Town-Center Retail Called Key Element
By Susan DeFord
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Most of the 500 people who came stayed the entire three hours Monday night and appeared to listen closely as representatives for General Growth Properties revealed how the company wants to remake downtown Columbia. They asked Gregory F. Hamm, the company's regional vice president and general manager for Columbia, not to move so quickly through the PowerPoint show and requested that company consultants to speak into the microphone.
At the end, many in attendance still had questions.
"Honestly, it was awesome on one hand and overwhelming on the other hand," Wilde Lake resident Joan Spicknall said. "I don't want to dampen the spirit of what GGP would like to do, but I need to be better informed."
What the company and its consultants unveiled Monday night was the first phase of shops, offices and a 300-room hotel and conference center that would adjoin public spaces, in an effort to knit together pieces of the Town Center that lie at the heart of developer James W. Rouse's pioneering planned community.
There's an open-air marketplace near the Mall in Columbia and pedestrian walkways leading to a refurbished Merriweather Post Pavilion and Lake Kittamaqundi. The plan emphasizes ecological sensitivity, calling for stream and woodland restoration and "green" building practices. There also would be new cultural attractions, such as a children's theater and a library.
"I like the connectivity," said Suzanne Waller, elected last week to serve as Town Center's representative to the Columbia Council.
"I was surprised by their looking at Symphony Woods in new ways," she said.
Financing for the project, which could start in 2010, was not discussed publicly. It's possible that the county, Columbia Association and even downtown's private landowners will form partnerships with Chicago-based General Growth.
The company wants its 30-year plan to include up to 5,500 residential units, a number that stirred opposition when it was included in earlier proposals.
Hamm said the best thing the company could do to create a vibrant downtown is "make sure that every piece of Town Center has some residential component."
County Council member Jennifer Terrasa (D-Southeast County) said she thought the company's approach of first establishing public spaces and cultural features was better than saying, "We're going to have density, and the rest will follow."
But she said the number of residential units "sounds like too much to me. I'll have to hear more about how they will do it."
The approach is actually the new standard operating procedure: clustering retail, offices and residential development together, said Ed McMahon, a senior resident fellow at the Urban Land Institute in Washington.
"Strip retail is retail for the last century," McMahon said. "Town centers are retail for this century."
Sound economics explain why more than 200 mixed-use town centers are being developed across the country, he said.
"People stay longer, they spend more money and more time in places that attract their attention," he said. "There's nothing people like more than watching other people."
General Growth consultants did homework for more than two years before displaying their ideas for refashioning the 1960s planned community. During Monday's meeting, they quoted Rouse, mentioned details of his original plans and cited county task force reports on Merriweather and affordable housing.
The effort actually began not long after the firm purchased the Rouse Co. in 2004 and faced persistent inquiries about its long-term plans for Columbia, said urban design consultant Joanne Beskind Elkin.
"You see how hard it is to answer that question?" she said.
General Growth officials will conduct more than a dozen community meetings to discuss details of its plans in May. The firm wants to submit a plan to county officials for approval in June.
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