Rethink College Park

After over a year of blogging about College Park, we’ve published 267 posts and (as of today) 1,000 comments. As we plan to continue to enhance and improve the site, we have decided to conduct a reader survey. While we have some idea of who we are reaching through comments and other feedback, we want to get a better idea of who is reading the site and what type of information they’re looking for.

If you are reading this post now, please take a minute to answer our short, 16-question survey. All individual responses will be kept private. Thanks for your help!

> Rethink College Park Reader Survey

We’re proud to announce the unveiling of the latest version of our latest development map. This map builds upon the success of our first map, with the easy updatability of the Google’s recently introduced “My Maps.” You’ll notice that we’ve color coded the project pins and added polygons for larger scale projects (like East Campus and M-Square). A green pin means that the project is already built, under construction, or that we’re reasonably sure it will begin construction soon. A red pin indicates uncertainty surrounding the project; whether it be political, regulatory, or developer uncertainty. We also drew out College Park’s extensive trail system because we believe trails are a vital part of the pedestrian fabric of any college town. Enjoy!

244 posts, 898 comments, and basically a year of serious postings. And what a year it has been! RTCP’s staff gets a little upset when good posts get buried. Just because they are old doesn’t make them any less important. So we decided to go back and dig up our ten best. Here they are in no particular order:

1) “Shopping for Low Lying Fruit” - 10/9/06. Eric Fidler rethinks to Pocomoke building, proposes an adaptive reuse into a grocery store (complete with incredible renderings) and exchanges blows with non other than John Porcari himself.

2) “10 East Campus Talking Points” - 11/1/06, reposted (with pictures) 5/1/07. David Daddio combines feedback from the RTCP staff to give our specific recommendations for East Campus. The points are as relevant today as they were in November (especially the part about keeping the public process transparent and meaningful).

3) “Mazza Grandmarc Student Housing Project Languishes” - 2/14/07. David Daddio discovers (as much as you can discover a $60 million project) the ill-fated Mazza Grad Student housing project, thus setting off a long chain of press coverage running up to the project’s eventual approval. Somehow it also led to a forced “compromise” on state legislation.

4) “Airport Regulations Stall Northgate Project” - 5/9/07. After a long series of phone calls and an alphabet soup of government terms, Rob Goodspeed sheds some light onto why the biggest project approved in CP hadn’t (and still hasn’t) started construction.

5) Special election survey 1 and survey 2 - 1/5/07. Rob Goodspeed gets every city special election candidate to tell all (after plenty of prodding).

6) “Greenbelt Station Proposal Now Includes Four 18-Story Tower” - 2/17/07. Rob Goodspeed discovers the true meaning of “Not in MY Backyard” on a cold morning in February.

7) “Historic District Considered Near Downtown” - 10/5/06. Rob Goodspeed unravels the Old Town Historic District saga.

8) “Talking Seriously About the Purple Line” - 5/11/07. David Daddio brings the University’s position on the Purple Line out in the open and uses his days as a lowly intern to tear it apart.

9) “Reconstructing Route 1” 2/2/07. Eric Fidler figures out what the deal is with the Route 1 reconstruction plans.

10) “Smart Growth, Student Housing, and Transportation - What Does it All Mean?” - 5/22/07. David Daddio explains why student housing is the salvation of College Park (even if no one making decisions chooses to open their eyes and see it).

With the school year approaching, activity is picking up around here. With major projects rolling down the pipeline and decisions being made about the East Campus Project, it promises to be a busy fall. In addition to reading the site, how can you stay in touch with Rethink College Park?

1. Join the email list. We use it very rarely - only when there’s something important to announce. It’s usually only one or two messages a month:

2. Join our Facebook group - we recently switched from a Maryland-only group to a “global” one, so anyone can join who is on the website.

3. Use our RSS feed to track us in Bloglines, My Yahoo or Google Homepage.

RTCP Editor Rob Goodspeed just posted an insightful and sweeping article about the future of urban planning and how blogs like this could help facilitate a robust broad-based public dialogue to bring about true urban change. The article is posted to Planetizan - a blog which Rob contributes to monthly. The post is a must read:

“City Building the American Way“

For awhile there it seems as though RTCP would forever reign king over this area’s “blogosphere”. The College Park Observer was off to a good start but then apparently flopped, the College Park Site had an impressive tech-savvy rollout but is now hardly updated, and theterp.com had plenty of funding but never really went anywhere. We’re pleased to announce the recent creation of two more blogs (both apparently with a development focus): The Riverdale Park Coffee House and Route 1 Growth. Both seem to be taking more of a Hyattsville-University Park- Riverdale orientation than we do, but Route 1 Growth professes to be building a coalition of citizens concerned about development from Mount Rainier to Beltsville.

We like to believe we have a unique thing going here, but blogging has become an enormously useful/common tool for communities undergoing rapid change the country over and a vibrant blogging community is a good signal of a vibrant community. In a blogging universe that can range from information overload (still an amazing resource), to ranting lunatic and personal cat diary blogs, we like to think RTCP is well informed, easily digestible to the average reader, and reasonably easy to navigate. The jury is out on these two (new) blogs, but we certainly welcome them to the neighborhood.

College Park’s Economic Development Coordinator Chris Warren has released this month’s CP Economic Development Update, which again shows the astounding amount of real estate projects going on in the city.

–> Check it out

After Martin O’Malley and Doug Duncan, but before the College Park bar oligopolists, the Diamondback dubs us a “winner” for the 2006-2007 school year. Priceless:

David Daddio and Rob Goodspeed, RethinkCollegePark.com: In the course of two semesters and through the use of an online blog, David Daddio and Rob Goodspeed have become major players in waking up area officials to what the area needs by ranting and raving on local development and disaster. Their direct, prescient style has won them seats at the table in influencing local legislation and guiding local development toward a bold but insightful completion. What did your LiveJournal do this year?