. Unfortunately, M-Square is just about as far from transit-oriented as can possibly be imagined. M-Square Sprawling Research Park might be a more appropriate name. MTA planners will definitely have a hard time integrating the Purple Line into the area in a pedestrian-intuitive manner. We’re excited about Route 1, but there is a good reason why we rarely cover Metro development…

RTCP has a column running in today’s Gazette:

> Dernoga’s ‘misjudgement’ hindering Route 1

The letter is in response to the County Councilman’s August 16th letter, which in turn was a response to GSG President Laura Moore’s August 2nd letter.

by David Daddio:

I was disappointed to read [Prince George’s] County Councilman Thomas Dernoga’s condescending letter [‘‘Free the developers from captivity in College Park,” Aug. 16] defending his position on the proposed ‘‘Mazza” student housing development. As a strong advocate of this project for over six months, I’m hardly surprised by the brashness with which Mr. Dernoga continues to conduct his affairs in regard to this matter.

(more…)

“The Jefferson” (pictured above), a proposed 220-unit mixed-use project was approved by the PG County Planning Board late last week. The project site is just north of 193 at the former location of Hillcrest Hotel and Lasiks and across Route 1 from JPI’s already approved “Jefferson Square” project (pictured below). The newly approved project will contain 25,000 square feet of retail on the ground floor that will be spread out among three separate spaces. Both JPI projects will include underground parking. Councilman Dernoga is widely expected to “pull” the newly approved project for review (if he hasn’t already) just as he did for Jefferson Square. Taken together, these projects will bring a huge boost to Route 1 and they are the two projects in the corridor that we expect to come to fruition the soonest.

—> Read the Detailed Site Plan

The fifth Cafritz Property meetings will be held this SATURDAY (Sept. 15, 10am-noon) and TUESDAY (Sept. 18, 7pm-9pm) at RIVERDALE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL (5006 Riverdale Rd, Riverdale MD).

Both identical workshops will present a concept plan for the mixed use development. The concept plans are to be based on design principles culled from previous workshops. There will be a new format without the familiar topic stations: A 20 minute presentation will precede a slated hour for open discussion.

See our previous posts on the Cafritz Property.

Today, Tuesday Sept. 11, from 11:30 a.m. to 12 noon, the University of Maryland’s Solar Decathlon Team will celebrate the completion of construction of LEAFHouse, its entry for this year’s international solar house competition on the National Mall in Washington. The event will be held in the parking lot adjacent to the construction site, east of the Architecture Building, and will feature a video tour of the house, readings from first year book The Ravaging Tide by Mike Tidwell, and free ice cream. In attendance for the LEAFHouse Celebration will be President Mote, as well as members of the Maryland Senate.

LEAFHouse will soon after be packed up and shipped to the Mall for the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon, which runs October 12-20 and features twenty teams from around the world. The houses these teams have built over the past two years will then be judged on ten contests, ranging from architecture and engineering to market viability and the ability to power an electric car.

Maryland’s entry draws its name, as well as inspiration from the leaf, which the team views as nature’s ultimate solar panel. LEAF also stands for “Leading Everyone to an Abundant Future,” and LEAFHouse is meant to be an attractive, efficient demonstration of solar power as an integral part of a sustainable future, particularly here in the Chesapeake Bay region.

Sam is the LEAFHouse Outreach and Fundraising Student Team Leader