Their Different Trails Led to 'a Little Gem'

Park, Pets, Rising Values in Prince George's

For an avid bicyclist such as Pam Helton, the decision to buy a condominium in Westchester Park's Section I in Prince George's County became much simpler when she discovered four trails that thread through 1,100-acre Greenbelt Park.

It takes her just a minute to get from her door to the busy park's lush woods, which nearly surround her neighborhood. Now she pedals for six-mile workouts shaded by mixed pines and deciduous trees along a paved trail that gently rises and dips.

Depending on the season, Helton can glimpse picnickers, warblers or a red fox.

"The park is in my back yard, with trees no one can chop down," said Helton, 46, who lives with her cocker spaniel, Ty. "I can also hop on my bike and ride out to the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center or the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center without too many traffic jams."

Westchester Park's Section 1 is a late-1960s-vintage development of about 225 townhouse and garden-style condo units. Next to it is the smaller Section II completed last spring. The development also includes the Towers at Westchester Park, two high-rise buildings. One building has condos for sale; the other is exclusively rental units. The upper floors of both structures offer a sweeping view of the Washington Monument and FedEx Field.

Helton bought her two-bedroom unit in 2004 for $165,000. The former owner, she said, replaced the carpeting with "lovely" parquet floors.

"The place is now worth about $225,000. I got in at the beginning of the up market. Had I bought six months earlier, I might have paid $125,000 for it."

When she's not challenging herself aerobically, Helton is the artistic director for the Third Millennium Ensemble, a seven-member group of musicians who focus on works by contemporary composers. She said she feels comfortable tuning up for her upcoming May concert in her dining room. "My neighbors have been great about my practicing at odd hours and rehearsing at more normal hours," said Helton, who holds a doctorate in music performance and is the group's clarinetist.

"Generally, it's pretty quiet here, and people are mostly respectful."

In 2003, when Vickery Brewer moved to Westchester Park, she traded in her nearly one-hour commute from Anne Arundel County for a four-minute ride to her job at the Food and Drug Administration's College Park complex. "I like that [the community] is small and proportional," said Brewer, 40, who paid $130,000 for her two-bedroom condo. "We've got small groups of buildings, and people know each other and look out for each other."

Her $394-a-month condo fee goes toward all utilities, plus her share of the landscaping provided to residents, along with trash and snow removal. "We basically have no out-of-pocket expenses," she said, other than cable TV and Internet connections.

George Pelham has a short commute, too. Pelham, 62, is an academic adviser in the computer science department at the University of Maryland. Westchester Park, he said, "could be described as a little gem, an island in the park. We are still a bargain. I paid $58,000 in '01. They would appraise it now at $205,000."