Editor’s note: This is the fifth and final installment in The Examiner’s series profiling the five proposed neighborhoods in the master plan for the redevelopment of downtown Columbia. Click here to review the previous stories.
The Crescent neighborhood will be a C-shaped neighborhood with office buildings and residences interspersed throughout forested lands.
The proposed outlook for this community is a place where new urban settings face an extensive wooded park, said Greg Hamm, regional vice president of General Growth Properties Inc. and general manager of Columbia.
The neighborhood will be surrounded by Broken Land Parkway and Route 29 and adjacent to the Merriweather neighborhood.
“People love to have buildings, trees and woods everywhere,” said Jaquelin Robertson, an architect with Cooper, Robertson & Partners, a New York City firm that’s part of GGP’s design and planning team.
Buildings would be prominent since GGP proposes more than 2.7 million square feet of office space in the neighborhood, which is about 55 percent of the total 4.9 million square feet in the whole Town Center.
The neighborhood is one of five, including Warfield, Lakefront, Symphony Overlook and Merriweather, that GGP is including in its 20- to 30-year master plan to redevelop downtown Columbia.
“For the downtown area to have success as a lively, dense, well-connected environment with all the amenities people need, we’re going to need more people,” said Tim Sosinski, a Columbia architect and active resident.
Sosinski said he predicts Columbia could become a place where people can survive without a car. Unlike today, where residents have to travel by car to many places, GGP’s plan includes walkways to connect the different neighborhoods.
“The Crescent will hopefully be the last section to be built up and hopefully there’ll be more demand for density,” he said. “In Columbia now there’s not enough density to support the village centers.”
Keith Bowers, a principal at Biohabitats, an organization working with GGP on the environmental sustainability program, said there will be many environmental enhancements for the Crescent.
Such improvements will include stream restoration, more than 22 acres of tree plantings and more than 58 acres of forest restoration, which includes invasive species management and the enhancement of native species.
GGP is expected to present its proposal to county officials toward the end of the month, Hamm said.
AT A GLANCE
Proposed use of the Crescent neighborhood:
- Retail: 114,000 square feet
- Office: 2,730,580 square feet
- Hotel: 300 rooms
- Residential: 1,492 dwelling units
Source: General Growth Properties Inc.
IF YOU GO
WHAT: Panel discussion titled “Columbia Downtown: A Community Response to the Master Plan”
WHO: Howard County Citizens Association
WHEN: 7:30 p.m., Sept. 10
WHERE: Oakland Manor, 5430 Vantage Point Road, Columbia
INFO: www.howard-citizen.org
[email protected]
