Politics & Government

Council to Request Delayed Planning Board Vote on Cafritz Re-zoning

Cafritz developers say they could have more details on CSX crossing proposal on Wednesday.

College Park City Council will request that the Prince George's County Planning Board postpone its decision on the Cafritz property re-zoning to ensure time for the involved municipalities to get on the same page, and to smooth out areas of concern with the developers.

“Chief among [concerns] is the CSX crossing, although that’s not the only issue," Councilwoman  (Dist. 3) said at Tuesday’s Mayor and Council worksession. The proposed crossing over the railway on the east side of the property is expected to alleviate some of the traffic on U.S. Route 1 created by the development, which will include a Whole Foods Market just south of College Park.

Though , the city council has made traffic a major part of the discussion at its meetings. Stullich has pushed for the bridge to be built early in the development, but Cafritz attorney Chip Reed has said that, due to the cost of the crossing, it will be built in the second wave of construction.

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But developers held a private meeting the day before to hammer out more details about the crossing, Reed said. Though not prepared to share specifics at the worksession, he said he expects information to be available to the public Wednesday.

“We’re working really hard on this issue because we understand the importance of it,” he said. Check Patch later for updates.

Find out what's happening in College Parkwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The Prince George's County Planning Board is currently scheduled to vote on the re-zoning on Dec. 15, which could potentially change the current R-55 residential zoning to the Mixed-Use Town Center zoning the developers require. The Planning Board agenda shows it won't be meeting the following two weeks, and so a continuance would postpone the vote until at least January.

County planning staff will recommend approval of the re-zoning with several conditions, according to the staff report.

After tabling the vote twice, the city council is set to decide its own stance on the re-zoning Tuesday, once the 2011-2013 city councilmembers are inaugurated.

Reed urged College Park to reconsider the request to postpone the county planning board vote, optimistic that College Park, Riverdale Park and University Park — which all have stakes in the development — could work through the issues by Dec. 15.

But council moved forward with the vote anyway.

“I’m not very confident those issues can be resolved in a week but I’m encouraged the development team is more optimistic about that," said Stullich, who has taken a lead on the development in College Park. Her District 3 includes a small portion of the Cafritz property.

Elected officials from Riverdale Park, where the majority of the Cafritz property lies, were present at Tuesday's meeting, in addition to elected officials from University Park.

“There really has been a lot of dialogue between the various communities," Stullich said. “This is an issue that is going to affect all of our towns ... And I think there is a lot of shared thinking and concerns.”


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