Town Center

Grillfire opens Wednesday night in Hanover, Md., at the Town Center at Arundel Preserve. Located in the Hotel at Arundel Preserve, the "sophisticated American grill" will be open for breakfast, lunch, weekend brunch and dinner. The 235-seat Grillfire Arundel is the sixth restaurant in George Martin Restaurant Group, but the first located off of Long Island, N.Y. George Martin the Original opened in 1989 in Nassau County, N.Y., followed by George Martin's Strip Steak and three Grillfire restaurants.

No new leases have been announced for Town Centre Laurel — the development that is planned for the site where Laurel Mall once stood — but agreements with tenants already announced have been officially finalized, and the project is said to be on track. The developers of the $130 million project gave City Council members an update at the meeting on Monday night, May 13. Officials with Greenberg Gibbons Commercial, the project's lead developer, said asbestos removal and the demolition work of the existing structure went as planned.

The University of Maryland, College Park could look considerably different by 2020 if plans for a light rail line and a town center development on the east side of campus roll forward this year. Preliminary engineering for the $1.93 billion Purple Line, expected to run through the heart of campus, could begin this fall if federal transit officials grant permission. The initial phase of the East Campus development, which would include a hotel, restaurants and retail shops, could also come up for approval by the Board of Regents if campus leaders can reach an agreement with the Baltimore-basedCordish Cos. School officials say that, in tandem, the projects could make the campus more accessible to commuting professors and students from across the Washington suburbs and give it a more polished look commensurate with the flagship university's enhanced national standing.

Columbia's core, which is in the early stages of redevelopment, is the territory for a trio of walking tours organized by the Columbia Association's Columbia Archives. The WalkAlong event will take place Saturday, May 4, and participants can choose one of three routes. The guided tours, which last about two hours, will depart from the Columbia Archives (at 10227 Wincopin Circle) at 10 a.m. One tour will focus on the architecture of Frank Gehry, including Merriweather Post Pavilion and the former Rouse Co. headquarters.

It was the best of zoning, it was the worst of zoning.The much-ballyhooed Odenton Town Center has been caught between the high-density development that it permitted and federal wetlands regulations that restricted development.A decade ago, Millersville businessman Tom Baldwin set out to build a 500,000-square-foot complex with a hotel, movie theater, eight-story office building and shops on land the county designated the Odenton Town Center.The project was exactly what county planners hoped for in 1968 when they devised the zoning that permitted the development.

A caption for a photograph in yesterday's Howard County section of The Sun misidentified a building in Columbia's Town Center. The building is the headquarters of the Columbia Association.The Rouse Co., which promoted Columbia's Town Center as the new town's center of excitement even before the first residents arrived in 1967, still is trying to figure out how to enliven the planned community's downtown area.Over the next 15 years, the Rouse Co. plans to build high-density, "urban-style" housing by Lake Kittamaqundi and several other Town Center locations.

Commuters who use Little Patuxent Parkway in Columbia's Town Center village should expect construction delays for the next two months.C.J. Miller Inc., a Hampstead contractor, will begin $581,000 in construction and landscape work Monday on Little Patuxent Parkway between Vantage Point Road and Sterrett Place. Howard Research and Development (HRD), a Rouse Co. subsidiary, is the sole-source contractor.The work will include resurfacing, repaving, new curbs and gutters and landscaping in the median with brick crosswalks.

The Town Center Community Association board of directors will sponsor a reception in honor of Del. Elizabeth Bobo and state Sen. Edward J. Kasemeyer at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Historic Oakland, 5430 Vantage Point Road. The reception is being held to recognize their successful efforts to pass legislation providing a new method to annex land into Columbia's villages. "If land isn't annexed into the villages, people pay the CA [Columbia Association] lien, but they can't vote for the CA board members or village board members, so we have to get them annexed to become part of the political process," said Patricia B. Laidig, Town Center village manager.

The Columbia Association, with Howard County General Hospital, the Howard County Health Department and the Ulman Cancer Fund for Young Adults, will sponsor a health fair from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday at the lakefront area of Town Center. The fair will include free health screenings, information on health issues, demonstrations of exercise activities and equipment, activities for children, entertainment and food. Around Town Yard sale: Town Center Community Association will sponsor its Town Center Yard Sale from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday at Vantage Point Park on Vantage Point Road.

Attempting once again to enliven downtown Columbia after business hours, the Rouse Co. has asked county officials for a rezoning that could add 345 apartments or condominiums to the planned community's Town Center."

Jury deliberations began Tuesday in the trial of a 21-year-old charged with gunning down a teen outside the Towson Town Center Mall just days before Christmas in 2011. Prosecutors say Tyrone Chester Brown Jr., 21, of Baltimore shot and killed Rodney Pridget as an initiation into the Black Guerrilla Family gang. They said Pridget and his girlfriend were followed by another member through the mall on Dec. 19 before he was shot six times. "That was a man who was on a mission and knew what he was going to do," said Deputy State's Attorney Robin Coffin.

Power was knocked out to about 7,000 customers in the Towson area, including Towson Town Center, around 11:30 a.m. Tuesday because of a problem with a piece of electric distribution equipment, according to Baltimore Gas and Electric spokeswoman Rachael Lighty. All but about 1,000 customers had their power restored by noon, she said. The remaining customers' power was restored by 1:30 p.m. It was about noon when the mall posted an item about the outage on its Twitter page. Other sections of Towson were affected by the outage as well.

As an architect who worked for the Rouse Company for 30  years and managed the design of many buildings in Town  Center, I am concerned about the feasibility of the Inner  Arbor Plan shown last Thursday (Jan. 31) at Slayton House. I am not  opposed to the idea of building some cultural facilities in the woods, but the choice of a site, with a 55-foot change in grade elevation from top to bottom, that necessitates burying the theaters substantially underground is unrealistic. As places of public assembly it would be impossible to comply with the building code's exiting requirements in case of fire or the barrier-free accessibility requirements of the handicapped without prohibitive costs.

Although I can see how the Merriweather sound exemption aids the venue, I am not convinced that it is economically advantageous for Columbia residents and developers. In recent years a growing number of us in Columbia and adjacent Ellicott City now hear Merriweather sound (especially the drums). The problem will only increase as Town Center expands housing and also, perhaps, adds a new amphitheater to be used by Merriweather. Older residents (a fast growing demographic) and others who might otherwise be attracted to the amenities that Town Center offers, may hesitate to buy here because of proximity to Merriweather. Columbia home buyers should not be limited solely to those who like loud rock concerts.

Forty years after Frank Gehry completed a series of buildings in the fledgling "new town" of Columbia, the current master developer wants him to come back and design more. The Dallas-based Howard Hughes Corp., which in 2010 took over as lead developer of Columbia's town center, invited the acclaimed architect to spend a day touring the town as part of its effort to spur development around the Merriweather Post concert pavilion and the lakefront. On Thursday, Gehry — who has created such buildings as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles — returned for the first time in more than two decades to take a whirlwind tour, learn how his local designs are holding up, and see what future role he might play in the town created by the Rouse Co. The California-based architect, 83, said he has not visited Columbia since the early 1990s — before company founder James Rouse died of Lou Gehrig's disease and Rouse executive Michael Spear died in a plane crash.

As a further sign of its investment in the revitalization of Columbia's town center, the Howard Hughes Corp. last week acquired the former Ryland Group headquarters, a nine-story office building next to The Mall in Columbia and close to land where Howard Hughes plans to build a $100 million apartment and retail complex. The property known as 70 Corporate Center opened in 1992 at Little Patuxtent and Broken Land parkways and is one of Columbia's largest office buildings, with nearly 170,000 square feet of space.

THE SCORE for town centers is 1-1. The concept won in Glen Burnie two months ago, when city officials carved out a 5-acre area at Ritchie Highway and Baltimore and Annapolis Boulevard as a town center with restaurants, stores and elderly housing, finally giving that sprawling town a rather appealing geographical heart. But the town center concept lost last week in Parole, when the Anne Arundel County Council rejected a bill that could have improved that city's chances for an attractive, urban, mixed-use design at Parole Plaza, which is bounded by Route 2, Forest Drive, Riva Road and West Street just outside Annapolis.

If James W. Rouse were around today, he would be working to complete Columbia's Town Center - something that never got done in his lifetime, said a member of the design team planning the revitalization. "Columbia was a very important idea, and it's like all good ideas, every 50 years or so you need to tweak them and make them better," said Jaquelin T. Robertson, founding partner of Cooper, Robertson & Partners and former dean of the school of architecture at the University of Virginia.