Council supports StarView expansion

The College Park City Council expressed support last night for expanding a planned student housing project to include more than 100 additional beds and an extra floor.

The StarView Plaza had originally been proposed as a five-story, 550-bed student housing project on Route 1 near the College Park Car Wash.

But developers last night asked the city council for its blessing in a plan to add more one story and 112 beds to the project, which city officials did not object to but said was an unusual step for so late in the development process.

Josh Peters, a member of the Star Hotels development team, said a redesign of the structure of the planned apartment building allowed it to support the extra weight of an added floor.

The university had asked the developers to maximize the number of student housing beds, Peters said, which prompted them to add the floor. Yet the building's general appearance and footprint will remain unchanged, he added.

Developers will break ground for StarView within a month, and the building should be open for tenants by fall 2010.

The council indicated it would vote next week to send a letter to other agencies supporting the modification to StarView's plans.

At the same council meeting, city officials "agreed to disagree" with developers of another student housing project about two environmental issues.

City staff noted the Varsity at College Park, a mid-rise 914-bed project to be built next to the University View, is planned to be partially built inside the Paint Branch stream buffer and did not conform to LEED green building standards.

Matt Tedesco, an attorney for developer Mark Vogel, said he expects the county and the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission to accept the project as is.

The building only encroaches above the 50-foot stream buffer, with only one pillar actually touching the ground in the area, developers said. They will also spend up to $750,000 to improve the stream in the area.

On the green building issue, developers used a different standard to measure the environmental impact of their facility than the city is accustomed to.

Developers said they earned an "extremely high score" of 49 by the Green Communities standard, but neither they nor city planners could translate that into the LEED ranking of bronze through platinum.

The city had requested "LEED Silver or similar," with silver being the second lowest of the four LEED standards.

The city council does not have the authority to block a development, but city officials customarily testify in favor of or against it at other bodies' hearings. The council tentatively deferred the two environmental issues to park and planning, and will hear back from the developers in two weeks.

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