Residents Re-envision U.S. Route 1

Senior citizen housing, a health care facility and brewpub were among some of the most popular ideas residents churned out Saturday morning when they discussed what they’d like to see happen with the several vacant properties near U.S. Route 1.

The city planning department organized the meeting to learn the residents’ vision for the College Park artery, currently dotted with several vacant, and often rundown properties.

“Route 1 is a topic the city never gets tired of,” Planning Director Terry Schum said at the Saturday morning meeting at City Hall. “The city has made the revitalization of Route 1 a goal for as long as everybody can remember. The reason why is that it affects everyone in College Park.”

two clusters of properties, or “nodes” that staff called “near-term development opportunities.”

Autoville

The first was Autoville, a 1/3-mile stretch of property on the west side of U.S. Route 1 on the north end of the city. The 21.42 acres of land is broken up between 22 different property owners. Two of the properties are for sale.

Susan Connor and Bob Duchene of the Barbara W. Duchene Trust, which owns the property for sale behind Jordan Kitts Music, were present at the meeting. Their original plan was to sell it for student housing, before the Mazza Grandmarc complex went up.

Now they’re looking at plan B: a senior housing complex.

“We felt there is a bit of an aging community here in College Park,” Connor said. Their ideal scenario would be for a health care facility to be nearby, but they would be open to other ideas too, they said.

That’s an idea that former District 4 Councilwoman Mary Cook and other residents said they could support in that area of the city. Cook also suggested a coffee shop or teahouse in Autoville, and a community space that could have multiple uses.

“We do not want to see any fast food whatsoever,” she said.

But Cook would support a brewpub, an idea that originated from resident Alan Hew, and it seemed to gain momentum.

A bookstore and a church were among the other suggestions for the area.

Sector Plan and Zoning

Whatever eventually fills that area must follow the guidelines of the Preliminary Central U.S. 1 Corridor Sector Plan, which zones the area for mixed-use infill, requiring a blend of residential, commercial, recreational, open space, employment and institutional facilities.

It’s also a walkable node, which means it must be compact and pedestrian-oriented, like a mini-neighborhood, Schum said.

A walkable node must also have a minimum 15 residential units and 45 jobs per acre, planning staff said.

Upper Midtown and Former Mandalay

The second node discussed is also zoned mixed-use infill; this one a 14.04-acre land area in upper midtown divvied up between seven different property owners, and includes the former .

Instead of a walkable node, this one is a corridor infill, which means it should be developed primarily for residential character, include a range of building types and provide easy accessibility to nearby goods and services. 

There’s already a detailed site plan for the Mandalay site, which would have replaced the squat building and lot with 160 multifamily units, 45 town homes, and more than 41,000 square-feet of retail space. Those plans tanked with the economy in 2009.

“That detailed site plan was extensively negotiated with members of the neighborhood,” said North College Park Citizens Association President and former District 1 Councilmember Mark Shroder. “It was not ideal but it was practical. It would have forwarded the development of Route 1 and would have been livable for the community.”

Several other community members agreed. The building’s detailed site plan expires in 2012, at which point the planning process would have to start over.

Marketing the City

The workshop was the brainchild of Councilwoman Christine Nagle (Dist. 1). She said that in March, when the council was working out its budget, it put aside $25,000 to hire a professional marketer to create a plan to attract more business and residents to College Park.

Both the marketing plan and the workshop on Saturday contribute to the goal of making College Park a safe and smart area to live, Nagle said.

“They both tie together for me,” she said.

Hiring the marketer is on the council’s January agenda, she said. At that point, Nagle will no longer be on council, having lost to .

Editor's note: This story has been corrected. The original story inaccurately explained the 2012 expiration of the detailed site plan for the Mandalay Restaurant and Cafe. We regret the error.