Key aspects of General Growth Properties' 30-year master plan for downtown Columbia involve the issues of transportation, housing, arts and the environment.

General Growth plans to provide startup funding to establish four separate groups charged with overseeing each of the elements, and later relying on annual fees charged to developers.

Also see:

• Five neighborhoods with unique personalities
• Columbia plans on course despite General Growth's struggles
• Pleased with plan, officials now eye nuts and bolts

The following concepts are outlined in the master plan General Growth officials proposed to Howard County officials last week.

Transit

The overall idea is to reduce automobile dependence in downtown Columbia, with people "parking once" and walking or using public transit to get everywhere else they want to go

A connected street network will use already existing roads, new streets and the "transformation" of inner and outer roads in the Columbia mall into actual streets. It could include a new grade-separated interchange at Route 29 between the interchanges that already exist at Broken Land Parkway and Little Patuxent Parkway.

Intersection improvements are being proposed, including adding a southbound lane on Broken Land Parkway at Hickory Ridge Road; additional turn lanes at Little Patuxent Parkway and Broken Land Parkway; added turn lanes at Little Patuxent Parkway and Symphony Promenade; and reconfiguring the Little Patuxent Parkway/Governor Warfield Parkway intersection.

The plan calls for allowing a higher critical lane volume standard within the downtown area than is currently allowed under county rules. Congestion and travel times are likely to increase, which would decrease the number of people who cut through Town Center on the way to other destinations, according to a traffic study commissioned by General Growth.

The full plan build-out would add between roughly 5,700 and 8,400 more vehicle trips to Town Center per day. However, the study found the roads, especially in light of increased emphasis on public transit, walking and biking, would be able to handle the added volume, so long as certain improvements are made. Those include adding through lanes at the intersections between Little Patuxent Parkway and Columbia Road and Vantage Point Road.

General Growth plans to establish a Transportation Management Association, collecting fees from developers and using that money to oversee transit services, promote carpooling and bicycle and pedestrian programs. Each developer would pay a 5 cent per square foot of gross leasable area annually.

The association would be established within six months of the approval of the final development plan for downtown.

A downtown shuttle bus would go on a double loop route around Town Center and serve as a main form of public transportation.

In addition, a new site should be found downtown for a transit hub facility, where the main town shuttle would be based and future long-distance transit could become established. This land would be given to the county by General Growth.

Columbia is not a good candidate for rapid transit now because the downtown area does not have a high concentration of people and activities. Should the number of people and attractions downtown increase, though, the transit hub could include regional buses, light rail or extension of the Metro Green line into Washington, D.C.

Pedestrian and bicycle paths would link Town Center to Symphony Woods and Lake Kittamaqundi, as well as Howard County Community College, Wilde Lake and Oakland Mills.

Town Center should have a "sufficient" number of parking spaces downtown, rather than an excess of spaces, to discourage car use. "Shared parking," where people use garages to go to more than one location, will be emphasized and multi-story garages will be built rather than flat lots.

Housing

General Growth plans to set aside 20 percent of new housing for people making less than 120 percent of the county's median income, which currently is about $101,000.

Ten percent of the homes will be built using methods that would make them affordable to people making roughly $80,000 to $120,000 a year. The other 10 percent would be made affordable to people making $80,000 a year or less.

A Community Housing Foundation, a nonprofit, would be set up to distribute money from a housing fund. The fund would get money from General Growth, developers and commercial properties.

General Growth would give $5 million total, with the first $3 million delivered after getting its final development plan approval. Another $1 million would come after the 200th residential unit building permit is granted and the last $1 million would be issued after the 400th new residential unit permit is granted.

In addition to the General Growth money, a one-time charge of $4,000 per new housing unit would be levied against developers. Commercial properties would pay 5 cents per square foot of leasable space into the fund.

The initial money in the fund would pay for about 550 units, out of which 60 percent would be rentals and 40 percent sales.

The foundation could use its money in nontraditional ways, such as offering subsidies for day care, or other needs the board decides are pressing concerns for downtown.

The board would include a member from General Growth, a property owner representative and members of the community. The foundation would be established within three months after the approval of the final development plan.

However, instead of a foundation's being created, an existing public charity could take over the fund instead and manage it as an alternative.

Arts and culture

A General Growth-commissioned study found that local arts organizations have been hampered by a lack of performance and exhibition venues, affordable administrative space and workspace for individual artists. The cultural master plan would seek to address those issues.

A new arts district would be centered in the Merriweather neighborhood and would require an extensive renovation of Merriweather Post Pavilion in order to help the venue attract popular performers. The renovation would begin within six months of the approval of the final development plan for downtown, with the eventual goal of transferring ownership of the pavilion to the community.

The concept also would include plazas and public spaces including a sculpture park, gardens, a children's park and a dog park throughout downtown intended to encourage people to gather and hold smaller-scale performances and events.

The plan calls for a new and improved Toby's Dinner Theatre venue and the addition of a children's theater.

The plan also calls for a new Central Branch library to be built closer to the arts district. Planners envision an "experience library" that would include the traditional resources of a library along with visual and interactive exhibits. General Growth officials say they are in discussions with library leaders about a land and building partnership that would aid in the construction of a new library.

The plan would include a new Columbia Visitor Center that would house the Columbia Archives and other resources for visitors and information about the history and development of Columbia.

General Growth officials plan to provide the seed money to establish the Columbia Town Center Cultural Commission, which would be established to promote downtown Columbia as a regional destination for arts and cultural events and attractions.

The commission would be funded by developer contributions amounting to an annual charge of 5 cents per square foot of gross leasable area applied to new commercial development in Town Center.

Local arts leaders would serve in an advisory capacity to the commission, which would be formed within two months of the approval of the first site development plan related to the master plan. The commission would be responsible for crafting a cultural master plan for downtown.

Environment

General Growth officials envision downtown Columbia as a compact, connected "city in a garden" designed using environmentally conscious practices that respect the land and provide for clean air and waterways.

To that end, they intend to establish the Columbia Town Center Sustainability Association to carry out a program aimed at restoring natural environments and relying more heavily on renewable resources. The association would be started within one year of the approval of the master plan using funding from General Growth and then rely on revenue from a fee levied on developers of 5 cents per square foot of gross leasable area in new commercial development.

The environmental plan calls for changes to both the natural and built components of Town Center, including guidelines for energy-efficient buildings and strategies to combat pollution by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Some new structures, and other existing buildings that lend themselves to retrofitting, would incorporate solar panels or wind power generators on their rooftops.

Other rooftops would be made "green" by adding vegetation or water collection barrels that absorb rain to reduce the amount of stormwater runoff polluting waterways such as Lake Kittamaqundi, the Little Patuxent River and eventually the Chesapeake Bay. Pervious paving materials, vegetated buffer areas and sand filtration systems also would contribute to the effort to stem runoff and erosion.

The plan also anticipates changes to Symphony Woods in order to make it the "central park" of Columbia, including the removal of invasive, non-native species based on a forest assessment and inventory of the trees in Symphony Woods.

Although Symphony Woods and Lake Kittamaqundi would be the area's principal green spaces, the plan calls for the development of new parks and squares to be the focal point of each neighborhood and within a five-minute walk from any location in the neighborhood.

---

user comments (0)