The primaries are behind us and now we can look forward to the general election.  With the 4th of July holiday upcoming, we are sure to see the frontrunners out in person. Let them know who you support.

41st?

41st? No way?  This blog ranks Maryland at the bottom of the list to survive a zombie apocalypse.  Perhaps some of the far flung counties are bringing the averages down, because Howard County is the best location to be for the end of civilization.  We choose civility!
With a brand new bridge over miles of connected trails and organizations such as Healthy Howard leading the way to shame sugary soft drink peddlers, our citizens are in top shape to dodge the sluggish undead that will creep from the unplanned communities around us.
Rouse had the vision as well, keeping those pesky corpses in underutilized land well outside the center of our vibrant community.  Our affordable housing opportunities and top ranked schools attract a diverse community of all types, but zombies will not be one of them as long as our top-notch heathcare at Howard County General is there for us.
Yes, all our children at our bus-free Stevens Forest school are all "walkers". But they thrive with their brains...  not on brains.

April Fools

April Fools –

While Marshmallow Man at 53Beers  ponders some alternate universe of Columbia, it is worth looking back at James Rouse’s sense of humor.  As many people know, Rouse was in the Navy serving in Pearl Harbor after the attack. He put his entire salary in the bank, living off of his gambling earnings. That is where he met one of his future business partners who would go to Connecticut General Insurance which would get his foot in the door to finance his vision of Columbia years later.  With such skill and wit, Rouse could charm most anyone to see things his way, to great financial advantage.

Fast forward to the birth of Columbia. Bouncing from meeting to meeting, Rouse is feverishly convincing everyone he meets to buy into the vision of his new planned city Columbia. Rouse has to enlighten the ill-informed of the substantial benefits of his vision. One day Rouse and his planners were confronted what to name the large drainage basin that was required at the foot of his new city.  Quick of wit, Rouse called it a feature… no better yet, a lake that all could gather around.  “Lake Kittamaquandi”, “The great meeting place” at the site of one of the oldest native American settlements in Howard County!

Kittamaquandi caught on, with the name becoming legend, published in every article espousing Columbia’s virtues. The reality is Kittamaquandi is named after a settlement further down the Potomac. When early Jesuit settler Andrew White came to Maryland, he met Chief Kittamaquud, a noble savage leader.  He was so taken by White’s religion, that he converted, and handed over his lands for them to settle.  

Rouse must have been thinking of the “enlightened” savages that handed their land over to see a bigger vision when he picked the name. Even more ironically, the town of Columbia would border the town of Savage, Maryland, where “savages” would live in their unplanned haphazard communities.  For the most part, he kept this to himself, probably with a slight smile as he gathered people around to tell of the  “The Great Meeting Place”.  He would have broken their hearts if he said the real translation  “Great Beaver Place”.

For Whom The Bell Tolls

While wrapping your brain around the complex issue of parking at Merriweather,  Frank Heckler’s Blog has broken it down into a simple comparison. Spoiler alert!  The best solution came out of the Woodlands Texas. They have a pavilion called the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion that rivals Merriweather.  They use a combination of an onsite paid parking garage, agreements with businesses to use their underground parking, and nearby mall overflow. The plan works! Yielding Yelp ratings as high as Columbia has now. And why not? The Woodlands is a planned community operated by the Howard Hughes Corporation. With such outstanding success, why not copy the same thing for Columbia?

The super-smart people at Howard Hughes have put together a plan so we do not have to break out our slide rules and sweat the heavy math. When Mrs Merriweather Post funded the pavilion, she envisioned lightly attended venues with arts patrons walking or riding the community mini-buses. I doubt she could have imagined the popularity of the venue today, as thousands of people from the unplanned communities flock in for vibrant rock concerts.  The wear and tear places a toll on the pavilion.  So rather than place a toll on the walking community, Howard Hughes is going to toll those who drive their smoggy soccer-wagons to the pavilion. The profits will insure that the Crescent community will remain shiny and viable for years to come.

Parking Issue Solved!

Dr. Ulman Dr. Ulman…. Paging Dr. Ulman.  Hecker’s blog did the math, and saw a sick patient walk through the door. Dr. Ulman has the cure for our ills!

Hecker must be a math major. He pieced together the parking spaces provided in the Crecent project to handle concerts at Merriweather and came up a few shy. Even the great team at Howard Hughes occasionally makes a slip-up in the slide rule.  Luckily for us, Ulman is on the ball.  He rolled up his sleeves and put together a bill that would allow private paid parking garages on the Crecent site, so everyone will be able to come and go with ease. Although all of us want a shiny new pavilion, it would be useless without a place to park, so he is going to let Howard Hughes to take a raincheck on the concert-halting improvements so we will not have to circle the Mall for hours with the kids screaming if they miss the Justin Bieber concert, or they will just Diiiiiie.

There may be a small group of greenies that get all sentimental over a underutilized patch of dead grass hosting the occasional greasy food concession dripping motor oil or creepy holiday light show featuring herky-jerky gnomes rocking back and forth. The modern parking facilities will let more families experience more culture more often!  Just think how many vibrant, exciting amenities could be funded without having to use taxpayer dollars.

Howard County Hospital would be nothing but empty beds if we had Dr. Ulman on duty.. but alas, he will only be able to cure our problems for a short while. But don’t worry, he is going to leave us in good hands and he does surgery with the State’s budget.

Columbians are the center

A new future for our village centers is onhand. When James Rouse envisioned the village center concept, he talked about a small town community center. His design was simply a central core surrounded by circles that represented the outlying village centers. Rouse did not promise us any specific tenants, he simply wanted the community to gather in central locations.

This is exactly what is being proposed by the new Columbia Village Center Market Study that will be presented on March 25 at the Wilde Lake Slayton House. Our community should be able to gather in central locations for years to come.  We anticipate that the re-imagined locations will be filled with vibrant active facilities that encourage the community to come together as never before. We can trust that this survey will guide us for decades to come with adaptive innovative uses that invigorate our underutilized cores of our village centers. The inefficient horizontal layout of our village centers will now soar vertically, enabling the best use of our resources, and send our gaze upward at the possibilities.

Rouse once said, “serious problems in society stem from the fact that the city is out of scale with the people”.  It is clear that our people view the village centers as out-of-scale with their expectations, and we need to re-scale them to prevent societal problems.

Merriweather

It seems hard to believe that Merriweather opened on July 15 1967. Marjorie Merriweather Post and James Rouse collaborated to open a premier arts venue on what was once a desolate underutilized field.  Then as now, many negotiations took place before the final product materialized.   Ken Ulman proposes new legislation that Envisions A Newly Renovated Merriweather Post Pavillion as the center of the Symphony Woods Cultural Park.  Our leadership will collaborate with Howard Hughes to create a thriving hub of arts and activity. 

“Visions describe what best should be – if and when mankind has the will to make them real” – James Rouse