Route 1 Reporter (https://route1reporter.com/category/news/college-park/)
Dozens of ear-witnesses in College Park, Greenbelt and Berwyn Heights, including this journalist, reported hearing a loud, explosion-like boom in the early-morning hours of Sunday, Aug. 18, 2019. The noise rattled residents, who took to social media to report their experiences. As of Sunday evening, no definitive cause for the noise has been disclosed by local officials.
At its Aug. 13, 2019, meeting, College Park City Council approved a measure authorizing city staff to borrow approximately $14 million in city funds to build a new City Hall that will also share space with University of Maryland offices, as well as approximately $5 million to fund new athletic fields for Duvall Field, the city’s largest public park. In so doing, College Park City Council rejected calls from a vocal group of residents to put the matter before voters as a referendum in the city’s upcoming November municipal elections.
College Park City Council approved a semi-dockless e-scooter and bikeshare program in July. But “motorized” vehicles are illegal on the county’s trail network.
College Park City Council appears poised to approve a November ballot referendum seeking citizen input on proposed changes to the city’s election calendar.
A developer wants to demolish a downtown College Park shopping center on Knox Road to build 340 student apartments, according to planning documents filed with Prince George’s County.
Major commercial transactions in the Route 1 corridor in the past few months have seen hundreds of apartments – and a large senior-living facility – change hands.
Prince George’s Planning Board approved detailed plans for two major development projects along the Route 1 corridor.
College Park wants to launch its new dockless bike, e-bike and electric scooter program before the fall semester gets underway in August. There may be a hitch in the plan.
A developer is seeking County approval of a plan to consolidate three properties into one to build 354 apartments near the Greenbelt Metro Station,
Elections in Prince George’s County’s southern Route 1 corridor tend to be small and fast affairs, with short campaign seasons that are active for maybe a month. But in College Park, the largest city along Baltimore Avenue inside the Beltway, the 2019 campaign is already underway, months before voters go to the polls in early November.
For those used to the pace of a national election cycle, a few months on the local campaign trail might seem like peanuts. But for Maryland’s middling-sized municipalities, shorter elections are the norm. Consider that Hyattsville had a fully-competitive slate of 13 candidates running for five council seats and the mayor’s office, and of those, only one announced their campaign more than six weeks out. In Mount Rainier, the candidate registration and certification deadline is three weeks from election day.
In College Park, candidates can begin to circulate a petition for candidacy in August.