After more than three years of deliberation - and sometimes acrimonious debate - Columbia's developer is preparing to submit rezoning plans for the town's center early next month, officially launching the far-reaching transformation envisioned for the planned community over the next three decades.
Gregory F. Hamm, vice president of General Growth Properties, told about 300 people at a public meeting Wednesday night that the firm would submit its plans to the county "early in August."
The plan, which will require approval by the county government, calls for five neighborhoods around the Mall in Columbia and Merriweather Post Pavilion comprising:
* 1 million square feet of new retail space;
* 4.9 million square feet of office space;
* 5,500 new townhouses and apartments;
* 640 more hotel rooms;
* 265,000 square feet of "cultural space"
The affordable housing component of the plan is not finalized, Hamm said.
The number of residential units has been a point of dispute. During the 2006 political campaign, County Executive Ken Ulman called the proposed figure "ludicrous." Now he's taking a somewhat softer stance.
"My gut feeling is that 5,500 are too many, and that has not changed," he said earlier Wednesday. But he said he is "open minded."
"They've got a lot of work to do to convince me on that," he said.
County Council member Mary Kay Sigaty, a Democrat who represents west Columbia, said she is not necessarily opposed to high density in town center.
"I'm looking for the best thing we can get," she said.
Hamm and two consulting architects presented the plan in a 90-minute PowerPoint presentation at the GGP headquarters building. They said that injecting a dense mixture of new residences, stores, offices, hotels and renewed public spaces into town center is vital to rejuvenating a downtown where the current 25 percent office vacancy rate is a big improvement over the recent past. Tax revenues would give the county a net increase of $11 million a year, enough to pay for the growth, he said.
Adding narrow tree-lined streets in neighborhoods, stores with floors of apartments above them, and plenty of pedestrian walkways and green spaces would revitalize the town over the next few decades. The changes also would slow traffic, hide parking garages behind U-shaped midrise buildings, and ease traffic complaints by slowing vehicles and inviting people to do more walking.
