What Happened to the Frederick Towne Mall? (Severn, Chance: 2013, apartments)

[Tiger Beer]

Originally Posted by mamaecho

Tiger Bear - I think you could reasonably live downtown Frederick and not own a car, but you would probably have to get a taxi/ride public transportation to go to a grocery store. You could do a lot though without a car downtown.

The rest of Frederick is not as walkable.. Although 40 you could reasonably live in a house/apartment and walk to some grocery stores, etc.

Thanks for the response

I'd certainly have a car as well....BUT, it would be a pure luxery to still be within walking distance to a number of things.

Wonder how the safety is in Frederick...seems pleasant enough...but sometimes in what seems would be desireable density and things to do...there is sometimes an unsafe element to it - I don't care so much for myself, but got a wife and kid as well.

I also wonder if Hagerstown favors better in that way?

Is there an unsavory element drifting from DC...or does that seem to be a stretch...?

[westsideboy]

Frederick has some rough spots as mentioned previously in the post, but most of the historic downtown area is gentrified and pretty safe. Hagerstown has more crime in their "dense" part of town, but aside from a few neighborhoods it is still a low crime environment.

[mamaecho]

Most of Frederick I would say is very safe. Someone else would be able to tell you about downtown Frederick, I know there are a few streets that some of my friends wouldn't want to live on, but anywhere near Baker Park would be nice.. and walking distance from downtown.

Just stay away from 40

[cgordon]

TB - Depends on how you want to define 'walkable' ...

I live on Motter, about 15 min. walk from downtown. Numerous restaurants and shops in easy reach, a couple of smaller markets there, too. Grocery-wise, my wife and I do walk to the local Safeway regularly, and there's a nicer Giant Eagle that _is_ walkable, but sits on the other side of US 15 from us and traffic may be an issue.

15 bisects Frederick and there are only a handful of places to cross it, causing traffic congestion at the chokepoints. There are decent sidewalks, but you still have to walk alongside a very heavily-trafficked street. Those chokepoints are NOT very cycle friendly ...

I work at Fort Detrick, and have walked to work and back occasionally (about 35 min. walk or so), again, having to cross under 17 on 7th St is a bit of a crush trafficwise.

My wife walk to her office almost every day, and cycles when the weather is warmer.

We chose our location specifically so that we _could_ walk to a lot of the amenities ...

[cgordon]

Safetywise - Some folks around here will tell you there is a crime problem in Frederick. I don't see it. Generally speaking, the town is much quieter, crime-wise, that I'd expected with it being so close to DC and Balto, and with I-70 and I-270 and US 15 running through town.

As I posted above, my wife and I walk in our area a lot, and so far, have only had one experience (in not quite two years here), that raised my hackles, and that was less of a worry about being mugged than it was that the guy in question was very obviously in the throes of some recreational chemical and not functioning real well in this reality.

There was a 'riot' downtown on New Year's Eve, what I think was more of a scuffle turned into a spectator event that the local police swooped upon en masse. I remember one weekend in the summer when there were six hold-ups/muggings in one weekend (most of them in the area near US40) and everybody was crying 'crime wave' ...

This ain't quite Mayberry RFD, but it's damn near.

On the other hand, you can walk downtown on a busy weekend and hear 6 or 7 languages, there's an active art scene (not so much the live music, though, but such can be found), a fairly progressive and active downtown food and shopping scene and the local bus system is decent enough.

The MARC train will take you to DC weekdays, and there are, IIRC, a couple of commuter buses to DC and Baltimore as well.

We've found a good farmer's market here (not so walkable, though), and the town has enough city-like amenities (Sams and Costco, etc) that we seldom are in want for shopping options. Would be nice to have a Trader Joe's here, but remember that beer, wine and liquor are only sold (with some few exceptions) in licensed liquor stores, so you won't be buying drink the same place you get groceries.

I think the housing market here is probably about as good as it's going to get, and I can see prices going back up (hopefully slowly) in the coming year.

cg

[mamaecho]

Trader Joe's isn't so far from Frederick, about 20-30 minutes.

[cgordon]

We go down to the one in Vienna/Reston pretty regularly (we've friends in the area and always swing by TJs when we god down).

On the other hand, we do love the bulk spices and some of the crunchier items available at Common Market ...

[cat1116]

Originally Posted by ScranBarre

Seeing that the nearest Boscov's was across the Potomac I made the journey up to Frederick today to shop at the store in the Frederick Towne Mall. Would someone mind explaining to me what, exactly, happened to that mall? There was a Boscov's (the worst Boscov's I've ever been in actually) and what looked to be a respectable Bon-Ton. There was also a Radio Shack and an FYE. Otherwise nearly every other storefront inside the mall was vacant. There were some "creative" adapations for a few tenants---a bouncy castle thingie that charged $4/hr., a flea market, and a few dollar stores. I then saw, oddly enough, a Home Depot jutting out of its far edge. There were a lot of shady people walking around the mall, too, and in the end I just left without buying anything out of frustration (I know now that I should have just gone to Tyson's in the first place).

The area surrounding the mall looked absolutely hideous and run-down as well. Considering Frederick County's rapid growth, why hasn't this area been targeted for a major redevelopment initiative? Frederick is "in the way" of a lot of people who head back North for the Holidays from NoVA and DC, so there's plenty of traffic flowing on through to sustain a new project in that part of town. Frederick is such a quaint town, and then you have this border-line ghetto of sorts on its west end giving visitors like me such a negative impression of it. It looks as if that whole area has been run-down for years, too.

Are there any plans to redevelop that part of town?

Took a back seat to FSK Mall? The last time I had visited the Frederick Town Mall, ..hmm.. it's been awhile but yeah, I saw many empty store fronts. Depressing. I have a few pics on my camera phone that I was intending to send to the "Dead Malls of America" website but never got around to it. Boscov's, then was slipping. I've been to quite a few of the Boscov's when I lived in Pennsylvania and I had been to the one here in Maryland but don't ever remember it looking so depressing as the last visit.

[cat1116]

Reading area has made quite an improvement on the Vanity Fair outlet shopping experience. I remember how closely it resembled the Martinsburg outlets [which of course, located in the Hagerstown (MD)Prime Outlet].
Maybe in another year or two, (or three, ...) Frederick Town Mall will be redone?

Originally Posted by mwruckman

As you might have gathered I have family in Reading-Berks PA. I left many years ago and ended up in the two areas on the east coast which are considered odd by most of the rest of the nation. One is Washington DC and the other could be called Greater New York City which now almost reaches out to the Delaware Water Gap on I-80, well up the Hudson river,
in to Conneticut as far as New Haven and all of Long Island (pronounced Lawn Guyland). This city kind of touches up to The Delaware Valley (Philly) somewhere near Princeton. I always got a laff when driving to Reading from NYC on I-78 that the PA State Welcome sign said "Pennsylvania, Where America Begins".Like all good slogans this had a double meaning.One meaning is the 1776-Liberty Bell thing. The other is you've finally reached a place with normal people as opposed to places like Greater New York. The difference between John Wayne and Woody Allen.

[mwruckman]

Originally Posted by cat1116

Reading area has made quite an improvement on the Vanity Fair outlet shopping experience. I remember how closely it resembled the Martinsburg outlets [which of course, located in the Hagerstown (MD)Prime Outlet].
Maybe in another year or two, (or three, ...) Frederick Town Mall will be redone?

The original Reading Outlets were on Moss Street in the city of Reading but this is a historical detail as most of it burned down about 20 years ago. It like most of Reading was going down hill and would have been abandoned for the suburban outlets that were being developed in places like Morgantown PA or at the VF site in Wyomissing/West Reading. Reading was once a textile and sewing town but most if not all of the factories are gone a victim of globalization. The VF outlet was once a real factory but the thousands of jobs are gone and the clothing sold at the outlet arrives by shipping continer or truck after a trip from China or Bangladesh and the frist time it has any American content is when a minimum wage VF employee puts a price sticker and security tage on it.