On September 28, 2009, I wrote on my erstwhile blog — the North College Park Informant — about my displeasure with the vacant buildings in and around North College Park, particularly those along Route 1 (e.g., the "spooky house" on the corner of Route 1 and Edgewood Road, the vacant storefront at the corner of Route 1 and Fox Street, and the former Mandalay building), and opined that the city should do something about them.

Since then, I've learned that the city really can't do anything about them and that the best way to get rid of such blighted properties is to interest some deep-pocketed individual (or corporation) to purchase and redevelop the site. Unfortunately, as a developer once told me, this part of the city has a reputation for making redevelopment difficult due to the vagaries of local politics and good old-fashioned NIMBY-ism.

Whether or not that developer's comments are accurate is neither here nor there, but assuming they are, I find it troubling that the city is limited in what it can do about blighted properties. If a building is empty for a year or even two, fine. Things need time to sell.

However, some of these properties have been vacant for a long time — several years. Are we just supposed to live with them? Given their proximity to homes, they must have a negative effect on property values. Further, they can't be advantageous to the efforts to get folks to move here as they diminish the overall appearance of the community.

Remember: Most of the folks who come to College Park to visit the university probably drive down Route 1, passing these unsightly properties along the way. What kind of message does that send about our community?

In a comment to that September 28 blog post, District 1 City Council member Patrick Wojahn, who is aware of these concerns, wrote,*

"Maintaining unused or abandoned properties is constantly a challenge for the City. We can cite and demand correction when there are blatant violations, such as trash on the property, etc., but it doesn't help if the owner is a bank — banks are not usually very responsive to the City's requests. The City doesn't have the resources to clean up all these areas … the best we can hope for is a cooperative property owner or redevelopment ... So we wait."

Yes, we wait. But for how long? Should our wait be indefinite? So I wonder: if the city can't do anything about problematic properties, can residents? That is, could we put pressure on the owners of these buildings, either through petitions or some other effort, to encourage them to act?

For example, Enterprise Rent-A-Car owns the property on the corner of Route 1 and Fox and, as the city's economic development coordinator Chris Warren, told me, "They're not interested in renting or redeveloping the site."

Could a citizen-initiated letter campaign, which makes it clear to the company that 1) we know who owns the building and 2) they're not being a good neighbor by letting the building sit vacant, change that? Thus, whereas a bank or business may not be responsive to the city's concerns, it might be more attentive to those of potential customers, even if it's just to avoid a public relations problem.

I know, the problems with the sale and redevelopment of these properties may be larger and more complex than they appear, and could have more to do with the downturn in the economy than lax ownership. Thus, any effort to spur action on a blighted property ought to be mindful of what other pressures may be acting on an owner. 

Yet, as I've already noted, some of the properties I've mentioned here have been empty for years — long before the recent downturn. So, if the economy isn't the problem, what is? And furthermore, what can be done about it? After all, if residents can succeed in blocking development, then I'd like to think we could help spur it too.

Smith is a resident and North College Park and treasurer of the North College Park Citizens Association.

* Wojahn's comments have been abbreviated here in the interest of space. To see them in full, follow the link to the original NCP Informant blog post.