Route 1 Reporter (https://route1reporter.com/category/news/college-park/)
A big stretch of Rhode Island Avenue will soon be College Park property, paving the way for an ambitious overhaul of the roadway intended to make it safer for pedestrians and cyclists.
College Park will give a $75,000 grant to help a retailer build a store in its new, soon-to-open mixed-use City Hall.
College Park has hired a new city manager in Kenneth Young, filling a vacancy that had been open since late December 2020. It’s also a job that had almost been filled by another candidate who was fired by city officials before her first day on the job.
In an announcement notable for its lack of details as much as the news it contained, College Park city officials announced they had parted ways with recently-hired city manager Natasha Hampton.
College Park has a new city manager in Natasha Hampton, the first woman and the first person of color to serve in the role.
After mistakenly granting, then revoking, a tax break for a student-housing project, College Park City Council narrowly approved a measure granting the project a reduced tax break anyway under a new waiver created for this specific situation.
College Park City Council appears supportive of still-preliminary design plans for a cycle-centric overhaul of Rhode Island Avenue. But the plans are likely to disappoint some cycling safety advocates, who in previous meetings called for more robust separation between the bicycles and cars.
At least two industrial development projects are interested in buying the Stone Straw site in northern College Park, according to city officials. Further details remain a mystery, save one: a proposal to build a fish processing plant on the site, first revealed in 2020, seems to be dead.
College Park city officials mistakenly granted a tax cut to a development, in part, because city staff used an out-of-date checklist when reviewing the proposal, according to emails obtained by Route 1 Reporter.
College Park City Council appears to have the votes to give a student-housing developer a tax cut it was once ineligible for, however the tax cut will be smaller than what developers sought.