That will recall the days when Hampstead was a tranquil town and Main Street was the primary shopping district - before residents from Baltimore and its outskirts flocked to Carroll County in search of a break from the city.
"In the mid-1980s, [developers] provided everyone with what they were looking for - a small house on a sizable piece of land in a quaint, little town," said Hampstead Councilman Wayne H. Thomas. The influx of newcomers helped transform the small community, which now has supermarkets, pizza parlors, dance studios and fitness centers.
"This used to be a hokey little place," said Ruth Leaf of nearby Reisterstown while dining at Snickerdoodles, "but not anymore."
Then some residents moved north to Pennsylvania, looking for cheaper houses and lower taxes, while keeping their Maryland jobs. The result: traffic woes that Carroll officials anticipated in the 1960s when "bypass" became a buzzword.
"I saw the first plans for a Hampstead bypass on the books in 1967," said Thomas, noting that initial plans called for a bypass for both Hampstead and Manchester, just to the north. "But in the early to mid-1970s, Manchester decided that it didn't want the bypass."
Manchester ultimately cleared the way for a housing development called Whispering Valley along the bypass route. It later drew up plans for a bypass east of Route 30, but those plans are still on the books.
Hampstead officials refused to give up.
State Sen. Larry E. Haines drove then-Maryland Department of Transportation Secretary Robert L. Flanagan out to Route 30 in Hampstead during rush hour to see the congestion up close. Thomas, meanwhile, petitioned for the road so often in Annapolis that legislators took to calling him "Mr. Bypass."
"My argument has been that Carroll County, for 40 years, didn't get their fair share of highway funding," Haines said. "I was here when we opened Route 140 around Westminster. There were people who said that we were building a road to nowhere, but in those days we built far in advance of the need. Now, we're building behind the need."
The northernmost point of the Hampstead Bypass merges onto Route 30 about two miles south of Manchester. So while Hampstead residents will enjoy a smoother ride through town in the spring, Manchester residents will experience gridlock as usual.
Yet the gridlock doesn't seem to faze Tina Kennedy. Each day she gussies up the storefront at Main Street Florist in Manchester, making sure that the colorful silk flower display is set just right and that the window sign, "Don't Just Drive By, Stop In," is clearly visible by motorists slowed by the Route 30 traffic.
"That's why everything's sitting out here - so they can have something to look at," said Kennedy. "A lot of merchants I know in Hampstead are upset because people aren't going to see their businesses anymore. I'm not so upset because they're still going to be here during rush hour looking at my business."
