Berwyn Heights

Doc Drop: Berwyn Heights’ ex-mayor’s short resignation letter

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If you were looking to glean more information about the reason why former Berwyn Heights Mayor Lynn White resigned, her resignation letter doesn’t offer much. The letter was provided to Route 1 Reporter by the Berwyn Heights Town Manager’s office. It is short. The entire letter is but 59 words long, including the salutation and the closing. 

It reads, in full: 

Dear Berwyn Heights Residents, Neighbors and Friends:It is with great sadness that I announce my resignation as Mayor of the Town of Berwyn Heights effective immediately.  I am so grateful for the opportunity to serve you as a Councilwoman and Mayor.  Wishing you a happy holiday season and many continued blessings for our wonderful town!Sincerely,Lynn WhiteFormer Berwyn Heights Mayor Lynn White’s letter of resignation, Dec. 6, 2018.

Berwyn Heights

Berwyn Heights gets third mayor in less than six months.

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Berwyn Heights has a new mayor in former Councilor Stephen Isler, who was sworn in at Berwyn Heights’ Dec. 12, 2018 meeting following the resignation of now former Mayor Lynn White. It is the second time since June that a Berwyn Heights mayor has resigned. 

“Last Thursday we received a message around 10 a.m. from now former Mayor White informing us she has resigned from her position as mayor and council member. We are really saddened to hear that. We were hoping to really work with her.

Beltway Plaza

Doc Drop: Beltway Plaza conceptual site plan application filed

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A conceptual site plan application for the redevelopment of Beltway Plaza was officially accepted for review by Prince George’s County Planning Officials Dec. 10, 2018.  Key documents from that application are attached below this article. Development Review 101 

That now kicks off a 70-day timeline for the application to be considered by the Prince George’s County Planning Board, though the timeline can be stretched through appeals and requests for delay. The first planning body to consider the proposal is the Subdivision Review Committee, scheduled for its Dec. 28, 2018 meeting.

Berwyn Heights
Cars drive along a moderately-congested Greenbelt Road, a six-lane suburban throughway overlooking a green horizon.

With Beltway Plaza redevelopment in play, a new vision for Greenbelt Road emerges

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As long-term plans to redevelop Beltway Plaza gain inertia, economic development and planning officials are developing planning and policy strategies to reshape Greenbelt Road to be a more pedestrian, cyclist and transit-friendly corridor. Guiding those actions for now is a report compiled over the summer by the Urban Land Institute, released October 2018. 

“The Greenbelt Road corridor is at a crossroads. Like many suburban commercial areas, it has lost some business to newer, outlying shopping centers and grapples with some disinvestment and traffic congestion,” reads the report. “Many community members express a desire for a greater variety of retail, but there is no singular vision for how the area can attract that.” The full report can be read here.

Berwyn Heights

Beltway Plaza mall mixed-use redevelopment in the works

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UPDATE – Dec. 11, 2018, 5 p.m. – The conceptual site plan for the proposed redevelopment of Beltway Plaza was accepted for review by county planning officials Dec. 10, 2018, kicking off a 70-day review timeline. Proposals to redevelop Beltway Plaza Mall into a mixed-use, open-air neighborhood with homes, offices and retail are moving forward. Renderings of the conceptual redevelopment proposal are embedded below this article. Officials with Quantum Companies, the Bethesda-based company that owns the mall, have submitted paperwork with the Prince George’s County Planning Department seeking approval of redevelopment plans that would allow residences to be built behind the mall along Breezewood Drive.

Berwyn Heights

After veto spat with Mayor, Berwyn Heights Council sets new rules

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Berwyn Heights Town Council has the votes to approve new rules clarifying the town’s “weak mayor-strong council” system of government. The changes most-prominently include a new amendment to Berwyn Heights’ Town Charter that gives the Mayor Pro Tem the power to enact Council-approved legislation if the Mayor refuses their “ministerial signatory” duties. This is all a reaction to a small-town equivalent of a constitutional crisis into which Berwyn Heights was thrust earlier this summer when Mayor Lynn White refused to sign documents necessary to borrow $1 million to fund repairs to town streets. White’s refusal to sign these documents has been described by other members of Town Council as an unlawful attempt to veto the bond measure, and have demanded her resignation. White has not resigned. At its Nov.

Berwyn Heights

Profile: Meet Amanda Dewey, Berwyn Heights’ newest Council member

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Amanda Dewey is Berwyn Height’s newest Town Council member, appointed earlier this summer after former Mayor Chris Rasmussen resigned for a new job in Colorado. Per the town’s charter, then-Mayor Pro Tem Lynn White assumed the Mayor’s office, leaving a vacancy on Town Council, which was filled by appointment. Dewey joins a Town Council that is dealing with the aftermath of Mayor White’s controversial refusal to sign documents to authorize more than $1 million in loans. Route 1 Reporter caught up with Dewey this past week to learn more about her policy interests and history of civic involvement. Name: Amanda Dewey
Position: Berwyn Heights Town Councilor
Age: 27
Hometown: Saint Charles, Missouri
Years lived in Berwyn Heights: More than three years
Current occupation: Doctoral student and instructor at the University of Maryland’s department of Sociology.

Berwyn Heights

The Route 1 corridor’s other trail gaps

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News that Maryland highway officials are indeed closing the gap separating the southern end of the Trolley Trail from the Anacostia Tributary Trails in Hyattsville was warmly welcomed by cyclists. But that’s not the only gap in the Route 1 corridor hiker-biker trail network. Others exist that, if closed, could make it even easier to move through and across northern Prince George’s County in something other than a car. North Brentwood-Mount Rainier trail stub

In fact, our first gap we’ll be reviewing today is but a stone’s throw from the eventual intersection of the Trolley Trail and the Anacostia Tributary Trail System. Located on the southern shore of the Northwest Branch of the Anacostia in Brentwood, this trail runs east to west from approximately (but not quite exactly) Rhode Island Avenue along the levee as it skirts North Brentwood.

Berwyn Heights

Disqualified: Could Berwyn Heights give mayor the boot?

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In the middle of a costly dispute over mayoral powers, Berwyn Heights Town Council seems open to some sort of mediation to forge a productive working relationship with Mayor Lynn White. But if that fails, Berwyn Heights Council could use its “disqualification” powers to try to push the mayor from office. Discussion of the Town Council’s disqualification powers came during a packed-house worksession of Berwyn Heights’ Town Council on Sept. 5, 2018. The first item on the agenda was a spirited discussion of Town Council’s recent letter asking for White’s resignation.

Berwyn Heights

Berwyn Heights Council demands mayor’s resignation

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Less than two months after being sworn in, Berwyn Heights Town Council is asking for Mayor Lynn White to resign. White says she’s not going anywhere. “It is not my intent to resign,” said White in an August 27, 2018, interview. White was elevated from Berwyn Heights’ Mayor Pro Tem position to the town’s mayoral office on July 16, 2018, following former Mayor Chris Rasmussen’s resignation after only two months in office to take a job with Colorado’s university system. The controversy centers on White’s refusal to sign documents authorizing the town to take out a $1.1 million loan – called a bond – to fund two phases of a planned five-phase repaving project for many of Berwyn Heights’ streets.