Monday, August 4, 2008

b'ville town square: learning to compromise

Part TWO in a series on the new Burtonsville Town Square development: what could have been, what we're getting, and what other communities are doing.

Rendering of the Burtonsville Town Square, which was supposed to begin construction this summer. Click here for a site plan.

By 2006, it looked like developer Chris Jones' plan to revitalize Burtonsville's struggling village center was dead in the water. Without the support of local residents who feared his ambitious development - dubbed the Town Square - would bring a Wal-Mart to town, he wouldn't be able to survive the development review process, which includes a public hearing. (Jones declined to be interviewed for this series, citing a busy schedule; when we e-mailed him questions, he did not provide a response.)

But today, Burtonsville's turned in favor of the Town Square again. In June, he unveiled new plans for the shopping center to the East County Citizens Advisory Board, giving residents their first glimpse of the project since 2005. "He was as forthcoming as he could be at this time," Kim Bobola, chairwoman of the board, told the Gazette, citing "frustration within the community" about the shopping center's slow progress. "No one can fault [Jones] as they have in the past," said Bill Strassberger, who sat on the board.

Outside of the Board, few have ever seen the plans. Several weeks ago, however, county officials discovered this marketing brochure on a password-only commercial real estate site. "Join Giant," the ad reads. "Dominant Location in Market. Limited Competition In Large Trade Area. Very Substantial Barriers To Entry For New Competition . . . A Green Development."

Not only does it confirm that earlier rumors that Jones, unable to attract the high-end grocer he'd promised, had lured Giant from its current location across the street. Meanwhile, it also reveals that what he's called "greenest suburban retail" in the nation may be betrayed by its sprawling, car-oriented design, using the same amount of land to hold half the retail space ambitious originally proposed - a concept which Jones later called a "maximum-build scenario" that was "unlikely to represent the final plan."

so much more AFTER THE JUMP . . .

Final layout of the Burtonsville Town Square, which was supposed to begin construction this summer. Click here for a larger version.

The new Burtonsville Town Square will be powered by geothermal heat pumps drilled 400 feet into the ground, landscaping with only native plants, and recycling 75 percent of the existing shopping center into the new one. But gone is the square intended to become Burtonsville's gathering place; instead, there are free-standing restaurants and drive-through banks forming a ring around a sea of parking.

And for Burtonsville merchants, that was absolutely fine. Business owners interviewed in a Gazette story about an economic development study conducted in June called pedestrian improvements like sidewalks "a waste of time." "I don’t need pedestrians; I need cars going by," said Kirk Whiteman, owner of Hobby City, adding, "Big changes are bad." Lynn Martins, whose Seibel's Restaurant is next to the Town Square, looked forward to its completion. "I think when [Chris Jones] revitalizes the shopping center, we’re all going to be surprised," she said.

It's a far cry from two years ago, when residents fought to save Dutch Country Farmers Market an anchor in the existing Burtonsville Shopping Center for nearly two decades and home to dozens of vendors selling everything from fresh produce to backyard structures. In a community that clings to its rural heritage, the so-called "Amish Market" represented a piece of Burtonsville that many felt had been lost to suburban development. In a 2006 Gazette profile on the store, Shelley Rochester, Stuart's wife, called it Burtonsville's "town center," and collected names from two thousand households as part of an awareness campaign for its impending closure.

Citing that the market might be competition for his new tenants, Jones began working with Montgomery County and the market's vendors to find them a new location in Burtonsville. It would be a difficult find, however; the market, a tight warren of shops and stalls that looks as homemade as the goods they sold, need more space. The market drew large crowds that required more parking than other stores of similar size - but also only being open three days a week, creating a "dead zone" from Sunday to Thursday. And the "well-below-market" rents they paid would also be hard to find elsewhere.

In June 2007, Bethesda resident Yoav Katz, who owned an auto repair shop on Route 198, approached the Amish Market about relocating to a new facility he'd build on his property. However, they'd already secured a location in a former grocery store in Upper Marlboro, in southern Prince George's County. At 30,000 square feet, it was twice the size of their current home in Burtonsville - and Katz's proposal as well. "We feel there is an opportunity here," manager Elam Petersheim told the Gazette shortly after the new market opened in March 2008.

The late County Councilmember Marilyn Praisner, who represented East County, was upbeat about the move. "This is a measure of their success that they're expanding," she told the Post in June. Meanwhile, Praisner, County Executive Ike Leggett and two County departments continued searching for potential sites in Burtonsville. In February, sites emerged on Dino Drive in thee Burtonsville Industrial Park, and in Laurel just across I-95.

By March, however, the Amish Market announced it had signed a five-year lease for a former furniture store on Route 198 in eastern Laurel, partly aided by Prince George's County Councilmember Thomas Dernoga. Like their new Upper Marlboro location, the Laurel store was twice as large as their site in Burtonsville, with "wider aisles and spacious floor space that will allow the market to offer faster, better service to customers," according to manager Sam Beiler.

With the Amish Market gone, Jones could finally draw attention back to his new shopping center, but he held his cards close, keeping most information about the development out of public view -and, thus, public debate. He dismissed questions about the Giant move at the Advisory Board meeting where the plans were unveiled. In June, the Post Office, a tenant for ten years, was evicted for being unable to commit to an additional ten-year lease. Recently, vendors at the Amish Market have told customers that they will remain open through November, citing Jones's difficulty in obtaining permits for the redevelopment.

Four years in the making, the Town Square represents a turning point in Burtonsville's history. Burned by suburban growth and wary of change, many residents hoped it would be a step back to more prosperous times - or, at least, maintain the status quo. For the developer, it was an opportunity to give the community the kind of upscale shopping that East County lacks. As the two clashed and attempted to compromise, neither managed to win in the end. But until the first shovel hits the ground, it's still just business as usual in Burtonsville.

Click here to see a site plan for the new Town Square. LATER THIS WEEK: What kind of retail similar communities in the area are getting.

9 comments:

Thomas Hardman said...

...and let me guess. This "greenest retail center ever built" will be powered by immensely expensive and impossible-to-relocate geothermal equipment sunk exactly in the most reasonable path for a re-alignment of MD-198 west of US-29.

Then if the sane thing is done -- simply go ahead with the realignment "as it should be" and attach the property under eminent domain proceedings -- he can squeeze a huge fortune out of the taxpayers, simply from having had the "foresight" to build his better mousetrap square in the path of progress.

Okay, I realize I'm getting a little obsessive about Burtonsville, considering I don't even live there. But this sort of obsessiveness is the almost inevitable result of me spending about 15 hours straight poring over State Hihway Administration plans and proposals going back to 2002 before the ICC was a done deal, much less a done deal under construction. I also pored over just about everything I could find on the subject of Burtonsville traffic, read every last blog on the subject, and got exceptionally drunk and woke up in the morning with both a hangover and a vision.

As our esteemed commentator points out, until the shovels actually dig into the ground, it's just business as usual, more talk, more planning, more exploration of alternatives and paralysis from analysis. These seven lean years we now face may eventually turn into another decade of boom times, though I honestly don't ever see a return to the day when gasoline was 99 cents a gallon and the measure of a man was the number of cubic inches in his lead sled from downtown Detroit. So, we need to plan for efficiency, we need to plan for transit-hub and mixed-use and above all we need to plan to straighten out what is crooked before we try to repurpose or infill. There's just no way to "fix" west Burtonsville until and unless all of that traffic gets unsnarled. And to untangle the traffic mess you have to untangle the roads.

I may be being obsessive but I think everyone would agree that it's a simple, straightforward, and inescapably logical obsession, the sort that a real politician would characterize with the slogan "inescapably passionate about doing things right". Call it grandiose, but it's a vision.

Take a look with your favorite satellite image browser and think about how nice it might be to have things start being more gridlike in terms of street alignments, rather than the current situation which much resembles highways paved over streets that were cobbled over cowpaths. Stop thinking about preserving the small-town nature of Burtonsville because that went the way of the dodo when Burtonsville Crossing and Burtonsville Office Park were built.

Local businesses are struggling, are they? Maybe it's because people are rightly afraid to take their eyes off of the road to see the signs of those businesses. Relocating the state highway to relieve the passthrough traffic from the local-shopper routes might change that a lot, and we've seen what happens in other places once they decide it's time to have an Old Town. So why not an Old Town Burtonsville that's a destination, rather than a horrid traffic nightmare people simply want to escape?

Anonymous said...

Thomas Hardman,

Keeping Burtonsville looking like a Depressed Old Town Mayberry is not the way to go.

One of the Best Solutions to help unclog the Traffic Snarls in Burtonsville is to Widen MD 198 between 4 and 6 lanes then add an East-West Metro Bus Route from Laurel to Rockville, and with the Completion of the ICC there would not be much of an excuse for commuters to Pile up traffic on the Back Roads through Burtonsville.

Thomas Hardman said...

An anonymous coward implies that I want to keep Burtonsville mired in the Civil War era, and then declares -- as if it were their own novel idea not clearly depicted in the post to which they respond -- that widening MD-198 and adding transit is the way to go.

Leaving out the issues of their being too lazy to read the preceding response, or alternatively pretending to having not read and then plagiarizing, I thought anonymous cowards were blocked from posting on this blog.

But let's get into more detail.


Elsewhere
, I proposed a realignment of the route of MD-198 west of Burtonsville. I shall reiterate that here:

------

"Downtown Burtonsville" is, in my opinion, not really salvageable until and unless a few things happen. Feel free to hate on me but I cannot see too many alternatives.

1. Free your mind and realize that the only way to save Burtonsville is to destroy it.

2. Understand that Burtonsville is laid out wrong, aligned wrong, and could not be better designed to obstruct traffic and outrage drivers. Furthermore, except to the west, everything is laid out even more wrongly. One obvious solution set for dealing with the traffic -- preserving existing businesses and making them more accessible by both foot and car -- is out of the question due to the layout of the area southeast of the intersection of US-29 and MD-28. O the horror.

3. All possible solutions to "rationalizing" Burtonsville utterly depend on two prerequisites. First, the elementary school goes. Done gone finish, kaput. Auf Wedersehen. The only thing more in the way is Burtonsville Shopping Center. Second, Burtonsville Shopping Center vanished utterly from the face of the earth and the minds of planners. History. Toast.

4. Bulldozers and heavy equipment are the friend of mankind and all things good for Burtonsville. Get ready to use them extensively or all hope is lost. Get ready to condemn some land, too. That is all.

5. Take your map and take a nice straight ruler. Mark a line from roughly the intersection of MD-198 and US-29 westward to roughly the intersection of MD-198 and Kruhm Road. Bulldoze everything along that line, 9 lanes wide. Pave it into three lanes by three lanes with left-turn pullouts and either elevated or cut-and-cover light rail.

6. Everything north of the highway-rail alignment is henceforth by proclamation and decree nothing other than Patuxent Watershed and conterminous farm or park lands. Offlimits for development etc., except as public space.

7. Leave the old Spencerville Road if you want to and in fact that's a great idea. However, at the southernmost point, once again break out the bulldozers and punch a road due east to the frontage road. Blackburn Road, counterintuitive as this may seem, goes the wrong way one way and that has to be fixed north of your new road. The new road should be one-way eastbound.

8. Santini Road gets realigned and improved between the new highway-rail line of MD-198 and the road you just built.

9 Everyone residing within that new square gets told that they just got zoned "mixed use high density" and to start packing, have a nice paycheck from our eminent domain action. The dirty trick here isn't the power play, it's that however you zone the place, you preserve as a public greens most of that land encircled by Blackburn Road and bounded on the north by Tolson Place.

Now you have your town square! Develop it how you will. But you can not ever possibly have a decent downtown Burtonsville until land unless you get almost all (and all passthrough)vehicular traffic off of the current alignment of MD-198.

Leave the current businesses where they are, more or less, and let "old 198" become more of a boulevard for local traffic, and develop stub streets perpendicular to that, connecting to Tolson Place and put a comparable street parallel to "old 198" to the north of it.

Thus you have the skeleton of a much more densified and walkable downtown Burtonsville, where locals can also drive but which has the vast majority of passthrough traffic routed around it. You stop preserving relic roads that got their modern layout when the vast majority of traffic was quadruped and ungulate. Then once the hideous traffic snarls and "you can't get there from here" layout has been rationalized, then you start debating on how to develop that.

And there you have it, something that will work and is far more ambitious than the Burtonsville Town Square as proposed, which really would be nothing more than trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, and a gangrenous sow's ear at that. Fix the traffic first and all else will follow. Fail to fix the traffic and Burtonsville remains not a destination, but a horror to be suffered while just passing through. Not to hate on Burtonsville, I'm sure there's plenty there that's just hunky-dory, but generally speaking I can't get on or off the road to go see what might be there.
------

Anonymous said...

Thomas Hardman,

Damn, what you state actually made sens in which I totally agree 100%.

Leave the current Highway MD 198(west of Highway US 29) as is and build a MD 198 Bypass with 4-6 Lanes West of US Highway 29 to the MD Highway 198-28 Connector west of MD Highway 650 NH Avenue.

My concern about Burtonsville is that when they relocated US Highway 29 to the East, why in the world did they not Construct a V Shape Interchange for US Highway 29 Exit North to the Old US Highway 29.

Also they should have Renamed the Old US 29 as Business US 29 and the current US Highway 29 as the US 29 By-Pass.

If your familiar with the US 29 in Southern Virginia(Danville), and North Carolina(High Point(near Greensboro), and Concord-Kannapolis(near Charlotte)) they have US Highway 29 Split as the Old US 29 that goes through the City Limits Labeled as Business US 29 and the Updated US Highway 29 that goes outside of the City Limits Labeled as By-Pass US 29.

retgroclk said...

Perhaps the question that is not being asked is--"Where are those people going in the morning, that they have to clog 29.?"

Everyone is driving south whether it is from Baltimore, Columbia, or Burtonsville.
Beltway traffic-- everyone is travelling from the aboce areas, and also Prince Georges, Howard, and Charles County.

Where are they going?

There is talk of a large influx of new residents coming to the state of Maryland- mostly military-- where are they going to live?

Since most of the military related establishments are in D.C. they should live there- but no-- instead they will live innew home and developments built along the 29 corridor, or further out 270.
How about relocating business to these areas- perhaps somekind of satellite office .

How about halting anymore development along 29 and 270.

Building alternative roads and roundabouts sound good- but they cost money.

If the County were to halt
further housing developments- those people who will be seeking jobs in the Washington, D.C., Bethesda or Silver Spring area will have to find some other place to live.

Maybe closer to work.

We do not need more destructive roads.

Anonymous said...

retgroclk said...
Perhaps the question that is not being asked is--"Where are those people going in the morning, that they have to clog 29.?"

Everyone is driving south whether it is from Baltimore, Columbia, or Burtonsville.
Beltway traffic-- everyone is travelling from the aboce areas, and also Prince Georges, Howard, and Charles County.

Where are they going?

RE: Hmmm!!!!!!!!

There is a state south of the Potomac River that the Beltway goes to called Virginia and in Virginia it sucks in most of the Maryland Working Population that commutes to cities/regions in Virginia such as Arlington, Alexandria, Springfield, Tysons Corner, Fairfax, Reston, Herndon, Ashburn, and Sterling.

retgroclk said...

There is talk of a large influx of new residents coming to the state of Maryland- mostly military-- where are they going to live?

RE: Anne Arundel County, Howard County, Frederick County, Baltimore City/County, Harford County, Cecil County, etc.

retgroclk said...

Since most of the military related establishments are in D.C. they should live there- but no-- instead they will live innew home and developments built along the 29 corridor, or further out 270.
How about relocating business to these areas- perhaps somekind of satellite office .

RE: The last time I checked most of the BRAC Military Establishments are being relocated to Bethesda, Silver Spring, Fort Meade, Fort Dedrick(sp), and Alberdean. In fact most of Walter Reed is Relocating to Bethesda.

retgroclk said...

How about halting anymore development along 29 and 270.


RE: Wow!!! I guess while they're at it why don't they just Halt ALL Form of Development throughout the Entire State of Maryland and Promote More High Density Development in Virginia and other States to the south such as North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas since aloot of people from Maryland are predicted to continue migrating there for cheaper cost of living.

retgroclk said...

Building alternative roads and roundabouts sound good- but they cost money.

RE: No, Building Roudabouts is a waste of Tax Payeer's Money and its proven to not be beneficial to traffic calming especially if the roundabout is built on a busy roadway.

retgroclk said...

If the County were to halt
further housing developments- those people who will be seeking jobs in the Washington, D.C., Bethesda or Silver Spring area will have to find some other place to live.

RE: If the County were to Halt Housing Development and the people are trying to find Jobs in Bethesda and Silver Spring but are forced to live in Fairfax County, Virginia due to Montgomery County being anti-Housing then the issue of Traffic would not reduce because the direction of the traffic would reverse due to commuters traveling to Montgomery County from DC/Virginia to Work.

retgroclk said...

Maybe closer to work.

RE: Then that would mean that they will have to sacrifice some park land in Bethesda and Silver Spring to build more housing for the commuters that travel to BRAC Military locations in Bethesda, Rockville, and Silver Spring.

retgroclk said...

We do not need more destructive roads.

RE: Right and Virginia Deserves Funding for Adding HOT Lanes to their Beltway, I-95/395, I-66, and Dulles Toll Road, Widening the Beltway to 12 Lanes, Spending Millions if not Billions on the Springfield Interchange, Building the Fairfax/Prince William County Parkways and now Upgrading them to Limited Access Highway Standards.

Hey why don't the MD SHA just Rip up All of the Paved Roadways and build small Dirt/Gravel Roads and Only allow people to use Horse and Buggy when needed to travel anywhere in Montgomery County if not the state of Maryland. If people are driving their cars from out of state(Interstate Travelers), they can park their cars near at a freight train station, the train can transport the cars accross the county/state and the drivers can return to their cars when the freight train arrives at the destination on the other end of the county/state...

retgroclk said...

The use of horse and buggy is not a bad idea. Do not forget stage coaches and covered wagons.

If we implement these modes of transportation, we can eliminate paved roads. Very good for the environment.

We can use the horse waste(horse s--t) for fertilizer, fuel(it can be converted to methane gas) and the cleaning and gathering of horse manure will provide employment.

People will travel at a slower rate-less accidents.

Since trips will take longer, rest areas will have to be built, maybe taverns and stables --again- creating more jobs.

WOW-- anonymous- you have some great ideas.

You should not hide your name.

I like your wayof thinking-- let's get together and make plans-- maybe some government grants can get us started.

Anonymous said...

retgroclk said...
The use of horse and buggy is not a bad idea. Do not forget stage coaches and covered wagons.

If we implement these modes of transportation, we can eliminate paved roads. Very good for the environment.

We can use the horse waste(horse s--t) for fertilizer, fuel(it can be converted to methane gas) and the cleaning and gathering of horse manure will provide employment.

People will travel at a slower rate-less accidents.

Since trips will take longer, rest areas will have to be built, maybe taverns and stables --again- creating more jobs.

WOW-- anonymous- you have some great ideas.

You should not hide your name.

I like your wayof thinking-- let's get together and make plans-- maybe some government grants can get us started.

August 13, 2008 8:18 AM

RE: You really think this is Funny, dontcha Jimbo, LOL!!!

I tell you what the day the Americans give this country back to the Indians, The Good 'Ol Boys down south stop Supporting the Confederate Flag, Viriginians come out the closet and admit that they have some resentment against Maryland, The Republicans become Humanitarian for the Poor, the Democrats become Fiscally Productive, You stop smoking the Angel Powder, Radio Stations stop playing the same music 100 x's a day, Michael Jackson regains his Brown Pigmentation, A Black Democrat Becomes Maryland's Governor, the Republicans become Majority in Maryland's Politics, Every State in the South including Sprawling cities like Atlanta, Charlotte, Miami, and Houston rip up ALL of the Paved Roads, tear down their Upscale Sky Scrappers, remove cars off the road and return back to Horse and Buggy then I will support your illfaded Pipe Dream to Sabotage Maryland's Business and Economic Growth.....

retgroclk said...

WOW-- I am with you all the way- when do we start