Coming soon to Symphony Woods: light, food and water.

Columbia Association officials say those key elements are what’s needed to draw residents to the 38-acre woods downtown, which is currently under-used save for popular annual events such as Wine in the Woods, the Capital Jazz Festival and the wintertime Symphony of Lights.

Under a plan presented Wednesday by association planners, a fountain-type water display and a small café surrounded by paved pathways would help transform the area into Symphony Woods Park. The woods’ dense canopy would be thinned in certain areas to provide for “pockets” of sunlight, according to planners.

The park also would have a more visible entry plaza off Little Patuxent Parkway, a woodland garden with crushed stone pathways, a children’s play area with sculptures, restrooms and a 150-space parking lot, according to plans presented by designers Cy Paumier and John Slater at a community meeting Wednesday night at Slayton House in Wilde Lake.

“It’s the magnet that brings the people.You’ve got the food; you’ve got the water; you’ve got the play equipment; you’ve got the art. This place comes alive and it will really be exciting,” Slater said. “It really is a marketing tool for the town and it’s a beautiful way to bring people in.”

Columbia Association officials will host a walking tour outlining the park plans at Symphony Woods Sept. 26 from 10:30 a.m. to noon.

CA has been planning the park renovations for about a year. Focus on the future of Symphony Woods intensified in recent years as the future of Columbia’s Town Center as a whole has been in the spotlight. Developer General Growth Properties Inc., the majority landowner in downtown, has submitted a 30-year master plan to remake Town Center with additional housing, retail, and walkways and upgrades to Merriweather Post Pavilion.

The GGP plan is under review by the county, which must approve it. The bulk of CA's plan for Symphony Woods does not need county approval.

Although General Growth owns most of the land in downtown, including the Columbia mall and Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia Association owns Symphony Woods, the roughly 38 acres that surrounds the concert pavilion.

General Growth’s plans had proposed additions to Symphony Woods, including a few cultural arts buildings, although that plan has not been embraced by CA officials.The two organizations have met a half-dozen times in recent months in an effort to plan ways to give Merriweather and Symphony Woods a more unified appearance, and General Growth officials have backed off their suggestion of adding cultural arts buildings to the woods, CA officials said.

“We love the idea of cultural arts in Town Center, but it ended up taking 10-plus acres of Symphony Woods,” Slater said of the General Growth plan.

Added Paumier: “The goal is to work with General Growth Properties to find a way to make this area more accessible, more attractive.”

The first phase of the park project, which CA Board of Directors chairman Philip Kirsch said the board hopes to begin in the next year, would include the walkways, benches and park infrastructure.

Later phases, for which officials hope to forge partnerships to fund, would bring in the fountain, café and other features, he said.

The entire plan would likely take four to five years to complete, depending on the availability of funding in CA’s budget, he said. Kirsch added that he received a letter from General Growth shortly before Wednesday's meeting supporting the association’s plan for Symphony Woods.

About 80 people attended the association’s presentation Wednesday and gave the plan mixed — though mostly positive — reviews.

Several people expressed concern about keeping the park from looking overly manicured, and not decimating the canopy. “It is called Symphony Woods, it should still look like a woods,” one attendee commented.

Planners responded that CA has committed to replacing each tree taken down in the park with at least one tree else where on CA open space.

A few people commented that the plan didn’t seem to acknowledge the presence of Merriweather Post Pavilion.

“The plan is a good one, it’s pretty, but it doesn’t seem to incorporate Merriweather. I’m not hearing anything in terms of Merriweather and it’s not going anywhere,” a resident told planners.

Town Center resident Teri Garstecki, who moved to Columbia about a year ago, told planners she thinks the park needs to be more accessible to pedestrians and better connected to its surroundings in downtown.

After the meeting, Garstecki said that, as a new resident, she was unaware for months if Symphony Woods was private property or open to the public. She said she liked the plan.

“I think it’s really beautiful. I want to keep downtown vibrant. I bought a house here; I’m invested here,” she said. “If you make it easy for the parents to pack up the stroller, they’ll come.”

Alan Klein, of the community group Coalition for Columbia’s Downtown, called the plan “gorgeous.”

“It’s exactly what should be there,” he said, adding that he believes CA’s plan for the woods is in sync with General Growth’s goals for downtown. “Now there will be an obvious entryway (to Symphony Woods),” he said. “It’s going to make it more walkable, more vibrant, more livable.”

However, another community activist, Jud Malone, of the community group Columbia Tomorrow, said he thought CA’s plan largely ignores the adjacent properties owned by General Growth — which he thinks would be a detriment to both.

“It doesn’t even begin to incorporate Merriweather,” Malone, a former CA board member, said of the CA plan. “It needs to be a joint plan, but I’m not seeing that yet.”

Resident Bill Santos, who serves on the Wilde Lake Village Board, said his opinion of the park plan was that it was a good first step, although he would like to have heard more quantified projections on how many people CA believes the new park will attract and comparisons to other Columbia parks and regional parks.

“Having two young children, I’d like to have a place in downtown where I can take them to play,” he said.

Additionally, he said he would like to see more options for the future of the park.

“It would have been nice to see a design competition for Symphony Woods.These guys are great, they’re world renowned, but they’re not without peers,” he said of CA’s designers.

He added that he sees wasted resources and missed opportunities for collaboration between CA and General Growth, such as each organization paying for an assessment of the health of trees in Symphony Woods.

---

user comments (1)

user tom3 says...

Great plan. But unnecessary budgetary expense at the wrong time. No one ever asked how much the plan will cost. I estimate this project will cost near the $5 million. This is an important question because CA already has many higher priority capital expenditures that will significantly increase CA's debt. If the Board will start working with other stakeholders involved in the downtown redevelopment they will find willing funding sources. It is high time this Board realize their responsibility to CA's lien payers to spend their money judiciously.

Posted 9:04 PM, 09.21.09 | Permalink