Downtown Columbia

AT THE center of Columbia, almost 40 years after the planned community began to rise from Howard County farmland, there's an exciting opportunity: to create a real downtown for a suburban town of almost 100,000 residents. On the face of it, the notion of a low-rise town having a downtown may seem contradictory. But Columbia has one, a hodgepodge of offices and housing around the shopping mall that anchors the unincorporated city. And remarkably, various interests now are talking about much the same bold vision for this increasingly valuable real estate, a vision of a lively, walkable and interconnected downtown offering a 24-hour mix of places to work, live, shop and have fun -- a place perhaps even with an actual Main Street.

The Columbia of my childhood, then known as "The Next America," was a place of innovation and excitement. It was known across the country as the herald for the next generation of great American communities. My parents and many others moved here in those days because it was a city founded on the principles of diversity and acceptance and guided by a ground-breaking plan that ensured a fertile "garden for growing people," as visionary developer James Rouse called it. But sometime in the early '90s, Columbia stopped innovating, and Jim Rouse's New City stalled.

Since the plan for Columbia was first put to paper, its creator, the Rouse Co., has promised a downtown enlivened by the arts, entertainment and commerce. Part of what was to make it happen was the construction of a mix of housing that would supply many of the patrons who would support these enterprises. But the plans have borne fruit slowly. Nearly 30 years after the first stone was turned there, downtown Columbia -- better known as Town Center -- is too often a sleepy hub that virtually shuts down when offices close for the evening.

John DeWolf III, the Howard Hughes Corp.'s senior vice president for development, is a tall man doing a big job from a large office in downtown Columbia. The floor-to-ceiling windows face Lake Kittamaqundi, and the conference table is covered with maps and plans for downtown development, a 30-year project to include new stores, homes, offices, hotels, transit lines, walking paths, renovations at Merriweather Post Pavilion — all in pursuit of James W. Rouse's original idea of a "real city.

General Growth Properties Inc. unveiled its plan for downtown Columbia last night, with redevelopment ideas that include a skating rink, new office, retail and hotel space and walking routes from The Mall in Columbia to the lakefront and Merriweather Post Pavilion. "What we're trying to do here is lay out what we think is a 30-year plan," said Gregory F. Hamm, GGP's regional vice president and Columbia general manager. "During all this time, we hope we've listened. We hope we've learned, but we're not done."

The county Zoning Board last Thursday rejected an appeal by the Rouse Co., which had asked it to reconsider a proposal for up to 300 apartments on 12 acres in Columbia's Town Center. But the board left openthe possibility of hearing the case again at a later date.The board refused to allow the change from the property's current designation as employment center, saying residents of apartments or town houses might be disturbed by noise from the Merriweather Post Pavilion. The decision has been criticized by community leaders and Rouse Co. planners, who have long maintained that downtown Columbia would be enlivened by more high-density residential development.

Site plans for 100 town houses in downtown Columbia -- the first houses to be built in Town Center since 1985 -- were approved by the Planning Board yesterday.The unnamed project will feature 50 standard town houses and 50 "back-to-back" town house condominiums, said Maurice Simpkins, vice president for the Columbia Division of Ryland Homes.The 14-acre development, on Banneker Road in Town Center's southwest corner, is adjacent to land the Rouse Co. is trying to rezone from commercial to residential to help bring more residents, and consequently more urban character, to Columbia's downtown area.

Howard County police are searching for a woman who robbed a downtown Columbia bank Friday morning after indicating she had a bomb.No one was injured and no weapon was displayed in the robbery, which occurred at 9: 50 a.m. at Taneytown Bank & Trust Co. in the Clark Building, in the 5500 block of Sterrett Place, police said.The woman walked into Taneytown Bank, which had just opened, approached a teller at the counter and handed over a manila envelope, said Sgt. Steven Keller, a police spokesman.

Responding to broad public concern, a height limitation of 14 stories for new buildings in downtown Columbia is under consideration by the county. That has been one of thorniest issues confronting a sweeping proposal to convert downtown into a dense city, and it has become even more contentious with the approval of a 275-foot-tall luxury residential and retail complex overlooking Lake Kittamaqundi, which would be the tallest structure in Howard County...

Solar arrays, "green" roofs and storm-water management that doubles as civic art and takes place only when it's raining are among the ideas for improving the environment in the redevelopment of downtown Columbia, a consultant told residents this week. Town Center could be a "city within a garden," said Keith Bowers, a landscape architect on General Growth Properties' design team -- a vibrant place that makes use of renewable energy and is built with local materials so that little energy is expended to bring supplies here.

The jazz quartet's last tune of the lunchtime set at the Columbia lakeside took an up-tempo bebop turn, the sort of sound one might associate with things urban and urbane: the Village Vanguard, maybe Birdland. The band played before a sparse crowd seated on a grassy terraced slope, folks who would get into their cars and drive off through a place that looks much like a suburban office and shopping area with its wide boulevards, tidy lawns, neat rows of trees, and parking lots. Not quite urban.

The master developer of Columbia's Town Center aims to begin construction by early next year on a $100 million apartment and retail complex, the area's first new housing in a decade. The Metropolitan Downtown Columbia will be a six-story, 380-unit development that the Howard Hughes Corp. plans to build in a joint venture with Kettler of McLean, Va., and Orchard Development of Ellicott City, on land next to The Mall in Columbia. Rents are expected to range from $1,600 a month for a one-bedroom apartment to $2,800 for a three-bedroom unit — making them among the highest in the region.

I would like to expand on my comments about the Warfield neighborhood traffic outlook presented at the April 12th meeting of the Planning Board hearing and reported in your April 19 edition. The Town Center Village Board, which represents Warfield residents, expressed concerns that while adding 800 residential units and new retail stores, the Howard Hughes Corporation plan approved by the Planning Board actually reduces the number of travel lanes on Mall Ring Road in the vicinity of the AMC Theater, from the number recommended in the original Downtown Design Guidelines.

Both Del. Elizabeth Bobo and Howard County Councilwoman Mary Kay Sigaty decisively won their West Columbia Democratic primaries, despite their sharply divergent views on the much debated renewal plan for central Columbia. Virtually complete, if unofficial returns showed Bobo won the Democratic nomination for her seat with 82 percent of the vote, and Sigaty got 62.5 percent of the vote in her Council District 4 race. The results showed that many voters picked both popular incumbents, and did not vote on the Columbia issue.

Democrat Alan Klein received some significant support Tuesday as Del. Elizabeth Bobo formally endorsed his primary challenge to incumbent Mary Kay Sigaty for a seat on the Howard County Council. The Sept. 14 primary contest in West Columbia's District 4 race is the latest fallout from the County Council's February approval of new zoning to allow the three-decade redevelopment of downtown Columbia, which Bobo represents in the Maryland House of Delegates. The announcement, made to reporters over iced tea on the quiet deck of Bobo's Columbia home, formalized the support she acknowledged she'd been giving Klein all along.

From wineries to windmills, the Howard County Council undertook to vote on a long list of big bills Thursday before starting the group's annual August recess. But one measure wasn't quite ripe, as it turned out. The winery legislation wound up being tabled until Sept. 7 for consideration of more amendments, but the council approved several significant measures without any disputes on the final votes. No council member voted against any of the legislation. Included were: •Approval of adding a 107-acre farm in Woodbine to the county's Agricultural Preservation program, which will mean $3 million plus interest for Mario and Serafina Manarelli over the next two decades.

With just two of the county's planned public meetings remaining, clarity, scale and skepticism of the vision for Columbia Town Center are on the minds of residents and public officials. "This is not a clear vision," Michael Cornell, a Columbia Association board member who represents River Hill, said Saturday. "A vision should very clearly paint a picture of what we want our community to look like in 20 or 30 years. If we want to continue to be a model city, we need to be creating some vision."

Of the many complex issues involved in converting downtown Columbia into an urban center, none has provoked greater passion than the need to provide housing for low- and moderate-income families. Unlike in some neighborhoods, one obstacle appears to have largely been overcome: public resistance. That is not surprising, because the spirit of the planned community has been economic and racial diversity. But the dynamics that permitted the new town to rise from farmland four decades ago to embrace all have changed substantially, creating a more daunting task in ensuring that Columbia is not a bastion only for the affluent.