University hopes to improve College Park housing for faculty (Silver Spring: neighborhood, construction)

[adelphi_sky]

I found this article interesting regarding all of the questions and talk about safety, schools, etc. I think what the university is doing is promising for the area. This project has been going on for about 2 years now. College Park has a lot of potential. The university sees it. Now if we can just get the local municipalities to stop tripping over themselves and slowing down the transformation, College Park can be a destination in the next 10 years.

University hopes to improve College Park housing for faculty

In a city plagued with frustrating bumper-to-bumper traffic, linguistics professor Juan Uriagereka enjoys a commute that’s just a brief walk down the street.
The associate provost for faculty affairs lives in University Park with his family and raves about his tight-knit, familial College Park neighborhood.
“It’s a very diverse community, very safe,” said Uriagereka, who is also a professor. “We bike around and walk to work.”
But as a faculty member living in the city, he’s a rare breed in College Park. Just 4 percent of the university’s faculty and staff live in the city, according to a report on faculty and staff housing published this year by Anderson Strickler, LLC.

I found this statement interesting despite the perception of the county and its schools, crime, etc.

“I bike a lot with the kids, and you do come here in the middle of the weekend and sometimes there’s not a lot of folks around,” Uriagereka said. “Or you go to Clarice Smith and it’s not always clear you can hang out and have a beer with [your] friends. We need to build the infrastructure. But the need is clearly there — who would object to going to an opera?”

[JBPisgah]

I always wondered why CP is so dead. Here you have a world class university and the excitement surrounding it is really meh. What is it about the DC area that sucks the life out of everything?

[molukai]

Originally Posted by JBPisgah

What is it about the DC area that sucks the life out of everything?

Everything.

[Mr Beco]

They already done study after study. I don't know why they need to study this anymore? CP is a rough market to get anything done, I've gone down the road on this and others say the same thing, developers that is. The community is stuck in neutral ... Go to Penn State, UVA, etc, and see what a nice college town looks like.....

[HurricaneDC]

I blame it on terrible infrastructure and terrible gang-banger neighbors.

[adelphi_sky]

Originally Posted by Barry Rock

They already done study after study. I don't know why they need to study this anymore? CP is a rough market to get anything done, I've gone down the road on this and others say the same thing, developers that is. The community is stuck in neutral ... Go to Penn State, UVA, etc, and see what a nice college town looks like.....

It's a town full of people that don't want change. Which is interesting since a major university like UMD has a constantly evolving student body. College Park has a large aging population. The main concern? Traffic and noise. I find that odd seeing as how they live near such a large institution.

The blame can also go to the previous UMD administrations. The College Park Metro was placed damn near a mile away from the center of campus. Duh! Also, UMD still has lots of land for development and expansion. Why was there ever a housing shortage for students? Duh! Just now we're seeing a wave of new student housing with retail on the ground floor. Really? UMD might as well be a community college. I love Loh. He is blazing new trails and is encouraging partnerships with the community. I like the fact that it is one of his goals to make College Park a top ten college town. It's longggggggggggggggggggggggggg overdue. College Park is next to D.C. It should be as vibrant as Silver Spring or Bethesda where students AND faculty dominate the town. It's sad that only 4% of faculty live in College Park. Duh!

There are great initiatives coming on board. I like the Domain Project. The Knox Box was purchased by a developer and will eventually become more student housing. No retail though. And the huge fail in East Campus, 12 years in the making (Duh!), has rebooted yet again without so much as a bulldozer in sight. THe redevelopment of Maryland Book Exchange is good too. It has been approved and hopefully construction can start in the late summer or fall. It will be a major presence in the heart of downtown College park.

College Park got off to a real slow start. But things are improving. The residents need to realize that change is not so dreadful. traffic means people. People mean vibrancy. Vibrancy improves quality of life by bringing services, retail, and nightlife. You don't hear anyone saying they don't want to live in Silver Spring, Bethesda, Rosslyn, Arlington, etc. All have more traffic than College Park, but the traffic is tolerable if the place is worth living in. Popular, vibrant places draw traffic. There's no way around it. If your town is the place where people want to be, that's will the traffic will be. Get over it.

I see College Park turning a point in the next 5 to 10 years. With the approval of transportation funding, look for developers to start looking at places along the Purple Line to develop. That helps College Park in huge ways. Let's see if they can't get 50% of faculty and staff to live in College Park in 10 years. I see it happening.

[Mr Beco]

Originally Posted by adelphi_sky

It's a town full of people that don't want change. Which is interesting since a major university like UMD has a constantly evolving student body. College Park has a large aging population. The main concern? Traffic and noise. I find that odd seeing as how they live near such a large institution.

The blame can also go to the previous UMD administrations. The College Park Metro was placed damn near a mile away from the center of campus. Duh! Also, UMD still has lots of land for development and expansion. Why was there ever a housing shortage for students? Duh! Just now we're seeing a wave of new student housing with retail on the ground floor. Really? UMD might as well be a community college. I love Loh. He is blazing new trails and is encouraging partnerships with the community. I like the fact that it is one of his goals to make College Park a top ten college town. It's longggggggggggggggggggggggggg overdue. College Park is next to D.C. It should be as vibrant as Silver Spring or Bethesda where students AND faculty dominate the town. It's sad that only 4% of faculty live in College Park. Duh!

There are great initiatives coming on board. I like the Domain Project. The Knox Box was purchased by a developer and will eventually become more student housing. No retail though. And the huge fail in East Campus, 12 years in the making (Duh!), has rebooted yet again without so much as a bulldozer in sight. THe redevelopment of Maryland Book Exchange is good too. It has been approved and hopefully construction can start in the late summer or fall. It will be a major presence in the heart of downtown College park.

College Park got off to a real slow start. But things are improving. The residents need to realize that change is not so dreadful. traffic means people. People mean vibrancy. Vibrancy improves quality of life by bringing services, retail, and nightlife. You don't hear anyone saying they don't want to live in Silver Spring, Bethesda, Rosslyn, Arlington, etc. All have more traffic than College Park, but the traffic is tolerable if the place is worth living in. Popular, vibrant places draw traffic. There's no way around it. If your town is the place where people want to be, that's will the traffic will be. Get over it.

I see College Park turning a point in the next 5 to 10 years. With the approval of transportation funding, look for developers to start looking at places along the Purple Line to develop. That helps College Park in huge ways. Let's see if they can't get 50% of faculty and staff to live in College Park in 10 years. I see it happening.

The project I worked on, a potential mix-use conversion of an office building, was back in 2006, we quickly realized that banging your head against a wall wasn't so great, so we bailed. I went to several meetings there where they announced the findings of their "Study"....widening Route 1 was on the table, can you imagine? I like Loh as well, but he is way too creative for the powers that be.....he really wanted to consolidate the entire Maryland System, that wasn't approved.

I just want to open a pizza shop somewhere on campus.....playing small-ball here