Rethink College Park

Please join us in the lower level conference room at College Park City Hall tomorrow (August 27th). Let us know if we should expect you.

There is a question mark at the end of the title for good reason. After 2 years, 347 posts, 1,666 comments, 646 photos, countless emails, phone calls, public meetings, private conversations, and newspaper articles, Rethink College Park finds itself at serious risk of needing to shutter its doors. Financially, the website is sound and can go on indefinitely. Yet we continue to be plagued by an inability to recruit and retain additional staff. Aside from our reliance on an extensive network of people for information, this site has basically been kept afloat by 3 contributors: co-editor Rob Goodspeed, technology guru and writer Eric Fidler, and myself. Now that all three of us find ourselves living outside of College Park and removed from the day-to-day interactions that kept the blog posts flowing, we’re finding it extremely difficult to post the quantity and quality of information that the community has come to expect of us.

We founded this site on a basic premise that the community has a right to have full and true access to development information. Journalists in traditional local media outlets are ill-prepared and ill-suited to follow contentious, nuanced, and often multi-year land-use disputes. Government provides development documents, consistent with government in sunshine laws, but does little to present the information in an easily digestible form. Planning and zoning issues dominate local politics, especially in College Park. Yet what you often find in local politics is an incredibly low level of public participation, which makes it susceptible to the outspoken and overzealous rather than the reasoned and even-handed. The void of reliable and easily accessible public information only exacerbates the situation…. leaving the general public zoned out rather than informed and engaged.

We believe there is a consensus in College Park about the need for a more dense, walkable, livable, and transit-friendly built environment. It’s a consensus that has been building for well over a decade and it is reaffirmed each time someone drives down Route 1 and marvels at the fundamental incompatibility of our buildings and infrastructure to the basic needs of local students and residents. What was once a rural arterial highway has evolved into a congested and blighted thoroughfare engulfed in a sea of sprawl. The community has already envisioned Route 1 as a pedestrian-friendly urban boulevard and our goal has always been to help it realize that vision through greater access to information. With East Campus and several large developments making there way through the pipeline as we speak and a reopening of the Route 1 Sector Plan this fall, there has been no more critical time for Rethink College Park than now.

After some internal discussions, we’ve decided to call an open meeting in which we’ll welcome anyone to come an join to discuss the future of this project. We won’t consider attendance at this meeting as a signal of your willingness to play an active role in the future of the site, but your participation will be extremely useful in helping us chart a course for the future.

Please join us at 7:30 PM in College Park City Hall this Wednesday, August 27th in the Lower Level Conference Room.

In June, the City of College Park officially launched an interactive website to increase the visibility of its local businesses. The new website, located at http://www.shopcollegepark.org, is a one- stop source of up- to- date information on city businesses, events, and attractions.

The website is the culmination of a six- month collaborative effort between the City and the Downtown College Park Management Authority (DCPMA), an organization of merchants in downtown College Park. The developers of the website are Geocentric, a start- up software and map services company, and King Cow, a web & print designers collective. The Anacostia Trails Heritage Area (ATHA), a grassroots organization dedicated to strengthening the image and economy of northern Prince George’s County, provided a matching grant to fund the site.

Below is a copy of the City of College Park’s Economic Development Update for June and July, containing a summary of active development projects in the city.

Read the rest of this entry »

DSP Site Plan

View from Route 1

Back of the development and green roof.

The City and University are close to arranging a deal to turn a property they own jointly into a student housing project. The property is located just south of Jiffy Lube and has stood vacant with a “Coming Soon” sign for the better part of six years. The project is planned to have  LEED Silver Certification, 146 rooms, 355 parking spaces, 550 student beds, and almost 10,000 SF of ground floor retail on Route 1.

The planning board wisely agreed to a 20% reduction from the required amount of parking for a project of this magnitude. They also agreed to allow 6 floors (1 over the maximum of 5 envisioned by the sector plan. These two variances allow for a financially feasible project with a underground parking structure. The planning for this project is ongoing and presumably it will be called before the county council by Eric Olson.

Read the full Detailed Site Plan here

See more renderings here

After months of rumors, some information has turned up regarding a project on the so-called Poole Property, a tract of vacant land across Mowatt Lane from the Architecture Building, across from Lot 1. A source at the University United Methodist church reports the church is considering a land swap to “straighten out the property line,” and we found this tidbit from a College Heights Estate Association meeting:

HANOVER CONSTRUCTION CO: Aaron Adler and Adam Harbin, representatives of the Hanover Company of Houston, Texas, briefed the Board on their plans to construct luxury apartments in College Park. The development will be on the Poole Property which is located on the southwest corner of Campus and Mowat Drives. The developers propose 5-10,000 sq. ft. of retail space, a roof top pool, and a 5-7,000 sq. ft. club house. There will be 1.4 to 1.5 parking spaced per residential unit. The company will construct approximately 250 unit, each 850 sq. ft. 70% will be 1 bedroom, and 30% will be 2 bedrooms with rents proposed at $1,200. Projections are not set in stone for any of these numbers. The projected tenants are graduate students, young
professions, visiting professors, and empty nesters. Aaron and Adam showed the board members samples of their prior apartment projects across the country. Hanover has received favorable comments from Doug Duncan of UMCP. The property will need to be re-zoned. Fall 2012 is the projected date for construction completion. Hanover will keep CHEA apprised of progress.

The Hanover Company’s portfolio includes projects in Baltimore and Towson, Maryland. Does anyone know more about this project?

Two articles from the Diamondback:

- The city council has voted to approve the concept of selling the city hall site to a hotel/condo builder in an attempt to roll that project together with the East Campus TIF. City Hall would be moved to an undisclosed location. Previously that location was an abandoned school in Calvert Hills.

- UMD DOTS was forced to raise daily parking rates due to lower than usual commuter parking permit sales. This is surely the result of higher gas prices and more students living closer to campus. For some reason DOTS director David Allen was surprised in January that “Less than 50 percent of commuters drive to campus.” He reports the campus having “2,000 fewer parkers in the last five years.”

This project has been flying in under the radar for sometime. It involves a land deal between UMD and a private developer to create “intergeneration” non-student housing. It is planned for a wooded lot just behind UMD’s business school on Mowatt Lane. As far as we know the original plans for the interior still stand (click the project category to learn more).