Howard County residents can be heard at the highly anticipated first public forum on the redevelopment plan for Town Center in Columbia –without actually being there.
» What: Columbia 2.0’s rally before the public hearing where video testimony will be recorded.
» When: 5 to 7 tonight
» Where: Zapata’s, Harper’s Choice Village Center, 5485 Harpers Farm Road, Columbia
» What: First public testimony on a plan to redevelop Town Center in Columbia.
» When: 6 tonight
» Where: Wilde Lake High School’s cafeteria, 5460 Trumpeter Road, Columbia
Grassroots organization Columbia 2.0 is compiling a library of video testimony from residents and distributing it to the Howard County Planning Board as well as other elected officials. The testimony also will be posted online at www.columbia2.wordpress.com.
“The public process is very time consuming and only certain people can dedicate that amount of time,” said David Yungmann, one of the co-founders of the group.
“There are a lot of single parents and young families out there who really care about this. There’s a sense that if you don’t show your face and sit there, you don’t care. We want to change this.”
Hearings on significant and controversial topics in Howard often last several hours, with three-minute testimony from dozens of residents.
Columbia 2.0, which now boasts more than 500 members, formed this summer to give the younger generation a voice in the plans to transform Columbia into an urban, vibrant and sustainable city.
“Our membership is really off the charts — that’s how many people we feel are connected to us,” said Yungmann.
“We want to strike a balance between changing the system a bit and give people a voice they otherwise wouldn’t have.”
In October, General Growth Properties Inc. submitted a 30-year redevelopment plan to the county proposing 5,500 new residences, 5 million square feet of office development, 1 million square feet of retail development, 640 hotel rooms and various environmental, transportation and aesthetic improvements, said Greg Hamm, GGP’s regional vice president.
Since then, the county’s Department of Planning and Zoning has published a report on the plan with suggestions including implementing the plan in six, five-year phases instead of GGP’s original proposal of three, 10-year phases.
The purpose behind the increased phases was to foster greater accountability and a chance for officials to more readily gauge progress, said William Mackey, division chairman of comprehensive and community planning with the county Department of Planning and Zoning.
The public hearing on the plan is the first of several, which will be followed by a series of work sessions. The Planning Board will make a recommendation on the plan to the County Council, which will vote on the plan at a time that’s still to be determined.
