Council Revisits Cafritz Decision Tuesday

Update 10:45 a.m.

Councilwoman (Dist. 3) said in an e-mail Tuesday morning she is going to ask that the College Park Council postpone its vote until next week, for either Monday or Tuesday. The Mayor and Council will still discuss the re-zoning during a work session Tuesday night, as planned, she wrote.

Update, 8:26 a.m.

Riverdale Park decided Monday night to delay it's decision about the Cafritz re-zoning by a week. .

Original story

College Park Council will revisit the decision Tuesday of whether or not to support a re-zoning application for the Cafritz development, so that a plot of land just south of the city can include a Whole Foods Market.

The 37-acre area is currently zoned R-55 for residential use only, but developers hope to construct about 170,000 square feet of retail space, 995 residential units, a 120-room hotel and 22,000 square feet of office space. The land is mostly in Riverdale Park with a small portion in Calvert Hills.

At the Mayor and Council , Councilwoman of District 3, which encompasses the portion of the Cafritz property in College Park, moved to oppose the re-zoning for mixed-use town center (M-U-T-C), as the developers are seeking. Instead she supported a mixed-use infill (M-U-I) re-zoning with requirements for parking, storm water management and many other conditions.

She said in an e-mail Monday night that she was not yet sure what her revised motion would be Tuesday — whether to support the re-zoning with conditions, or to oppose the re-zoning entirely.

College Park’s Conditions for a CSX Crossing 

Stullich said during an interview on Friday that she’s considering a condition that would assure that a crossing over the CSX railway on the east side of the development would be built on a timeline in relation to the rest of the development.

While Cafritz Attorney , after the offices, Whole Foods Market and additional retail space have gone up, Stullich is pushing to have this crossing as part of the first phase.

“I don’t think I’ve talked to any elected official who doesn’t think that,” she said, adding that if this doesn’t happen, the impact on U.S. Route 1 traffic .

Stullich’s revised condition could include more triggers; she wants developers to have to accomplish certain stages of the crossing construction before they can progress in other parts of the development, she said Friday.

Crossing Specifics

The Transportation Planning Section of the county’s planning division predicts that such a crossing could mean 5,000 fewer vehicle trips a day on U.S. Route 1.

Reed has said that . But still, Cafritz has provided CSX with a location map, pinpointing possible crossing spots, and $15,000 so that CSX engineers will review more detailed plans down the road, Reed said. He declined to provide proof that $15,000 was exchanged. After multiple attempts to reach out to CSX, Spokesman Robert Sullivan was still not able to confirm this with Patch before publication of this article.

At a previous council work session, Reed outlined three possible crossing locations, the most likely connection going south of the ERCO Subdivision, on University of Maryland property.

UMd. Hasn’t Yet ‘Crossed That Bridge’ 

Though the University of Maryland has expressed support for the re-zoning plan, that support is based on the current Zoning Map Amendment, which does not include the proposed crossing.

“We’re not making any judgment on that issue,” University Vice President for Administrative Affairs and Chief Financial Officer Robert Specter said.

“If there is an expectation that the project will need to make use of the adjacent university-owned land … we need to talk about it," he said.

These views were expressed in a letter to the county’s planning board on Nov. 3, roughly a week before Cafritz representatives met with Specter for the first and only time, he said. 

Commitment to the Crossing

Councilmembers have suggested that because Cafritz didn’t meet with the University of Maryland sooner, the developers aren’t committed to the crossing.

“I do think it says something about how serious they are about that bridge,” Stullich said.

Reed disagreed.

“We’ve done more than any normal developer would have done … at this very early stage. We don’t even have zoning done. So I don’t think that’s a particularly fair comment.”

If the council makes a decision Tuesday, the city’s opinion will be passed on to the county’s planning board, which votes on the application Dec. 15, but will as part of the re-zoning decision.

The CSX crossing and traffic will be just part of the discussion Tuesday night at . Stullich said that although traffic is one of the biggest issues with the development, there are other concerns to be sorted out, like storm water management, development design, and parking.

If the motion passes, she said the developers must meet every condition, or the city’s support will turn to opposition. “[Meeting] 19 out of 20 [conditions] would not be good enough,” she said.