I watched the discussion on the old mall 5 acres today on Pac 14. There were many good points brought up by all who attended. I do agree with the following points:
1) There is currently a lack of parking spaces for sold out events if people don’t carpool.
2) Buying the property before the developer turns it into something else makes sense.
However, charging per car for parking solves #1, and living in fear of the big bad developer is silly.
It is land that the developer bought, but the County makes the laws that control its use. It was a parking lot before it was re-zoned for General Commercial and Planned Residential Community use. The Developer failed (past tense) to act in good faith to bring in the promised development, so simply re-zone it back to a parking lot!
Setting the zoning back to the default setting does two things; it devalues the property back to value at the developers purchase time, and we don’t need then to re-zone it to build a parking lot there! It also keeps it from becoming anything but a parking lot, so there’s no “over a barrel” feeling we need to deal with.
Also, bring the parking lot up next to the Civic Center and run Civic Avenue around it as a safety issue. Keep the existing underground storms where they are and drain the lot to that, and use pervious concrete (ask PRMC about their new lots) for all the street and parking lot. That keeps the MDE happy. Lighting is a shorter run and there’s no drag strip between the Center and its customers.
Now, set up the bar in a tiki hut out in the parking lot so it will be sold off the contingent portion of the property and people can bring their “purchased off site” alcohol in to the events, and you’re good to go!
I’m here all week…
Gary Bullard
DelMarVa's Premier Source for News, Opinion, Analysis, and Human Interest Contact Publisher Joe Albero at alberobutzo@wmconnect.com or 410-430-5349
13 comments:
There is plenty of additional area at WiHi between the driveway on Glen ave and existing parking lot on Long ave to turn into additional over flow parking. We already own this land. Appears to be 3-4 acres.
That makes too much sense and would be the right thing to do. I would also add that would give us contractors a little bit of work
There is no "parking lot zoning". The property was zoned commercial in its entirety. To rezone it back to its original comercial zoning solves nothing.
Furthermore, if it were rezoned to some invented zoning district that permits only parking lots, it would be considered spot zoning and is thusly illegal.
Transplanting myself for a while to your fairy tail land, assuming that there was some zoning code and assuming that we could spot zone the property, the land would still the only property located directly adjacent to the civic center. The price would still be what the price is, simply because location is location.
I am surpise that Joe even posted this ridiculously uneducated post.
So zone it back to commercial. The developer that owns it is interested obviously in residential developments. Makes it less valuable to him.
Hey Gary, how about you buy it and let us use it isn't that a better fiscal idea?
The city does the zoning on this property, not the county.
Nothing can be done with the property until the deadline passes on the $14.5 million TIF agreement, which calls for construction to begin in earnest not later than March 2011, or is it 2012?
I strongly suspect that the developers and owners of the property (Natelson and Dzaman, both real princes) will be asking the city for an extension between now and 201l. Until then, raping (or helping to rape) the taxpayers from all over Maryland for four times the property's worth is about par for them.
"There is plenty of additional area at WiHi between the driveway on Glen ave and existing parking lot on Long ave to turn into additional over flow parking. We already own this land. Appears to be 3-4 acres."
Yes, I took notice of this today as I drove by. Just put some gravel on it. It's directly across the street from the existing parking lot, owned by the County, and no zoning required.
I agree, why should the county be held hostage on this issue while the developers extort money from us? The city/county need to work together on this one. hasn't the developer been given special tax incentives and deferments on the property, and now they want to bite the hand that feeds them and bleed the taxpayers because the property isn't worth what they paid. I say rezone it to parking, buy the stinkin lot and then tax the hell out of whatever the developers put on the rest! The county shouldn't let the developers bully them on this, we have the upper hand! You wanna play ball?!
I attended my daughter's graduation
from SSU. There was no place to park including the zoo. We ended up parking between the Pony League park and Fire House. This was 45minutes before the event started. Walking back to the car after the graduation was very unsafe. I was thankful my son attended with me.
I'm sure this isn't the norm but this does happen.
Here's an idea. I was opposed to buying this land for parking, after the "facts" that were delivered at the meeting Tuesday, I am still against this purchase, I believe that all the problems cited for purchasing the land could be resolved much cheaper. Here’s one from my feeble mind, Have parking for large events conducted at the Civic Center, at Perdue Stadium, arrange for Shore transit buses to shuttle folks to and from for say $2.00 a person. This type of system works well for really large venue facilities, in urban areas where the facility is land locked. If and when this venue becomes one that holds events every week that creates parking issues then maybe the “need” to purchase more land should be considered. I love the Civic Center and the County but we’ll never have lots of “big” entertainment here. BUT>>>
I have been opposed to legalized slots, but now that the state seems destined to get into the game, go ahead and legalize table games to compete with Delaware, then the holders of the old mall property could sell it to a major casino organization, then maybe we would get bigger entertainment shows in the area.
I think if they're going to spend all this money on a parking lot, they should go ahead and buy the rest of the old mall property, bulldoze the old Civic Center and build a new one on the mall property and put some extra parking where the Civic Center is. Then they could sell alcohol and theyd have a bigger more modern facility to draw better shows. Of course, that would cost tons of money but apparently the powers that be think they've got cash flowing out their wazoo so why not?
4:00.
Why not? I can give you one hundred million reasons why not. Do you think our tax roles can shell out a hundred million dollars for a new civic center?
3:35..shuttles won't work because show promoters and show organizers will not book events where self contained parking isn't provided.But your thought was a constructive one.
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