A Ripple or a Wave?
As Canal Park Transforms Frederick, Some Question the Speed of Change

By Matthew Robb
Special to The Washington Post
Saturday, October 27, 2007

Water spilling over the banks of Carroll Creek 31 years ago flooded downtown Frederick waist-deep, sending residents scrambling for high ground -- and a permanent fix.

After years of bickering, brainstorming and financial barnstorming, city leaders recently cut the ribbon on a $65 million, double-deck flood-control project that sends most of the creek underground while giving the city a $20 million canal park.

Carroll Creek Park cuts a handsome swath through Frederick's 19th-century streetscape. Visitors and residents can stroll along a brick promenade accented with greenery, splashing fountains and waterfalls, artsy bridges, restaurants, and a 350-seat amphitheater. Inspired by San Antonio's 3.2-mile-long River Walk, Frederick's version measures three-quarters of a mile long. When completed in mid-2009, the city predicts, it will have generated more than 80 new businesses and $155 million in private investment and will draw 1.4 million visitors annually.

But as Carroll Creek Park sends out ripples of economic revitalization, some say Frederick is changing too much, too fast. Office buildings and parking decks are multiplying. Residential and commercial rents are rising. Long-term residents are leaving. As the economic tide pushes old faces out and draws new faces in, people are asking: Is quaint Frederick at risk of losing what makes it special?

The idea of downtown Frederick grappling with success would have prompted laughter three decades ago. The 1976 flood was bad enough, but in reality it only finished off the deterioration that had begun a decade earlier when Frederick Towne Mall opened nearby. Faced with dozens of boarded-up stores, city leaders designed Carroll Creek Park with hopes of hitting a public-works trifecta: control floodwaters, spur economic development and boost tourism.

Almost to a person, downtown's merchants and residents today give Carroll Creek Park high marks, but some wonder if Frederick's economic growth is sustainable and if the city might have better protected elderly and moderate-income people from revitalization's rough edges.

Joe Cohen, 68, sells British foods and cigars from a corner building on North Market Street. He links downtown's rising rents to two factors: real estate speculation and chain retailers. He said investors who snapped up downtown properties at peak values a few years ago have been pumping up rents ever since.

Consequently, some small businesses are struggling, including Cohen's.

He said his landlord paid $1.15 million for the building in 2005. But Cohen said he thinks the owner would be lucky to get $800,000 if he tried to sell.

Cohen's lease expires in two years. The building owner, he said, wants to raise the rent to six times what he is paying now, first from about $1,000 a month to $3,000 a month, then to about $6,000 a month in 2010. Cohen said he is considering relocating to a strip mall.

He said the influx of chains and franchises could create market conditions that are particularly unfavorable to independent retailers nearing lease renewal.

Merchant Eric Krasner, owner of nostalgia-themed CineGraphic Studios, said he is worried about a related issue: accelerating growth altering downtown's historic flavor. "What's the point of driving to a downtown that looks like a mall if a real mall has air conditioning and free parking?" he asked.

The recent arrival of chain retail stores and restaurants -- among them Ben & Jerry's, Five Guys and the Maryland-based Greene Turtle Sports Bar & Grille -- has met with mixed public reaction, and more stores are expected. A study projects that by 2020, as many as 40 national chains or franchises may line downtown's streets. Today there are about 10.

Coffee has become the symbolic focal point for anti-chain ire. In January, Starbucks is to open downtown, an announcement that has created something of a tempest in a coffeepot. Just six years ago, Frederick residents were lamenting their inability to attract a single Starbucks. Today, there are five around the city, and many residents are up in arms about the corporate powerhouse going against downtown's independent cafes.

Federal retiree Greta Elbert is one. She and her husband, Joe, delight in their commanding view of Carroll Creek Park from their new two-bedroom condominium but want Frederick to keep its small-town feel. "I want a quaint little independent coffee shop," she said. "I don't think [Starbucks] belongs down here."

Merchant Richard Bailey disagrees. A Starbucks directly across from his rock shop, Earthly Elements, would be a godsend, he said. "There's a large group of people who make a beeline for Starbucks. I'm hoping they'll [visit] my store."

More people are indeed on the way, a city study forecasts. By 2017, it says, as many as 2,200 additional dwelling units will be built within a 1.5-mile radius of central downtown, an area that now has almost 10,000 households. About 5,000 people currently work downtown in private- and public-sector jobs.

Alderman Marcia Hall said change is inevitable but requires prudent oversight. Frederick "can't be a museum, but we also don't want to give up our history," she said.

Hall, a downtown apartment dweller, said she isn't worried about the influx of national stores. Few chains are interested in old, long, narrow, 2,000-square-foot buildings, she said, and the Historic Preservation Commission is vigilant. "Our building stock cannot be messed with in terms of size," she said.

Former mayor Ron Young, widely regarded as the father of Carroll Creek Park, said he isn't worried about the arrival of more chains, either. "Frederick isn't going to get franchised," he said.

Before the 1976 flood, the Frederick native recalled, there were plenty of chain stores downtown. "There was Penney's, Sears, Woolworth's, Kresge's, Newbury's, McCrory's, and on and on."

Young said he's heartened by downtown's new strength but wishes Carroll Creek Park were closer to his original vision. Hoping to position Frederick for greatness, Young in the 1980s suggested building a 5,000- to 7,000-seat downtown convention center, 1,500 hotel rooms, 1,500 condominium units, 10 new office buildings and restaurants at practically every turn. Doing so, he said recently, would have brought "2 million to 3 million people a year walking up and down that stream."

Young's vision encountered political and economic roadblocks. Among his regrets is the decision to locate condominiums, rather than restaurants and stores, on one side of the canal's epicenter. At the very least, he said, the ground-floor spaces should have been entirely retail.

Richard Griffin, director of the city's Department of Economic Development, said that he understands Young's concerns but that having those residences adds to Frederick's nighttime vitality and keeps lots of eyes on the city's investments. He also said more retail stores and restaurants are coming.

Griffin acknowledged that some people have worries but said they need to be kept in perspective. Before Carroll Creek Park, he said, the area was a vulnerable flood plain covered with ramshackle buildings and industrial clutter. The choice was simple: Move forward, or watch Frederick's heritage disintegrate. Griffin said armchair quarterbacking is easy, but cities across the nation have expressed keen interest in having their own Carroll Creek Park.

Greg Gallaspy, executive director of San Antonio's River Walk association, Paseo Del Rio, sees national chains or "formula restaurants," such as Starbucks, as vital to any successful downtown revitalization. Building an award-winning canal park is tough enough, he said, but that pales next to financially sustaining it over the long term. A downtown that offers some brand-name stores is more likely to succeed, he said. Frederick's leaders, he said, are "on the right track."

Many merchants couldn't be more pleased about Carroll Creek Park. Patrick Spahr, owner of Ten Thousand Joys, an Eastern-inspired gift store, is bullish on the city. Carroll Creek Park is "a beautiful, beautiful project," he said. "Downtown Frederick is having a wonderful revitalization right now."

Spahr said he believes downtown is popular because it has everything suburban shopping malls lack: picturesque architecture, a colorful history, tree-lined streets, one-of-a-kind shops, a down-home feel, enough international eateries to draw comparisons with Bethesda's Restaurant Row -- and now the park.

One undisputed casualty of revitalization is Frederick's African American core. The Rev. Burton Mack, pastor of Asbury United Methodist Church, has seen the surrounding neighborhood quickly transition from "a center of African American community life" to a gentrified neighborhood of "transients." Some residents sold their homes for a healthy profit, he said. Others left because young professionals were pricing them out of the rental market. Mack said his church, founded in 1818, has a new goal: "just to stay afloat."

Resident Scott Grove, 48, is sensitive to the dislocation but said many downtown residents are neither transient nor affluent. Like his neighbors, Grove purchased a rundown house on the city's blighted south side in the 1980s and invested gallons of "sweat equity" into its rehab. He credits homeownership and Carroll Creek Park with transforming a "demilitarized zone" into a fashionable neighborhood.

"My heart really does go out to families who have rented" and are now gone, he said. Small houses that today command more than $200,000 "just 10 years ago could have been bought for as low as $50,000."

Back on store-lined East Patrick Street, Spahr is looking to a bright future. "I locked in my lease for 10 years," he said. "I came here to succeed . . . and downtown is going to succeed."

For Spahr, downtown Frederick's future isn't a win-lose, all-or-nothing proposition. Its health, he said, depends on reinvention -- on a constant infusion of new ideas, new talents, and a healthy mix of national chains and independent shops.

"There is enough abundance," he said, "to go around for all of us."