University starts over on East Campus

The university is abandoning years of planning work on its massive East Campus development, starting over with a new developer to come up with a design for the mixed-use project that can be built more gradually.

The university and a new developer will now begin with a modest redevelopment of a small portion of the project's 38-acre area, and it will be designed to expand over time to include more property and amenities depending on the market and community input, according to Ann Wylie, the university vice president for administrative affairs.

Wylie said it's too early to say when the project will now be built, but College Park officials don't expect to see construction begin any earlier than 2013. Under initial timelines, the first parts of the development would have already been complete by then.

East Campus is the university property along Route 1 from Paint Branch Parkway to Fraternity Row that currently houses bus parking and an aging collection of maintenance and storage facilities. The university has worked since 2006 to convert the area into a massive town center.

Under the original plans prepared by Foulger-Pratt/Argo Investment, the firm responsible for rebuilding downtown Silver Spring, the space would have featured thousands of apartments for university faculty, staff and graduate students; a luxury hotel; a supermarket; a Birchmere Music Hall; and other retail and office space.

But the university and the developer struggled to finance the project, estimated at $900 million, and FP/Argo backed out last fall.

The problem, said Wylie — whose office is responsible for East Campus — is simple: The original design for the project "wasn't buildable."

The university had hoped to have East Campus built in two large phases over the course of about five years, and the layout would not have worked if it lingered too long as a construction site, Wylie said.

After attempting to carry out a project that required too much money up front and consisted of "an awful lot of development," Wylie said this time around the project will be designed to be built in more stages.

"Everything was designed to be built all at once, which in this economy was just not possible," she said. "That is exactly why it fell through."

Friday, the university announced a partnership with a new developer — The Cordish Company, a Baltimore-based firm involved in that city's Inner Harbor redevelopment.

Cordish vice president Blake Cordish wrote in an e-mail that the company's planners are "now rolling up our sleeves" to begin planning the details for the development.

"We are very excited about the East Campus opportunity and look forward to working in partnership with the University of Maryland and local community on this transformative project," he wrote.

While the project's scope, timeline and budget remain unknown, Cordish and the university will spend the next year "developing a plan that is financeable," Wylie said, as well as gathering community input for the construction before any money is invested.

District 2 City Councilman Bob Catlin agrees that the biggest problem with the previous plan was the enormity of it. "The old plan was to be built in two phases," he said. "But you can't deal with pieces so big."

Catlin predicts the project will now consist of more modest chunks, each costing $75 million to $100 million and taking a while to get off the ground.

"Most projects that are being built now have a three-year window," Catlin said. "You have the whole designing phase, working with the community and the city, and then it'll have to go to the county, you need zoning permits, building permits. Permits alone takes six months."

While it may take years to see East Campus fully revitalized, Catlin agrees with redesigning the project to be executed in smaller phases.

"I would think, for something like this, you wouldn't want to design the whole thing at once," he said. "So much can happen. You might want to change some things."

While no details have been given concerning any changes to the specific amenities of the new project, Catlin wondered how the goals of a project designed years ago will hold up in the future.

"I think we'll have to wait and see if the ambitions expressed in the old plan can exist in the world we live in now," he said.

While times and approaches may have changed, Wylie remains confident the revitalization of East Campus will be successful.

"We are a little more cautious in our approach this time around but nonetheless determined," she said.

villanueva at umdbk dot com, yitbarek at umdbk dot com