tl;dr: Howard County parents and other voters shouldn’t have the ability to elect Board of Education members taken away from them. Instead they deserve a way to vote for the Board of Education that truly reflects their preferences, namely ranked choice voting.

How we got here, Board of Education edition

Prior to 2020 the Howard County Board of Education was elected at large, with three members elected during presidential election years and four members during gubernatorial election years. The primary election was used as a way to winnow down the number of candidates to be voted on in the general election.

2018 was the last election in which the traditional method was used: there were thirteen Board of Education candidates in the primary, of whom voters could vote for four. The top eight candidates advanced to the general election, at which again voters could vote for four. The top four were elected to the board.

For the 2020 election year the system was changed to have five members of the Board of Education to be elected by district (using the Howard County Council districts) and two members elected at-large in alternate election years.

In the 2020 primary election voters could vote for one candidate in their district. The top two candidates in each district advanced to the general election, at which voters again voted for one candidate. The top candidate in each district was elected to the board.

The at-large members were elected in the 2022 election year. In the 2022 primary election voters could vote for up to two at-large candidates in their district. The top four at-large candidates advanced to the general election, at which voters again voted for up to two candidates. The top two candidates were elected to the board.

A threat to stop voters from electing two board members

Now a new proposal is on the table: to take away the ability of Howard County voters to elect two of the seven Board of Education members they previously elected, and have those members appointed by the Howard County Executive from a list drawn up by the Howard County legislative delegation.

Of the remaining five board members that Howard County voters would still be permitted to elect themselves, two of them would be elected at-large in the same manner as today, and the remaining three would be elected from the Howard County portions of the state senate districts wholly or partly contained within Howard County (currently Districts 9, 12, and 13).

I’m not going to speculate on the possible motives of those proposing this new schemes, what problem they think they are trying to solve, or what they hope to accomplish by taking away the ability of Howard County voters to elect these two board members.

However I do want to point out two potential issues with the proposal:

First, as noted above, the two appointed members would have to be selected from a list prepared by the Howard County legislative delegation. But Howard County shares several of its legislative districts with other counties, including Senate Districts 9 (shared with Carroll County) and 12 (shared with Baltimore County), and House of Delegates District 9A (shared with Montgomery County).

Given that, it’s possible that four of the members of the “Howard County” delegation may not even live in Howard County. What business would they have picking candidates for the Howard County Board of Education?

Second, also as noted above, the three districts with elected Board of Education members would be based on the one Senate district wholly within Howard County (currently District 13) and the Howard County portions of the two Senate districts partially within the county (currently Districts 9 and 12).

But here’s the problem: there’s no guarantee that the Howard County portions of the second and third districts will be equal in population to the first district. It’s quite possible that the second and third districts may have only a few thousand—or even only a few hundred—voters in Howard County, yet those voters would have as much influence over the Board of Education as the tens of thousands of voters elsewhere in the county.

(This problem doesn’t exist with the current Board of Education districts because the councilmanic districts are constrained by the county charter to be approximately equal in population.)

The bottom line: besides taking away the ability of Howard County parents and other voters to select two of the Board of Education members, this proposal is complicated and fraught with potential problems that would further reduce the ability of Howard County voters to influence the composition of the board.

Ranked choice voting: a better alternative

Enough of that. Here I present a better proposal, introduced by Chao Wu and Jen Terrasa, that

• preserves the ability of Howard County voters to elect all members of the Board of Education (except for the student member, of course);
• does a better job of reflecting voters’ true preferences;
• can potentially eliminate the need to have Board of Education primary elections, and thus ensure that the maximum number of voters participates in electing the board; and
• is less prone to some of the problems some people might have had with both the traditional method of electing the Board of Education and the method used in 2020, as well as other methods.

That proposal involves so-called “ranked choice voting,” a scheme that allows voters to rank candidates in order of their preference, and that allows their votes to be transferred to another preferred candidate in the event that their most preferred candidate is not elected. Ranked choice voting is being increasingly adopted by jurisdictions around the US and has been popular with voters in elections where it has been used.

Advantages of ranked choice voting

To expand on what I wrote above, ranked choice voting has the following advantages over current ways of electing either a single Board of Education member (i.e., per district) or at-large board members:

Elimination of primary elections. As discussed in more detail in the next section, a ranked choice election can eliminate the need to have primary elections, since there is no need to winnow down the number of candidates for the general election.

Instead all candidates would run in the general election, and voters could indicate their preferences between them. If a voter’s favorite candidate were not elected then the voter’s indicated preferences could help elect another candidate they also favor. The ranked choice method of counting votes works the same whether there’s one seat to be decided (i.e., for a district) or more than one (i.e., for an at-large seat).

Eliminating primaries is especially important for Board of Education races, because the board is supposed to be a nonpartisan body open to anyone interested in improving the school system, not a body made up of professional politicians primarily interested in pursuing their party’s agenda. Having no primary election means that running for the board should be less expensive and thus open to more potential candidates, and holding the election at general election time means that the voter base will include voters beyond just party activists and partisans.

Reducing “wasted” votes. When there are multiple candidates in a race, voters will often not vote for their favored candidates because their chances of winning are uncertain. Ranked choice voting allows voters to give a first preference vote to their favored candidates and second, third, etc., preferences to other candidates. That way, even if their favored candidate loses, their votes can still help elect other candidates that they like.

Preventing a slim majority of voters from dominating other voters. In the tradition Board of Education elections, or in the current election of at-large members, it is possible for a slim majority of voters to elect all their favored candidates: they simply vote as a bloc for their candidates, so that all those candidates have the most number of votes and are thus elected. This leaves other voters without representation of their views. (Incidentally, this is exactly why traditional at-large elections have been outlawed in many jurisdictions, because they were used as a way to enable a white majority to disenfranchise Black voters.)

This bloc voting strategy doesn’t work in a ranked choice election because of the way the ranked choice mechanism works, giving voters representation in rough propertion to the size of their voting bloc. For example, in an election to pick two at-large board members, a 51% majority could elect one at-large member, but would be very unlikely to succeed in electing two. That’s because there would be enough people in the 49% minority giving their preferences for other candidates that one of those candidates would very likely be elected once all voter preferences were accounted for.

Making it more likely that winning candidates will have broad appeal among voters. The key to winning as a candidate in a ranked choice election is not just to have your core group give you their first preference votes. In an election with three, four, five, or more candidates, it’s unlikely that those votes alone will be enough to put you over the line. Winning thus also requires persuading voters outside your base to mark you as their second or even third preference.

Ranked choice elections work against extreme candidates because they typically won’t get second or third preferences from outside their base. (To use the jargon term, they aren’t “transfer-friendly.”)

Electing district and at-large board members using ranked choice voting

There are multiple ways that ranked choice voting might be used to elect Board of Education members. Here I present two possible schemes, one a variant of the method currently used, and one a variant on the traditional way of electing Board of Education members.

In the first scheme we would continue the current practice of electing five Board of Education members by district (using the five Howard County councilmanic districts) and electing two board members at large, but using ranked choice voting in both types of election.

In the 2020 election the maximum number of Board of Education candidates running in the primary election was six (in District 4); other districts had only four candidates (District 5), three (Districts 2 and 3), or two candidates (District 1, where no primary was needed).

As discussed above, with ranked choice voting we could skip the primary election and have all Board of Education district candidates run in the general election. Voters would rank candidates in order of their preference, and then the ranked choice vote counting scheme would go as follows:

1. If any candidate received more than 50% of the first preference votes then they would automatically be elected.
2. If no candidate received more than 50% of the first preference vote, then the candidate with the least number of first preference votes would be eliminated, and their votes transferred to other candidates according to the preferences of the voters who gave the eliminated candidate their first preference.
3. The process of eliminating candidates and transferring their votes would continue until one candidates accumulated enough votes to go over the 50% mark.

Note that when electing a single candidate, ranked choice voting is often referred to as instant-runoff voting: because voters would have already expressed their preferences for their second, third, etc., choices, there would be no need to hold a separate runoff election if one candidate didn’t receive more than 50% of the votes in the first round.

In 2022 eight Board of Education candidates ran in the primary for the two at-large seats. Again, we could dispense with the primary election and just have all candidates run in the general election, with two board members elected using ranked choice voting. The process would be similar to that described above, except that the “quota” would be 33.3%: any candidate receiving more than that number of votes, whether from first preference votes or from votes transferred from others, would be deemed elected.

Electing all board members county-wide with ranked choice voting

In this alternate scheme we would revert to the traditional method of electing three at-large Board of Education members elected during presidential election years and four at-large members during gubernatorial election years. The only difference would be to use ranked choice voting in the elections to select the top candidates, similar to what was described above for using ranked choice voting to elect two at-large members.

Again we could dispense with the primary and just have voters rank all candidates in the general election. In that case the quota for being elected would be 20% plus 1 when electing four board members, and 25% plus 1 when electing three.

Addressing objections to ranked choice voting

There are various objections that might be made to using ranked choice voting for Board of Education elections. In this section I address those objections.

“Ranked choice voting is too complicated for voters.” I don’t see this as an issue at all. Experience with other jurisdictions, including New York City, has indicated that voters understand the process of ranking candidates and are generally satisfied with the results. Howard County has a relatively highly educated population; if voters in New York City can understand ranked choice voting then I’m sure voters here can as well.

“Ranked choice voting is too complicated and expensive for the Howard County Board of Elections.” There would be some added expenses in conducting a ranked choice election, mainly to design the ballots and implement the special process for tabulating results. However, there are plenty of resources available for election officials on how to run ranked choice elections successfully and efficiently, and free and open source ranked choice tabulation software (e.g., RCTab) that has already been certified for use in several jurisdictions. It’s also possible that the Board of Elections could offset some or all of the cost by not conducting Board of Education primary elections, as discussed above.

“Since the ranked choice voting calculations depend on knowing the total number of voters, election results will take a long time to determine if voters can vote by mail.” The short answer here is that traditional elections can also take a long time to be decided when mail ballots arrive late, as happened in the 2022 House of Delegates race for District 9A. That’s a universal trade-off with voting by mail, if voters are allowed to mail ballots up to 8:00 PM on election day.

The longer answer is that since the ranked choice calculations can be easily and quickly done by computer, the Board of Elections could simply release intermediate results, including the effects of voters’ second, third, etc., preferences, as the votes come in. As with other elections, results would not be final until all late ballots were accounted for and any other ballot-related issues were resolved.

“The ranked choice voting computations are a ‘black box,’ and we don’t have confidence in the way the calculations are done.” This issue can be addressed by using open source software (like RCTab, mentioned above) to provide transparency for how the calculations are done, and then releasing data for the final certified results showing all ballots and how they were marked. This would enable other people (like me, or anyone else able to run the software) to double-check the official results.

“Ranked choice voting would unduly disadvantage (or unduly advantage—take your pick) parents’ groups, the Howard County Education Association, the Democratic or Republican parties, or other interest groups.” Interest groups could still make endorsements like they currently do, indicating which candidates should (in their view) receive voter preferences, and which should not. If they strongly favor some preferred candidates over others, they can specify how they think voters should rank them.

The only real caution interest groups would need to take would be to not endorse too many candidates, lest voters split their first preference votes between them and cause none of them to be elected in the first round. As noted above, this is actually an advantage of ranked choice voting: it reduces the ability of a 51% majority to elect all at-large members by bloc voting for a slate of candidates.

“Ranked choice voting is inferior to approval voting.” This is a more esoteric objection, but is worth addressing. Approval voting is a different voting scheme in which voters simply mark which candidates are acceptable to them—and can approve of more than one—and then the candidate with the most “approvals” is elected. Regardless of whether approval voting is superior to ranked choice voting, either in theory or in practice, its greater simplicity is only present in elections where a single candidate is elected.

So-called “multiwinner approval voting” is more complicated, requiring a choice between multiple methods of counting approval ballots. It would be simpler for both voters and election officials to use a standard ranked choice mechanism for both single-winner districts and multi-winner at-large seats.

“Ranked choice voting could produce a result that doesn’t reflect who should actually win.” There are no perfect voting systems that are guaranteed to produce intuitively “correct” results in every possible scenario. Ranked choice voting is no exception.

But ranked choice voting has been successfully used for many elections, not only in the US but also in juridictions like Ireland and Northern Ireland, which have conducted dozens of elections and elected hundreds of officeholders using ranked choice voting. (They just call it something different: “proportional representation with a single transferable vote,” or PR-STV.) There is no reason to think it can’t work just as well in Howard County.

For further exploration

• Proposed legislation relating to election of the Howard County Board of Education:
  • Ho. Co. 10-23. Proposed legislation to make two members of the Board of Education appointed, not elected. Sponsored by the chair of the Howard County delegation.
  • Ho. Co. 16-23. Proposed legislation to allow Howard County to elect the Board of Education using ranked choice voting. Sponsored by Chao Wu and Jen Terrasa.
• Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center. Includes resources for election administrators, the RCTab tabulation software, and links to ballot data for past ranked choice elections in several jurisdictions.

This is a follow-up to my seven-part series (starting with part 1) on expanding the Howard County Council, using ranked choice voting to elect council members, and leveraging automated redistricting software overseen by an independent redistricting commission.

This particular post describes an alternative to the three-district map proposed in that series and illustrated in part 5: I retain the idea of a fifteen-member county council, but instead of using three districts (with five members each) I use five districts (as with the current council), electing three members in each district. As in the previous example I assume the use of ranked choice voting.

An example five district map

The map above shows the five districts produced by the Auto-Redistrict software based on the data and options I provided. The new districts divide the county into the following areas; I’ve numbered the districts so that they roughly correspond with the current council districts:

• District 1. Ellicott City.
• District 2. Northeastern Howard County, including Elkridge.
• District 3. Southeastern Howard County, including North Laurel, Savage, Maple Lawn, and Fulton, as well as the Village of Kings Contrivance.
• District 4. Central Columbia, excluding some outlying villages.
• District 5. Western Howard County, including the Villages of River Hill and Harper’s Choice.

Because of the way that the Auto-Redistrict software works, starting from a random assignment of precincts to districts and then “evolving” the map from there, each run may end up producing a somewhat different map. For this run I was lucky, as I think this particular map does a really good job of matching up with the key population centers in the county. The main departure is that Columbia is too populous to fit into a single district; the proposed District 4 includes only about two-thirds of Columbia’s population.

Based on the 2020 Census figures, the racial and ethnic groups in these five districts would break down as follows:

• District 1. Non-Hispanic Whites would comprise about half the population of this of this district, at 49%, with Asians the next largest group at about 31%. Non-Hispanic Blacks would comprise about 10% of the population at 10%, with multi-racial people (or people of other races) and people of Hispanic origin the smallest groups, at about 5% each.
• District 2. Non-Hispanic Whites would be a slight minority in this district, at about 46%. Blacks and Asians would be roughly equal as a proportion of the population, at about 20% and 21% respectively. People of Hispanic origin would be about 10%, and multi-racial people or people of other races about 6%.
• District 3. Non-Hispanic Whites would be a distinct minority in this district, at 41% of the population, with Blacks and Asians about 25% and 18% respectively. The proportions of people of Hispanic origin and multi-racial people (or people of other races) would be comparable those in District 2, at 10% and 6% respectively.
• District 4. Non-Hispanic Whites would again be a distinct minority in this district, at 42%. This district would have the highest Black population, at 30%. The next most populous group would be people of Hispanic orgin at 12%, with Asians at 9% and multi-racial people and people of other races at 7%.
• District 5. This would be the only district with a non-Hispanic White majority, at 58%. The proportion of Asians would be about 21% (similar to District 2), while the proportion of Non-Hispanic Blacks would be about 11% (similar to District 1). The proportions of people of Hispance origin and multi-racial people (or people of other races) would be similar to those in District 1, at %% each.

(For figures for Howard County as a whole, see part 5 of the redistricting series.)

Assuming some level of vote transfers, Blacks would be well-positioned to win seats in Districts 4, 3, and 2 (in that order), while Asians would be positioned to win seats in Districts 1, 2, and 5. (Again, see part 5 for a caution about interpreting “Asians” as a monolithic demographic group.)

The remaining nine seats would likely go to Non-Hispanic Whites. As of the 2020 Census Non-Hispanic Whites are now a minority in the county overall, but they’d likely still comprise a majority on the county council—though not as much so as at present.

How would Democratic and Republican candidates fare in each district, and what might the final makeup of the Howard County Council look like? When ranked choice voting is used in a three-member district, a candidate is automatically elected if they are selected as the first preference on at least 25% plus one of the ballots cast (the “quota”).

So, for example, in the precincts comprising the proposed new District 1 I estimated the Republican share of the total vote for Howard County Council in the 2018 general election at about 38%. If a single Republican candidate ran in the Northeast District they would pretty much be guaranteed to be designated as the most preferred candidate by more than 25% of voters. The Republican Party would thus have one “safe” seat in the proposed District 1.

On the other hand, for the precincts in the proposed new District 1 I estimated the Democratic share of the county council vote in 2018 at about 62%. Suppose that only two Democratic candidates ran in the Northeast District and they each received roughly equal shares of the first preference votes—in other words, about half of Democratic voters picked the first candidate as their most preferred candidate and about half of Democrats gave their first preference to the second candidate.

Then given a 62% Democratic vote share each candidate would be designated as the most preferred candidate by about 31% of voters, well over the quota of 25% plus one, and both would automatically be elected. The Democratic Party would thus have two “safe” seats in the Northeast District.

With one Republican seat and two Democratic seats that would fill all three seats in the district. The Democratic party might be tempted to run three candidates, or the Republican party two, but they’d be running a risk in doing so. (See part 6 for a more in-depth discussion of this issue.)

A similar analysis can be done for the other districts. A summary of the likely results for all districts is as follows:

• District 1. Party breakdown: 62% Democrats, 38% Republicans. Likely two safe Democratic seats, one safe Republican seat.
• District 2. Party breakdown: 64% Democrats, 36% Republicans (similar to District 1). Likely two safe Democratic seats, one safe Republican seat.
• District 3. Party breakdown: 71% Democrats, 29% Republicans. Likely two safe Democratic seats and one safe Republican seat, although it’s possible that Democrats might be able to win all three seats against a weak Republican candidate.
• District 4. Party breakdown: 77% Democrats, 23% Republicans. Democrats would have an even better chance here for a three-seat sweep.
• District 5. Party breakdown: 51% Democrats, 49% Republicans. This would likely be a true swing district, with one safe Democratic seat, one safe Republican seat, and one seat a toss-up.

Overall with this district map and the use of ranked choice voting Democrats would likely win at least nine or ten seats on the Howard County Council and Republicans at least four. The remaining one or two seats would be in play, with the most likely result being a 10-5 or 11-4 Democratic majority—a more balanced result than the 4-1 Democratic majority on the current council. (And as noted in a previous post it’s also possible that a third party or independent candidate could capture a seat and act as a deciding vote on the council.)

Overall the idea of electing fifteen council members from five districts has a lot to recommend it: the use of five districts is a continuation of current practice, and the resulting map is very reflective of the geography of the county.

Electing only three members per district using ranked choice voting (as opposed to five) would also simplify both ballot design and the task of voters: there would likely be fewer candidates on the ballot to rank, and in some cases Republican voters at least would likely only need to indicate a first preference (assuming that they were indifferent as to which Democratic candidates were elected).

The major downside of this approach, at least from the point of view of the Republican party, is that it somewhat disadvantages Republican candidates relative to electing five members in each of three districts. That’s a general issue with ranked choice voting: for a minority party’s results to match its vote share, it helps to have more candidates on the ballot for voters to rank.

For further exploration

For the code used to generate the graphs above, see my document Howard County Council Expansion, Part 4. For the data behind the district maps see Howard County Council Expansion, Part 1. I ran the Auto-Redistrict application as described in part 4 of my redistricting series, using the same input data and the same settings, except that I specified five districts with three members each instead of three districts with five members each.

[This is part 7 of a seven-part series. See also part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, and part 6. I also wrote a follow-up post that can be viewed as an alternative to part 5.]

In the first post in this series I proposed a comprehensive overhaul of the way we elect the Howard County Council:

1. Expand the council from five to fifteen members.
2. Reduce the number of council districts from five to three.
3. Elect five members in each district using ranked choice voting.
4. Draw the district lines using an automated process overseen by an independent nonpartisan commission.

In this final post I discuss what motivated me to spend the considerable amount of time it took to research the issue of county council redistricting, to analyze the data and find software to create a proposed district map, and to write this series.

Why do I care about this?

As I discussed in a previous post, my proposal would reduce the likely Democratic majority on the Howard County Council and allow Republicans to win proportionally more seats than they currently do. My fellow Democrats might therefore ask me, “Frank, what the heck are you thinking?!?” My answer is as follows:

First, in addition to being a proud and lifelong Democrat I am a strong believer in the value of liberal democracy: that liberty is best secured by a political system in which every person has equal power to influence government actions through their votes. Partisan gerrymandering and other forms of voter suppression work against that ideal.

The Republican Party was once the party that freed the slaves, amended the Constitution to help secure their rights, and made it possible for some of them (i.e., the men) to vote for the first time ever. How the GOP wishes to treat that great legacy through its present-day actions is its own business.

But my own party has evolved from being the past architect of Jim Crow, and I abhor anything it might do that reminds us of the days of the poll tax, voter “literacy” tests, and other measures that served to make the votes of some people worth more than those of other people.

Second, if we are ever to move beyond our current polarized and poisoned political environment then that process will have to start at the local level, where the rewards for political misbehavior are less and a dedicated movement for electoral reform might have a better chance of being successful.

Finally, I believe that campaigning in a more competitive political environment will ultimately be good for the Democratic Party. Partisan gerrymandering can make for a weak party: why bother doing the hard work of grassroots organizing when you can just redraw district lines every ten years to give yourself a structural advantage over the other party?

(And as a corollary, a weak party is a party that can find itself taken over by politicians primarily interested in their own success rather than that of their party and their fellow candidates and elected officials.)

I think that improving the future prospects of the Democratic Party at a state and national level starts with building strong county- and city-level party organizations. Running under a ranked choice voting system would mean that those organizations couldn’t afford to get lazy when it comes to winning elections. And a stronger Democratic party that can win competitive elections means increased opportunities to advance the interests of Democratic voters and of Americans in general.

Betting on an alternative

OK, so I care about this issue. But why spend so much time working on this series of blog posts and the data analyses behind them, when it’s not clear that anyone else cares about this? As David Clifton remarked on Facebook, “I haven’t noticed people lining up outside the council building to complain they feel they have inadequate representation.”

Maybe he’s right. Maybe Howard County Republicans don’t care that they only have 20% of the seats on the county council despite having at least a third of the vote share. Maybe Democratic voters in District 5, or Republican voters in some other districts, don’t care that they don’t have a realistic chance of electing a council member from their own party.

Maybe young Democratic activists looking to run for elective office are happy to wait a decade or more for one of the few county council seats to open up, as Democratic council members are term-limited or move on to other offices. Maybe all the people with political ambitions in Howard County are content to work within the current two-party system.

And maybe Chinese-Americans, or Indian-Americans, or Korean-Americans, or people of Hispanic origin, or members of any of the other racial and ethnic groups in the county, don’t mind that no one of their background has ever been elected to the county council.

The work I put into creating this series of posts is in effect one big bet that there are people out there who are not happy with the way we currently elect the Howard County Council, and would like to see some alternative proposals. But the alternatives that have traditionally been on offer—an increased number of single-member districts, or a few at-large seats, both elected by the traditional “first past the post” method—will likely not address people’s concerns.

We know this because Howard County has already tried these methods: The initial use of five at-large county council seats led to Democratic dominance on the council beyond what the Democratic vote share would warrant. Howard County Republicans put a lot of effort into promoting and ultimately achieving a switch to five council districts, only to eventually find that this mechanism was vulnerable to Democratic gerrymandering of the district lines.

The computer scientist Alan Kay once said of the original Apple Macintosh that it was “the first personal computer good enough to be criticized”. That was my goal with this series of posts: to put forth an alternative plan for Howard County Council redistricting that seriously attempted to address issues with the current council district system, was backed up by a reasonable amount of data analysis (sufficient at least for a first attempt), and produced a district map and associated party and racial/ethnic breakdowns that could be usefully evaluated and compared against other alternatives. Whether or not I’ve succeeded in that goal I leave to others to judge.

Anyway, that’s it for me. I’m a blogger, not an activist or organizer. If anyone else wants to take these ideas and run with them they’re welcome to do so. In the meantime I’d be happy to answer any further questions and concerns others might have about this proposal, and will update the previous Q&A post as appropriate.

For further exploration

There are a number of other explorations that could be done relative to Howard County Council redistricting and alternative electoral systems. I list some of them here in case anyone wants to take them on.

• Repeat my redistricting analysis, but using census blocks as the basic unit of the districts instead of precincts.
• Do simulations of ranked choice elections for the proposed three districts using one of the many RCV simulators available. (Just do an Internet search for “ranked choice voting simulator.”)
• Repeat the redistricting exercise I did, but for other numbers of council districts or members per district, for example five districts with three members each (for the same total of fifteen members as my proposal) or three districts with three members each (for a total of nine).
• Do an analysis of the current five single-member council districts, but using ranked choice voting (in this context known as “instant-runoff voting or IRV) instead of “first past the post.”
• Repeat the previous analysis, but use approval voting instead of ranked choice voting. (This would require some assumptions on how voters would vote in such a system.)
• Analyze councils with seven, nine, eleven, or thirteen single-member districts, elected using ranked choice voting.
• Repeat the previous analyses with approval voting instead.

[This is part 6 of a seven-part series. See also part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, and part 7. I also wrote a follow-up post that can be viewed as an alternative to part 5.]

In the first post in this series I proposed a comprehensive overhaul of the way we elect the Howard County Council:

1. Expand the council from five to fifteen members.
2. Reduce the number of council districts from five to three.
3. Elect five members in each district using ranked choice voting.
4. Draw the district lines using an automated process overseen by an independent nonpartisan commission.

In this post I attempt to answer various questions people have raised about this proposal. (Note: I also addressed other questions about ranked choice voting for Howard County Council elections in an earlier post, “Ranked choice voting: questions and answers”; however that post assumed electing only one council member per district. Also, I may make updates to this post if I get further questions that merit answers, or if some of my answers turn out to be incorrect or incomplete.)

Expanding the council and having fewer districts

Doesn’t Howard County’s charter provide for automatically expanding the number of council members based on population?

Unfortunately, it does not. The county charter specifically states that

The legislative power of the County is vested in the County Council of Howard County which shall consist of five members who shall be elected from the Councilmanic Districts. . . . Each Councilmanic District shall elect one Council member. (Section 202. The County Council.)

So the county charter would need to be changed even just to add new council members, let alone move to multi-member districts.

A related question is whether the use of multi-member districts is consistent with the Maryland Constitution. The relevant language is as follows:

The charter for the government of any county governed by the provisions of this Article may provide for the election of members of the county council by the voters of councilmanic districts therein established, or by the voters of the entire county, or by a combination of these methods of election. (Article XI-A, Section 3A.)

This doesn’t explicitly rule out having a county council elected from multi-member districts, but it doesn’t explicitly permit it either.

If each district had five county council members, how would a person know which of their council members to call if they needed help?

First, this is a problem Howard County has faced before. Liz Bobo, Ed Cochran, C. Vernon Gray, Lloyd Knowles, and Ginny Thomas were all elected to the Howard County Council during a time when council members were elected at large, before council districts were adopted in 1984. So in a sense each of them had the entire county population for their constituency, and we can look to their experience to see how this worked in practice.

My own answer is as follows: If a constituent has five council members whom they can go to for assistance or to lobby for something, they’ll go to whomever has a particular interest or expertise in the issue at question, has proved helpful in the past, and/or has political views congenial to themselves.

Each council member in a district would likely have natural constituencies, based on the area of the county in which they live, particular interest groups they represent, and so on. For example, someone living in Ellicott City concerned about, say, Route 40 development would likely contact whichever council member in the West District happened to live in Ellicott City and seemed interested in that issue.

Council members within a district might then compete with each other to provide services to their constituents and address their concerns. It’s possible that in some cases a constituent who’s a Democratic voter may prefer dealing with a Republican council member, or vice versa, because they find that that council member is more effective at getting things done for them. But it’s also possible that they might join forces and establish unified channels for dealing with constituent requests, especially if they were of the same party.

Could we find fifteen people who could and would invest the time to serve on an expanded county council? And wouldn’t that be expensive?

I think there are more than enough ambitious political activists of all parties and ideologies in Howard to fill a fifteen-member council. And I would rather have them running for the county council and leave the Board of Education elections to people whose primary interest is in overseeing the Howard County Public School System.

As for the expense, in the proposed Howard County FY22 operating budget the budget for the county council is just under $6 million out of an overall budget of $1.8 billion, or about 0.3%. Even if it doubled or tripled with an expanded county council it would still be under 1% of county operating expenditures.

Wouldn’t expanding the county council expand the power of the county executive by weakening the ability of any one council member to hold the county executive accountable?

A county council is a legislature, and it’s inherent in the nature of a legislature that there will be many legislators relative to the executive. Even with a fifteen-member council an individual council member would have significantly more power to affect legislation and hold the executive branch accountable than (say) a typical Maryland state delegate out of the 141 members of the House of Delegates, or a typical state senator out of the 47 members of the Maryland Senate.

In practice I suspect that a fifteen-member council would delegate much of its work to committees, and the committee heads would hold significant power in terms of holding the county executive accountable.

If we reduce the number of districts from five to three, would western Howard County have any representation at all?

As discussed in the previous post, one of the three proposed districts would include western Howard County, and would have five council members (out of fifteen). It would be roughly equivalent to the current District 5, but a bit bigger, since it would contain about one hundred-ten thousand people vs. about sixty thousand today. I’m confident at least some of the five council members from the proposed West District would be from western Howard proper (as opposed to, say, Ellicott City or River Hill).

Wouldn’t decreasing the number of districts to three increase the potential to gerrymander districts so that no Republicans get elected to the Council?

This might be the case if members within each district were elected at-large. However ranked choice voting has the effect of ensuring Democratic or Republican shares of seats proportional to the parties’ vote shares. See my previous post.

Wouldn’t this proposal reduce the diversity of representation in terms of the different types of communities in Howard County, and enable certain high density areas to control the agenda?

My guess here is that the concern is with reducing the number of districts from five to three, thus lumping different different communities into larger subdivisions. My response is that even though the number of districts would be smaller, the number of council members per district would be much larger, and that would allow more effective representation of different communities.

For example, in the proposed West District there would be three relatively large communities, Ellicott City, River Hill, and Maple Lawn, along with the various smaller communities of Western Howard County. It’s perfectly possible that candidates could pitch themselves as representing one of those distinct areas (for example, a candidate specifically focusing on the Maple Lawn/Fulton area).

As for the concern about high-density areas controlling the agenda, areas with more population will always have more voting power and consequently more representation at the county council. See for example the current council, in which there are four council members representing relative populous and high density areas and only one representing the lower-density and less populous rural West.

Wouldn’t having a fifteen-member county council at least double or triple the meeting length? Would council members still be able to stay part time?

Baltimore city has a fifteen-member city council. We can look to them to see what to do (or not to do) to efficiently conduct council business. I suspect one approach will be to do what other larger legislatures do, namely to delegate some matters to committees, with the full council needing to get involved only at later stages.

If the goal of expanding the council is to enable council members to be better serve their constituents, couldn’t that be accomplished more cheaply and effectively just by increasing the number of staff members assisting each member?

Serving a constituent is not the same as representing a constituent. A progressive Democrat in District 5 may be served by their Republican council member, and served well at that, but may not feel represented by them. Ditto for a conservative Republican in other districts in which Democratic candidates invariably win.

Questions about ranked choice voting

In ranked choice voting how do you determine which excess ballots get transferred from a candidate that wins election to another candidate?

Per the FairVote advocacy site: “[Vote transfers] can be done many different ways, but the best way is to transfer a fraction of every vote to its next choice. That way, every vote is treated equally and no part of any vote is wasted.” So if a candidate is (say) 20% above the quota of first-preference votes, you take the second preference votes for everybody who voted for that candidate, multiply them by 0.2, and add these fractional votes to each of the candidates receiving the transfers.

How do you resolve the fact that whether Candidate A or Candidate B wins a seat may depend on whether a much lower ranked Candidate C gets more votes than Candidate D?

How do we resolve the fact that in the 1992 presidential election Bill Clinton won with a minority of the vote, due in large part to Ross Perot taking a large percentage of the vote away from George H. W. Bush, when it’s quite possible that most Perot voters would have preferred Bush to Clinton?

Any electoral system used in a race with more than two candidates has theoretical cases where it will fail to adhere to some set of reasonable criteria. (There’s even a mathematical theorem about this.) But how often do these situations occur in practice? Ranked choice voting with multi-member districts has been used for a long time in Ireland and Northern Ireland in particular (under the name “proportional representation with a single transferable vote,” or PR-STV) and to my knowledge has not experienced major issues of the type described.

It’s also important to look at the overall effect of a given electoral system. I dislike the “first past the post” electoral system (the one used in the US) not because of the results of a single presidential race, but because as a general tendency it tends to lead to the dominance of two political parties and the crowding out of independents and third parties, and because when used in multi-member districts it tends to produce one-party dominance at the expense of proportional representation. If ranked choice voting can help correct that then I think the occasional odd result is bearable.

Why wouldn’t parties at least run five candidates for five districts?

The problem here is as follows: When a party runs too many candidates relative to their vote share, it will likely find that none of the candidates get enough first-preference votes to be elected in the first round.

For example, in a five-member district using RCV the quota is approximately 16.7%. If Democrats had (say) a 60% vote share and first preference votes were spread relatively evenly among five Democratic candidates, each would receive about 12% of first preference votes, and would therefore fail to be elected in the first round (which requires exceeding the quota).

One might say, “well, they can be still be elected on transferred votes.” But the question then becomes, where are those transferred votes going to come from? In the second round the only source of transfers would be from winning candidates in the first round who have excess votes (i.e., above the 16.7% quota), or from a last-place candidate eliminated because no candidate met the quota.

But in our example no Democrats won in the first round, so there would be no excess votes to transfer from them. And if a candidate was eliminated, there are two possibilities: 1) The eliminated candidate was either a Republican or third-party candidate, which may not result in any transfers to Democrats. This would leave all of the Democratic candidates still below the quota. 2) The eliminated candidate was a Democratic candidate, in which case the Democratic party’s goal of electing five candidates has failed at the starting gate.

The second and subsequent rounds can be similarly analyzed. Such an analysis raises two questions: 1) If in the scenario described it’s very likely that at least one Democratic candidate will be eliminated, and possibly more than one, what was the point in running five candidates in the first place? 2) What happens if some people voting for Democratic candidates just mark a first-preference vote for their favorite candidate and don’t indicate second, third, etc., preferences? Then even after a Democratic candidate is eliminated there may not be enough second preference votes for other Democratic candidates available to make up the shortfall for another Democratic candidate.

Exploring the full ramifications of running too many candidates would take too long for this post. Suffice to say that I have read a lot of material about real-life RCV elections, and everything I have read is consistent with the view it is a potentially disastrous strategy for a party to field many more candidates than their vote share would warrant.

It seems really easy for a voter to accidentally mark two third choice candidates. Does this spoil the entire ballot?

It does indeed. The possibility of users making errors on ranked choice ballots is a real one. Opponents of ranked choice voting point to rates of spoiled or rejected ballots as high as 10% or more in past US elections using RCV.

This problem can be addressed through a combination of proper ballot design, voter education, and voter experience in using RCV. In the 2020 Irish general election the rate of spoiled ballots was only 0.8%. This is comparable to the rate of ballot spoilage and rejection for absentee and mail-in ballots in the 2020 US election, which per Ballotpedia was also 0.8%.

The New York City Democratic primary was conducted using ranked choice voting, and it took a long time to get the results. Is this an inherent problem with RCV?

The problems in New York City appear to be in large part due to inexperience and possibly outright incompetence on the part of the NYC elections board. However, there is one inherent issue with ranked choice voting that can in fact delay announcement of results:

As previously noted, key to ranked choice voting is the concept of the quota, which for a five-member district is defined as one-sixth of the total number of votes, plus one. But that means that in order to compute the quota you first need to know the total number of votes, and that means that you have to have all the votes in hand first before you can starting calculating results.

That’s not that big an issue for votes cast on election day. But what about mail-in ballots? Maryland’s current rules for mail-in voting allow up to ten days after election day for mail-in ballots to be received. If mail-in ballots are a significant fraction of the total vote then with an RCV election it might take several days after election day for there to be even preliminary results.¹

Why didn’t you consider using approval voting? Or a party slate system? These don’t have the problems that ranked choice voting does.

There are multiple answers here. First, my primary goal was to look at a system that both reduced the number of districts (to reduce the potential for gerrymandering) and provided representation for political parties and other groups commensurate with their voting power. That naturally led me to look at ranked choice voting, and having software (i.e., Auto-Redistrict) that could compute district maps under those assumptions sealed the deal.

Other systems may not necessarily address the goals I have. For example, approval voting (in which each voter can indicate multiple candidates that have their approval) is worth looking at when electing a council member in a single-member district. However when applied to a multi-member district, at least in its simplest form, it can behave like traditional at-large voting and thwart proportional representation.

For example, suppose that we use the simple rule that in a five member district the five candidates receiving the most approvals will be elected. If Democrats form the majority, if all Democratic voters approve all Democratic candidates, and if no Democratic voters approve Republican or third-party candidates, then all five Democratic candidates will be ranked in the top five based on the number of approvals, and all five will be elected.

I think it’s definitely worth considering other election systems for use in Howard County. But—not to brag or anything—I put a lot of work into my analysis of ranked choice voting in the context of Howard County Council elections, and I’d like to see a similar amount of work put into evaluating any suggested alternatives.

As mentioned above, I’ll update this post as appropriate. But in the meantime I’m coming to the end of the series, with my next (and final) post discussing why I think this general issue is so important.

For further exploration

The following may be of interest:

• The Wikipedia article on the single transferable vote (STV) electoral system contains a discussion of how vote transfers can be done. (STV is an older term for ranked choice voting.)
• Ballotpedia summarizes various arguments for and against ranked choice voting.
• The Center for Election Science, an organization supportive of approval voting, argues for it over ranked choice voting. Note that their analysis appears to assume that only a single candidate will win election, and if so is not necessarily applicable to multi-member districts like those I’ve proposed.
• FairVote, an organization supportive of ranked choice voting, argues for it over approval voting.

[This is part 5 of a seven-part series. See also part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 6, and part 7. I also wrote a follow-up post that can be viewed as an alternative to this one.]

In the first post in this series I proposed a comprehensive overhaul of the way we elect the Howard County Council:

1. Expand the council from five to fifteen members.
2. Reduce the number of council districts from five to three.
3. Elect five members in each district using ranked choice voting.
4. Draw the district lines using an automated process overseen by an independent nonpartisan commission.

In this post I present the results of the automated redistricting I did using the Auto-Redistrict software to draw district lines for a fifteen-member Howard County Council elected in three districts using ranked choice voting.

What might the new districts look like?

The map above shows the three districts produced by the Auto-Redistrict software based on the data and options I provided. The new districts divide the county into the following areas:

• Southeastern Howard County, including Savage, North Laurel, most of east Columbia south of Route 175, and most of west Columbia except the Village of River Hill.
• Northeastern Howard County, including Elkridge, Ellicott City south of Route 40, and east Columbia north of Route 175.
• Western Howard County, including Ellicott City north of Route 40, Maple Lawn, and the Village of River Hill in Columbia.

Based on the 2020 Census figures, the racial and ethnic groups in these three districts would break down as follows:

• Northeast District. Non-Hispanic Whites would be a minority in this district, at 46%. Non-Hispanic Blacks and Asians would form roughly equal parts of the population at 18% and 21% respectively. People of Hispanic origin would be about half those percentages at 9%, and multi-racial people or people of other races would be the smallest group, at 6%.
• Southeast District. The population of non-Hispanic Whites in this district would be even lower, at 40%, with Blacks at about three-quarters of the White population, at 29%. The population of Asians and people of Hispanic origin would be roughly comparable at 13% and 11 % respectively, with multiracial people or people of other races again the smallest group, at 7%.
• West District. This is the only district in which non-Hispanic Whites would form a majority, at 54%. At 26% Asians would have almost as significant a presence in this district as Blacks would in the Southeast District. The population of Blacks would be the smallest of any of the three districts, at 10%. Finally, the populations of people of Hispanic origin and of multiracial people or people of other races would be relatively small, at 5% each.

For Howard County as a whole the breakdown of groups is as follows: 8% persons of Hispanic origin, with the remaining (non-Hispanic) population 47% White, 20% Asian, 19% Black, and 5% multiracial, with the number of American Indians, native Hawaiians, and people of other races negligible.

(The breakdown for those 18 years of age or older is similar but leans slightly whiter: 7% Hispanic origin, 51% White, 19% Asian, 18% Black, 3% multiracial, and the remaining groups negligible. I used total population figures with Auto-Redistrict because many of those under the age of 18 will become voters over the next ten years.)

The task of estimating the number of council members from the various racial or ethnic groups is complicated by several factors. One is that the “Asian” category encompasses both East Asians (e.g., Korean- or Chinese-Americans) and South Asians (e.g., Indian-Americans or Pakistani-Americans), and it can’t be assumed that they would vote in similar ways. Another is that it’s not clear who exactly comprises the group of multi-racial voters, and how they might vote.

Having said that, my guess is that under the proposed council district scheme that Blacks and Asians would be represented on the county council in rough proportion to their presence in the population. For example, there would likely be one Black council member from the Northeast District, and at least one and possibly two Black council members from the Southeast District. There would also likely be an Asian council member from the West District, and possibly one each from the Northeast and Southeast Districts.

How would Democratic and Republican candidates fare in each district, and what might the final makeup of the Howard County Council look like? When ranked choice voting is used in a five-member district, a candidate is automatically elected if they are selected as the first preference on just over one-sixth of the ballots cast, or about 16.7% of those voting. (This number is known as the threshold or quota.)

So, for example, in the precincts comprising the Northeast District I estimated the Republican share of the total vote for Howard County Council in the 2018 general election at about 34%. If a single Republican candidate ran in the Northeast District they would pretty much be guaranteed to be designated as the most preferred candidate by at least 16.7% of voters. The Republican Party would thus have one “safe” seat in the Northeast District.

On the other hand, for the precincts in the Northeast District I estimated the Democratic share of the county council vote in 2018 at about 66%. Suppose that only three Democratic candidates ran in the Northeast District and they each received roughly equal shares of the first preference votes—in other words, about a third of Democratic voters picked the first candidate as their most preferred candidate, about a third of Democrats gave their first preference to the second candidate, and about a third of Democrats gave their first preference to the third candidate.¹

Then given a 66% Democratic vote share each candidate would be designated as the most preferred candidate by about 22% of voters, well over the quota of 16.7%, and all would automatically be elected. The Democratic Party would thus have three “safe” seats in the Northeast District.

What about the remaining seat? Suppose that the Republican Party ran two candidates, the Democratic Party ran four, and each candidate received first preference votes from a roughly equal share of their own party’s voters. Then each Republican candidate would receive about 17% of first preference votes (34% divided by two), and each Democratic candidate would receive about 16.5% of the first preference votes (66% divided by four).

Since all six candidates would be close to the threshold value of 16.7%, and they could not all be elected, it would be a toss-up as to whether the Democrats or Republicans would win the fifth and final seat after accounting for all the second, third, etc., preferences expressed by voters.²

A similar analysis can be done for the other two districts. A summary of the likely results is as follows:

• Northeast District: Party breakdown: 66% Democrats, 34% Republicans. Likely three safe Democratic seats, one safe Republican seat, and one toss-up.
• Southeast District: Party breakdown: 75% Democrats, 25% Republicans. Likely three safe Democratic seats, one safe Republican seat, and one leaning Democratic.
• West District: Party breakdown: 53% Democrats, 47% Republicans. Likely two safe Democratic seats, two safe Republican seats, and one leaning Democratic—albeit only slightly.

Overall with this district map and the use of ranked choice voting Democrats would likely win at least eight seats on the Howard County Council and Republicans at least four. The remaining three seats would be in play, with the most likely result being a 9–6 or 10–5 Democratic majority—a significantly more balanced result than the 4–1 Democratic majority on the current council. (And as noted previously it’s also possible that a third party or independent candidate could capture a seat and act as a deciding vote on the council.)

In my next post I attempt to answer various questions that have been raised regarding this particular proposal and regarding ranked choice voting in general.

For further exploration

For the code used to generate the graphs above, see my document Howard County Council Expansion, Part 3. For the data behind the district maps see Howard County Council Expansion, Part 1.

[This is part 4 of a seven-part series. See also part 1, part 2, part 3, part 5, part 6, and part 7. I also wrote a follow-up post that can be viewed as an alternative to part 5.]

In the first post in this series I proposed a comprehensive overhaul of the way we elect the Howard County Council:

1. Expand the council from five to fifteen members.
2. Reduce the number of council districts from five to three.
3. Elect five members in each district using ranked choice voting.
4. Draw the district lines using an automated process overseen by an independent nonpartisan commission.

In this post I discuss how to draw district lines for the proposed three districts, with ranked choice voting used to elect five members in each district.

Automated redistricting for everyone

At present the boundaries of the five Howard County Council districts are created and proposed by an appointed redistricting commission, and then adopted by the county council. Each of the two parties appoints an equal number of candidates for the commission and the county council appoints the chair of the commission.

In practice the district boundaries are actually drawn by computer, with each of the two parties using redistricting software to draw potential districts so as to favor their own cause. Since Democrats currently have a majority on the county council, the district boundaries adopted will be those that help get Democrats elected to the council.

Ordinary voters and third parties have little or no influence over this process: the rules are designed to exclude third parties from the redistricting commission, and access to redistricting software has traditionally been restricted to the two major parties.

However there’s no longer any reason (other than inertia and a desire to maintain control) for county council redistricting to be done in this way. Any interested person can now download free software that can automate the process of redrawing district boundaries. They can also download the data that’s required as input to the redistricting software, including population data derived from the US Census, digital maps of precinct boundaries, and past election results. Armed with this software and data they can create their own proposed districts.

That’s exactly what I’ve done for this series of posts. I used the Auto-Redistrict software (created by Kevin Baas), in large part because it supports creation of multi-member districts elected using ranked choice voting. Not only is it free but its source code is also available, so that the way it works can be inspected for correctness and potential biases.

Running Auto-Redistrict to create a three-district map

As input to the program I used the public data released by the Maryland Department of Planning after each decennial census for use in Congressional redistricting. The data files include precinct boundaries and populations for each precinct, including population figures broken down by race and ethnicity to help ensure that districts are not drawn to disadvantage particular minority groups.¹

I also used as input to the program the public data on election results released by the Maryland Board of Elections. This can be used to help ensure that districts are not drawn to disadvantage particular political parties. In this case I used results from the 2018 general elections for Howard County Council, since those are the results most relevant for county council redistricting.

(Since there was no Republican candidate in District 3, I estimated the potential vote share for a hypothetical Republican candidate in that district. I also did further estimation to account for early voting and absentee voting, which are not reflected in the official precinct-level results.)

The Auto-Redistrict program allows you to tweak various parameters representing various trade-offs between different goals: for example, how important is it that the districts’ populations be as equal as possible, or that districts be as compact as possible? In my case I used all the default settings.

Howard County has over a hundred precincts. The number of ways in which those precincts could be combined to form three districts is much too large for a person to check each possible district map, and even too large for computers. The Auto-Redistrict software therefore takes a different approach: it generates a set of random maps, evaluates them according to the various criteria being used (compactness, competitiveness, etc.), and then selects the best maps to be carried forward. It then mimics biological evolution, creating a new set of maps by combining different maps together to form new ones, while also introducing some random changes (analogous to mutations).

This process—evaluating maps, picking the best ones, using them to create new maps, and then repeating the evaluation—continues until the generated maps become more and more alike, representing the “best of the best” in terms of meeting the desired criteria. In my case I stopped the program after over eight thousand iterations and went with the last map produced. Using a modern laptop the whole process took about half an hour from start to finish.

“Automated” doesn’t mean “nonpolitical”

Having extolled the virtues of using software to automate the process of doing redistricting, I now have to stop and issue a caution: just because the process can be automated using software designed to handle the mathematics doesn’t mean that we can simply “leave it to the mathematicians”. There are multiple aspects of automated redistricting that entail decisions that are political in nature.

That means in turn that an inclusive approach to redistricting requires the inclusion not just of people who can run software like Auto-Redistrict, but also of people who can question the assumptions and data that go into the software, as well as the results that come out of it. Hence my suggestion that redistricting needs to be overseen by an independent commission that is (as much as possible) designed to be nonpartisan and representative of all the major groups with a stake in the results.

As but one example, I made a judgement call when deciding what party-related data to include in the input to Auto-Redistrict. In particular, I chose to use only the results of the 2018 county council races, and did not use the results of the 2018 county executive race (which had a higher vote share for Republicans). Others may quibble with that decision.

I also haven’t considered using detailed voter registration data (e.g., registered Democrats vs. registered Republicans in each precinct). To my knowledge that data is not fully publicly available, so if I were able to obtain detailed voter registration data I would not have been able to present my analysis in a fully public and transparent manner. Making that trade-off is, again, an inherently political decision: should I have prioritized possibly doing a better job of drawing maps at the expense of excluding people without access to the same data?

Other decisions are involved in how redistricting software like Auto-Redistrict is configured to run. For example, I chose the default settings when prioritizing geometrical considerations like compactness of districts against considerations of fairness like balancing party, racial, or ethnic vote shares. Perhaps others might have had different priorities. Again, these become political decisions, and should not simply be left to the “experts” to decide.

So what I’ve done here in running Auto-Redistrict for my proposed fifteen-member three-district county council shouldn’t be construed as a perfect effort, not to be questioned, or even as the best that could possibly be done. It’s just one example out of many possible ones. In any case, in the next post I’ll present my particular results.

For further exploration

For more information on attempts to take redistricting out of the control of legislative bodies and put it in the hands of independent redistricting commission see:

• “Independent and Advisory Citizen Redistricting Commissions” is a list of links to information about states that have reformed redistricting to one extent or another.

For more on drawing district boundaries using computer sofware see:

• The Auto-Redistrict web site has more information about how the software works and how to run it.
• My document Howard County Council Expansion, Part 1, discusses creating the input data that Auto-Redistrict uses (Howard County precinct maps combined with demographic data and election results). It includes a detailed discussion of the measures I took to select particular data to be considered, and to estimate data where it was not available for one reason or another.
• My video “Howard County Council Redistricting with Auto-Redistrict” demonstrates how to run Auto-Redestrict to generate a district map for the proposed expanded Howard County Council.

[This is part 3 of a seven-part series. See also part 1, part 2, part 4, part 5, part 6, and part 7. I also wrote a follow-up post that can be viewed as an alternative to part 5.]

In my first post I proposed a comprehensive overhaul of the way we elect the Howard County Council:

1. Expand the council from five to fifteen members.
2. Reduce the number of council districts from five to three.
3. Elect five members in each district using ranked choice voting.
4. Draw the district lines using an automated process overseen by an independent nonpartisan commission.

In this post I discuss why ranked choice voting is a better way to elect five members in each of the three proposed districts.

Why ranked choice voting?

If we want to have only three districts, with five members in each, and we don’t want to elect members using at-large voting within each district, how should we elect each district’s members? My proposal is to use ranked choice voting.

Using ranked choice voting in a multi-member district (like the three districts proposed here) helps ensure that elections are fair for all voters, and that each voter has an equal chance to make their votes matter. It allows voters the option to rank candidates in order of preference: one, two, three, and so forth. If a particular person’s vote cannot help their top choice win, that vote counts for their next choice.

The image above shows a sample ballot for a hypothetical Howard County Council election for the West District (as discussed in a future post) conducted using ranked choice voting. Here the voter, a progressive Democrat, indicated Democrat candidate Alice Doe as being her first preference, but then has marked Emily Zhang of the Green party as her second preference, ahead of the other Democratic candidates. She then marked Democrats Latoya Green and Sanjeev Patel as her third and fourth preferences, and then marked the other candidates as her fifth, sixth, etc., preferences.

Note that there is no requirement that the voter indicate a preference for all six candidates; she could have just stopped after marking her ballot for the three Democratic candidates and Emily Zhang. However, it may be that some of the Republican candidates are more acceptable to her than others, so she may want to give them preference ahead of other candidates. She may also dislike libertarians on general principle, so takes care to mark the Libertarian party candidate as least preferred.

(Note that there are only three Democratic candidates and three Republican candidates on the ballot. You may wonder, why wouldn’t the two parties put forth five candidates each, given that there would be five open seats? That’s because in ranked choice voting it doesn’t make sense for a party to put more candidates on the ballot than that party’s expected share of voters would warrant. I’ll discuss this in more depth in a future post, but will note for now that in this example district Democrats and Republicans are evenly matched.)

In a five-member district like the hypothetical Howard County West District in this example, there would be a 16.7% “quota” for election.¹ If more than 16.7% of ballots cast marked a particular candidate as their first preference then that candidate would be automatically elected. Any of those votes that they received from voters in excess of the quota would be transferred to other candidates, more specifically the candidates named by their voters as their second preferences.²

In our example suppose that Democratic candidates Alice Doe and Sanjeev Patel had enough first preference votes to win outright in the first round of county. (In other words, they both got more than a 16.7% share of all first preference votes cast.) If enough Doe or Patel voters followed our example voter and indicated a second preference vote for Emily Zhang of the Green party, the excess votes for Doe and Patel (i.e., above the quota) could help elect Emily Zhang in the second round of counting, after all excess voters were transferred to other candidates.

More specifically, if Zhang did not have enough votes in the first round of counting to exceed the quota, she might have enough votes in the second round to exceed the quota, by virtue of votes transferred to her because Alice Doe and Sanjeev Patel didn’t need the votes, and their voters marked Zhang as their second preference. Zhang would then be deemed elected in the second round of counting. (The colloquial term for this is “getting in on transfers.”)

Other candidates could benefit from this as well. For example, if Republican Joe Jones were elected with first preference votes in the first round of counting, and he were the only Republican candidate to be elected in that first round, his excess votes (above the quota) could end up being transferred to Elana Garcia or Christopher Park.

On the other hand, suppose that after excess votes from the first round were transferred to other candidates, there were still no candidates with votes in excess of the 16.7% quota. In that case the candidate with the least amount of votes would be eliminated, and their votes would be transferred to others according to their voters’ preferences. So, for example, if Emily Zhang were in last place after the second round of county, any votes assigned to her after the first round would be transfered to other candidates (probably Democratic candidates) heading into the third round of counting.`

Vote tabulation would proceed in this manner round by round, transferring votes from successful candidates to other candidates, and eliminating last place candidates, until five candidates were elected. (The way in which the quota is defined makes it impossible for more than five candidates to be elected.)

(In some cases voters may not rank all candidates. For example, the voter in the example above may indicate her preferences for Emily Zhang, the Green party candidate, and the three Democratic candidates, but may not indicate her preferences regarding the Republican candidates and Janet Smith, the Libertarian candidate. If so, her ballot will not be considered further once Emily Zhang and the three Democratic candidates are either elected or eliminated; at that point the ballot is said to be “exhausted.”)

Promoting political and ideological diversity

In addition to allowing voters to rank candidates from the two major parties according to the voters’ preferences, ranked choice voting also allows voters to vote for third-party candidates without “wasting” their vote. This can be seen in the example above: even if Emily Zhang was eliminated in the second round of counting, the expressed preferences of voters like our example voter could end up helping to elect other candidates in the third or subsequent round.

As another example, suppose that there were a third party associated with the Democratic Socialists of America. That party could run a DSA-backed candidate in a council district with lots of progressive voters, and encourage those voters to give that candidate their first preference. If the DSA-backed candidate were unsuccessful then their first-preference votes would simply transfer to the candidate (most likely a progressive Democrat) that those voters had marked as their second preference, and could then help that candidate be elected.

The same logic works for independent candidates. For example, if a “Never Trump” conservative couldn’t make it through the local GOP primary then they could run for a county council seat as an independent. If their popularity were high enough then they could potentially attract enough first and second preference votes to be elected in their own right. As with the DSA example above, a Republican voter giving such a candidate their first preference would not be “throwing their vote away,” since they could—and presumably would—designate the official Republican candidates as their second, third, etc., choices.

Promoting racial and ethnic diversity

The same dynamic works for promoting racial and ethnic diversity on the council. For example, a Black Democrat running for the council in a district could appeal to Black Democratic voters to give the candidate their first preference votes, and then to give other Democratic candidates their second preference votes. Such a candidate might also attract second or third preferences from conservative Black voters who might give their first preference votes to Republican candidates.

This would allow Black candidates to leverage Black voter support in all three districts, as opposed to having Black voters be concentrated in a single district.

Similarly, a Korean-American Republican candidate might get first preference votes from Korean-American Republican voters, second preference votes from other Republican voters, and second or third preference votes from Korean-American independents or even Democrats who wanted to see some Korean representation on the county council.

To repeat, in none of these cases would voters be “wasting” their votes on a candidate with marginal prospects. They could vote according to their own heart’s desires, secure in the knowledge that their preferences would be reflected in the final results one way or another.

So, let’s assume that we have three council districts with five members each, and that we’d elect those members using ranked choice voting within each district. How could we draw district lines in a way that would reflect the racial, ethnic, and political diversity of Howard County, be open and transparent, and could be justified to the voters and candidates who participate in the resulting elections? That will be the topic of my next post.

For further exploration

For more on the topic of ranked choice voting see the following:

• FairVote is an advocacy site for ranked choice voting. Its recent report “Ranked Choice Voting Elections Benefit Candidates and Voters of Color” and its analysis of the use of ranked choice voting in the 2021 New York City primaries are particularly relevant to my comments above regarding promoting more diversity on the Howard County Council.
• The Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center has more in-depth information, including a detailed discussion of issues relevant to election administrators.

For a more detailed discussion of how ranked choice voting might work in the context of a Howard County Council election, see my 2012 post “Electing a council that reflects Howard County, part 1” and its followup post. These were written for the case of electing the five current Howard County Council members by ranked choice voting, but they are also relevant to the problem of electing five council members in a single district of the proposed three. (Note that the posts refer to ranked choice voting using the alternative name “Single Transferable Vote” or “STV.”)

[This is part 2 of a seven-part series. See also part 1, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, and part 7. I also wrote a follow-up post that can be viewed as an alternative to part 5.]

In my previous post I proposed a comprehensive overhaul of the way we elect the Howard County Council:

1. Expand the council from five to fifteen members.
2. Reduce the number of council districts from five to three.
3. Elect five members in each district using ranked choice voting.
4. Draw the district lines using an automated process overseen by an independent nonpartisan commission.

In this post I discuss why having three districts is better than having fifteen districts (or no districts at all) when it comes to promoting diversity on the Howard County Council.

Why three council districts? Why not fifteen?

Why reduce the number of council districts from five to three? With fifteen council members shouldn’t we have fifteen council districts?

The first problem is that electing one council member in each of fifteen districts can dilute the voting power of minorities. Look at the graph above, which shows the population percentages for various racial and ethnic groups within an example set of fifteen council districts. (The associated district map was drawn by the same automated system described in the next post.)

As of the 2020 Census non-Hispanic Whites make up less then half of Howard County’s population, but they would still form the largest voting bloc in thirteen of the fifteen example districts. There is only one example district in which Blacks would form the largest voting bloc, and only one in which Asians would.

If such a map were to be adopted, and if voters tended to vote for people of their own race or ethnic group, the result would likely be a White-dominated council, similar to what’s been the historical norm in Howard County. It’s possible that there might be only one Black council member out of fifteen (down from one in five currently), and only one Asian council member.

Creative drawing of district lines could “solve” this problem, by lumping minority populations into a few select districts where they might have a chance of electing one of their own. But this would be at the expense of minority voters in other districts. (This is similar to the situation with the current council districts, in which Black candidates have been elected in District 2 but not in any other districts.)

The same techniques used to draw district lines to favor particular racial or ethnic groups also can be—and have been—used to favor one political party over another. This brings us to the second problem:

Drawing district lines for fifteen districts is a lot of work compared to drawing them for five districts, and offers more opportunities for partisan gerrymandering and endless political fights over redistricting. The process of Howard County Council redistricting is contentious enough—I literally wrote the book on this—so why make it even more divisive and time consuming than it already is? The fewer districts, the less opportunity for gerrymandering.

Howard County originally had five council members representing the entire county, with no councilmanic districts. Howard County now has over three times the population as it did then. So you can think of the proposed scheme as a return to the county council’s roots, with each of the three districts being comparable in population to Howard County fifty years ago, and each district having five council members representing it, just as Howard County as a whole did back then.

But . . . the original Howard County Council elections had a fatal flaw, one which we need not and should not replicate. I discuss that in the next section.

Why not elect council members at-large?

OK, so having fifteen districts may not be a good idea. Why not eliminate districts altogether, and elect all fifteen council members in county-wide at-large elections? Or have three districts as suggested, with five members chosen in at-large elections in each district? Or have a smaller number of districts (say, nine or ten) and then elect the remaining members at large, similar to how Howard County Board of Education elections work?

The problem here is that at-large elections can entrench the dominance of majorities and work against minorities: since voters can vote for multiple candidates, and the candidates with the most votes win, if a 51% majority votes as a unified bloc for a slate of at-large candidates, they can succeed in having all of their candidates being elected. The 49% minority would then have no representaion at all.

This is not just a theoretical concern. It’s exactly what happened in Howard County in the first years after it moved to a council form of government: Because all five members were elected at-large, and because Democrats formed a majority of voters (in large part due to the establishment and growth of Columbia), the council was dominated by Democrats. In fact, at one point there was no Republican council member at all.

The same thing would happen with an expanded fifteen-member council elected in at-large elections. In fact, it would likely be even worse than in the 1970s because the ratio of registered Democrats to registered Republicans is much larger now.

The push to switch the Howard County Council from at-large elections to elections by district came mainly from the Republican party, because Republicans were under such a disadvantage in at-large elections. But election by districts is not a panacea for Republican concerns, especially when the number of districts is large.

Suppose we abandon the idea of electing fifteen council members in county-wide at-large elections and go back to the idea of electing one council member in each of fifteen districts. Republican candidates would then be severely disadvantaged if we used our hypothetical example set of fifteen districts (which was created by an automated system designed to minimize partisan advantages).

Although there’s a substantial body of Republican voters across the county, as shown in the graph above there is only one district out of the example fifteen districts in which Republican voters would form a clear majority, and only one other district where their numbers would be comparable to Democratic voters. (This is based on estimates derived from the 2018 county council elections.)

If there were only three districts, and members were chosen at-large in each district, the Republican party would still have the problem of majority dominance. There are so many Democrats relative to Republicans that it would probably be possible to draw district lines such that all three districts had Democratic majorities. Using at-large elections to elect five council members within each district would allow those majorities to elect full slates of Democratic candidates in those districts, again locking Republicans out of county council representation.

So if we want to have only three districts, with five members in each, and we don’t want to elect members using at-large voting within each district, how should we elect each district’s members? That’s the topic of my next post.

For further exploration

For the numbers and code behind the graphs above showing the racial, ethnic, and party breakdowns for a hypothetical fifteen districts, as well as the generated fifteen-district map, see “Howard County Council Expansion, Part 2.”

[This is part 1 of a seven-part series. See also part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, and part 7. I also wrote a follow-up post that can be viewed as an alternative to part 5.]

Howard County is too big for its county council

For over fifty years now Howard County, Maryland, has been governed by a five-member county council and a county executive.¹ In those fifty years Howard County has grown from about sixty thousand people to well over three hundred thousand, more than five times as many people as when its first county council was sworn in.

In 2019 the Howard County Charter Review Commission recommended expanding the size of the county council from five members to seven. This was a relatively minor change, but one which seemingly did not attract any support from the county executive, the county council, or—for that matter—anybody else. So why am I writing about this topic now?

Because I don’t think the Charter Review Commission was being bold enough in its recommendations. Even I wasn’t being bold enough in my previous post recommending a move to ranked choice voting for either a five- or seven-member council.

I believe that the structure of the County Council needs a more thoroughgoing reform in order to bring it closer to the people of Howard County, better reflect the preferences of county voters, and potentially reduce political polarization that can bleed over into other areas, most notably the Board of Education.

So in line with the motto “go big or go home” I’m coming back with an even bolder four point recommendation:

1. Triple the size of the Howard County Council, expanding it from five members to fifteen.

2. At the same time, reduce the number of council districts from five to three, with five council members elected from each district.

3. Elect each district’s council members using ranked choice voting, in which each voter would list the candidates they want to see elected, in order of preference.

4. Establish a nonpartisan commission to draw the district lines using a process that takes into account various criteria important in redistricting—creating compact and contiguous districts with equal populations, not diluting the voting power of minorities, and ensuring competitive races not marred by partisan gerrymandering—with all code, data, and background assumptions made publicly available.

In this post I address the first part of this proposal, namely expanding the Howard County Council.

Why fifteen council members?

Why expand the Howard County Council? First, to provide better service to county residents. When the Howard County Council was first established there was one council member for every twelve thousand people or so. Now each council member serves almost seventy thousand people, a number that makes it more difficult for a council member to attend to the needs of any given constituent.

As the graph above shows, Howard County is in the top five of Maryland juridictions when it comes to population per council member or county commissioner. The average ratio for all Maryland counties and Baltimore city is thirty-six thousand people per member. The median ratio is twenty-two thousand people per council member. (Half of all counties have a higher ratio than the median, and half a lower ratio.)

Note that Baltimore city, despite having a population considerably larger than Howard County, has a ratio of population to council member that is significantly lower than Howard County. That’s because Baltimore city has a fifteen-member city council, compared to Howard County’s five-member county council.

How big should the Howard County Council be? Increasing the council by only two members, as the Charter Review Commission recommended, would in my opinion just be putting a bandage on the problem without really solving it. On the other hand, if we wanted to keep the ratio of constituents to council members the same as in the late 1960s we’d need a council of twenty-five to thirty members. That’s a lot: I’m not sure the council chambers in the George E. Howard building has enough room to hold that many council members.²

Let’s consider an intermediate approach, increasing the size of the Howard County from five to fifteen members to match the size of the Baltimore city council. That would lower the ratio of population to council members from the current sixty-six thousand to a third of that value, or twenty-two thousand people per council member. This would match the current median value for Maryland, and be comparable to the ratios for St. Mary’s County and Allegany County.

Of course Howard County is still growing in population, so this ratio would degrade over time. However a fifteen-member council should be large enough to suffice for most if not all of the twenty-first century without requiring any further expansion.³

Enabling more people to serve Howard County

Increasing the size of the Howard County Council also provides more opportunities for up-and-coming community activists and politicians to serve the county—and we have a lot more qualified candidates than there were in the late 1960s. Consider the picture above: of the many Howard County Democratic activists attending this dinner, surely more than a handful would be interested in making a future run for the Howard County Council and would make good candidates and council members.

If we have a lot more people qualified to run for elected positions but the number of positions doesn’t change, that leads to increasingly contentious, expensive, and partisan elections—something we see in the US at the national level, as more and more people compete for a limited number of Congressional seats.

The large number of qualified candidates can also lead to ostensibly nonpartisan elected positions becoming bones of partisan contention, as with the Howard County Board of Education: thwarted by the lack of openings on the Howard County Council, ambitious political activists can try to use the Board of Education as a springboard to future runs for the county council or other positions.

As a result Board of Education elections may become increasingly partisan affairs, featuring explicit party endorsements and people voting for candidates based primarily on their political affilations. Expanding the county council could help reduce this incentive.⁴

Let’s assume that there’s a consensus on expanding the Howard County Council, and that having fifteen council members is the desired council size. How should the county be divided into districts, and how should council members from each district be elected? That’s the subject of my next post.

For further exploration

For a discussion of the need to expand legislative bodies, in this case the US House of Representatives, see:

• “America Needs a Bigger House” by the New York Times editorial board.
• “Congress Needs to Be Way, Way Bigger” by David Litt in The Atlantic.

For commentary about increasing partisanship in Howard County Board of Education races see:

• “Will Partisan Politics Make The Howard County Public School System No Longer The Best In The State?” by Scott Ewart at Scott E Blog.
• “What’s at Stake in the Increasingly Politicized Howard County Board of Education Elections” by Jeremy Dommu at The Merriweather Post.
• “Partisan school board elections erode trust” by Robert Miller (letter to the editors of the Baltimore Sun).

For the numbers and code behind the graph above showing the population per council member or county commissioner, see “Howard County Council Expansion, Part 1.”

tl;dr: On the occasion of Michael McCall’s death I reflect on his signature achievements in Columbia, Maryland.

Two weeks ago I was distressed to learn of the death of Michael McCall. Although Michael was a long-time resident of Columbia, he was actively involved in Columbia and Howard County affairs for less than six years, from the fall of 2011 to the spring of 2017.

During that time he put forth a new vision for a park in Symphony Woods in downtown Columbia, reigniting excitement about the future of one of the signature places in the county. In his pursuit of that vision Michael left behind two tangible legacies, one architectural and one institutional: the striking green Chrysalis amphitheater that forms the centerpiece of the park, and the Inner Arbor Trust created to oversee the park’s future development.

Beginning in late 2013 I took a personal interest in Michael’s vision for Symphony Woods, and since then have written over a hundred thousand words on his “Inner Arbor” plan, and in particular on the design and construction of the Chrysalis. During those years I also had extensive correspondence with Michael, as he generously shared photos, plans, and other material relating to the Chrysalis and the park for use in my writing.

It was not unusual for me to publish an Inner Arbor- or Chryalis-related post and then shortly thereafter get a call from Michael offering additional information, or providing his own thoughts on how things were going. He also shared with me a fair amount of insider gossip about the various people and organizations involved with the Chrysalis and Inner Arbor plan to one degree or another. (Needless to say I left that material out of my writing, except in those cases where I could independently confirm it from public sources.)

Thus although I can’t provide a full account of Michael’s life and work, I feel more able than most to assess his legacy when it comes to Columbia.

Michael McCall, developer

In the title of this post I very deliberately referred to Michael as the “developer” of the Chrysalis, not as the “creator” or a similar term. In Howard County these days the word “developer” has become for many a slur, as they attribute most if not all of the county’s problems, ranging from school overcrowding to traffic congestion to flooding in Ellicott City, to “greedy developers” and their alleged quest to pave over the county in pursuit of profit.

But I think it’s appropriate to call Michael a developer, and I think he would have accepted the designation gladly. He was not responsible for the visual appearance of the Chrysalis, for the design of its structural steel backbone, for the creation of its green aluminum skin, or for the detailed architectural work needed to make it work for its users and visitors. Those responsibilities fell in turn to the New York-based designer Marc Fornes of THEVERYMANY, the international engineering consulting firm Arup, the A. Zahner Company of Kansas City, Missouri, and the Baltimore firm Living Design Lab, the architects of record.

What Michael did was everything else: creating an overall vision and strategy for Symphony Woods, selecting designers and architects for the various components of the Inner Arbor plan, working with and securing funding from various sources, including Howard County and the Columbia Association, taking the project through the Howard County design approval and planning process, overseeing and managing all of the various firms involved in design and construction, and in general working to see these activities through to the successful completion of the Chrysalis and its opening to the general public.

These are exactly the things that developers do. Michael himself started his career working with one of the most well-known and revered American developers, Jim Rouse, who was responsible for the creation and development of Columbia and then later founded the nonprofit Enterprise Foundation (now Enterprise Community Partners) to support the development of affordable housing across the country.

In 1982 Michael left his home state of Minnesota and moved to Columbia to join the Enterprise Development Company, the for-profit subsidiary of the Enterprise Foundation. He worked there for ten years before leaving in 1992 to found his own development consulting firm, Strategic Leisure. In that capacity he worked on a number of development projects across the US and elsewhere in the world—but never in Maryland, Howard County, or Columbia.

The Inner Arbor plan and the creation of the Chrysalis

Amost twenty years later Michael came to be involved with Symphony Woods, as the Columbia Association was encountering problems with county design and planning authorities in its attempt to develop a park—an attempt that came after decades of what can best be described as benign neglect of the woods on the part of CA and others.

Michael first appeared in the public record for Columbia with comments during the “Resident Speak Out” period at a Columbia Association board meeting on September 22, 2011. He agreed with the concerns about CA’s Symphony Woods plan expressed by the county’s Design Advisory Panel, and questioned the lack of an overall unifying strategy for developing the park.

Michael’s comments did not go unnoticed. Introduced by his mentor, George Barker, his former manager at the Enterprise Development Company, beginning in 2011 and continuing through 2012 he entered into a series of conversations with various people and entities involved in downtown Columbia development, including Howard County, the Howard Hughes Corporation, I.M.A. (operators of Merriweather Post Pavilion), and the Columbia Association itself.

The result of those conversations was a concept plan for what McCall called the “Inner Arbor” project (punning on Baltimore’s Inner Harbor festival marketplace, one of Jim Rouse’s most famous projects), intended to fulfill the vision expressed in the Howard County General Plan that Symphony Woods become “a new kind of cultural park, where the landscape becomes a setting for arts, cultural and civic uses”. That concept plan was adopted by the Columbia Association Board of Directors on January 24, 2013, as the board abandoned its previous plan for Symphony Woods in response to further hiccups in the Howard County planning process.

Soon afterward the Columbia Association board also decided to establish a separate organization, the Inner Arbor Trust, to implement the previously-adopted concept plan for Symphony Woods, under a perpetual easement from CA. On May 10 the Inner Arbor Trust officially came into existence, with Michael as its first President and CEO.

Things moved fairly quickly after that, at least in comparison to previous Symphony Woods plans. Michael spent the summer selecting a design team for the project, and in November presented the full design team, including designer Marc Fornes, in a public meeting held soon after the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Columbia. The end of the year saw the public presentation of plans for various park structures, including the Fornes-designed Chrysalis amphitheater.

The year 2014 saw the Inner Arbor Trust receive official 501(c) tax-exempt status (January), the Inner Arbor plan approved by the Howard County Design Advisory Panel (February), submittal to Howard County of a Site Development Plan, including final plans for the Chrysalis (May), and approval of that SDP by the Howard County Planning Board (November)—just ahead of a November 30 deadline set by the Columbia Association board.

After completing the easement agreement with the Columbia Association in December 2014, the first part of 2015 was taken up in securing further funding for the Chrysalis and negotiating additional legal agreements with various entities, including Howard Hughes Corporation and I.M.A. Actual construction activities for the Chrysalis began in earnest late in the year, after selection of Whiting-Turner as general contractor and A. Zahner Company as “design-build” contractor for the Chrysalis shell, and the official groundbreaking ceremony on September 22.

2016 saw the bulk of Chrysalis construction, including completion of the concrete “subfloor” (April and May), erection of the steel “skeleton” (completed in August), installation of the ZEPPS panels intended to support the aluminum “skin” (completed in October), and installation of the green skin panels themselves (completed in late 2016 or early 2017).

On April 22, 2017, the Chrysalis amphitheater, was officially dedicated and opened to the general public, and on May 1 Michael officially stepped down as President and CEO of the Inner Arbor Trust. (He was succeeded by Nina Basu, former general counsel of the Trust.) Michael went on to work on other development projects elsewhere, but his work in Columbia was done.

The institutional legacy

As noted above, Michael’s tangible legacy in Columbia can be divided into two parts: the Inner Arbor Trust and the Chrysalis amphitheater.

The creation of the Inner Arbor Trust resolved a long-standing problem, namely the relative inaction and inertia of the Columbia Association when it came to downtown Columbia in general and Symphony Woods in particular. Despite multiple attempts beginning in the 1990s to interest it in enhancing Symphony Woods as a community park for downtown, the CA board declined to take any action.

After the Columbia Association board did get around to proposing a plan for a Symphony Woods park, only to run into trouble with Howard County planning authorities, Michael provided them with both an alternative plan and an alternative way of getting that plan implemented, namely putting Symphony Woods development under the effective control of an independent nonprofit organization.

The success of that approach speaks for itself: in addition to successfully completing construction of the Chrysalis, under the continuing leadership of Nina Basu the Inner Arbor Trust has maintained and enhanced the park’s natural setting and has worked to attract visitors to the park, both through programming at the Chrysalis and such seemingly simple (but apparently never previously considered) steps as putting picnic tables in Symphony Woods.

The Trust has also continually evolved its plans for Symphony Woods to reflect budget and other realities (including in particular creating a revised concept plan), and in general has worked in conjunction with other stakeholders to enhance the overall appeal of the Merriweather-Symphony Woods neighborhood (as Howard County planning documents refer to it).

The architectural legacy

The Chrysalis is a beautiful and striking structure, to my mind the most distinctive piece of architecture in Howard County, surpassing Merriweather Post Pavilion and the former Rouse Company headquarters turned Whole Foods Market (both I think overrated in retrospect because of their association with Frank Gehry).

It’s also becoming a very useful one. I once had a local politician express concern to me that the Chrysalis might end up as a “green elephant,” but I think it’s safe to say that that will not be the case. That’s in large part due to the work of the Inner Arbor Trust in encouraging and hosting a wide variety of local programming, from yoga classes and kid’s activities to celebrations of the cultures of Howard County’s diverse population.

Although Merriweather Post Pavilion has traditionally been thought of as Columbia’s main cultural venue, its size makes it much more suited for nationally-known touring acts and other events drawing audiences from across the entire Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area. For events targeted at a more local or more niche audience the Chrysalis is a much more suitable venue, more intimate and approachable.

As a result the Chrysalis is well on its way to becoming a beloved local landmark, a gathering place for the entire community, and a symbol of the evolving downtown of Columbia.

The intangible legacy

Like Jim Rouse, Michael’s reach exceeded his grasp. Jim Rouse sought to create a “new American city,” a “garden for the growing of people,” but a poor US economy in the 1970s and overall trends in society left Columbia as just a somewhat more diverse example of a typical American suburban bedroom community.

Similarly Michael had a vision of an arts and culture park in Symphony Woods worthy of comparison with Millennium Park in Chicago or Tivoli Gardens in Denmark, featuring the work of a host of world-class architects, designers, and artists—a park that could attract visitors from across the metropolitan area and even from elsewhere on the Eastern seaboard.

That dream was not and likely will not be fulfilled. Howard County is one of the wealthiest counties in the United States. However it has neither the concentrated private wealth that has funded signature parks elsewhere in the US (for example, the new Barry Diller-funded Little Island park in New York City) nor the governmental budget capacity to make up for the lack of private funding—especially given more pressing problems like the COVID-19 pandemic and flooding in Ellicott City.

Mindful of such realities and preferring things as they are, many residents of Columbia and Howard County, and more than a few community activists and local politicians, have been content to honor Columbia’s past while accepting a diminished future for it, simply tending the embers of a dying legacy.

In his desire to “make no little plans” Michael refused to believe that the best days of Columbia were behind it. He promoted a vision for Symphony Woods that could inspire a new generation, and in the Inner Arbor Trust and the Chrysalis gave us the first fruits of that vision. We can best honor his memory by keeping that vision in mind, and carrying on the work of creating a new park for Symphony Woods that he so determinedly began.

For further exploration

This article is based on material from my “Creating the Chrysalis” series, including in particular the post on Michael’s vision and strategy for Symphony Woods park development, and the post containing a complete timeline of events relating to the Chrysalis and Symphony Woods.

For more of my opinions on and explanations of various aspects of the Chrysalis and the development of Symphony Woods, see the Inner Arbor-related posts in the series “The Inner Arbor plan takes shape” and elsewhere on this blog. Note that some of these posts contain outdated information relating to park features that were later dropped or revised; for the very latest plans for the park see the article “A new plan for Symphony Woods.”

For more on Michael’s life and work see the Strategic Leisure web site. The Chrysalis and Merriweather Park page in particular has a lot of interesting material on how Michael himself saw his work in Symphony Woods.

Bloggers can write articles for their blogs, or they can fiddle about with the technical underpinnings of the blog itself—with the latter often serving as a substitute for the former. So it is with me: the writing I’ve been doing is not writing that will show up on this blog any time soon (or perhaps ever), so instead I’m doing something I’ve thought about doing for a while, namely renaming the website to use my own name and domain.

My reasons for doing this are pretty straightforward. My goal as a blogger remains to write in a way that upholds the ideals of civility and truth: civility to all, including those with whom I might disagree, and the truth as I can best determine it, even when it’s not to my liking. However in these polarized times actually putting the words “civility” and “truth” in a website name invites mild skepticism at best and cynical sneers at worst.

I could rename the website to something more stirring and of the moment, as for example the Howard County Library System did when they “sunset” their “choose civility” campaign and rebranded under the more pugnacious slogan “brave voices, brave choices.”

But in the end I concluded that it would be better just to use my personal domain frankhecker.com that I already use for my email address. The zeitgeist might change, but I’ll be “Frank Hecker” as long as I’m here to write.

If you’ve bookmarked old articles or linked to them, rest assured: URLs referencing the old domain name civilityandtruth.com will still work fine, and your browser will be redirected to the same place on the renamed site. (Incidentally, my ability to implement this is one of the advantages of maintaining my own platform rather than relying on someone else’s.)

Finally, as part of this renaming I’ve also decided to suspend my newsletter at civilityandtruth.substack.com. I never used that newsletter for its stated purpose, namely sending out alerts of new articles on my main blog, and the articles I posted there were things I could have just as well as posted here. So I thought it best to consolidate my online writing to a single website, one that I control (see above).

If you want to get notified of new articles you can either follow me on Twitter (@hecker) or use a news reader and point it to this site’s RSS feed (https://frankhecker.com/feed.xml). (If you already have a news reader pointing to this site, it should continue to work. However you may want to resubscribe using the new URL.)

Thanks to all of you who come to this site from time to time. I’m sorry there hasn’t been much for you to read here lately, and hope I’ll be able to remedy that in future.

I’ve therefore decided to deprecate the newsletter and go back to posting articles only to this site. If you want to be alerted to new posts, follow me on Twitter (@hecker).

I won’t be posting anything else to the Civility and Truth Substack site, but I will keep it online for the foreseeable future for the benefit of folks linking to old posts.

tl;dr: The Inner Arbor Trust is revising its plans for Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods to reflect new realities.

In April 2017 the Chrysalis amphitheater in downtown Columbia, Maryland, was opened to the public as the first element of Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods. The amphitheater was built by the Inner Arbor Trust, the nonprofit organization created to manage and develop the Symphony Woods property under a perpetual easement from the Columbia Association, the property owner.

Since then the Inner Arbor Trust has promoted and hosted a set of free events at the Chrysalis and hosted other events in the park, while at the same time planning for further development of the park, based on the so-called “Inner Arbor” plan. The Inner Arbor Trust is now proposing a revision to that plan, and recently held a briefing for the boards of directors of the Trust and the Columbia Association.

The Merriweather Post posted a good overview of the revised concept plan, so I won’t recap it in detail in this post. Instead I want to explore the factors I think are driving the revision and comment on the various elements of the plan.

Note: While I have been a long-time supporter of the Inner Arbor Trust and its plans for Symphony Woods, I have no formal affiliation with the Inner Arbor Trust, the Columbia Association, or any other of the organizations that are or might become involved with park planning. This post contains my personal opinions, and is based solely on the slide presentation and briefing video released to the general public by the Inner Arbor Trust.

New realities, new plans

This revised concept plan is the latest of three attempts to develop Symphony Woods as a park. Before discussing the new plan, let’s briefly review how we got here:

For forty years the Symphony Woods property was little more than a relatively neglected piece of land over which people traveled by car or on foot to get to Merriweather Post Pavilion, which it surrounds. Finally in 2008 the Columbia Association began planning for a park in Symphony Woods and, after an initial plan met with criticism during the Howard County planning process, adopted the Inner Arbor plan (referred to by some as the “McCall plan,” after its creator Michael McCall).

In 2013 the newly-established Inner Arbor Trust further expanded and refined the Inner Arbor plan, took it through the 16-step county approval process in 2014, and successfully built the Chrysalis amphitheater as the first step in creating the newly-named Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods.

Why is the Inner Arbor Trust now considering revising the existing approved plan? As an outside observer I can see at least three realities with which the Trust must contend.

First, the economic reality: As currently approved the Inner Arbor plan is a very ambitious plan, with a estimated price tag well into the eight digits just for the first phase. Although Howard County is a relatively wealthy county, it lacks the concentration of great individual or corporate wealth (e.g., in the form of a billionaire or Fortune 100 company) that in other locales has provided the bulk of funding for world-class public parks.

The COVID-19 pandemic has further strained the finances of those entities that might be candidates for funding Merriweather Park development. An anticipated slow economic recovery from the pandemic, coupled with a possible recession in the coming decade, would likely make it difficult to impossible to fully develop Symphony Woods as envisioned in the current plan.

The economic reality then influences the political reality: the Inner Arbor Trust will need support from as many as possible of the people and organizations who can influence funding decisions. It’s no accident that the new concept plan presentation begins with a list of all the stakeholders whom the Trust has consulted in the process of deciding on a plan revision.

This includes the Columbia Association in particular, since its approval is needed for any changes to the park plans. The Columbia Association is also currently involved in an legal dispute with the Downtown Columbia Arts and Culture Commission, owner of Merriweather Post Pavilion, and the tenor of that relationship may constrain the form of any future park development. (See the discussion below.)

Finally, priorities for park development have arguably been changed by the progress of the Howard Hughes Corporation’s development of the Merriweather District, including completion of Merriweather Drive and Symphony Woods Road bordering Symphony Woods on the west, south, and east, completion of the multi-use pathway next to those roads, and completion (or impending completion) of office, residential, and retail developments along Merriweather Drive.

The park and the pedestrian

Although Symphony Woods was designated as public open space from the very beginning of Columbia, making it fully accessible to the general public was not a major priority for most of its existence. Until recently there were only two pedestrian access points to the park, both intended primarily for getting people to and from Merriweather Post Pavilion: one pathway from Little Patuxent Parkway to the west gate of the pavilion, and a second pathway to the south of the pavilion leading from the then-undeveloped land used for parking during events.

Once within Symphony Woods there were no pedestrian pathways providing access to the other parts of the property. Visitors had to walk along the bare ground next to the fence surrounding the pavilion, walk on the sides of roads providing vehicular access to the Merriweather VIP parking lot and the backstage area, or take their chances on a turned ankle or an encounter with thorns by striking out into the woods to the east and south of the pavilion.

The original Inner Arbor plan partially rectified that lack, proposing a set of pathways in the northern part of Symphony Woods that would provide enhanced access from Little Patuxent Parkway back to the Chrysalis. However that plan provided nothing for the southern part of Symphony Woods, at least in the first phase.

Now that it’s possible to walk all the way around the park on the new multi-use pathways, that lack of pathways into and within the park has become quite glaring: walkers on Merriweather Road near the intersection with Hickory Ridge Road confront a set of guardrails and then a steep drop into a creek valley, while walkers on the sidewalk on the west side of Symphony Woods Road find a steep upslope broken only by a one-lane access road (Chrysalis Drive) intended for cars and trucks, and then a less steep drop into a second creek valley.

There are now a new staircase and ramp leading from Merriweather Drive down to the previous path leading to Merriweather Post Pavilion. However, walkers seeking to go into the park proper still face a lack of pathways if they want to explore the creek and lake area to the south of the pavilion, or must take another steep hike up Dennis Lane if they want to go to the Chrysalis.

The revised concept plan proposes a set of new gateways into the park, along with an expanded set of pathways once you get into the park. Going clockwise from the western side of Merriweather Drive, these are as follows:

Southwest gateway: This proposed entrance point is not from Merriweather Drive itself, but under it, along the creek that runs below a bridge just south of the intersection with Hickory Ridge Road. As such it would provide a nice link into the park from what will be preserved open space between Hickory Ridge Road and the Juniper apartment complex.¹ The pathway from that point would then lead into the park to a short (45-foot) “hidden bridge” spanning the creek just south of the pavilion fence line.

Southern gateway: This is the most striking proposed gateway, consisting of a 290-foot pedestrian bridge carrying park visitors from the multi-use pathway along Merriweather Drive over the creek and onto a pathway next to Dennis Lane. (See above for the approximate location.) In the revised concept plan this bridge is shown alongside the existing path to the pavilion, including the staircase, ramp, and wooden bridge over the creek. However, the bridge would save visitors the hike down a couple of dozen feet to the creek and back up again, improving accessibility of the pavilion from the south, and could also provide access to ADA-compliant pathways within the park itself. Thus it can also be seen as a potential replacement for the current southern entrance.

Eastern gateway: This proposed gateway includes a shorter (78-foot) bridge from the sidewalk next to Symphony Woods Road over a second creek to the rear of the Chrysalis amphitheater. (See above for the approximate location.) If this were to be combined with a suitable crosswalk on Symphony Woods Road, it would provide a very convenient and accessible connection between the Chrysalis and the proposed New Cultural Center on the current site of Toby’s Dinner Theatre.²

Northeast gateway: This would include yet another bridge, this one 150 feet long, leading from the northeast corner of the park at Little Patuxent Parkway. This bridge would take the place of a boardwalk proposed in the current Inner Arbor plan, carrying visitors over the second creek and into an expanded set of pathways north of the Chrysalis.

Western gateway: I’ve left this one for last because it does not involve an expansion of pedestrian access, but rather a refinement of the access that already exists. As one of the presenters remarked during the briefing, this area (at the intersection of Merriweather Drive and Divided Sky Lane) is if anything over-supplied with paved access roads and pathways.

The problem is not therefore to provide access where there was none, but to make this area more visibly a part of the park and more welcoming to people walking into it. The revised concept plan proposes to rectify this by providing a terraced landscape that includes play spaces for children and a visitors center with restrooms.

The topic of restrooms leads us into the next section.

The park and the pavilion

Since the 2000s a common theme in planning for downtown Columbia has been the need to consider the combined Merriweather Post Pavilion and Symphony Woods properties as a single whole, what the Downtown Columbia Plan dubs the “Merriweather-Symphony Woods neighborhood.” In accordance with this approach Howard County planning authorities encouraged greater integration of activities, uses, and design features between Merriweather Post Pavilion and any park developed in Symphony Woods. (Among other things, this was one of the key recommendations the Howard County Planning Board made with respect to the Columbia Association’s original plan for a park.)

The current Inner Arbor plan takes this recommendation to heart, and proposes eliminating the existing fence between the Merriweather Post Pavilion and Symphony Woods properties (at least along the northern boundary), incorporating the existing historic buildings and pathways within the pavilion as a shared area between the pavilion and park (perhaps with a fountain). Instead of a fence the Inner Arbor plan proposes controlling access to the pavilion via a long cylindrical structure, the Caterpillar, acting as an artificial berm separating the northernmost portion of the park from the area shared with the pavilion, and providing infrastructure for events within the park.

For various reasons the Caterpillar has always been one of the most controversial elements in the Inner Arbor plan. But beyond any concerns previously expressed, one major problem with the Caterpillar is that it assumes a very high degree of cooperation between the respective property owners and managers, cooperation that may be beyond the desire and ability of the various parties to sustain.

The revised concept plan, perhaps following the dictum that “good fences make good neighbors,” deletes the Caterpillar and proceeds on the linked assumptions that there will continue to be a fence between the two properties, and that visitors to the park would normally be locked out of the pavilion.³

This has various implications, beginning with the western gateway discussed above. The revised concept plan proposes constructing a small visitors center here, perhaps in the spirit of the original Exhibit Center built by the Rouse Company to welcome prospective Columbia residents. Whether or not that’s the case, the practical use of this structure would be to provide restrooms for visitors on the west side of the park—since the Merriweather Post Pavilion restrooms would be locked away behind the fence.

In the revised plan that fence would itself be either replaced or overlaid with a new fence, designed to be more aesthetically pleasing and to provide park visitors at least partial screening of the ice machines, golf carts, and other Merriweather Post Pavilion fixtures currently visible on the other side of the fence. Based on the slides in the revised concept plan presentation, the proposed fence could use wooden pickets spaced closely together, providing a visual tie-in with similar pickets used for railings at the Chrysalis.⁴

That would take care of the west and east sides of the fence, next to the western gateway and the Chrysalis respectively. In between, on the northern portion of the fence, the revised concept plan attempts to solve a problem and create an opportunity.

Because the area just north of the fence is heavily used by vendors and others during Wine in the Woods and similar events held in the park, alternative infrastructure to that within Merriweather Post Pavilion must be provided to support merchandise booths, food and drink stalls, and the like.

The revised concept plan addresses this need via a proposed covered walkway or colonnade located next to the fence, running east-west along what the plan terms the “Ridgeline.” This colonnade could be used for vendor stalls, for public art, or simply as a quick and easy way to get from the western gateway to the Chrysalis without having to take a longer route over other park pathways.

The plan further proposes locating a stage in the middle of this colonnade, providing the opportunity for small-scale performances either standalone or as part of larger events. For events that use both properties, gates in the fence on either side of the stage would open to provide free access for event-goers crossing between them, without their having to walk all the way to the east or west pavilion entrances.

Continuing clockwise, just as on the west side of the park there is a need for restrooms on the east side of the park near the Chrysalis. Currently that need is served by a temporary restroom located next to the historic building housing the Merriweather Post Pavilion staff.

However that temporary facility will be replaced at some point by a new restroom designed to alternately allow access to either park or pavilion visitors, depending on whether events are being held in Merriweather Park Pavilion or not. (Since visitors will be allowed in the park during most Merriweather Post Pavilion events, they would still need to be accomodated during those times; presumably the proposed visitor center restrooms would fill that need.)

Priorities and pitfalls

Overall I think the revised concept plan does a good job of addressing the realities that development of Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods will need to deal with going forward. However there are still decisions to be made regarding priorities in proceeding with the next phases of development, as well as potential pitfalls along the way.

In terms of priorities, the first order of business is to complete the already planned and funded pathways in the northern section of the park. The first portion of this pathway system has recently been completed, and provides pedestrian access from Little Patuxent Parkway into the northeastern portion of the park and from there to the Chrysalis. The next portion of this pathway system will extend the current pathway system further west into the northwestern section of the park. When completed this pathway system will help address the needs of events like Wine in the Woods.

What will the next park improvements be after that? That will I think depend on higher-level priorities. I see two general ways to go:

The first is to prioritize the needs of events like Wine in the Woods that use the northern part of the park. For example, this might drive earlier construction of the above-mentioned colonnade and stage running along the northern boundary of Merriweather Post Pavilion.

The second approach would be to serve the needs of the new Merriweather District developments to the south of the park. For example, constructing pathways along the lake might encourage residents and workers from those buildings to explore the park’s southern reaches and build more awareness of and support for further proposed park developments like the southern gateway.

There are also potential pitfalls along the way. Soliciting support from as many organizations as possible will help with fundraising and gaining financial support from Howard County and the state of Maryland. However it also invites potential micromanaging of park development in a way that may detract from the overall vision for the park.

For example, the Downtown Columbia Plan envisions the Merriweather-Symphony Woods neighborhood as “a new kind of cultural park . . . a setting for arts, cultural and civic uses.” Taking its cue from this, the Inner Arbor Trust advertises Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods as a place where “where arts, culture, and community come together.”

However now that more residents and workers are moving into the Merriweather District and nearby areas, they may be looking for more conventional park features for recreational and other uses. As but two examples, in the concept plan briefing Virginia Thomas of the Columbia Association board discussed putting a bocce court in the park, and I can also see some local residents lobbying for a dog park—there’s already an area next to the multi-use pathway along Merriweather Drive with signs directed at dog owners.

Many if not all of these other uses may be ruled out by existing easements and agreements. However they may nonetheless end up distracting from the work needed to realize the park as one devoted to art and culture.

Speaking of art, and the art of architecture in particular, another area of difficulty may be realizing a high degree of design excellence for the park’s various features. In architecture there is sometimes a trade-off between aesthetics and practicality, and better-looking structures are typically more expensive to build and maintain. I can see designs like those presented in the concept plan for the gazebo, the Nest, and the two pavilions (see above) possibly being compromised in the interests of saving money and serving more utilitarian purposes. (Again, an example: in the concept plan briefing Alan Klein of the CA board suggested that the gazebo be redesigned to shelter park visitors from the rain.)

Thus although I think adoption of the revised concept plan would significantly increase the chances of completing the development of Merriweather Part at Symphony Woods according to the vision in the Downtown Columbia Plan and the Inner Arbor Trust mission statement, realizing that vision will still require much work and attention. As refinement of the plan continues I hope to be here to chronicle accomplishments and promote further progress.

For further exploration

For more information on the revised concept plan see the video recording of the briefing to the Inner Arbor Trust and Columbia Association boards, and the accompanying slide presentation [PDF]. For a briefer overview see the Merriweather Post article “Columbia’s ‘Central Park’: The Inner Arbor Trust Plan for Symphony Woods.”

For more information on the various attempts over the years to develop Symphony Woods as a park, see my history of Symphony Woods and an accompanying timeline of events up through May 2017, as well as my other posts on the Inner Arbor plan.

Like other registered voters in Howard County, I recently received my postal ballot for the 2020 presidential primary. Some of the decisions I have to make are easy (yes, I’ll vote for the presumptive Democratic nominee for President) while others are hard (gee, there are a lot of Democratic candidates for the US House of Representatives, and I have no idea who most of them are). And then there’s the question of who I should vote for in the Howard County Board of Education election.

In recent days there have been posts on the Board of Education race by Jenny Solpietro and Jason Booms, both progressive Democrats, commenting directly or indirectly on the lack of BoE candidates in District 5 that match their own political views. If you’re a progressive Democrat in District 5 then presumably no one you like will end up representing you on the BoE. This is reminiscent of past complaints by conservative Republicans living in (say) County Council District 2 that there was little to no chance of their being represented by someone who shared their own views.

These complaints support my firm opinion that electing Board of Education members (or County Council members) by district makes no sense. Why, do you ask?

First, it causes the problem we see in the current Board of Education race and past County Council races: if your views are at odds with the majority of people in your district, you don’t have a realistic chance of electing someone who reflects your views.

Second, in my opinion electing members by district does not do a very good job of what it was originally justified as doing, namely giving people more of a say in what happens in their “local” schools, i.e., schools in their part of the county. That’s because the district boundaries are arbitrary divisions.

For example, in past times the boundary line between District 1 and District 5 ran down the middle of the street in front of my house. If someone moved across the street to a different Board of Education district, would their concerns as a voter, a taxpayer, and a current or future parent of school-age children change in any significant way?

No, because they’d still be Howard County residents and taxpayers, and they’d still be dealing with a county-wide school system with a single budget, curriculum, and set of policies. The schools that their children attended (or would attend in future) probably also wouldn’t change, since the Board of Education districts are based on County Council districts and don’t necessarily have any relation at all to how HCPSS draws its own district boundaries.

Third, electing BoE members by district ignores the other ways in which voters might differ in their interests, beyond just the part of the county they happen to live in. For example, suppose that you have an interest in seeing more advanced math and science classes, or more funding for arts programs, or increased choices for vocational education, or you have concerns about disorderly classroom environments, or want more attention paid to issues around social justice and equity, or in general have strong opinions concerning any of a host of other issues that might arise in running a large public school system.

Electing members by districts may do little or nothing to ensure that your views are represented on the Board of Education: while there may be a lot of people across the county who share your views, there may be few like-minded individuals within the district you happen to live in.

So, what would be a better approach? The first step would be to abandon election by districts as a well intentioned approach that unfortunately does not address the true problems of representing the views of a diverse county population, and go back to electing all Board of Education members on a county-wide basis. (Under the current scheme only two at-large members are elected county-wide.)

But we can’t stop there. Using the traditional way of electing Board of Education members has its own set of problems. If we simply count the votes for each candidate and elect the five (or seven, or whatever) people with the most number of votes, then we run the risk of having minority views not be represented at all:

If 51% of voters think one way, and 49% of voters another way, the 51% of voters will vote for their preferred candidates and the 49% will vote for their (different) candidates. The result will be that the 51% of voters will get all of their candidates elected, and the other 49% will have no one on the Board of Education representing their views.

(Incidentally, the roles of the majority and the minority can vary. In the past this approach of electing the top set of candidates was used in many US jurisdictions as a way to systematically suppress the votes of African Americans—who would always be a minority in a city- or county-wide election—and elect all-white city or county councils. As a different example, in Howard County in the 1970s electing county council members at large resulted in Democratic dominance of the council, with no Republicans at all elected to the council at one point.)

So what’s the alternative? The alternative is to combine county-wide election of Board of Education members with a voting scheme that better takes into account the full range of voters’ interests, by allowing them to rank candidates in order of preference. I’ve previously written about this “ranked choice” scheme in the context of Howard County Council elections, proposing it to the Charter Review Board and then addressing various follow-up questions about it.

I want to particularly focus on how ranked choice voting can actually do a better job of providing “local” representation on the Board of Education than election by districts:

Suppose you live in (say) Elkridge and think that that area of the county has been neglected by the Board of Education and the Howard County Public School System. Even though in the scheme I’ve proposed the candidates would be running county-wide, nothing would prevent a candidate from running as the “champion of northeast Howard”. This candidate could then be elected as follows:

First, people living in that area could designate that candidate as their first preference. Note that in doing so it wouldn’t matter exactly where these voters live: there would be no artificial district boundary dividing Elkridge from Ellicott City, for example, such if you live just on the Ellicott City side of the boundary line then you don’t get to vote for the “northeast Howard candidate”. This increases the size of the voter pool that the candidate can attract votes from.

Second, it’s possible that other people elsewhere in Howard County might think that northeast Howard needs more attention by the BoE, even if they don’t see it as the most important issue. Those people could vote for the candidate that best represents their own perceived interests, designating them as their first preference, and still vote for the “northeast Howard candidate” as their second preference. If enough people do so, that candidate could be elected even if the number of their supporters in Elkridge or Savage might not be enough to get them elected just on “first preference” votes.

What about the concern that parents wouldn’t know who on the Board of Education to contact if they had concerns about their local schools? That’s easily solved: just have the Board of Education itself assign members to different parts of the county, to serve as the official liasons to parents and students in those areas.

BoE members would naturally nominate themselves to serve those areas that are their natural constituencies, as in the “champion of northeast Howard” example above. And because the Board of Education would be doing this assignment as a matter of board procedure, and not in strict accordance with state law, it could assign members to areas that would be as closely aligned as possible to the actual school catchment areas, and not have to go back to the Maryland legislature in the event that those boundary lines change.

What about the concern that it would be more expensive to campaign county-wide, and that election by districts makes it easier for “local” candidates to run in their own districts without having to raise a lot of money? I think what we are seeing now is at odds with that ideal: since the number of voters in each district is relatively small, and the turnout for a primary is going to be relatively low, it’s possible for wealthy donors inside or (as Julia McCready has complained) outside a district to have an outsized influence in that district’s election.

I’ll close by noting that even though the Board of Education elections have in the eyes of many become more politicized and partisan, adopting a county-wide ranked choice voting scheme for the BoE or County Council should not be a point of partisan contention. In the context of this year’s Board of Education election ranked choice voting would help progressive Democrats who live in western Howard. In the context of the 2022 County Council election ranked choice voting would help conservative Republicans who live in eastern Howard.

That’s because ranked choice voting is designed to better reflect voters’ preferences in general, and to do a better job of ensuring that preferences held only by a minority of voters can nonetheless lead to those voters having representation on elected bodies like the Board of Education or County Council. Who will be in the minority will vary by time, place, and the issues involved, so ranked choice voting offers something for everyone regardless of their particular political views.

Further exploration

For more on this topic see the following:

• “Analysis of Scott E’s D5 BOE Debate”. Jenny Solpietro bemoans the lack of progressive candidates in District 5.
• “Contemplations on the Board of Education Races”. Jason Booms reviews the 2020 Board of Education races and states that he will not be commenting on the District 5 candidates.
• “Here’s the Context”. Julia McCready’s thoughts about the new dynamics of Board of Education races.
• “A better way to elect the Howard County Council” and “Ranked choice voting questions and answers” contain more of my thoughts on ranked choice voting in the context of Howard COunty.
• “Bill proposes to elect Howard school board members by district,” a 2015 Baltimore Sun article by Amanda Yeager and Lisa Philip, discusses the early stages of the effort to elect Board of Education members by districts. The justification was that “constituents . . . are confused about where to turn when they have a question for the board.”
• “Howard school board bill moves forward,” a 2017 Baltimore Sun article by Amanda Yeager, contains quotes from several local politicians for and against the move to elect Board of Education members by district.
• “Howard County Board of Education primary election features new district format, vote-by-mail ballots,” a current Baltimore Sun article by Jacob Calvin Meyer, discusses the new scheme for electing the Board of Education.

tl;dr: I answer questions about ranked choice voting raised by the Howard County Charter Review Commission and others.

I was able to make it to the Howard County Charter Review Commission’s public hearing last night and request that the commission recommend the adoption of ranked choice voting for the Howard County Council, with all members elected county-wide. (See my prior post for a copy of my testimony.)

The members of the commission had various questions about ranked choice voting, as did people on Facebook when I posted a link to my testimony. My answers were off-the-cuff and could be improved in many cases, while one answer (to a question about examples of ranked choice voting in Maryland) was outright incorrect.

Here’s the complete list of questions along with my improved answers.

Wouldn’t this make running for Howard County Council more expensive, since candidates would have to campaign county-wide?

I think running under a ranked choice voting election could be somewhat more expensive, but I think this fear is overblown.

The key point is that running in a ranked choice election for one of five or seven council seats is not like running for county executive. In the county executive race a candidate must aim for more than 50% of the vote, but in a ranked choice election a candidate need only get more than 16.7% (for a five member council) or 12.5% (for a seven person council) of the vote.

That means a candidate could (and should) concentrate expensive and/or time-intensive activities like canvassing or direct mail on their natural base of voters, which might be concentrated in a particular geographical area or based on shared interests. The rest of the voters could be addressed through less expensive means, for example using social media.

If county council members no longer have districts, how would a person know which council member to call for constituent services?

I’m not really the person to ask about this. The people to ask about this are Liz Bobo, Ed Cochran, C. Vernon Gray, Lloyd Knowles, or Ginny Thomas, all of whom were elected to the Howard County Council during a time when council members were elected at large, before council districts were adopted in 1984.

But if you ask me, I’d answer as follows: Even though council members would be elected county-wide, they’d still likely have natural constituencies, based on the area of the county in which they live, particular interest groups they represent, and so on. For example, someone living in Ellicott City concerned about, say, Route 40 development would likely contact whichever council member happened to live in Ellicott City and seemed interested in that issue.

Since there would be no districts, it wouldn’t be possible for redistricting to split up those natural constituencies. If you find a particular council member is responsive to your concerns, you can continue to treat them as “your council member” for as long as they serve. And if that council member ceased to be responsive you’d have the choice of several others to ask instead.

Question: What about retaining council districts and electing members for each district using ranked choice voting?

Answer: This is a perfectly possible scheme to implement, and in fact is implemented in at least one nearby jurisdiction (see below). The technical term for it is “single winner ranked choice voting” or “instant runoff voting”. Voters express their preferences among candidates as before, but only a single winner is chosen.

One problem with single winner ranked choice voting is that it makes sense only if there’s more than two candidates. With two candidates the counting of votes works just like a regular election: whoever has the most first preference votes wins, with the voters’ second preferences not mattering.

So how do we get more than two candidates? There are two possibilities (which are not mutually exclusive). The first is that the two major parties continue to put forward one candidate apiece, but those two candidates are joined by additional candidates who represent smaller parties or who are running as independents.

With ranked choice voting, voters unhappy with the two major parties are free to express their displeasure by giving their first preference votes to someone other than a major party candidate. Their votes would not be wasted, since if their favored candidate doesn’t win their second preferences can help elect someone else, such as the major party candidate they consider the lesser of evils.

Another possibility is that the two major parties put forth multiple candidates of their own, for example, as a substitute for their traditional primaries. Alternatively, they could retain the current primaries but let two or three winners advance to the general election rather than just one. This might help when it’s not clear which of the candidates is more suited for general election success.

However, using single winner ranked choice voting by district does not help with the problem of ensuring that minority groups are represented on the county council. Only if members of such groups were concentrated in one or two districts would they have enough critical mass to help get their favored candidates elected.

What about keeping the five council districts as is, with election by district as done today, and adding two at-large council members elected county-wide?

If the at-large elections were conducted as they usually are, this would almost certainly just result in adding two Democratic council members to the council.

Each party would nominate two candidates for the at-large seats. Given that Democrats have a significant edge in both party registration and votes county-wide (based on the 2018 election), and given that most people (even supposedly unaffiliated voters) would likely vote a straight party ticket, the two Democratic candidates would almost certainly end up with the most votes and be elected.

We know this because this is exactly what happened on a larger scale during the period when Howard County elected all five council members at large. During that era Republicans had more than one member on the county council only once, at a time when Democrats and Republicans were more evenly matched in voting strength than they are today. In 1974 the effect was so pronounced that all five Democratic council candidates were elected and Republicans had no member on the council.

What about using ranked choice voting for the two at-large seats? This would almost certainly always lead to one Democrat and one Republican being elected at-large. In a ranked choice election with two candidates, a candidate can be elected if just around 33.4% of voters select them as their first preference. It’s a simple matter of arithmetic: if two candidates each get 33.4% of first preference votes, or 66.8% between them, the best that any other candidate can do is to get 33.2% of first preference votes and come in third. The first two candidates would then be elected to the two seats.

Given the number of Republican voters in the county and past voting patterns for county council elections (see below), if the Republican party ran a single candidate then that candidate would likely clear the bar of getting 33.4% of first preferences. The same is true of the Democratic party. The two parties would then split the seats between each other.

If ranked choice voting were implemented with a seven-member council and county-wide elections, what would be the likely split between Democratic and Republican council members?

If there were no other parties were involved, my best guess is that we’d see at least two Republicans on the county council (i.e., a 5–2 split), and possibly three (a 4–3 split).

The math again is fairly simple: Using a similar argument as above, with ranked choice voting for a seven-member council a candidate would win if they got just over 12.5% of the first preference votes (100% divided by 8).

In the 2018 election Republican candidates for county council collectively got 43,772 votes out of a total of 136,524 votes in all county council races combined, or about 32%. However, there was no Republican candidate in District 3; if there had been one then the total vote for Republican county council candidates might have been a few points higher, say around 36–38%.

If Republicans ran two candidates in a ranked choice election for seven council seats, and the two GOP candidates each got an equal number of first preference votes, a 32% share of the total vote would translate into 16% of the first preference votes for each candidate, more than the 12.5% needed to get elected.

Could three Republicans win election to a seven-member county council with ranked choice voting? It’s possible, but it would be tight: With three candidates and an equal share of first preference votes, the three candidates collectively would have to get more than 37.5% of the vote (3 times 12.5%), significantly more than the 32% GOP share in the 2018 council election.

However, even if there were not enough first preference votes to elect three Republicans it’s possible that a third Republican might be elected if they could secure a fair number of second preference votes from voters who selected Democratic candidates for their first preferences. The type of candidate best positioned to do this would be a moderate Republican who appealed to many Democrats, for example someone like Allan Kittleman.

Is any jurisdiction in Maryland currently using ranked choice voting?

I answered “no” to this during the hearing, but I was wrong. It turns out that the city of Takoma Park has been using ranked choice voting since 2006 for both its mayoral elections and elections to its city council. All of these are single winner ranked choice (“instant runoff”) elections. Six members of the city council are elected by ward, and the mayor is elected at-large.

Takoma Park’s experience is not fully applicable to Howard County, for at least two reasons. First, Takoma Park does not use a multiple winner ranked choice system like I’ve been discussing above. Second, the total number of votes cast is relatively small. This makes it feasible to count the votes by hand, something that would be relatively time-consuming in Howard County.

However the use of ranked choice voting in Takoma Park does indicate that the concept is not foreign to Maryland, and it seems to be both well-understood and popular among voters in the city.

Would the Maryland legislature have to pass special legislation in order for Howard County to use ranked choice voting?

I’m not a lawyer and can’t give a definitive opinion on this. However to my knowledge the only restriction imposed by the Constitution of Maryland on Howard County is as follows:

The charter for the government of any county governed by the provisions of this Article may provide for the election of members of the county council by the voters of councilmanic districts therein established, or by the voters of the entire county, or by a combination of these methods of election. (Article XI-A, Section 3A.)

A ranked choice election conducted on a county-wide basis would appear to satisfy this requirement.

That’s all the questions I can remember. If you have further questions please feel free to ping me on Facebook or Twitter (@hecker).

For further exploration

For more information on ranked choice voting in Takoma Park, see the following:

• “Instant runoff voting in action in Takoma Park”. A description of how single winner ranked choice voting worked in a 2012 special election in Takoma Park Ward 5.
• “Frequently Asked questions about instant runoff voting”. How the Takoma Park city government explains single winner ranked choice voting to city residents.
• “Takoma Park Municipal Code, Section 606, Election of Mayor and Councilmembers”. The section of the Takoma Park municipal code outlining the “instant runoff” procedure for voting for the mayor and members of the city council.
• “City of Takoma Park, Maryland, Ward 5 Special Election, January 30, 2007 Ballot”. Sample ballot explaining to Takoma Park voters how to use the single winner ranked choice system.

Numbers for Republican vote share in the 2018 county council elections are from the official 2018 gubernatorial election results for Howard County. See also my 2012 post “How to win an STV election for Howard County Council, part 1” for an example of how a ranked choice election might have played out based on the 2010 election results.

Finally, Section 3A of Article XI-A of the Constitution of Maryland appears to be the governing language on how Maryland charter counties (like Howard) can conduct council elections.

tl;dr: Tweaking the council redistricting process is the wrong solution. Ranked choice voting is the right one.

I’ve been preoccupied with other things and missed the fact that the Howard County Charter Review Commission is having its last public hearing tonight. James Howard, one of the commission members, recently published a preview of the commission’s recommendations.

The primary recommendation is to increase the size of the Howard County Council from five members to seven, presumably to reflect the increased population since the first Howard County Charter was adopted in 1968. I support this recommendation.

A second set of recommendations is tweak the process of redrawing council district lines, apparently in an effort to make the process less partisan. While these recommendations are worthy in and of themselves, I think they miss the point in terms of reforming the way the Howard County Council is elected. I think a better approach would be to ditch the entire council district system.

Here’s a statement I wrote to give in public testimony before the Charter Review Commission. Since it’s too late to submit written testimony by email, and I may not be able to get to the last public hearing tonight, I’m publishing it here in case anyone else wants to use it. (I’ve timed the statement to make sure it comes in under three minutes, the limit for individuals proving testimony.)

As I understand it, the Charter Review Commission is likely to recommend increasing the Howard County Council from five members to seven. However, I would like to go on record as asking the commission to consider recommending an alternative approach: to get rid of council districts, and instead elect council members on a county-wide basis using ranked-choice voting, in which voters rank the various candidates in order of their preference.

I also understand that the commission is likely to make other recommendations to improve the process of council redistricting. But beyond the time-consuming and contentious task of drawing new district lines, electing council members by districts has an inherent flaw that cannot be remedied: Suppose you are a voter who is a member of a minority group spread relatively evenly across the county, whether that be a minority ethnic or racial group, a minority political party, or a minority interest group of any type. Your chances of having a council member representing your group are low, because your group is not likely to be a majority in any individual council district.

But in a ranked choice county-wide election your vote will count again: With a seven-member council, if your group makes up at least 10-15% of the voting population you have a good chance of electing at least one council member sympathetic to your interests. If your group makes up at least 20% of voters, that chance becomes almost a certainty.

As documented by FairVote (fairvote.org), the Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center (rankedchoicevoting.org), and others, ranked-choice voting schemes do a much better job of electing candidates who reflect voters’ true preferences. They help to preserve the voting power of minority populations, by ensuring that their votes are not wasted: even if their most preferred candidate loses, their second, third, and other preferences can help elect other suitable candidates.

When implemented using properly designed ballots, ranked choice voting is both simple for voters to understand and compatible with optical scan systems like those used in Howard County. The actual tabulation of results can be carried out either by computer or, if desired, by hand, for example in a recount of paper ballots.

Ranked choice voting has been successfully implemented in a number of US jurisdictions, including at the state, city, and county level. In particular, I recommend for the commission’s consideration the charter language and detailed voting rules implemented by the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, for elections to its nine-member City Council and six-member School Committee.

Like Cambridge, Howard County prides itself on its high-tech economy and educated population. It deserves no less than a modern voting system that helps ensure that the Howard County Council reflects as much as possible the rich diversity of Howard County and the true preferences of Howard County voters. Thank you.

For further exploration

For more information on and arguments for ranked choice voting, see the following:

• Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center. “The Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center provides a compilation of best practices and first-hand experiences from jurisdictions that have used this method of voting.” The people behind it have deep experience as election administrators.
• FairVote. More activist in nature, “FairVote is a nonpartisan champion of electoral reforms that give voters greater choice, a stronger voice, and a representative democracy that works for all Americans.”
• Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America. Argues that the current two-party duopoly is driving political polarization and gridlock, and that the only way to fix it is by moving to ranked choice voting.

For more information on other local jurisdictions considering ranked choice voting, see the following news stories:

• “Group pursues ‘ranked-choice’ voting for San Diego city elections”. An initiative in San Diego, California.
• “Portland voters will decide whether to expand ranked-choice voting”. An initiative in Portland, Maine.
• “Vancouver eyes ranked-choice voting system”. An initiative in Vancouver, Washington.

For more information on how Howard County came to have council districts in the first place, see my book, Dividing Howard. For more details on how ranked choice voting might work in Howard County, see my series, “Electing a council that reflects Howard County”. (Those posts, written eight years ago, use the older term “proportional representation” used in other countries. The term “ranked choice voting” is what is used now in the US.)

I don’t usually post articles commenting on what my fellow Howard County bloggers write. However I’m more likely to jump into the fray when important points need to be clarified—all the more so when I myself haven’t done a good job of being clear in my own blog posts.

The topic today is the oft-repeated claim that Howard County has a shortage of 5,000 (or 5,500) affordable housing units, and in particular the post “The High Cost of Affordable Housing” by the pseudonymous blogger “Shaykh.” In this post they write,

The current refrain of the far left is that Howard County “needs more affordable housing,” making claims such as “we have a shortage of 5,500 affordable housing units.” Why is there a shortage? Where are these 5,500 families that are without housing? Are they living in a tent city like we now see out in Seattle?

Shaykh then goes on to speculate:

If each of these 5,500 affordable housing units sees an average of 2.5 persons, that would equal 13,750 more residents, or a 4.3% population increase over the current 321,000 residents. This is more than 3.5 times higher than the current growth rate of 1.2%. . . . If each of these 5,500 affordable units has an average of 1.5 children (I feel this is a reasonable guess), that would mean 8,250 more children in HCPSS, a 14% increase of the roughly 58,000 students currently enrolled.

First, to nitpick: I think the number 5,500 should actually be 5,000, if (as I think) the source of this estimate is ultimately the the 2018 Howard County Rental Survey commissioned by the Howard County Housing Commission. If so, this is not Shaykh’s fault, as various politicians and activists have used the 5,500 number in their public statements.

More fundamentally, the estimate of 5,000 “missing” affordable units does not mean that there are 5,000 Howard County households who are homeless, or 5,000 households living elsewhere who would like to move to Howard County but cannot. Instead it is an estimate of the number of households already renting housing in Howard County who are paying more for rent than is considered “affordable.”

I already posted about how this estimate was derived, but looking back on that post I’ve concluded that I didn’t do a very good job of explaining things. So, I’ll try again:

The 5,000 estimate is based on a comparison to a theoretical ideal: If the housing market were a totally free market and if there were no factors artificially inflating the price of housing, then we would presumably see developers and landlords offering a range of housing options priced to be suitable for households in each and every income range, just as we do with other types of consumer goods. (Just as, for example, with clothing we see the free market offering options ranging from buying low-priced outfits at TJ Maxx to buying haute couture from Christian Dior.)

At the time the 2018 Howard County Rental Survey was produced, there were an estimated 9,545 households with household income of less than $50K who were living and renting in Howard County. To put this in context, at the time of the survey there were an estimated 116,711 households in Howard County, of which an estimated 32,358 households were renting. (See page 17 of the survey, Table 10, “Renter Household Characteristics.”) These lower-income households thus make up about 8% of all Howard County households, and about 29% of renting households.

So, if the housing market in Howard County were a totally free market and if there were no factors artificially inflating the price of housing in Howard County, then we would expect to see these 9,545 lower-income Howard County households renting units that were priced roughly in line with the incomes these households have.

However at the time of the survey there were only 4,486 rental units in Howard County that were considered to be “affordable” to those 9,545 lower-income households, with “affordability” based on the (somewhat arbitrary) guideline that a household should spend no more than 30% of its income on housing. The difference of 5,059 (9,545 minus 4,486), rounded off to 5,000, is then considered to be the amount by which Howard County falls short in terms of providing affordable housing.

So this has nothing whatsoever to do with enticing thirteen thousand poor people to move to Howard County, or adding eight thousand more FARM students to Howard County public schools. Those people are already living here, and their children are already attending school here. They’re just paying more than 30% of their household income for their rental housing.

As for how to make housing more affordable in Howard County, Shaykh’s position is that the best solution lies in making the housing market more of a free market, for example by loosening zoning restrictions. I agree with this, and said so in my previous post.

The fundamental problem with government policy on housing is summed up by the economist Arnold Kling as “restricting supply then subsidizing demand.” On the one hand, zoning regulations and other government-imposed restrictions (e.g., APFO regulations) result in less housing built than would otherwise be built in a totally free market, reducing the supply of housing and driving up its price.

Government then seeks to offset the impact of increased housing prices through various direct and indirect subsidies, including things like Section 8 vouchers (which attract the most attention and controversy) but also including providing tax credits for developers building affordable housing and allowing homeowners to take tax deductions for mortgage interest and real estate taxes.

These subsidies not only divert government spending from arguably more useful purposes (like improving transportation infrastructure), they also have the effect of increasing the demand for housing beyond what it would have been in the absence of the subsidies. This then further drives up the already high housing prices caused by the restricted supply of housing.

From this point of view the way to address the issue of housing affordability is not to create more “affordable housing,” it’s to build more housing, period.

After writing something I almost always think of things I wanted to say but didn’t have the time or space for. So it was with my last post touching on housing affordability issues in Howard County. Here are a couple of random follow-up comments,:

School redistricting and housing affordability

I have for the most part stayed out of directly commenting on the current controversy on school redistricting in Howard County. My family is not directly affected by it since we don’t have a child in the public school system, and I didn’t have the time or inclination to do the sort of in-depth research I normally feel is necessary before I make public comments on my blog or elsewhere.

However I did at least obliquely comment on the issue in my post “Moving to opportunity in Howard County.” To recap briefly, I suspect supporters of the superintendent’s proposed redistricting plan are likely over optimistic as to how much of a real difference the plan would actually make in the lives of students, especially students already in high school. (I think one could make a stronger case for redistricting at the elementary school level.) At the same time I definitely believe opponents of the plan downplay the extent to which the current situation is the result of deliberate government “social engineering” that has the effect of isolating lower-income households geographically and discouraging their living in Howard County.

Some people claim that rather than redistricting the school system we should be instead focusing on issues of housing affordability, making sure that lower-income households are able to live in any part of the county and take advantages of the schools in those areas. That’s a perfectly legitimate opinion to hold, and I look forward to seeing these people work to build political support for concrete proposals to do just that.

The “no public transit” argument against affordable housing

Still on the topic of affordable housing, Tom Coale (who is variously an attorney representing developers, a progressive activist, and co-host of the Elevate Maryland podcast), recently tweeted, “Time after time, inadequate public transportation is used as an excuse to reject affordable [housing] projects,” and claimed that “The median income in certain parts of Maryland is high enough that those eligible for affordable housing, based on percentage of median [income], make enough to own a car, but not enough to pay for housing.”

As it happened, that tied in nicely with the analysis I had been doing on new vehicle sales, and so I tweeted in response. To expand a bit on my comment:

The median new vehicle price is around $35,000, and according to the affordability criterion I used (the vehicle price should be no more than 50% of pre-tax income) such a median vehicle should be affordable to a household making $70,000 a year. Although such an income is above the US median income of approximately $62,000 a year, it is well below the Howard County median income of almost $120,000 a year, and so it’s quite possible such a household would have difficulty affording housing in the county.

If we turn to households making between $25,000 and $50,000, they should be able to afford a single vehicle worth $12,000 to $25,000, used or even new. They could even probably afford two high-mileage used vehicles. But, again, they would almost certainly have problems affording housing in Howard County.

The result is that, as Coales tweeted, “There is no record of people being ‘stranded’ because we built affordable housing without a bus route.” As he also pointed out, housing affordability is a problem across the state, even in areas where people absolutely need a vehicle to get around, and presumably are able to afford one one way or the other.

That’s it for follow-up for today, though I may have some additional comments later.

UPDATE 2024/01/04: This post originally appeared on my Civility and Truth Substack newsletter. I’ve moved it to my main site in an effort to collect all of my writing in one place.

tl;dr: The story behind the claim that Howard County needs 5,000 more affordable units.

If you’ve been following Howard County matters you’ve probably heard someone claim that there’s a shortage of over 5,000 (sometimes 5,500) affordable housing units in the county. Have you ever wondered where that number came from? What it means? How it was calculated? If so, I am here to (I hope) shed some light on these questions.

To answer the first question, this estimate is from the 2018 Howard County Rental Survey commissioned by the Howard County Housing Commission. (Thanks go to Tom Coale of the Elevate Maryland podcast for indirectly providing me this clue.) More specifically, it’s from pages 81–82 of that document, which is worth quoting at length:

There are 1,250 multifamily subsidized rental units and another 1,886 multifamily rental units that are rent-restricted. Additionally, Howard County administers approximately 1,350 tenant-based Housing Choice Vouchers (HCV) of which 800 are county vouchers and 550 are Port-In vouchers from other jurisdictions. Assuming the unlikely scenario that no vouchers are used at tax credit communities, a combined 4,486 units are available to support the 9,545 low to moderate-income renter households in the county, leaving a gap of over 5,000 units, which provides a context for the county’s HCV waiting list of a comparable length.

So there you go. This appears to be the definitive number that’s bandied about (although I’ve also seen the number 5,500 used a couple of times): 1,250 plus 1,886 plus 1,350 adds up to 4,486 (affordable rental units), and 9,545 (households) minus 4,486 equals 5,059, the size of the claimed gap. (I’m not sure where the number 5,500 comes from. It may just be someone misremembering the report’s conclusion.)

Two additional points: First, the figure of 9,545 low to moderate-income renter households is from Table 11 on page 19, and comes from adding 2,524, 1,870, and 5,151, the numbers of rental households earning less than $15,000, between $15,000 and $25,000, and between $25,000 and $50,000 respectively. (In comparison, the number of rental households earning more than $50,000 is 22,813.)

Second, the 5,000 figure is buried in the conclusion of the housing survey analysis, not highlighted in the introductory summary. If you didn’t have the patience to read through the previous 80+ pages of very number-heavy text you would have missed it. That’s pretty casual treatment for a number that’s since received so much attention from politicians and activists.

You can stop reading here if you want to. But if you’re interested in exploring more of the story, including the “penetration rate” analysis discussed in the rental survey and whether or not the market for housing looks like the market for other goods and services, read on.

Let’s start with this graph, Figure 12 on page 80 of the survey, part of section D, “Penetration Rate Analysis.” (It’s also duplicated on page viii of the Executive Summary.) To quote from the beginning of that section,

By dividing the number of units in a specific affordability classification by the number of renter households that can afford or qualify for a unit at that price point, the penetration rate can tell us the extent to which renter households at particular income bands are adequately served by the existing supply.

For example, according to the graph, there are few “low rent” units targeting families earning 50-60% of the area median income, relative to the number of such families. In contrast, there are lots of “moderate rent” units targeting families earning 60-80% of the area median income, again relative to the number of such families. The former income range is said to have a low penetration rate (under-supplied), and the latter income range to have a high penetration rate (over-supplied).

(The survey divides Howard County into multiple sections and presents penetration rates for each one. Also, the “area” in “area median income” refers to the general Baltimore metropolitan area, not to Howard County specifically. Thus a household making less than 60% of the area median income actually makes significantly less than that compared to the Howard County median household income.)

There are several factors and assumptions associated with this analysis. Let’s explore this a bit more, moving from housing to other goods and services. As I see it, the penetration rate analysis used in this survey and elsewhere rests on one fact—that households vary in their income—and two assumptions: that in a free market profit-seeking businesses (but not necessarily the same businesses) will produce goods affordable to all households no matter their income range, and that in a free market the supply of goods targeted to households of a particular income range should at least roughly match the number of households in that income range.

Clearly households have a wide range of household incomes, as shown by the graph above, which displays the percentage of US households that have household incomes in certain ranges. (The definitions of the various income ranges are from the US Census Bureau, and reference household income before taxes.) As for the potential market for goods and services targeted to lower-income households, almost half of all US households have household income of less than $60,000 (the US median household income is about $62,000), and based on the graph it looks as if 20-25% of households have incomes of less than $30,000.

These are fairly large markets, and in a market economy it seems as if some businesses somewhere would find profitable ways to serve them. In the case of products like clothing that’s exactly what happens: we see retailers like Ross and TJ Maxx coexist with retailers targeting middle-income and upper-income households, like Macy’s, Nordstroms, Saks Fifth Avenue, and so on. All these are in turn supported by a global apparel industry capable of producing clothing at a wide range of price points, including relatively low ones.

The result is that households of all income ranges are reasonably adequately served by the products offered in the clothing market. Lower-income households might not be able to spend a lot on clothes, but there’s a reason we don’t see headlines about the “clothing affordability crisis.”

However we shouldn’t necessarily expect to see an exact matching of clothing of different prices to households of different incomes—that lower-income households buy only cheap clothes and upper-income households buy only expensive clothes. Some lower-income people want or need to present a more fashionable appearance, and will stretch their budget to do so. At the other end of the income scale, higher-income individuals do not typically spend every day dressed in haute couture.

The result is that a penetration rate analysis for clothing would likely not show 100% penetration rates across all income ranges, even in a completely free market. Instead we should expect to see higher penetration rates in the middle income ranges, and lower penetration rates at the extremes: relatively more mid-price clothing will be sold because there are lower-income households dressing up and higher-income households dressing down.

Let’s turn to a penetration rate analysis for another important class of goods, namely cars and light trucks. I was able to find the number of new vehicles sold for each model in 2017 along with price ranges for each model for the 2019 model year, and combined those to produce the graph above, which shows the percentages of vehicles sold that are targeted to each of the income ranges in the previous graph.

In creating this graph I had to make two key assumptions. The first was how to account for sales of vehicles where there was a large difference between the minimum price and maximum price. I tried to distribute sales for a given model across the price range in a reasonable manner, accounting for the fact that relatively few buyers purchase either the lowest price base model or the most expensive “loaded” model. See the full penetration rate analysis for details.

The other assumption, which also comes up in the penetration analysis in the rental survey, is how to decide what income range a particular vehicle is targeted at based on its price. Put another way, how do we measure vehicle affordability? After looking at various recommendations of the form “how much should I pay for a car”, I decided to use the following criterion: a new vehicle is affordable to a given household if its price does not exceed 50% of the household’s before tax income. Thus, for example, a household with an income of $60,000 should be able to afford a vehicle costing $30,000.

Put another way, given a vehicle offered for sale at a given price, a household’s income must be at least twice that price in order to afford the vehicle under this criterion. As it turns out, the typical (mean/median) price for new vehicles is around $35,000, so under this criterion we’d consider a typical vehicle to be targeted to households making around $70,000 a year before tax.

Combining the previous graph with the graph on the number of households in each income range produces the graph above, which shows the new vehicle penetration rates for each income range.

There are several points worth making about this graph. First, the details of the graph are obviously dependent on the assumptions made about vehicle affordability. If the criterion for affordability, i.e., a vehicle price no more than 50% of household income, were changed then the penetration rates for the various income groups would also change.

However the overall shape of the graph should remain the same, with under-penetration in the lowest and highest income ranges, and over-penetration in the middle income ranges. This general shape can be explained as follows:

In the higher-income ranges there are fewer vehicles sold than one might expect. For example, a household in the income range “$200,000 or more” should be able to afford a vehicle costing $100,000 or more, but relatively few such vehicles are sold (about a 25% penetration rate). This is probably due to two factors: 1) as with clothes, there’s an upper limit on how luxurious a vehicle a given household wants or needs, and 2) higher-income households almost certainly have multiple vehicles, for example buying two vehicles for $50,000 each instead of one vehicle for $100,000.

In the lower-income ranges there are also fewer vehicles sold than one might expect. Again this is likely due to two factors: 1) auto manufacturers find it difficult to sell truly low-cost vehicles in the US market, due both to government regulations and lack of market demand for small vehicles with limited or no amenities; and 2) some households buy vehicles that are more expensive than what they could supposedly afford, due to need (for example, a truck for work or an SUV to transport a large family) or simply the desire to have a nicer vehicle.

The flip-side of under-penetration in the lowest and highest household income ranges is then over-penetration in the middle income ranges: many more vehicles are sold into the middle part of the market than one might expect given the number of households in those income ranges.

What lessons, if any, does the market for cars and trucks have for the rental housing market?

At the top of the market truly expensive luxury apartments are as rare as exotic supercars, at least in Howard County. Just as wealthy families have the option of buying multiple lower-priced vehicles rather than one super-expensive vehicle, wealthy families in Howard have an alternative to renting expensive apartments, namely purchasing expensive single-family homes on large lots. For example, a household that could spend $5,000-6,000 or even more in monthly rent could just as easily purchase a house worth $1-2 million somewhere in west Howard.

(However, that’s not to say that there is no market at all for expensive apartments in Howard County: If listings at Apartments.com are any indication, there appears to be strong demand relative to supply for large 3-bedroom apartments at the Metropolitan development next to the Mall at Columbia. That demand will presumably be tested as more luxury apartment buildings open in downtown Columbia.)

The more interesting comparison in the context of affordable housing discussions is what happens at the lower ends of the vehicle and housing markets. There are at least three possible approaches to serve lower-income households looking for transportation services:

The first is for manufacturers to make and sell lower-priced new vehicles. For an example of what’s possible, a typical model of the manufactured-in-India Maruti Suzuki Alto hatchback sells for the equivalent of about $5,000 in that country, two to three times less than the Nissan Versa, apparently the lowest-price car currently available in the US market. Based on the affordability guideline above, such a vehicle would be affordable to a household with annual income of $10,000.

However, US and state government standards for vehicle safety, emissions, etc., make new vehicles more expensive than they otherwise might be. Government decisions also distort the new vehicle market in other ways: Relatively low taxes on gasoline in effect subsidize the sales of larger more expensive vehicles, while land use and highway construction policies that encourage sprawl also discourage the use of smaller under-powered vehicles like the Alto that are more suited to city driving.

The result is that lower-income households wanting a personal vehicle turn to the used vehicle market, where they can pay lower prices in exchange for accepting a vehicle with perhaps significant wear and tear. (As a comparison, a quick spot check of Howard County used vehicle dealers finds the lowest-price options are in the $6,000-$8,000 range, all vehicles with over 100,000 miles. A quick check of craigslist.org finds several vehicles in the $3,000-$6,000 range, typically with even higher mileage.)

Finally, lower-income households who can’t afford personal vehicles rely primarily on public transit, which in a Howard County context means buses.

The perceived housing equivalent of public transit is public housing for which renters are directly subsidized, for example, the relatively new Monarch Mills development in Columbia or the renovated Forest Ridge apartments (shown above, left), also in Columbia. Such housing is often stigmatized (e.g. as “the projects”) and in suburbs like Howard County new public housing construction is typically strenuously opposed by nearby homeowners.

The housing equivalent of used vehicles are older apartments (or, in some cases, single-family houses) that have deteriorated to the point where they can no longer command typical market rents—what in extreme cases is pejoratively called “slum housing.” However, unlike vehicles, which have no real value once they reach a certain point of decay, deteriorated apartment complexes have an intrinsic value due to land and location. In an economically vibrant area like Howard County they will likely be replaced with new construction or heavily renovated, at which point they will no longer be affordable to their former tenants.

Finally, the housing equivalent of low-priced new vehicles is low-priced new (or renovated) housing designed to be profitable for its developers with at most indirect subsidization (for example, housing for which the developer gets tax credits, analogous to the tax credits provided for electric vehicles). Profitability here depends on at least two factors:

First, developers may incur certain costs directly as a result of government laws and regulations. For example, requirements to go through an extended legal process for approvals (e.g., the 16-step process required for development in downtown Columbia) impose direct costs on developers as well as indirect costs, for example to fight legal action by development opponents or to gain their assent by paying for community amenities or reducing the scope of a project.

Second, government action (or inaction) distorts the market in various ways that make it more difficult to profitably offer lower-priced housing. For example, zoning regulations that allow only single-family homes, or government’s declining to offer water and sewer service in certain areas, reduce the ability of developers to offer lower-priced multi-unit housing in areas that otherwise might be a good fit for it.

So, what’s the take away from all this? First, the claims about Howard County needing 5,000 more affordable housing units need to be understood in the context of the assumptions behind this number. Change the assumptions and the number will change. (For example, it would be smaller if we relax the criteria for affordability.)

Second, the penetration rate analysis used in conjunction with calculating this number itself has a major problem: it implicitly assumes that all income ranges should have a 100% penetration rate for a given type of good, and that any deviation from that figure indicates a problem. But as we saw from the example of the market for clothing, such deviations might just be the result of people’s preferences, relatively undistorted by any other factors.

However, the fundamental point remains: It is possible for markets in some goods to do a better job in serving lower-income households than they do. The market for clothing does a better job in serving lower-income households than the market for vehicles, and the market for vehicles does a better job in serving lower-income household than the market for housing.

There’s therefore a lot of opportunity to improve how the housing market works for lower-income households. Since government is to a large degree responsible for the problems in the housing market, government is equally accountable for addressing those problems.

As discussed above, this need not involve directly subsidizing lower-income households or the housing developments that serve them. There’s also ample scope for reducing the market distortions caused by government action (or, in some case, inaction) in the areas of planning and zoning, provision of essential services, school redistricting, and the like. Anyone who claims to care about housing affordability in Howard County needs to look at all the possible options on the table to make it possible for lower-income income households to lead productive lives as our fellow residents of the county.

That’s all for now. My apologies for the long delay in getting this post out. In addition to my usual work and family duties, I also now want to spend more time revising posts from this newsletter for publication on my main Civility and Truth website, plus I have other unrelated projects I want to work on. The upshot is that I will be posting here much less frequently than my already infrequent schedule. In the meantime, thank you again for your interest and attention.

UPDATE 2024/01/04: This post originally appeared on my Civility and Truth Substack newsletter. I’ve moved it to my main site in an effort to collect all of my writing in one place.

I’m back again with more population density maps, this time for Ellicott City—or, more precisely, the Ellicott City Census Designated Place or CDP.

The map above shows population density variations as of the 2010 census for the various census block groups that are wholly or mostly within the Ellicott City CDP. There are 34 such census block groups, compared to 54 census block groups for Columbia or 154 census block groups within the county, with Ellicott City thus accounting for about a fifth of Howard County. (The 2010 population of 64,245 for these census block groups is also almost a fifth of the county’s total 2010 population.)

The main take-away from the map above is that most of Ellicott City has pretty much the same population density: it has less multi-unit housing than Columbia, and fewer large lots with single-family homes than western Howard County. (The major exception is the area east of US 29 between US 40 and I-70, which contains a number of apartment complexes.)

This is confirmed by the histogram above, which shows the distribution of density among the various Ellicott City census block groups in 2010. Most of the CDP was between 1,000 to 4,000 people per square mile, with only two census block groups out of 34 having higher density. The overall population density for Ellicott City in 2010 was 2,234 people per square mile, about a third less than the overall population density for Columbia.

The next map shows changes in population density in Ellicott City between the 2010 census and the 2017 American Community Survey 5-year estimates (which reflect surveys done in 2013 through 2017). Even over this relatively short period we can see a significant decrease in density in the area between US 40 and I-70 west of Rogers Avenue (which includes a good chunk of Patapsco State Park).

There was also almost a doubling of population density in the area north of old Ellicott City and south of US 40. I don’t know if the latter is due to new development or to changes in household size. However it’s worth noting that based on the 2010 population density map compared to the map for 2013-2017 immediately above, that area was originally less densely populated than most of Ellicott City, and whatever changes occurred brought it up to a “typical” density for the area.

As I did for Columbia, I also mapped density variations at the level of census blocks. This uses population data available for the 2010 census but not for the American Community Survey.

This map is most notable for showing areas of Ellicott City that have very low population densities. These include retail areas like the Long Gate shopping center north of MD 100 and east of US 29, park areas including Patapsco Valley State Park, Meadowbrook Park, and Centennial Park, and golf courses like the one at Turf Valley.

Note that as with Columbia some areas appear on this map that were not on the prior maps. These reflect census blocks that are in the Ellicott City CDP, but that are in census block groups that are mostly not in Ellicott City. The most notable example of this is the Turf Valley resort.

There is also a set of Ellicott City census blocks west of Centennial Lane that appear to be almost disconnected from the rest of the CDP. These appear to be associated with the soccer fields and church at Covenant Park, with Centennial High School and Burleigh Manor Middle School another “low-density” area just north of there. (Recall that “low-density” in this context refers to the size of the residential population in a given area, not how built-up the area is.)

You can find the code and data behind this post, as well as more Ellicott City population statistics, in the document “Ellicott City, Maryland, population density.”

That’s all for this week. A reminder: if you find these posts interesting and useful please tell other people about them and encourage them to subscribe to the Civility and Truth mailing list. Having readers who care enough to subscribe helps motivate me to send these posts out on a regular basis, and the more readers I have the more motivated I’ll be. In the meantime, thanks for reading this post!

UPDATE 2024/01/04: This post originally appeared on my Civility and Truth Substack newsletter. I’ve moved it to my main site in an effort to collect all of my writing in one place.

Hey! I finally managed to figure out to get a list of census block groups or census blocks for the Columbia CDP. (As a reminder, “CDP” or “Census Designated Place” is US Census Bureau jargon for a population center that’s unincorporated.) So now I can bring you some density maps that zoom in to focus on just Columbia as opposed to all of Howard County.

The map above shows population density variations as of the 2010 census for the various census block groups that are wholly or mostly within the Columbia CDP. (Some census block groups contain only a small portion of the Columbia CDP. I omitted them from the map.) There are 54 such census block groups, as compared to 154 census block groups within the county. Thus from this point of view Columbia accounts for about a third of Howard County.

As I mentioned previously, census block groups are a nice “not too large, not too small” subdivision. In 2010 the least populated census block group in Columbia contained 645 people, while the most populated census block group contained 3,632 people. The smallest Columbia census block group covered an area of 0.12 square miles (about 79 acres), while the largest block group covered an area of 3.11 square miles.

A typical census block group is considerably smaller than a Columbia village: since there are nine Columbia villages, each village would contain about 6 census block groups on average if they were equally distributed.

In the map above I’ve shown more roads than in my previous maps, to help orient you vis-a-vis the various parts of Columbia. I thought about also superimposing the boundaries for the various Columbia villages (data that’s available on the Howard County GIS site), but ran out of time to make this work.

The main take-away from the map above is the areas of Columbia that are relatively high-density vs. relatively low-density. Relatively high-density areas include portions of Harpers Choice and Owen Brown villages, presumably due to apartment complexes there. In contrast the Columbia Gateway area is primarily office space and thus low-density in terms of residential population.

The histogram shows the distribution of density among the various Columbia census block groups in 2010. Density varied from a low of 761 people per square mile to a high of 13,285 people per square mile, a difference of over an order of magnitude. Overall population density for Columbia in 2010 was 3,187 people per square mile.

As a comparison, the lowest density Howard County census block group in 2010 had 151 people per square mile, and the highest density block group had 15,181 people per square mile. Overall population density for the county in 2010 was 1,144 people per square mile. Thus the least-dense Columbia census block group was over five times as dense as the lowest-density Howard County block group, and Columbia as a whole was about three times more densely populated than the county as a whole.

The next map shows changes in population density in Columbia between the 2010 census and the 2017 American Community Survey 5-year estimates (which reflect surveys done in 2013 through 2017). Even over this relatively short period we can see significant decreases in density in the area of Harpers Choice village off Harpers Farm Road in northwest Columbia, and a increase in density in the area just south of there, north of Little Patuxent Parkway and east of Cedar Lane. I don’t know if there’s been any change in the total number of housing units in those areas, so my initial guess is that these changes are due to changes in household size: older children moving out on the one hand, and more young children on the other.

For my final map I decided to map density variations at the level of census blocks. This uses population data available for the 2010 census but not for the American Community Survey.

Census blocks are very small: there are 1605 census blocks in the Columbia CDP, with an average area of 0.02 square miles (about 13 acres). In 2010 over half of the census blocks contained no people at all, and the average population of a block was only 62 people; the largest block contained 2,696 people.

Because of the small size of census blocks the corresponding population density can be very high if the block mainly contains apartment complexes. In 2010 there were several census blocks in Columbia with population densities over 50,000 people per square mile, and a few over 100,000 people per square mile. At the other end of the spectrum the majority of census blocks in Columbia contain no people and thus have a population density of zero.

Because of this wide distribution of population densities I don’t think the block-level map is that useful for looking at population densities in residential areas. However on this map it’s very easy to pick out the parts of Columbia that are devoted to office, retail, or industrial uses (in dark blue). This includes the Columbia Gateway and Dobbin Road areas on either side of Snowden River Parkway, the areas along Broken Land Parkway, the Mall at Columbia and the future Merriweather District, and the area around the hospital and Howard Community College.

UPDATE: I was able to resolve the problems that were preventing me from publishing the underlying code and data for this post. See the document “Columbia, Maryland, population density.”

That’s all for this week. A reminder: if you find these posts interesting and useful please tell other people about them and encourage them to subscribe to the Civility and Truth mailing list. Having readers who care enough to subscribe helps motivate me to send these posts out on a regular basis, and the more readers I have the more motivated I’ll be. In the meantime, thanks for reading this post!

UPDATE 2024/01/04: This post originally appeared on my Civility and Truth Substack newsletter. I’ve moved it to my main site in an effort to collect all of my writing in one place.

Should we in Howard County be encouraging more people to move here, especially people with lower incomes who hail from Baltimore city and elsewhere? Should we instead be focusing instead on the people left behind in areas with high rates of poverty, helping them where they live now? And the most basic question: Who is Howard County really for?

Recently I attended, read, and watched three things bearing on those questions: the initial meeting of the local Howard County for All advocacy group, the book The Lines Between Us: Two Families and a Quest to Cross Baltimore’s Racial Divide by local journalist Lawrence Lanahan, and an event on “Moving to opportunity: What’s next?” put on by the Brookings Institution, a DC think tank.

Howard County for All was recently founded and/or promoted by a number of local activists, including former local blogger T.J. Mayotte and Elevate Maryland co-hosts Candace Dodson Reed (who moderated the September 12 launch event) and Tom Coale. Its statement of purpose claims that “Howard County should be open to all,” that the county is “strengthened through inclusivity,” and in support of those values should “create and maintain a variety of housing options alongside a commitment to long-term affordability.”

In The Lines Between Us, Lanahan (who spoke at the Howard County for All launch event) weaves together the stories of three people: Mark Lange, who with his wife Betty was called by his Christian faith to move from their Harford County suburb to live in Baltimore’s Sandtown neighborhood; Nicole Smith, who moved herself and her young son from Baltimore City to Columbia with the help of a special housing voucher; and Barbara Samuels, a lawyer and activist who participated in the legal battles to open up affordable housing across the entire Baltimore metro area.

Finally, the Brookings event, broadcast over the Internet, featured presentations and discussions of research on the benefits to families moving from high-poverty areas to low-poverty areas, and whether and how government policies should promote this.

Since my writing tends to be data-focused I’ll spend most of my time discussing the Brookings event, and in particular the presentation on the Moving to Opportunity initiative, with occasional asides regarding the human impacts documented in Lanahan’s book and the ongoing controversies involving affordable housing and school redistricting in Howard County. Since the Brookings event, Lanahan’s book, and the Howard County for All group all are coming at these issues from a progressive/liberal point of view, I’ll also try to acknowledge conservative and libertarian perspectives as well.

As noted in the slide above (taken from the Brookings webcast, as are the other slides below), Moving to Opportunity was a Federal initiative to determine what would be the benefits (if any) of providing government assistance to help families with children move from high-poverty neighborhoods in central cities to low-poverty areas in the surrounding suburbs.

Stated this way the MTO project could be portrayed as a classic attempt at social engineering undertaken by central planners blind to social and economic realities. However, it could also be seen as an attempt to overcome the ill effects of previous social engineering by central planners with different priorities. Lawrence Lanahan devotes much space in his book to documenting government policies that had the effect of advantaging (mostly white) suburban dwellers at the expense of (mostly black) city dwellers, including radically changing the face of cities by destroying traditional neighborhoods in the name of “urban renewal.”

Some of these activities are in the past, but others are live issues today, most notably with respect to zoning. In effect zoning laws employ government coercion to restrict the freedom of property owners to make what might be more productive uses of their land. For example, a landowner might be allowed to build a large single-family home, but be prohibited from building a duplex, an accessory apartment, or a small apartment complex, even though these alternatives might be more lucrative for them and better address market demand.

In the past many Maryland counties, including Baltimore County in particular, went even further and specifically denied approvals for any attempts to build “affordable housing” projects, even when they otherwise conformed to zoning requirements. They were supported in this by politicians and homeowners who agitated against poor inner-city residents moving to the suburbs. As but one example, when 285 families from Baltimore public housing were chosen to receive special housing vouchers as part of the Moving to Opportunity initiative, opponents portrayed it as the first step in moving thousands of poor Baltimore city residents into eastern Baltimore County, displacing existing residents.

Given the role of past government policy in isolating poor people and their housing from the rest of society, it’s understandable that some government officials would look for a way to try to remedy the effects of those policies by providing lower-income families opportunities to move to more mixed-income environments. But leaving aside the political controversies, did this actually result in any benefits for such families?

The Moving to Opportunity initiative came in the wake of other small-scale experiments that suggested that there were major benefits to lower-income families moving to the suburbs. The results from the MTO initiative itself were more measured, and the initial presentation at the Brookings event was essentially a recap of why the MTO results were worse than those from prior initiatives, and what the best case results might be.

Leading with something positive, there were apparently some benefits related to the physical and mental health of those lower-income adults who moved with their families to the suburbs, including in particular lower incidences of depression and diabetes. Even though these benefits appear to be somewhat modest, they could both improve quality of life for the people involved and help lessen government health care spending on these chronic diseases.

Exactly why did the adult MTO participants have health improvements? The speaker at the Brookings event was silent on that point, but I’ll speculate that it may have been associated with reduced stress. (More on that point below.)

However, even though moving to the suburbs may have improved the health of lower-income adults, it ultimately didn’t make any real difference to their economic prospects. The graph above tells the tale: the percentage of lower-income adults employed ended up being the same no matter whether they moved to the suburbs as part of the MTO initiative (“experimental group mean”), moved elsewhere in the city through the normal Section 8 housing voucher program (“Section 8 group mean”), or stayed where they were (“control group mean”).

Even for those employed it’s not clear that moving to the suburbs led to better-paying jobs. For example, as described in The Lines Between Us, upon moving to Columbia Nicole Smith was able to complete an associate degree at Howard Community College and work as a child care provider. While she was able to support herself and her son, in the end she did the same type of work her mother did, just in a different setting.

What’s the explanation for the failure of the MTO initiative to change these life outcomes? My own personal theory goes somewhat as follows: We can view people as having both natural talents and certain personality attributes (e.g., being conscientious or extroverted) that suit them for certain types of work. These talents and these personality attributes are in turn partly inborn and partly developed through people’s unique life experiences in their early years.

For example, the child who is naturally good with their hands can develop related skills (for example, as an carpenter or auto mechanic) if given the opportunity to do so. A child who is naturally extroverted may find that they can stand out from their peers by emphasizing their ease and skill in public settings, and perhaps end up in sales or politics. And so on.

But once they have become adults people have mostly developed whatever natural talents they possess, and their personalities are pretty much fully-formed. Based on their talents and personalities there are some jobs for which they are well-suited, and some jobs in which they would likely never succeed. (For example, though I’ve worked in sales environments for most of my career I know that my personality is ill-suited for life as a salesperson.) Where one might move might affect this somewhat at the margins, but is unlikely to make a major difference.

A conservative could here point to Thomas Sowell’s “constrained vision”: that human nature puts limits on what society and especially government can accomplish in alleviating human suffering and promoting human flourishing. Of course one could also go on to point out that everyone is equal in the sight of God, and that a well-ordered society can and should provide opportunities for every person to live a life of dignity and worth within the scope of whatever talents and other attributes they possess.

For us to do otherwise, to seek to close ourselves off from those less fortunate by birth and circumstance, and to countenance their isolation out of sight and mind, would be like attending a church whose doors are open only to the conspicuously righteous. According to The Lines Between Us it was the struggle to reconcile their comfortable suburban lives with their felt duties as followers of Christ that led Mark and Betty Lange to leave the suburbs for life in Baltimore city. For those of us who choose to stay in the suburbs it may also serve as motivation to welcome those from the city who wish to move here, and to assist them in doing so.

It’s also worth noting here what the MTO results do and not mean: They imply that if a random person from a low-income neighborhood moved to a higher-income neighborhood it would make little or no difference to their employment prospects. But in real life the people who move from lower- to higher-income neighborhoods do not do so at random. Given the financial and other barriers to moving, the lower-income people who do move are those who are most motivated to make the move, and most motivated to make for themselves a successful life in their new neighborhoods.

(Incidentally, this is exactly why small-scale programs prior to MTO showed such good results, because they had a “selection bias” of this type. The random assignments in the MTO program removed the effort of this bias.)

The discussion above was with reference to lower-income adults moving to the suburbs. What about their children? Here the picture is more complicated: all things equal, those children who moved to the suburbs as part of the MTO initiative as young children had increased incomes later in life compared to those who stayed where they were, while those who moved as teenagers did not. (The differences in income shown in the graph may seem small, but the cumulative differences in lifetime earnings could be quite large.)

What could account for these different outcomes? To go back to my hypothesis above, I presume that natural talents in children can be enhanced by opportunities they have to discover what they like doing and get better at it, and that personality development and socialization in children are strongly influenced by the environment outside the home, including both their peers at school and play and the overall influence of neighborhood adults. (See for example my post on the ideas of Judith Rich Harris.)

Children who moved as youngsters would then have more opportunities to develop their inborn talents and a longer period of socialization to prevailing norms. They would be analogous to the young children of immigrants, who may have begun life speaking a different language but then learn to speak a new one fluently. On the other hand, children who moved as teenagers would already be well on the way to full development of their talents and personalities, and the new environment would likely have less effect on them. They would be like immigrants who arrive as older teenagers or young adults, who may learn a new language but still speak with an accent.

The speaker at the Brookings event then went on, as speakers at such events typically do, to discuss implications for policy, in this case various options for improving the effectiveness of programs that encourage lower-income families to move to higher-income neighborhoods. The most obvious of these is to focus on families with young children, for reasons discussed above. The others you can read on the slide, but I’ll recap them briefly: provide additional counseling, allow for higher rents, and work with tenants, landlords, and housing authorities to improve the experiences of these families and make it more beneficial to rent to them.

(You can find more information about these recommendations in the article “Neighborhoods matter for opportunity: Time for more place-conscious policy” on the Brookings web site, the “Collinson and Ludwig, forthcoming” article referenced on the slide.)

Of course, this assumes that moving families is the best way to approach this problem. The alternative approach, again as outlined by the speaker, is to try to improve high-poverty neighborhoods directly. Here the key insight was that families participating in the MTO experiment wanted to move in large part because they felt unsafe living where they were, and wanted to escape those neighborhoods for those in which they could be more secure.

This harks back to my discussion in an earlier post about the importance of reducing crime in the context of promoting racial equality, and to do so in a way that (as I wrote later) “both protects and respects” the people living in these neighborhoods.

Let’s bring this back to Howard County. The county has replicated in miniature the income and housing patterns of the larger Baltimore metro area, with a relatively low-income high-density core almost encircled by relatively high-income low-density areas. Here Columbia plays the role of Baltimore city and western Howard the role of Baltimore County and other suburban jurisdictions. What, if anything, should we try to do about the resulting patterns of segregation?

This question is at the heart of the ongoing controversies in Howard County over development, affordable housing, and school redistricting. I can’t offer a definitive answer to the question, but I see at least three possible paths for the county:

The first is simply to maintain the status quo: Let existing patterns of segregation remain roughly the same, but at the same time make some moves toward maintaining affordability of housing in select areas of the county, typically in and around Columbia.

The second takes us down a path similar to that traveled by Silicon Valley and other high-tech meccas we often wish to emulate: In this scenario the problem of school overcrowding would be addressed by limiting development as much as possible (with possible exceptions for senior living projects). With development brought to a near halt, prices for existing housing would soar as demand for Howard County’s “good schools” and quality of life remained high.

Political pressure would then rise for existing homeowners to be protected against tax increases, and for the burden of paying for new schools and other new county services to be put on new residents as much as possible. The result would be to price out low-income or even moderate-income families. The adults in such families would still be needed to fill a wide range of jobs in Howard County, but they would have to commute in from other places and then leave the county at the end of the day.

The third scenario would see more aggressive efforts to reduce residential segregation and make Howard County more affordable to anyone wishing to live here. This might include school redistricting along the lines of the proposed plan, an expanded program of school construction to get ahead of demand for housing, and placing affordable housing projects in areas outside of Columbia. It might also include encouraging more development in selected areas in west Howard, for example along commuter routes like I-70 and MD 32, and extending county services into those areas as necessary to support higher-density housing.

Which path we take depends on the values we each think are most important, and the political power we can bring to bear in coalition with others. My own inclination is for us to pursue the path of making Howard County a county that as much as possible is open to all who aspire to live here, not one populated by a monoculture of highly-educated high earners singularly obsessed with home values and test scores. That reflects the values I hold, and is why I support the efforts of groups like Howard County for All.

As always, if you find these posts interesting and useful please tell other people about them and encourage them to subscribe to the Civility and Truth mailing list. Having readers who care enough to subscribe helps motivate me to send these posts out on a regular basis, and the more readers I have the more motivated I’ll be. In the meantime, thanks for reading this post!

UPDATE 2024/01/04: This post originally appeared on my Civility and Truth Substack newsletter. I’ve moved it to my main site in an effort to collect all of my writing in one place.

This is a brief follow-up to last week’s post. I had hoped to be able to take a closer look at density variations in Columbia and Ellicott City. However I haven’t yet found a good way (at least via the Census API) to get a list of census block groups or census blocks for the Columbia and Ellicott City CDPs. (“CDP” or “Census Designated Place” is US Census Bureau jargon for a population center that’s unincorporated.)

I also happened to think about whether the census block group boundaries had changed from 2010 to 2017. After looking at this I concluded that they probably had not, but this took a while to nail down.

The one new thing I did was to produce a map of density variations based on the quintiles the various census block groups fell into. In other words, in the map above the census block groups in dark blue (quintile 1) are the 20% of all census block groups with the lowest population density in 2010, while the census block groups in yellow (quintile 5) are the 20% of all census block groups with the highest population density in 2010. The other areas in light blue, green, and orange (quintiles 2, 3, and 4 respectively) are intermediate between those two groups.

I think this map does a slightly better job of letting you tell at a glance which are the most dense and least dense parts of the county, as well as which areas are roughly in the middle in terms of density.

Here’s a similar map using the 2017 ACS 5-year estimates, which cover the 2013-2017 timeframe. At first glance I can’t see any differences between this map and the prior map. This means that even though some areas of the county may have experienced changes in population density between 2010 and 2013-2017, the changes weren’t large enough to make any real difference in the overall density picture.

I’m going to try again to do density maps for Columbia and Ellicott City. In the meantime, see the revised version of “Howard County density trends by census block groups” for the code behind the maps above.

That’s all for this week. A reminder: if you find these posts interesting and useful please tell other people about them and encourage them to subscribe to the Civility and Truth mailing list. Having readers who care enough to subscribe helps motivate me to send these posts out on a regular basis, and the more readers I have the more motivated I’ll be. In the meantime, thanks for reading this post!

tl;dr: Some areas of Howard County are over a hundred times more densely populated than others.

A long-time theme in writings about Howard County is the distinction between the more densely populated suburban and semi-urban areas like Columbia and the less densely populated rural areas in the western part of the county. This has implications for issues from political affiliations to school redistricting, and of course for affordable housing as well.

In this post I’m going to ignore those issues though, and just look at the simple facts about density variation across the county. The map above shows density variations as of the 2010 census—a data source I chose because it contains accurate population counts at a fairly fine-grained level.¹ The map shows population densities (people per square mile) for each of the census block groups within the county.

A census block group is a geography defined by the US Census Bureau that is one level below a census tract. There are currently 154 census block groups in Howard County, compared to 55 census tracts. The smallest geography in US Census data is the census block, one level below the census block group. There are currently 4,845 census blocks defined for Howard County.

Census tracts are relatively large, about 6,000 people or so on average in Howard County. On the other hand, census blocks are too small: more than half of all census blocks in Howard County contained no people at all in the 2010 census.

Census block groups are a nice “not too large, not too small” subdivision of the county’s overall area. In 2010 the least populated census block group contained 645 people, while the most populated census block group contained 3,632 people. The smallest block group covered an area of 0.1 square miles (about 64 acres), while the largest block group covered an area of 13.4 square miles.

A typical census block group is thus comparable in both size and population to a traditional village or small town. It is large enough to be a recognizable “place,” but small enough to have its own identity distinct from that of other places in the county.

What about density? One of the most surprising things to me in doing this analysis was the wide variation in population density across the county. Population density in 2010 varied from a low of 151 people per square mile to a high of 15,181 people per square mile, a difference of two orders of magnitude. In comparison, overall population density for the county in 2010 was 1,144 people per square mile (287,085 people divided by the county land area of 251 square miles).

The map above is a variation on the first map. It is based on the same 2010 census data, but divides the census block groups into five groups (or “quintiles”) of 31 block groups each (or 30, for the highest quintile). This map shows much more clearly that almost all of the census block groups with the highest population density are in Columbia and eastern Howard County, and almost all of the census block groups with the lowest population density are in western Howard County.

(Some of the major exceptions are areas like Columbia Gateway and the light industrial districts east of I-95 that have little or no residential construction. Here “low population density” is not the same as “not built up.”)

As shown in the above histogram, and also in the first map above, there are many census block groups in Howard County that had a population density of less than 500 people per square mile in 2010. At the other end of the spectrum a few census block groups had population densities of well over 10,000 people per square mile.

The largest number of census block groups fell into the range of 2,000–2,500 people per square mile; the typical (median) block group had a population density of about 2,400 people per square mile. (This is different from the overall population density of Howard County of 1,441 people per square mile quoted above.)

To help think about what these numbers mean, consider a square mile, about 640 acres. Suppose we have a few neighborhoods of single-family houses on 3- to 4-acre lots, with three or four people per house. With 50–100 total houses we have a total of 150–400 acres and 150–400 people. Throw in two or three 100–150 acre farms plus road surfaces and open spaces and you’d have a typical Howard County rural census block group with a population density of 200–500 people per square mile.

Now suppose instead we have 0.1 square miles, about 64 acres, occupied by five or six apartment buildings with 50–100 units each, with two to three people per unit. Now we have 500–1,800 people total in that 0.1 square mile area, for a total of 5,000 to 18,000 people per square mile—in other words, a typical semi-urban setting in Columbia or eastern Howard County.

How is population density in the various parts of Howard County changing over time? It’s hard to get a good picture of this in between censuses, because the available population estimates are from surveys taken over multiple years (from 2013 through 2017 for the latest available data) and have fairly high margins of error at the level of census block groups (up to 30% or more above or below the estimates themselves).

The map above is an attempt to show density changes from the 2010 census forward, using the American Community Survey 2017 5-year estimates. As with population density itself, there is wide variation in population density changes.

A few areas stand out as having significant increases in population density, from 50 to 100%. These appear to be include the Maple Lawn Farms development in Fulton as well as adjacent neighborhoods south of MD 216, areas along US 1 south and north of MD 175, and areas near downtown Ellicott City.

Other areas apparently experienced decreases in population density. Assuming that the number of housing units did not decrease in those areas, this likely was caused by the number of people per household decreasing, for example due to children leaving families and “empty nesters” remaining. (Additional census data, for example on household size and the ages of household members, should be able to confirm or refute this idea.)

To sum up: we may argue about how the density divide in Howard County came about and what it all means, but I don’t think there’s any dispute that it exists. It is especially clear in western Columbia, where the drop off in density west and north of MD 108 and (to a lesser extent) south of MD 32 is particularly dramatic. It’s also apparent that new development and demographic changes in family size are having disparate impacts across the county.

Combining this density data with information on socioeconomic and political variables could uncover some interesting patterns. Hopefully I’ll have time in the future to look at this.

Further exploration

For more on how I created the maps and histogram above, see the following:

• “Howard County density trends by census block groups” shows the R code used to produce these and other graphs.
• My hocodata code repository includes copies of the R Markdown files for this and another analyses. (Look in the “affordability” subdirectory.)
• If you sign up for a free account on the Rstudio.cloud service you can open and make a copy of my hocodata project for this and other analyses, and try your hand at it yourself. (Again, look in the “affordability” subdirectory, and check out the RStudio primers to learn how to use the system.)

I also did two other articles focusing specifically on population density in Columbia and Ellicott City for my (now deprecated) Civility and Truth newsletter.

UPDATE 2024/01/04: This post originally appeared on my Civility and Truth Substack newsletter. I’ve moved it to my main site in an effort to collect all of my writing in one place.

I’m back this week with some more data analysis and maps, this time regarding the relative cost of housing in Howard County for both renters and homeowners. But before we get to the maps, a brief aside on some ways in which the impact of housing costs can be measured:

The first way is to look at the median percentage of household income taken up by housing costs. That is, for each household, first compute the percentage of its income taken up by housing costs. Then compute the median of all such values, such that half of all households spend more than that percentage and half less.

An alternative measure of housing costs is the percentage of households whose housing costs exceed a certain amount, typically taken to be 30% of household income. Such households are said to be “housing cost burdened.” (Households spending more than 50% of their income on housing are often referred to as “severely burdened.”)

Finally, others have suggested looking at residual income, that is, how much income households have left over after paying for housing.

For this analysis I use the median percentage of housing costs relative to income, mainly because these estimates are directly available at the census tract level in the American Community Survey 5-year estimates. (I may do an analysis based on housing cost burden in my next post, and am looking further at how one might do at least a simple form of residual income analysis.)

Anyway, back to the map above: It shows for each census tract in Howard County the median percentage of household income spent on “gross rent”—rent plus utilities and fuel—in the 2013–2017 timeframe. (There are lots of gray areas on this map and one of the maps below because for some census tracts there were too few renters or homeowners to calculate an estimate, or the estimates were too unreliable.)

It looks if there are a number of places in Howard County where people spend fairly high percentages of their household income on rent and related expenses. Most of these appear to be in Columbia and eastern Howard County, but there’s also an area in western Howard County where the typical renter looks to be housing cost burdened.

The histogram above shows a different view of the same data. It shows the number of Howard County census tracts falling into different categories: median percentage of rent relative to income between 15% and 20%, between 20% and 25%, and so on. (Again I’ve omitted census tracts with no estimates or unreliable estimates.) The dashed vertical line shows the median percentage of rent to income for all of Howard County (28%), and the solid vertical line shows the 30% figure above which a household is considered to be housing cost burdened.

As noted above, there are a lot of census tracts in Howard County where the median household spends more that 30% of household income on rent and related expanses.

The next map has the same color scale, but shows the median selected costs of housing as a percentage of household income for homeowners who have a mortgage. (“Selected costs of housing” includes not only the mortgage payments but also utilities, insurances, taxes, and condo fees—which would appear to include Columbia Association annual charges.)

Based on this map it appears that typical homeowners in Howard County with mortgages generally spend relatively less on housing than renters.

The histogram above confirms this initial impression: In all Howard County tracts with valid estimates median homeowners with mortgages pay less than 30% of household income in housing costs. The median percentage of housing costs to income for the county as a whole was 22% for homeowners with mortgages in the 2013-2017 timeframe, significantly lower than the 28% figure for renters.

The data as presented don’t really explain this difference: it could be due to relatively higher rents and related expenses for renters, or relatively lower household incomes for renters, or both. (And relatively lower household incomes in turn could be due to lower incomes in general, or fewer numbers of workers per household.) This is a possible subject for future posts.

The final map shows the median selected costs of housing as a percentage of household income for homeowners who do not have a mortgage. These households presumably consist of older people who’ve paid off their mortgages, people wealthy enough to pay cash for their homes, or people who’ve inherited homes from their parents. There are relatively few of these people, so most census tracts do not have reliable estimates for their housing costs.

These households appear to be in even better shape than homeowners with mortgages: their median percentage of income spent on housing is fairly low across the entire county.

The final histogram confirms this: In almost all census tracts the median percentage of household income spent on housing by homeowners without mortgages is less than 15%. The median percentage for the county overall is 10%.

So, what does this all mean?

People in all three categories receive government subsidies of one sort or another: renter can be eligible for housing choice vouchers (also known as Section 8 vouchers), homeowners can deduct mortgage interest and real estate taxes (although real estate taxes are no longer deductible on Federal tax returns), and older homeowners can get additional help with housing costs (for example, the Howard County senior tax credit) even if they don’t have a mortgage.

After taking all those subsidies into account, it appears that relatively speaking renters are worse off in Howard County than homeowners. One way to address this imbalance would be to provide further subsidies to renters, whether at the county, state, or national level. Another way would to increase the stock of affordable rental housing, whether through a specific focus on building below-market-rate units, or by building more apartments and other rentable housing in general.

How best to provide affordable housing is a topic of great debate in Howard County and elsewhere. I don’t have a definitive opinion on this matter yet, so I’ll sign off this week with the promise that I’ll try to look at this issue in more detail later when I have time to do more research. For now you can check out the code and data behind this post in the article “Howard County, Maryland, relative housing costs by census tract.”

As always, if you find these posts interesting and useful please tell other people about them and encourage them to subscribe to the Civility and Truth mailing list. Having readers who care enough to subscribe helps motivate me to send these posts out on a regular basis, and the more readers I have the more motivated I’ll be. In the meantime, thanks for reading this post!

UPDATE 2024/01/04: This post originally appeared on my Civility and Truth Substack newsletter. I’ve moved it to my main site in an effort to collect all of my writing in one place.

This is a follow-up to my post about home value declines across Maryland, and a companion to my post about median household income within Howard County. For reasons discussed in that post, this analysis covers only the period from 2010 forward, and in particular compares median home values in the 2006-2010 time frame with median home values in the 2013-2017 time frame.

As with median household income, the margins of error for median home value estimates at the census tract level are high, up to 10% or more above and below the estimates themselves. So again I decided to divide the 55 Howard County census tracts into 5 quintiles of 11 tracts each, with quintile 1 containing the 11 census tracts with the lowest median home values, quintile 5 containing the 11 census tracts with the highest median home values, and the other quintiles in between.

The result is the map above, showing which census tracts are in which quintiles according to the 2010 American Community Survey 5-year estimates of median home values. The areas with high and low median home values should not surprise anyone familiar with Howard County real estate: with one exception the census tracts with the highest home values are west of US 29, and the tracts with the lowest median home values are east of US 29 or in Columbia.

How did this situation change over time? In the graph above I show how the average (inflation-adjusted) median home value for each 2010 quintile changed from 2006–2010 to 2013–2017.

(A reminder here: I write “2010 quintiles” because the census tracts are grouped according to their rank in 2010. If a tract was assigned to, say, quintile 2, in 2010 then it will still be considered in quintile 2 when comparing 2013-2017 to 2006-2010. Also, as noted in the last post averaging median values is not strictly speaking correct, but is the best that can be done in the circumstances.)

From the graph above we see that all quintiles experienced a decline in average inflation-adjusted median home values over the time frame in question. The quintile with the largest decline in percentage terms was quintile 1, for which average inflation-adjusted median home values dropped 19% from 2006–2010 to 2013–2017. The quintile with the smallest decline in percentage terms was quintile 3, with a 13% drop.

This map is an alternate approach to showing the changes in median home value between the 2006-2010 and 2013-2017 time frames. It shows the percentage declines in median home value for each census tract in Howard County. No census tract had an increase in median home value between the two time frames, and only a couple of census tracts experienced small declines. At the other end of the spectrum a few tracts experienced declines of between 30–40% in median home value.

The final map shows the distribution of census tracts among median home value quintiles based on the 2017 ACS 5-year estimates. (In other words, I recalculated which tracts were in the top 20%, etc., based on the newer figures.) The overall picture is similar to that for the 2010 map (high median home values west of US 29, low median home values east of US 29), but some tracts have moved up to a higher quintile or down to a lower quintile. This may be due to how home values fared in those tracts, or simply to random errors in the estimates. (Recall my note above about relatively high margins of error for tract-level estimates.)

For the code and data used to produce the graphs above, see “Howard County median home value trends by census tracts.”

That’s all for this week. A reminder: if you find these posts interesting and useful please tell other people about them and encourage them to subscribe to the Civility and Truth mailing list. Having readers who care enough to subscribe helps motivate me to send these posts out on a regular basis, and the more readers I have the more motivated I’ll be. In the meantime, thanks for reading this post!

tl;dr: I look at median household income within Howard County, Maryland, and how it has changed.

I’m continuing my look at median household income, in pursuit of my ultimate goal of learning more about the issues around housing affordability in Howard County.

After my previous post about Howard County median household income compared to other local jurisdictions, I now turn my attention to looking at median household income within the different parts of Howard County. Unfortunately data at the census tract level (the next level below county level as far as the US Census Bureau is concerned) doesn’t go back very far, and has some issues that make analysis more difficult.

First, median household income estimates for census tracts are not available before 2009, at least for Howard County. Second, the boundaries for Howard County census tracts changed from 2009 to 2010 (presumably as part of the work on the 2010 census). (Fortunately, the census tract boundaries have been stable since then.)

Also, figures for median household income for census tracts are available only in the American Community Survey 5-year estimates. There are no 1-year estimates available as there are for counties and cities. This means that the 2010 median household income estimates published for Howard County census tracts actually reflect income surveys in the years 2006–2010, the 2011 estimates reflect surveys in the years 2007–2011, and so on. For this reason the US Census Bureau recommends not comparing 5-year estimates from overlapping sets of years, for example comparing 2011 5-year estimates to 2010 5-year estimates.

I’ve therefore chosen to compare only the 2010 and 2017 5-year estimates, in order to get both the earliest and latest comparable data.

Next, the margins of error for median household income at the census tract level are very high, typically 10–20% or even higher relative to the base income figures. That means that ranking individual census tracts based on their median household income doesn’t really make sense, given that the relative positions of tracts on the list will in large part reflect random measurement errors.

Finally, there are 55 census tracts in Howard County, one for every 6,000 people on average. (The 2018 ACS population estimate for Howard County is about 323,000 people.) Graphing information on individual census tracts makes for a cluttered graph, unless you either plot data on a map or group census tracts together in some way.

In the map above I did both: I took the 55 census tracts and divided them into 5 groups or “quintiles” of 11 census tracts each, based on their median household income 5-year estimates for 2010. Quintile 1 contains the 11 census tracts with the lowest median household incomes and quintile 5 contains the 11 census tracts with the highest median household incomes, with the other quintiles containing tracts with income values intermediate between the lowest and highest.

I then plotted the census tracts on a map of Howard County, with each tract colored according to the quintile it’s in.¹ The results are as one might expect: the census tracts with the lowest median household incomes tend to be in eastern Howard County and/or in Columbia, while the tracts with higher median household incomes tend to be in western Howard County.

How did the median household income for the various census tracts in Howard County change from 2010 to 2017—or, more correctly, from the 2006–2010 timeframe to the 2013–2017 timeframe?

The graph above shows one way to look at this: I took the income quintiles from above, computed the averages of the inflation-adjusted median household incomes for the census tracts in each quintile, and graphed the results for 2017 compared to 2010. Thus, for example, for the census tracts in quintile 1 (the lowest-income quintile) I computed the average from the 2010 5-year estimates of inflation-adjusted median household income for all of those 11 census tracts. I computed similar averages for the other quintiles, and then repeated the process using the 2017 5-year estimates.

As a side note, averaging the median incomes in this way is not strictly speaking correct. The correct method would be to aggregate all the individual household incomes for all the tracts in a quintile, and then compute a median household income for the quintile overall. However this is not possible because the US Census Bureau does not release data for individual households within a census tract. Averaging the median household incomes for the tracts is the next-best thing.

There’s another subtlety here as well: Many graphs showing changes between income quintiles over time actually reflect different sets of people, households, or geographies between the different timeframes. For example, if in the graph the 2010 figures were to reflect the quintiles as they exist in 2010, and the 2017 figures were to reflect the quintiles as they exist in 2017, then we would not necessarily be comparing like to like. That’s because a given census tract may have moved from one quintile to another over time.

To avoid this problem I had the 2017 values in the graph reflect the income values for the same sets of quintiles as for the 2010 values: if a census tract were in, say, quintile 3 in 2010 then it was counted as part of the same set of tracts for 2017.

Take-aways from this graph (and the underlying data, not shown here) are as follows:

• The Howard County census tracts in the lowest quintile in 2010 (i.e., those with the lowest median household income) had a substantial increase in average (real) median household income between the 2006–2010 and 2013–2017 time frames, amounting to about a $7,000 increase in real terms or a 9% increase in percentage. This was actually the largest increase of any of the quintiles in both absolute and percentage terms.
• On the other hand, the census tracts in the next-to-lowest quintile in 2010 (quintile 2, just above quintile 1) experienced the largest decline in average (real) median household income between the two time frames in both absolute and percentage terms, about $6,000 or 5%.
• The census tracts in the highest quintile in 2010 (quintile 5, the 20% of census tracts with the highest median household income) had a slight decrease in average (real) median household income between the two time frames, about $5,000 or 3%.
• Finally, the census tracts in the other higher-income quintiles (quintiles 3 and 4) had slight decreases in average (real) median household income.

The first item above is somewhat counterintuitive: does it mean that relatively less affluent people in Howard County actually did better income-wise between 2006–2010 and 2013–2017 than more affluent people? That’s one possible interpretation, but not the only one, and I suspect not the most likely one.

Remember that even though the census tracts may not have changed between the 2010 and 2017 5-year estimates graphed above, the people living within those census tracts did not necessarily remain the same. In particular, it’s possible that many people living in the least affluent census tracts experienced a decline in household income so severe that they could no longer afford to live in Howard County.

Under this hypothetical scenario the people who left would presumably then be replaced by people with slighter higher incomes who could afford to live in Howard County. As a result of this turnover the median household income of these least affluent census tracts would then increase, because the least affluent residents of those tracts would have moved to other counties.

This hypothetical scenario would also explain the difference between the experiences of the quintile 1 census tracts vs. the quintile 2 census tracts: Unlike those in quintile 1, the people in the quintile 2 tracts were presumably not “on the bubble” in terms of their being able to afford to live in Howard County. They may have suffered declines in household income between the two time frames, but those declines were not so large as to force them to leave the county.

This next map shows changes in median household income between the 2010 and 2015 5-year estimates for each census tract, expressed in percentage terms. Again the calculated changes are based on median household incomes in constant 2017 dollars, so they reflect real changes rather than changes due to inflation.

Harking back to the discussion above, note that two of the census tracts with increases in median household income were those in Elkridge east of I-95 and north of MD 100. These were in quintile 1 (lowest 20% of all tracts by income) in 2010. On the other hand, the census tract east of I-95 between MD 32 and MD 175, which was in quintile 2 in 2010, experienced one of the largest declines in median household income.

This final map, like the first map above, shows Howard County census tracts in the different income quintiles, this time based on the 2017 ACS 5-year estimates for median household income instead of the 2010 estimates.

Note that of the three census tracts discussed above, the first two moved up from quintile 1 (as measured by the 2010 estimates) to quintile 2 (as measured according to the 2017 estimate), while the third moved down from quintile 2 to quintile 1.

I’m done with looking at median household income, at least for now. In my next post I’ll turn my attention to median home values.

Further exploration

For more on how I created the graphs above, see the following:

• “Howard County median household income trends by census tracts” shows the R code used to produce these and other graphs.
• My hocodata code repository includes copies of the R Markdown files for this and another analyses. (Look in the “affordability” subdirectory.)
• If you sign up for a free account on the Rstudio.cloud service you can open and make a copy of my hocodata project for this and other analyses, and try your hand at it yourself. (Again, look in the “affordability” subdirectory, and check out the RStudio primers to learn how to use the system.)

UPDATE 2024/01/04: This post originally appeared on my Civility and Truth Substack newsletter. I’ve moved it to my main site in an effort to collect all of my writing in one place.

After looking at the median household income of Howard County relative to other local jurisdictions, I now look at median home values. As I noted previously, the earliest county-level data I can find dates from 2005 and the beginning of the American Community Survey.

The graph above shows Howard County median home values over time compared to a select set of other jurisdictions. (I chose the same jurisdictions as in my previous analysis of median household income, for the same reasons.)

All values are in current dollars as of the year of the survey. Thus, for example, the values for 2005 are expressed in 2005 dollars, the values for 2006 are in 2006 dollars, and so on. (I did not use inflation-adjusted values because housing costs are themselves a major component of the Consumer Price Index. Multiplying by a CPI deflator would therefore understate any actual rises in home values.)

Here’s some immediate takeaways from the graph above:

• Unlike other counties (not to mention the US as a whole), Howard County home values have not yet fully recovered from the Great Recession, and have been essentially stagnant since 2014. The same is true for Montgomery County and Baltimore city, as well as possibly for Anne Arundel County.
• In contrast, home values in Virginia counties are rising, and in the case of Fairfax County have fully recovered (at least in nominal terms).
• The District of Columbia has experienced a major rise in home values, over 50% since the start of the time period covered in the graph.
• Stafford County, Virginia, has significantly lower home values than Howard County, but a median household income that is essentially equivalent to that of Howard County. (See my previous article.)

This second graph shows the ranking of Howard County over the years versus the most affluent local jurisdictions. (Note that these rankings do not reflect home values in counties or county-equivalents with populations less than 65,000. These jurisdictions are too small to be included in the American Community Survey 1-year estimates.)

The story is similar to that from the previous graph:

• Howard County has gone from being in the top 25 counties (or county-equivalents) based on median home value to barely being in the top 50. (Its actual rank for 2017 was at number 45.)
• As it did in the median household income rankings, the District of Columbia has come from being out of the top 50 to being in the top 20 in terms of median home value. (Its actual rank for 2017 was at number 16.)

This is consistent with the narrative of major “showcase” cities (DC, New York, San Francisco, etc.) experiencing economic success and an accompanying rise in home prices, while other cities (like Baltimore city) and some suburban areas (like Howard County) languish.

I’ll continue looking at median home values, but may post about something else next week for a change of pace. As always, if you find these posts interesting and useful please tell other people about them (feel free to forward them these emails if you’d like) and encourage them to subscribe to the Civility and Truth mailing list themselves. In the meantime, thanks for being a subscriber and reading this post!

UPDATE: I’ve corrected my comments about ranking of counties to make it clear that the rankings reflect only counties and county-equivalents with populations over 65,000.

tl;dr: Looking at median household income in Howard County, Maryland, over time compared to other local jurisdictions.

I’m continuing my look at median household income, in pursuit of my ultimate goal of learning more about the issues around housing affordability in Howard County.

After my previous post about Maryland median household income I now turn my attention to looking at Howard County specifically. Unfortunately US Census Bureau data on median household income at the county level does not go back nearly as far as state-level data. The earliest county-level data I can find dates from 2005 and the beginning of the American Community Survey.

The graph above shows all the data I could find on Howard County median household income, compared to a select set of other jurisdictions. All values are in 2017 dollars. The gains and losses thus represent gains and losses in real terms after adjusting for inflation.

I chose the other jurisdictions as follows:

• Howard County has traditionally been compared with Loudoun County, Virginia, as the most affluent counties in Maryland and Virginia respectively. For this graph I also added Stafford County, Virginia, a rapidly growing county that straddles I-95 south of D.C. just as Howard County straddles I-95 north of D.C.

• I paired Montgomery County and Fairfax County, the largest and most affluent of the close-in suburban jurisdictions.

• I paired D.C. and Baltimore city as the respective urban jurisdictions of the Washington-Baltimore metro area.

• Finally, I added Anne Arundel County as one of Howard County’s most affluent neighbors in Maryland.

(I would have also added Baltimore County and perhaps Frederick County, but I ran out of colors and didn’t want to make the graph more cluttered than it already is.)

Here are some immediate takeaways from the graph above:

• Howard County experienced a significant drop in median household income from 2016 to 2017.

• Northern Virginia continues to outpace central Maryland when it comes to median household income, with Loudoun County still way out in front, Fairfax County continuing to lead Montgomery County, and Stafford County having caught up to Howard County.

• Similarly the District of Columbia is widening the income gap between itself and Baltimore city, and narrowing the gap between itself and its suburbs.

As to why these trends are occurring, I haven’t done enough research to have a solid opinion. However I will note that median household income for the Northern Virginia suburbs is increasing even as median household income for Virginia as a whole is stagnant or decreasing. This is presumably due to the rest of Virginia suffering economic problems to which Northern Virginia is immune.

This graph repeats the previous graph in comparing Howard County to other jurisdictions, except that here the measure is median household income for Howard County, etc., relative to US median household income. My takeaways here are as follows:

• Loudoun County has separated itself from the pack in the last ten years, with a median household income now 225% or more of US median household income.

• D.C. continues its growth in median household income, and is now above 130% of US median household income. Given that Baltimore city median household income is stagnant at about 75-80% of US median household income, the next few years could see D.C. have almost double the median household income of Baltimore city.

• Howard County and the other jurisdictions are trending steadily at 150-200% of US median household income.

The final graph shows the ranking of Howard County over the years versus the most affluent local jurisdictions. The story is similar to that from the graphs above.

UPDATE: While the relative rankings below are correct, the absolute rank numbers do not account for any affluent counties or county-equivalents with populations under 65,000. That’s because they are based on the American Community Survey 1-year estimates, and such estimates are not done for smaller counties.

• Loudoun County has maintained its position for the last ten years as the most affluent US county as measured by median household income, with Fairfax County also consistently in the top ten. They have now been joined by Stafford County, although the margins of error for Stafford County estimates are so large that it’s likely a matter of sheer randomness whether Stafford County is in the top ten or just outside it.

• Howard County has dropped out of the top five and the top ten, and Montgomery County has dropped out of the top ten. (Again, due to margins of error Howard County is probably in reality roughly tied with Stafford County.) Anne Arundel County was never in the top ten counties by income, and now sits at #30.

Looking at the rankings for other jurisdictions, Virginia has four jurisdictions in the top ten (with Arlington County joining Loudoun, Fairfax, and Stafford), with the remaining top ten counties in California and New Jersey (with three each). Looking beyond the top ten, ranks #11-30 include two more Virginia jurisdictions (Prince William County and Alexandria city) and five Maryland counties (with Calvert and Charles counties joining Howard, Montgomery, and Anne Arundel).

Caveats aside, overall this reinforces the story of northern Virginia’s economic success and suburban Maryland’s relative economic decline.

In my next post I’ll turn my attention to median household income within Howard County itself, looking at Census data by census tract.

Further exploration

For more on how I created the graphs above, see the following:

• “Median household income trends for Howard County, Maryland” shows the R code used to produce these and other graphs.
• My hocodata code repository includes copies of the raw data files and R Markdown files for this and another analyses. (Look in the “affordability” subdirectory.)
• If you sign up for a free account on the Rstudio.cloud service you can open and make a copy of my hocodata project for this and other analyses, and try your hand at it yourself. (Again, look in the “affordability” subdirectory, and check out the RStudio primers to learn how to use the system.)

tl;dr: Everyone can now work with data and visualize it. Should you?

NOTE: This article was originally published in my Civility and Truth Substack newsletter. I have republished it here without changes.

I haven’t had time yet to look at the detailed median household income data for Howard County (for which I’m going to try to do some maps of income by census tract), so that will have to wait for a future post. In the meantime I wanted to talk a bit about how I do these visualizations, how you can do them too if you have the time and interest, and what I’ve learned in the process.

Easy data analysis and visualization for free

Once upon a time anyone wanting to do serious statistical analysis and graphic visualization of data needed to purchase a license for proprietary software products like SAS or SPSS that cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars per user. The traditional alternative for most users was Microsoft Excel, which included at least a basic set of statistical functions and graphing operations. However it was still not exactly cheap, especially for home users, and given its origin in accounting spreadsheets it was not really that suitable for advanced statistical and data visualization work.

R and the tidyverse

What has changed from then until now? First, noncommercial alternatives arose to SAS, SPSS, and similar products, most notably the R statistical programming language and its associated runtime environment. Unlike SAS and SPSS, R was developed through an open collaborative process in which anyone could participate, and the resulting software was distributed in both binary and source form at no charge. R relatively quickly gained many users, and today it is pretty much the most popular language (along with Python) for so-called “data science” projects.

Unfortunately as a programming environment R is relatively difficult to use, especially for people coming to it as a first language. The second advance was to simplify the use of R by dictating a particular way of programming in it. This was accomplished by the statistician Hadley Wickham and his colleagues, who developed a set of R extensions or “packages” known colloquially as the “Hadleyverse” and now renamed as the “tidyverse.”

The tidyverse packages implement a simplified philosophy for working with data, basically treating all data as sets of tables whose rows and columns can be manipulated in various ways, with the output of each manipulation producing a new table used as input to the next manipulation. The tidyverse packages also include an accompanying set of functions (“ggplot” and others) to graph data in various ways, again adhering to a particular philosophy of how to transform data into visuals.

Data analysis and visualization as a service

So-called “free and open source” software products like R and the tidyverse packages are a godsend for people like me who can’t or don’t want to pay for expensive proprietary software. But to paraphrase a former colleague of mine, free software is only free if your time has no value: the time and effort spent downloading, installing, and configuring software can be daunting, especially for a casual user who just wants to do a basic data plot. This is especially true if you want to do more advanced things, like displaying data on maps.

To address this issue Hadley Wickham and his colleagues founded a startup, RStudio, to lower the barriers to widespread use of R and the tidyverse packages. Their first product, also called RStudio, provides a web-based interactive development environment (IDE) to simplify creating R-based data analyses. In its RStudio Server version it allows an organization to stand up a central web site to which users can connect and use R, the tidyverse packages, and other R-based capabilities without having to install software on their own PCs.

However, RStudio Server removed a burden from end users only to place it on the people charged with standing up the server system with all its necessary software. That was fine for larger organizations, but a problem for small businesses, not to mention individual users.

To address that issue RStudio is now developing a new service, RStudio.cloud, currently being made available for testing by the public. With RStudio.cloud all you need is a browser: the R and RStudio software is already pre-installed for you, with additional packages easily installable on the service if and when you need them. RStudio.cloud also includes a full set of interactive tutorials (see the graphic above), so that anyone who’s familiar with (say) working with Excel spreadsheets, formulas, and macros can learn to do basic data analyses and visualizations.

(If you want to try RStudio.cloud yourself, you can sign up for a free account. and work through some of the interactive tutorials. If you want to explore a non-trivial project, I’ve shared a version of my “hocodata” project on RStudio.cloud for others to access.)

Public data for public use

Of course, it’s not enough to know how to do data analyses and visualizations. You also need some actual data to work with. Here, as in other areas, government (local, state, and Federal) has come to the rescue—though not always, and not always completely.

Government’s “data exhaust”

Governments by their nature generate a lot of data about the jurisdictions over which they hold sway. The most notable (and ancient) example of this is the census, which has gone from being a simple count of people to collecting all sorts of relevant demographic, economic, and other data about populations.

Governments also collect a lot of other data in the course of their operations, for example about crimes both serious and petty, building permits and zoning decisions, the locations of fire hydrants and streetlights, and so on. Traditionally this data was generated and kept as paper documents, but now it is almost always generated and stored as digital files or as entries in a digital database—a sort of “data exhaust” that is emitted by the day-to-day running of governments.

Having generated this data, it’s natural for governments to consider giving citizens access to it. In some cases this is part of an overarching strategy to improve visibility into the workings of government. A good example is the “HoCoStat” system proposed by former Howard County Executive Allan Kittleman during his successful 2014 campaign.

In other cases government just takes data and makes it available without an overall strategy—after all, the data is being produced in digital form already, whether that be as Excel spreadsheets or in some other form, and the incremental work to make it publicly available may not be that large. For example, although the full HoCoStat system was never deployed, under Allan Kittleman Howard County did stand up a new OpenHoward site that collected data produced by various Howard County agencies. Somewhat confusingly, there is also a separate site data.howardcountymd.gov that also hosts a variety of data provided by the Howard County GIS division—another project that appears to have been done as an incremental effort.

However, governments do not always make data available, or make it available only in inconvenient ways, for a variety of reasons. For example, some government agencies release data only in the form of PDF documents, the electronic equivalent of traditional paper reports. These can be relatively difficult to extract data from. In other cases data may be displayable on a public web site, but with no way to download it in a more convenient form.

But even here people have created automated ways to access data even in odd formats, whether that be extracting tables from PDF files or “scraping” it off of web sites. The result is yet more data to add to that available from more convenient sources.

The downside of data

So with all this data available, and free ways to analyze it, are we living in utopia (at least as far as data analysis and visualization are concerned)? I don’t really think so: there are downsides to having lots of data to analyze just as there are downsides to not having it.

First, we tend to think that data is more accurate and reflective of reality than it actually is. For example, take the median household income estimate for Howard County and comparable estimates for other counties. In 2017 the estimate for Howard County median household income was $111,473 while the estimate for Stafford County, Virginia, was $112,795, or $1,322 more. This difference was enough to propel Stafford County into the list of top ten counties by median household income, and knock Howard County out of it.

But the margins of error for these estimates were $2,666 for Howard County and $5,081 for Stafford County. There’s therefore a good possibility that Howard County and Stafford County had pretty much equal median household incomes for 2017, and a fair chance that Howard County’s median household income was actually higher than Stafford County’s.

This failure to take margins of error into account is ubiquitous in people’s treatment of data (and I’ve been guilty of it myself). It’s not that significant an issue with respect to median household income estimates, but it can be a big deal indeed when it comes to data measurements that drive funding and personnel decisions, as with student test scores. It’s quite possible that many if not most of the reported test score increases and decreases that are alternatively lauded or derided are actually just random year-to-year fluctuations that don’t reflect any underlying change in students’ ability to learn or teachers’ ability to teach.

School test scores provide another reason not to put too much faith in data: When data measurements are used to drive rewards and punishments, the temptation to game the measurements in various ways can be irresistible. With school test scores such gaming can range from “teaching to the test” up to outright fraud, as shown by scandals around the US. We now have to account not only for the possibility of random fluctuations, which are relatively benign in origin, we also have to assess to what degree the data might be fraudulently measured or reported.

Finally, in many cases we should question ourselves as to whether some data is actually useful, or should be used. For example, do student test scores actually tell us anything useful? Would it be better not to do student testing at all, or to restrict it to certain narrow purposes? One benefit of working directly with raw data, as opposed to consuming pre-cooked graphs and tables prepared by others, is that it can give you a good sense of the limits to what data can tell us.

tl;dr: Merriweather Post Pavilion gets its own resident orchestra.

Long-time Howard County residents (or people who’ve read my Creating the Chrysalis timeline) may recall that when Merriweather Post Pavilion was built, over fifty years ago, it was intended to become the permanent summer home for the National Symphony Orchestra. A few years later the NSO left Merriweather Post Pavilion, and soon after that the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra began playing summer concerts at the pavilion. The BSO eventually left as well, and since then Merriweather Post Pavilion has had no resident orchestra. Until now.

Recently the Downtown Columbia Arts and Culture Commission announced that Soulful Symphony, an orchestra led by DCACC artistic director Darin Atwater, would make Merriweather Post Pavilion its new (summer) home. This announcement is interesting for at least three reasons: for what it says about Merriweather Post Pavilion, what it says about Soulful Symphony and the future of classical music, and what it implies for future support of the arts in Columbia and Howard County.

First, why Soulful Symphony and Merriweather Post Pavilion? For reasons discussed below, although they may do occasional performances, it’s extremely unlikely that Merriweather Post Pavilion would ever again serve as an exclusive summer residence for either of the two main regional symphony orchestras, the National Symphony Orchestra or the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

What about the Columbia Orchestra? It is rooted in Howard County, has successfully navigated the last forty years of its existence, and based on its most recent annual report appears to have been able to put on a relatively ambitious series of performances, play to near-capacity audiences at its main venue (the 742-seat James W. Rouse Theater at Wilde Lake High School), and manage its finances well.

An initial answer would be, well, Darin Atwater is the artistic director for DCACC and DCACC now owns Merriweather Post Pavilion, so of course Atwater’s Soulful Symphony is a natural choice for a resident orchestra. That somewhat begs the question, though: why pick someone like Darin Atwater for DCACC artistic director in the first place?

My answer, one echoed by Atwater himself in the Elevate Maryland podcast, is that whatever Jim Rouse’s intent may have been in building Merriweather Post Pavilion, its tradition is not that of a classical music hall but that of an amphitheater hosting popular music performances by many of the most important artists of the last fifty years. Merriweather Post Pavilion is famous not because the NSO or BSO played there, but because it hosted concerts by artists like Stevie Wonder, Pink Floyd, the Carpenters, B.B. King, John Denver, Ella Fitzgerald, the Kinks, Miles Davis and Muddy Waters, Al Green, Judy Collins, the Temptations, Gladys Knight and the Pips, and the Beach Boys—to name only a few of the acts featured in just the summer of 1973.

Thus it’s only appropriate that if Merriweather Post Pavilion is to have a resident orchestra, it have one that is not a traditional symphony orchestra but one that has one foot in the classical music tradition and the other in the popular music of America.

Which brings me to my second point: arguably the major problem with classical music in America today is that (unlike classical music in other times and other countries) it has few if any connections to American culture at large. As the critic and composer Greg Sandow wrote, “We don’t connect well with the world. Most of the music we play is from the past, while the people around us are connecting with the culture and concerns of the present.”

And when it comes to music, “American culture” really means African American culture. It is the wellspring from which have arisen all the major American music genres , and its influence has traveled around the globe, from blues-influenced (and sometimes blues-plagiarizing) 1960s British rock to R&B- and hip hop-influenced contemporary K-pop (to name only two).

However, as Atwater notes in his comments, African American musical culture has been only fitfully reflected in classical music, which is to a large degree a foreign growth transplanted to American soil, and all the weaker for it: As Sandow notes, the audience for classical music in America is declining, and is increasingly dominated by the elderly. (For example, according to its 2018 annual report seniors comprised over 60% of the audience for the Columbia Orchestra’s core series of classical music performances, and students less than 10%.)

According to Atwater, his mission is to diversify the classical music repertoire, to help create a music that speaks “the native tongue of the people”: “Music now has to speak to all Americans, it can’t just speak to a segment of America.” In that sense I think Soulful Symphony is a good fit for Merriweather Post Pavilion, and for what the DCACC hopes that the pavilion can be for the residents of Columbia and Howard County.

Thus my third and final point, relating to who’s going to support the arts in Howard County in future:

One major reason why the National Symphony Orchestra left Merriweather Post Pavilion is that Catherine Filene Shouse donated millions of dollars to build (and then rebuild, after a fire) the Wolf Trap performing arts center in Northern Virginia near McLean and Great Falls.

One major reason why the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra left Merriweather Post Pavilion is that Joseph Meyerhoff, who donated the funds to construct Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore, worked to secure a new summer performance venue for the BSO in Oregon Ridge Park near Hunt Valley in northern Baltimore County.

In contrast, the wealthiest philanthropist ever mentioned in relation to Columbia and Howard County was Marjorie Merriweather Post, who famously never gave a dime to help fund construction of the pavilion that bears her name. It’s unclear whether we will ever see a private individual who could and would single-handly take on the task of financially supporting the construction and maintenance of a major performance venue in Howard County.¹

But what about all the money from Merriweather Post Pavilion concerts? Leaving aside the fact that event revenue primarily funds ongoing operations, even in this regard Merriweather Post Pavilion is a decided underdog. Operated by I.M.A., a subsidiary of the D.C.-based independent concert promotion and production company I.M.P., Merriweather competes locally with Jiffy Lube Live, the Northern Virginia outdoor amphitheater that is but one of over two dozen operated by Live Nation Entertainment, a $10 billion global corporation.

There is no “somebody else” who will ensure that Merriweather Post Pavilion will survive and thrive. Now that ownership of Merriweather Post Pavilion has been transferred to the DCACC, the future of the venue will be dependent on a mix of financial streams: revenue from concerts at the pavilion, corporate sponsorships, and other monetary contributions from Howard County and Maryland residents, whether directly via donations or indirectly through their county and state taxes.

Put simply, the future of Merriweather Post Pavilion depends on us—as does that of the surrounding Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, including the Chrysalis amphitheater. I think that by hosting Soulful Symphony and through its other activities DCACC has made clear its intention to make Merriweather Post Pavilion a place that offers music and other cultural performances for all of Howard County. Now it’s up to us to ensure that that outreach is rewarded.

For further exploration

Besides the Elevate Maryland podcast #53 featuring Darin Atwater, other interviews and features of note include the following:

• HoCoMoJo 3-minute video on the Soulful Symphony Merriweather Post Pavilion announcement.
• Backstage at Merriweather (B@M) #1. A 29-minute conversation between Darin Atwater and Ian Kennedy, executive director of the DCACC.
• Mykel Hunter interviews Darin Atwater. A 12-minute 2010 interview on Baltimore’s Magic 95.9 FM.
• Rock Newman interviews Darin Atwater. A one-hour 2009 interview on the Rock Newman Show.

The following Soulful Symphony performances, among others, can be found on YouTube:

• “Swing Low Sweet Chariot.”
• “Go Down Moses”

Finally, although the Soulful Symphony does not appear to have its own public web site, the DCACC web site has a copy of the press release announcing Soulful Symphony’s association with Merriweather Post Pavilion, and should also have announcements of future performances. (In the B@M podcast linked to above, Darin Atwater advises listeners to “save the date” of June 29.)

Update 2021/06/19: I am no longer updating the Civility and Truth newsletter, so there’s no longer any point to subscribing to it. However old posts will remain accessible for the foreseeable future.

I don’t update this blog very frequently, and it’s too much to expect people to check out the web site on a regular basis. Hence I’ve created a new Civility and Truth newsletter, and am inviting you to subscribe to it. I’ll use the newsletter to send new Civility and Truth posts direct to your inbox at the same time I post them to the site—or even before I post them to the site, as a reward to subscribers.

I’ll also send out other material that for whatever reason doesn’t warrant a full Civility and Truth post, including links to recommended articles, mini book reviews, and random commentary.

Finally, this is a free newsletter and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Please feel free to forward any of my posts to anyone you think may be interested in in-depth, data-based, non-partisan commentary and analysis of issues relevant to Howard County, Maryland, and the world beyond.

For further exploration

Apparently email lists are the hip new alternative to blogs. (I can remember a time when blogs were the hip new alternative to email lists.) If you’re interested in the trend to email newsletter subscriptions, check out the following articles linked to from the Substack site:

• “The new social network that isn’t new at all,” by Mike Isaac for the New York Times.
• “Judd Legum wants to fix news with a newsletter,” by Emily Dreyfuss for Wired.
• “Substack celebrates its first birthday with 25K paying newsletter subscribers,” by Anthony Ha for TechCrunch.

How exactly do schools and parents matter? To what degree are the actions of parents responsible for how their children turn out, and how? What do children really learn in school, and what might they learn? And how do these questions relate to issues that Howard County is facing today, including housing affordability, school redistricting, raising students’ test scores, and the like?

Judith Rich Harris was once a Harvard graduate student in psychology before being kicked out of the program on the grounds that she would not “develop into our professional stereotype of what an experimental psychologist should be.” Prevented by chronic illness from obtaining her doctorate elsewhere, she first found employment as a writer of psychology textbooks and then began a second career as a independent researcher after coming to disbelieve conventional wisdom about the role of parents in child development. Her death last December at the age of 80 prompted me to explore her work and write this post.

Nothing that Harris wrote, or that I write here, should be taken as gospel. The state of psychology as a science right now is very unsettled, and (as I discuss below) it will likely take some while for the discipline to come to a consensus on how well Harris’s ideas explain the world. But her ideas are certainly plausible and consistent with other things we know about family, school, and society, so if nothing else you can consider this an interesting thought experiment about how the world might be different than we think, and our education and related policies likewise different.

How do parents affect their children’s development?

Harris’s chief interest as a researcher was in how children develop their personalities and become socialized to live and work in the world. Why is this such an important topic?

In my “seven answers” article on liberty and equality I discussed how even in the world of Major League Baseball, in which everyone might be expected to perform at an equally high level, there are large differences in players’ performances. Some of these can be chalked up to differences in raw athletic ability, but others are plausibly due to differences in personality and resulting behavior: how willing are players to practice? Do they listen to their coaches’ instructions and follow them? Are they leaders in the clubhouse, or disruptive to team cohesion?

As in baseball, so in life: conscientiousness, likeability, willingness to cooperate, and other factors help determine how successful people will be in their careers. Other aspects of personality, like altruism, community spirit, kindness, and so on, affect our judgements of how morally good a person is.

The traditional view (which is actually relatively recent in historical terms) is that parents’ guidance is the most important factor in molding children’s personalities: that if children are studious or kind it is supposedly because their parents “raised them right,” and if they fall short in any area then it is allegedly due to their parents failing to do their job.

In the course of writing psychology textbooks and reviewing the research on which they were based, Harris concluded that the traditional view was wrong: that parents’ actions in and of themselves have relatively little influence in how their children turn out, and that to the extent children resemble their parents in personality it is in large part because parents pass those personality traits on to them, in the same way parents pass on their facial features and hair color.

Harris spends much of her book The Nurture Assumption building the case for this. One key argument has to do with children who are adopted: that such children’s personalities do not typically resemble those of other children born into the same families, while identical twins have similar personalities even if they are adopted into other families and raised apart. In baseball terms, it’s unlikely that the average Little Leaguer would have become an MLB prospect if adopted by Ken Griffey, Sr. However, it’s likely that Ken Griffey, Jr., would have found athletic success even away from his father’s influence, if he had been given the opportunity to develop his talent (a key point to which I’ll return).

This is not to say that parents do not and cannot positively influence their children in any way—an extreme position that many of Harris’s critics ascribed to her, and a reaction that she herself sometimes inadvertently provoked by taking an “everything you know is wrong” attitude.

First, parents can and should provide their children the things we’d expect all children to have in a civilized society: adequate food and shelter, medical care, physical security and freedom from abuse of all kinds, and so on.

It is in turn the mark of a civilized society that it makes it possible for all parents to do this: that parents can earn wages sufficient to provide for their families (or be financially assisted if they cannot), that they can provide health care to their children without bankrupting themselves, that their homes and water supplies are free of lead and other poisons harmful to children’s development, and that they are subject to a system of policing that both protects and respects their persons.

Parents also influence their children by their actions in acknowledging and reinforcing the personalities already inherent in the children: if a child appears to be studious and interested in reading their parents buy them books and take them to libraries, if they show artistic inclinations their parents take them to the theater and museums, and if they like physical activity their parents play with them more and sign them up for youth sports.

This behavior is very much influenced by the parents’s own inherent personalities passed down to their offspring: for example, parents who are athletic will tend to have children who are also athletic, and then (being athletic themselves) will tend to further encourage those children in athletic activities. But again the larger society also plays a role, by providing opportunities for parents to influence their children in these ways, for example by funding public playgrounds and athletic fields.

Finally, through their actions parents can influence the behavior of children within the family itself, including children’s attitudes toward their parents: parents who treat their children with kindness and respect will be more likely than harsh and cruel parents to have their children respect them and treat them kindly in turn. This influence may not carry over into children’s behavior in the outside world—indeed Harris argues that children’s behavior in the outside world often bears little or no similarity to their behavior in the home—but it can improve the quality of the parent-child relationship.

How does the outside world influence children’s development?

If parents do not greatly influence their children’s personalities (beyond whatever personality traits were passed down from parent to child at birth), what does?

Harris contended that the major influence on children’s personality development and socialization is the world outside their families, and in particular the peers they encounter at school and elsewhere. One of Harris’s key arguments is based on the example of language learning, particularly when parents are immigrants and speak a different language than society at large.

Immigrant parents may speak their own language at home, and their children will learn that language and use it when speaking to their parents. However at the same time those children will learn the language of the outside world, because it is the language spoken by the other children who are their peers, and they will adopt the accent, vocabulary, and vocal mannerisms characteristic of those peers.

Harris explained this by pointing out that the ultimate goal of children, the goal that drives their behavior, is not to succeed at home (which they will someday leave), but to succeed in the wider world outside the home. To achieve that goal children emulate other children of their own age or slightly older, modeling their own behavior on theirs. They also categorize themselves in relation to other children, and join peer groups consistent with those categorizations: the studious child becomes a “nerd,” the athletic child allies themself with the “jocks,” and so on.

In modern societies the place where children encounter other children is in school, and therefore the school environment is the primary driver of children’s socialization, together with after-school environments both in-person and (increasingly) online—both of which are often just continuations of school interactions in other contexts.

What roles does this leave for parents, if they wish their children to develop into successful adults? The first possibility is that parents can indirectly help influence their children by the parents’ actions in the larger world. Children emulate older children, who in turn emulate older children still, until children who are almost adults emulate actual adults. Thus the values and attitudes of the parents’ neighborhood and the broader society flow down and become the values and attitudes of children. To the extent that parents can help shape those values and attitudes, they help shape those of their children.

However parents are severely limited in how much they can do. Whatever they themselves can do in the home or in the world is far outweighed by the influence exerted by others. In the final analysis they have little power to stop their children adopting the values and attitudes of their peers, just as immigrant parents cannot stop their children from learning the languages spoken outside the home.

What parents can realistically hope to do is to help determine who their children’s peers are, by their choices of where to live and where to send their children to school. This plays out in various ways depending on the parents’ income.

Wealthy parents have it the easiest: they can afford to live anywhere, and to send their children to exclusive private schools in which they will encounter only other children of the wealthy (and perhaps a few carefully-selected scholarship students).

Parents at the other end of the income spectrum have it the hardest: it is difficult for them to move to places other than where they grew up, and if they are not satisfied with their children’s school experiences then their only hope is that someone else will provide them a no-cost alternative, like the choice of a public school in a different neighborhood or a publicly-funded charter school.

Middle-income parents have a different strategy: They cannot necessarily afford to send their children to private schools, but they are able to move to jurisdictions where the public schools are filled with the children of other middle-income parents with similar values and attitudes. Those other children will then be their own children’s peers and (collectively) the primary influence on their values and attitudes.

This is the dynamic that has played out in Howard County: educated middle-class parents are attracted to the county by housing and job opportunities, and they pass on their talents and personalities to their children. Those children are then successful in Howard County public schools in large part due to those talents and personalities and their reinforcement by the presence of other children with similar talents and personalities. Howard County public schools then get a reputation as “good schools,” yet more educated middle-class parents are attracted to the county based on that reputation, and the cycle begins again.

This would seem to be an entirely positive dynamic, but it has its unfortunate aspects. First, it ties parents’ hopes for their children to the schools they attend, and to the neighborhoods within those school’s attendance boundaries. This makes fights over Howard County school redistricting more divisive than they otherwise might be.

Moving students from one school to another does not just change students’ teachers, it changes the peer groups that determine students’ socialization. Some parents may be concerned about their children being moved to a school with students whose values and attitudes may be different (or at least perceived to be so), and other parents may be concerned about the possibility of such students being moved into their own children’s schools.

This dynamic also makes Howard County less affordable and less open to those pursuing upward mobility. As Howard County becomes more known for its “good schools” (which would be better termed “schools with good students”) that increases the demand for housing, which in the absence of increased housing supply will raise the prices of houses and apartments in the county. This in turn means that the county will become affordable only to those of higher incomes, or in other words people who have the talents and personalities that are a good fit for jobs enabling them to command such incomes.

The Central Branch of the Howard County Library System in downtown Columbia recently hosted an “Undesign the Redline” exhibit tracing the history of legal and corporate attempts to restrict housing opportunities in the United States by race. The library’s hosting the exhibit was consistent with the founding story of Columbia as a “garden for growing people” (to quote its founder Jim Rouse), open to people of all races and income levels.

The experience of Howard County today, now past Columbia’s 50th birthday, shows that it is possible for similar patterns of residential segration to emerge in a more spontaneous manner. Unlike past redlining these new patterns are ostensibly race-neutral (because they are based on household income) and the restrictions on housing supply and housing types that drive them can be justified as supporting worthy goals like preventing school overcrowding, reducing over-development and the influence of developers, ensuring adequate public facilities, preserving open space, and protecting the character of the county and its neighborhoods.

Is it possible to break this cycle, to make Howard County once again affordable to a wider range of people and ensure that Columbia will fulfill Jim Rouse’s vision? That is a longer discussion than this article can contain, but surely part of the solution is to ensure that all Howard County schools are equally attractive to parents, so that some neighborhoods are not disadvantaged relative to others, and that all parents can feel good about the socialization their children will undergo in those schools.

How can schools do this, above and beyond their ostensible function of teaching students academic knowledge that will (supposedly) be useful to them as adults. At a minimum they should provide what we would expect parents to provide: an environment in which students are adequately cared for and are safe from physical and emotional abuse of various kinds, including bullying both off-line and on-line.

We’d also expect schools to provide an environment in which learning of all kinds is supported, and in which students who wish to learn are able to do so without interference or interruption. What can schools do to ensure this? Harris had some relatively unformed ideas about this, and I speculate about this a bit in the next section.

How can schools help children succeed?

Going back to my baseball example, suppose we lived in a country where playing baseball were the only way to succeed in society, with anyone who couldn’t play baseball at a high level unlikely to rise out of poverty. Suppose also that politicians in that country urged children facing such poor prospects to “learn to hit or pitch,” and proposed to help them succeed by providing every child free tuition to baseball camps.

Most people would probably consider this to be an inadequate response to the problem, and such a country to be a less than ideal place for children to grow up. (In fact, there are countries where lack of economic development means that playing baseball is the only way out of poverty. We don’t consider generally consider those countries as models for the US to emulate.)

What does this have to do with child development? In addition to considering personality attributes passed down from parent to child, and socialization of children by their peer environment, Judith Rich Harris also sought to understand why children develop different personalities even in cases (as with identical twins) where we might expect their personalities to be very similar.

In her book No Two Alike Harris argued that the answer to this question lies in children’s quest for status within the groups to which they belong. Per Harris, socialization within peer groups causes children’s values and attitudes to match those of their peers, but achieving higher status requires that they act in ways that make them stand out from their peers.

This in turn drives the evolution of children’s personalities: for example, the child who is studious and rewarded for doing well in academic subjects is motivated to study more, and the child whose extraversion and likeability makes them popular will seek more opportunities to display those attributes and achieve further popularity. This evolution is influenced not just by children’s own personality predispositions, but also by the socialization they receive (e.g., do the child’s peers consider academic or athletic success to be something worth pursuing?) and the opportunities open to them.

Our schools can then be seen not just as an environment for children’s socialization, but also as providing a set of opportunities for children to measure themselves against others and achieve higher status in one way or another. If that set of opportunities is relatively limited then children will seek other ways to achieve status, some of which may not be desirable from the point of view of the school or of society at large.

My tentative conclusion is then that our schools should not be like the countries where baseball is the only path to success. In addition to providing a positive environment for children’s socialization and a grounding in topics everyone should know (mainly basic literacy and numeracy), schools should strive to provide as many opportunities as possible for children to find something they’re good at and pursue the achievement of status in positive ways. Beyond traditional academic subjects for the studious and sports for the athletic, that might include opportunities for students to express themselves through arts of various kinds, to work with their hands, to learn how to run a business, to learn how to care for others, and so on.

Opportunities like this are often a feature of today’s schools, but they exist at the margin, under constant threat of funding cuts (like the arts), seen as less prestigious and desirable (like vocational programs), and in general considered to detract from the primary goal of driving children’s academic achievement as measured by standardized test scores.

Fully implementing the vision above would thus require a total rethinking of the way schools are organized, especially in late middle school and high school, corresponding to the years in which (according to Harris) children develop their adult personalities. It would also require a different way of measuring the success of schools and teachers—or perhaps abandoning the idea of measurement entirely, beyond ensuring that schools meet some base-line goals in terms of providing a safe and supportive environment for students.

Of course such a major rework of schools could not occur in a vacuum. Beyond state and Federal educational policies that might hamper such a change, it’s of no use for schools to offer alternative paths to students if society at large does not value people who take those paths. There must be opportunities and (if needed) support for them to live lives of dignity and worth and to provide for themselves and their families. I addressed this topic in other posts, so I won’t comment further on it here.

Looking to the future

As I mentioned at the beginning, this post is a thought experiment: if Judith Rich Harris was correct then these are some implications for parents, schools, and society. I happen to think her theories are plausible, but at present they are not generally accepted, particularly by the people who are most concerned with child development and who drive education policy.

Could this change, and if so, how long might such a change take? At this point it’s been over twenty years since Harris first laid out her hypotheses and the arguments for them. I suspect it may be almost as long until Harris is definitively proved right or wrong to the satisfaction of most of the people whose opinions count, and perhaps longer than that for her ideas (if correct) to be reflected in education policy.

First, people deemed to be child development experts would have to come to a consensus that children resemble their parents in personality and talents for the same reason they resemble them in appearance. As consumer DNA testing becomes more popular and its applications move beyond those that are primarily ancestry-focused or entertainment-oriented (“wine recommendations . . . scientifically selected based on your DNA”), it’s possible that ordinary people will come to this conclusion before most experts do.

Second, psychologists would need to test and confirm (or disprove) Harris’s ideas regarding children’s socialization and personality development. Right now psychology as a discipline is in the midst of a battle over whether past experiments underlying accepted theories were actually conducted properly,¹ and what if anything needs to be done to put psychological theories on a sounder scientific footing. Resolving these controversies will take some time, and probably depend to a large degree on researcher turnover within the field.

Finally, even if Harris’s ideas come to be accepted by experts and ordinary people alike, policymakers will not respond to those ideas until they have some compelling reason to do so. For now policymakers appear to be committed to the idea that what America needs most are more STEM professionals, that the primary if not only goal of our educational system should be to provide them, and that we can best measure public schools’ success in promoting that goal through students’ scores on standardized tests and their acceptance into four-year colleges and universities.

Policymakers will likely change their minds only if and when that strategy clearly proves insufficient to address the challenges that the Americans will face in the 21st century. I wrote this post in the belief that that day will come.

For further exploration

The best source for information on Judith Rich Harris is the web site judithrichharris.info maintained by her husband Charles Harris. The site includes a biography of Harris and an extensive set of links to articles and related material for her two major works, The Nurture Assumption and No Two Alike.

Geting the full flavor of Harris’s argument really requires reading her books, since popular summarizations often distort what she was saying—most notably that she claimed that “parents don’t matter” in any way whatsoever. However if you don’t have time to read the books here are some sources in which Harris defends her theories in her own words:

• “Children Don’t Do Things Half Way.” An interview on the Edge online site in which Harris reviews the arguments of The Nurture Assumption. (See also the Edge retrospective on Harris.)
• “How Many Environments Does a Child Have?.” A reprint of a Harvard Education Letter article in which Harris comments on the role of schools, clasmmates, and teachers in forming children’s personalities.
• “The Nature of Nurture.” A “dialogue” (really, a debate) in Slate magazine between Harris and one of her critics, psychologist Jerome Kagan. Among other things, this highlights Harris’s contrarian and somewhat combative stance vs. the psychology “establishment.”
• “Where is the Child’s Environment? A Group Socialization Theory of Development.” The 1995 Psychological Review paper in which Harris first set out her theories.

If you do have time to read Harris’s books, the first part of No Two Alike recaps the arguments of The Nurture Assumption, so reading that book alone might seem like a shortcut. However some people might not like the way No Two Alike is structured (like a mystery novel), and the book omits the in-depth discussion in The Nurture Assumption of how Harris came to believe that conventional theories of child development were incorrect.

Finally, those who like Malcolm Gladwell’s popularizations can read his New Yorker profile of Harris, “Do Parents Matter?” written on the eve of publication of The Nurture Assumption.

tl;dr: I reveal the winner of the vote for best-looking Howard Couny 2018 campaign sign.

. . . and it’s the sign for Shahan Rizvi, candidate for Democratic Central Committee. His sign got 37% of the total vote. Congratulations Shahan on your victory!

The next two highest vote-getters were the signs for Byron Macfarlane (28% of the total vote) and Sabina Taj (15%). Condolences to Byron and Sabina: your signs looked good, but I think Shahan’s highly-effective get-out-the-vote efforts made all the difference.

Thanks to all of you who participated in the voting not just in the final round but in earlier rounds as well. I hope you enjoyed these posts!

Now I’ll be back to posting on other matters. If you want to keep up with my future posts (which I doubt will be nearly this interesting) you can follow me as @hecker on Twitter. I’ll also post any Howard County-relevant stuff in the Howard County Facebook group.

tl;dr: After you vote in today’s 2018 Maryland primary, vote for the best-looking Howard County 2018 campaign signs among those that made it to the final round.

Polls are now closed for voting for the signs discussed in parts 1 through 6 of this series. The following candidates’ signs were the winners and runners-up for each part (with their percentage of the vote in parentheses):

• Part 1. Winner: Kim Oldham (56%). Runner-up: Greg Jennings (15%).
• Part 2. Winners: Deb Jung and Shahan Rizvi (tie) (32%).
• Part 3. Winner: Danny Mackey (35%). Runner-up: Christiana Rigby (29%).
• Part 4. Winner: Sabina Taj (77%). Runner-up: Rich Gibson (9%).
• Part 5. Winner: Liz Walsh (54%). Runner-up: Jessica Feldmark (32%).
• Part 6. Winner: Byron Macfarlane (52%). Runner-up: Opel Jones (24%).

The following candidates’ signs will advance to the final round of eight (in random order): Deb Jung, Liz Walsh, Byron Macfarlane, Jessica Feldmark, Shahan Rizvi, Sabina Taj, Kim Oldham, and Danny Mackey.

The signs for Deb Jung and Shahan Rizvi both advanced because they finished in a dead heat, with the exact same number of votes. I also included Jessica Feldmark’s sign as my wild card choice, since it was the runner-up with the highest percentage of the vote share (the same as Jung’s and Rizvi’s signs, as it happens).

Please vote for your choice of the best-looking sign of those listed above. Extended voting hours will run until 11 pm on Election Day, so you can vote for your favorite sign while you attend the parties after the real polls close. Check Twitter and Facebook tomorrow to see which sign won!

tl;dr: Here’s my final set of reviews of Howard County 2018 campaign signs. This post features signs from Opel Jones, Steven Bolen, Bill McMahon, China Williams, Wayne Robey, Byron Macfarlane, Gail Bates, Katie Fry Hester, and Robert Miller.

Today I have only nine signs to review. Every post thus far has included only signs that I saw at the Miller Branch library during early voting. This post includes one other sign, for Wayne Robey, that I saw in my own neighborhood.

There are a number of other candidates who did not have signs at the Miller Branch library or other places I’ve looked. Typically these are candidates who are not actively campaigning or have no opposition in the primary and will post signs later. I don’t plan on doing an update of this series for the general election, so signs for this latter group of candidates will go unreviewed this year.

As always, the signs are listed in random order, there’s a survey link at the end, and you can find more background at part 1.

This is a good simple sign that has multiple strategies to avoid being boring. First, the star in the middle of the letter “o“ in “Jones” lends visual interest to the text and breaks up the all caps single typeface nature of it. Second, the use of a second color highlights “Opel” just as the star did for “Jones”. Finally, the yellow strip at the bottom echoes the color of “Opel” and underlines the sign as a whole.

Of all the signs I’ve seen that try to use a map of Maryland as a design element, this is the only one where I think it works. Maryland has a strange asymmetrical shape, so it’s difficult to fit into a design. The secret here is to use the northern and eastern boundaries of Maryland to complete the rectangle of which “Steven” and “Bolen” form the left and bottom sides.

The other parts of the sign work well too: the brownish orange and blue match well, the text looks clean and readable, and it’s a nice touch to have the color of “District 9A” match the color of the Maryland map.

The only things I’m not 100% on board with are the wavy lines that evoke the shape of a fluttering flag. They’re OK as a way to fill the space above and below the main sign content, and I really can’t imagine a good alternative, but for some reason they didn’t totally win me over.

As I mentioned in my last post, for some reason candidates for Howard County Sheriff are fond of the black on yellow color scheme: Jim Fitzgerald used this color scheme in 2014, and Marcus Harris is also using it this year.

This is a reasonably good example of the type: readable, with good emphasis on the name “McMahon,” and a sheriff’s-badge design element that doesn’t over-complicate the design. It has a slogan, but it’s nice and crisp.

A good minimal high-contrast sign that provides the key information needed by voters. It’s worth noting that “China” is almost twice as large as “Williams”. This is partly dictated by the last name being significantly longer, and thus less tall when both names occupy the width of the sign. However it also makes sense from a name recognition perspective, since “China” is more memorable than “Williams.”

This is a good example of using red, white, and blue together: the red ribbon and blue star design elements together give a bright and even playful air to the sign that makes it more attractive.

The black text also provides good contrast with the white background. However I’m not really sure why such a blocky and angular typeface was chosen for “Robey”. It looks a bit strange, especially since the red and blue design elements are curved.

Byron Macfarlane has a record of good-looking signs, and this one is in that tradition: legible and minimal text, clean and bold typography, attractive colors that go well together, and a jaunty design element in the upper left. Note that it follows the same strategy as several other signs of contrasting alternating lines of white and colored text throughout the sign.

Also note that “Byron” is set in a slight larger size than “Macfarlane,” even though it really doesn’t need to be (since “Byron” isn’t intended to take up the full width of the sign. However making “Byron” larger provides better visual balance against both “Macfarlane” and the design element in the upper left. It also has the side effect of implying the candidate is a familar presence and on a first-name basis with his constituents after two terms in office.

This sign is almost but not quite identical to the sign that Gail Bates used in 2014. The only change I can discern is that the new sign omits the word “For” in “For State Senate”—probably because this year Bates is an incumbent.

Because I’m getting tired I’ll just quote my comments from 2014:

This is a good sign, especially for using only two colors. The “BATES” is large and readable in a clear serif typeface, and the smaller “Gail” in a script typeface adds a nice informal, almost personal, note. The integration of the Maryland flag-inspired banner is also done very well; note that the banner is outlined to prevent confusion between the sign background and the white parts of the banner.

(The outline I was referring to is the one on top of the banner where it meets the border of the sign.)

This particular example of the sign is marred (in my opinion) by the endorsement logos, but the sign underneath is pretty good. I like the colors, with the light purple of “Katie Fry” contrasting well with the dark purple background and the white text of “Hester”. Setting “Katie Fry” right above “Hester” with almost no linespacing also provides a little visual interest where the descender of the “y” intrudes just a bit on the “T.”

Unlike the China Williams sign above with “China” featured prominently, this sign puts much more emphasis on the last name “Hester”. Here the situation is reversed: “Hester” is a more unusual name than “Katie,” and so it makes sense to make it the focus of the sign and to relegate “Katie Fry” to a secondary role.

I’m not sure if the greenish-gray background color on this sign was intended to evoke a blackboard or not. In any case, while I’m not a big fan of that particular color it does provide a good contrast with the white text. The text itself is clear and readable.

As I’ve previously mentioned, I’m not a fan of putting endorsement logos on signs. The color of the two “Teacher Recommended” logos here clashes somewhat with the background color, and the logos look a bit strange perched on the “shoulders” of “Miller.”

However the design element I’m more concerned about is the steering wheel at the middle of the bottom white stripe. Someone down my street has this sign in their yard, and I must have passed it dozens of times. I also saw it at even closer range when I went to vote. However it was not until I actually looked closely at the sign when reviewing it that I finally figured out that the thing at the bottom was a steering wheel, and I was able to connect it with the “Learning driven” slogan.

In the interest of a simpler design and not confusing people looking at the sign, I think it might have been better to leave the steering wheel off and just include the slogan. Alternately the design could be revamped entirely to make the steering wheel bigger and make it a more integral part of the design.

And with that I conclude my reviews, after discussing 58 signs in all. Please vote for the best sign of those discussed in this article.

UPDATE: Voting is closed. See part 7 for all the signs that advanced to the final round.

A special bonus: tomorrow (Primary Tuesday) please check Twitter and Facebook for your opportunity to vote for the best of the best. I will create one final survey with the winners of each day’s vote and (if appropriate) a “wild card” entry I feel deserves inclusion, and will do a final post on Wednesday with the top three vote-getters.

tl;dr: I’m in the home stretch now in the race to review Howard County 2018 campaign signs. This post features signs from Hiruy Hadgu, Natalie Ziegler, Jessica Feldmark, John Francis McMahon, Clarence Lam, James Howard, Liz Walsh, Ian Moller-Knudsen, Marcus Harris, and Jeremy Eldridge.

You should know the drill by now: ten signs, ten reviews, order is random, survey link at the end, more background at part 1.

The color is an unusual choice relative to other political signs, but I think it works well and gives a good contrast with the white lettering. You also certainly can’t fault the prominence and legibility of the candidate’s name—helped here by the fact that both first and last names have only five characters each.

The first name actually looks slightly larger than the last name. This appears to be due to the first name having an “i” rather than an “a”. Since all the other characters in each name are the same or of similar width, setting both names to the same overall width forces the last name to be slightly smaller to fit, since the letter “i” is narrower than the letter “a.”

The only thing I would question on this sign is the treatment of the “for” in “Democrat for County Council,” which is just set in a lighter version of the same typeface used for the rest of the line. It might have been better to set it in lower case and italics, a strategy used on other signs.

Candidates love endorsements, but fans of candidates’ signs like me hate them because they often result in endorsement logos being slapped on signs and obscuring the design. That’s the case here, with the Sierra Club green in particular clashing greatly with the red and blue color scheme.

Although it’s interesting: if the endorsement logos weren’t there it looks like there’d be a lot of space between “Delegate for 9A” and “Natalie”. It’s almost as if the sign were designed to leave sufficient space for the logos.

Otherwise the sign looks fine. Note the inclusion of a thin white strip between to the red and blue parts of the sign to avoid directly juxtaposing those two colors and give the sign more of a “red, white, and blue” feel.

This sign takes a different approach, boldly interrupting a blue background with a diagonal slash of bright red. It also uses drop shadows on the text for “Jessica Feldmark,” a unique choice among 2018 signs, making the text seem to float above the blue and red background.

The overall result is a sign that looks good and stands out from the crowd.

There’s not a whole lot to say about this sign. The green background is common among Democratic candidates here and elsewhere, and the main typeface is legible and looks professional. The only design element is the badge icon within the letter “o”. Candidates for sheriff (almost?) always include some form of badge in their signs; this one is well-integrated into the overall design.

This sign is very reminiscent of Clarence Lam’s 2014 sign: bold yellow text in the same sans serif typeface, a dark background to provide high contrast, and a small horizontally-centered banner-like design element to add some visual interest but not detract from the candidate’s name.

It’s worth noting that the 2014 signs for Eric Ebersole and Terri Hill were somewhat quirky and visually busy. Now that they’re on a slate with Clarence Lam they’ve adopted his philosophy of stripped-down “get it done” minimalism when it comes to signs. As with Lam’s 2014 sign, I don’t think this philosophy produces signs that are particularly attractive or interesting from a design perspective, but they are undeniably effective when it comes to the basic job of promoting the candidates’ names.

This sign is in many ways the opposite of the Lam/Ebersole/Hill sign, and shows that there is such a thing as being too subtle from a design perspective. First, why is the candidate’s name so relatively small? There’s a lot of unused area on this sign that could have been devoted to text.

Second, what is the image on the bottom of the sign supposed to be? At first glance I thought it was an American flag. At second glance I thought it was a Maryland flag. Now I’m doubting even that.

If you’ve read this series thus far you’ll know that I like to see design sophistication and even elegance in signs. But I also think that to be effective as signs they need to be more “in your face” than this one is.

I chose the order of these signs randomly (or rather, my computer did it for me), but it’s almost as if the order were designed to help me make certain points. Here’s a good example of a sign that employs sophisticated design in the service of highlighting the candidate.

There are at least four separate design “tricks” in the sign. The first and most prominent is the use of a light blue background with dark blue diagonal stripes (or a dark blue background with light blue stripes, depending on how you look at it). This is very attention-grabbing, almost looking like a glossy metallic surface over which the white text floats.

The second is the rounded corners on the background, reminiscent of an old-style TV set. By leaving the actual corners of the sign blank, this focuses attention on the middle of the sign where the candidate’s name is located.

The third is having the vertical stems of the letters “L” and “H” flow into the white border. (This was made possible in the first place because of the particular forms of those letters, and because “Liz Walsh” is a short enough name to fit on one line.) This impairs readability of the name just a tad, but produces a striking effect.

Fourth (and most subtle) is the thin black (?) outline on the white letters of the text. This helps to separate the letters from the light blue/dark blue background and make them “pop.”

Finally, the sign shows a good strategy for handling endorsement logos and other ancillary sign elements: don’t put them on the sign itself, but attach them to a corner where they’re prominent but don’t obscure the main part of the sign.

We’re now back to relatively plain signs. The sign designer here faced the problem that “Moller-Knudsen” is a long name that’s hard to fit on a sign without making the text relatively small. Some signs address that problem by breaking the name at the hyphen and splitting it across two lines—see for example the 2014 sign for Renée McGuirk-Spence.

I think a similar strategy could have been followed for this sign, especially since “Moller” and “Knudsen” are almost the same length. The extra line required could have been compensated for by removing the “Elect” text in the upper left corner. As it is that text sits all by itself and occupies space and visual attention that could instead go to the candidate’s name and office sought.

There seems to be an unwritten rule that candidates for Howard County Sheriff should use signs that consist of black text on a yellow background with a sheriff’s badge. Jim Fitzgerald had signs like this both in 2010 and 2014. (John Newnan had one in 2014 that reversed the scheme and used yellow on black.)

In this cycle the tradition is continued by Marcus Harris and (as we’ll see in the next post) Bill McMahon, while John Francis McMahon goes his own way (as seen above). Harris’s sign has the key elements, with the name displayed prominently and legibly in a conventional san serif typeface. The yellow is bright and not muddy, and the sign also has a white border, which I think always helps the main part of the sign stand out more. (At least one of Jim Fitzgerald’s signs didn’t have such a border, and I think suffered for it.)

The last sign for today is another sign for a Central Committee Candidate. I think the design for this sign flows from the candidate’s name being relatively long at eight characters and the choice to use all caps for the text. That means that the area for the name on the sign has to be relatively small (unless the letters were stretched vertically) and the designer has to fill the rest of the sign with other elements.

In this case the chosen strategy was to divide the sign horizontally into three areas of equal height, with the office sought and authority line in the bottom section and “Vote for” in the top section. It’s a reasonable approach, with my only nit being that the sign looks a little bottom-heavy because of the large amount of text in that section relative to the middle and (especially) top sections.

Otherwise the sign looks fine: the colors are attractive and the typography looks clean and readable.

49 signs reviewed thus far, and 9 to go; the next post should cover all the rest of them. Check Twitter and Facebook for the next article, and don’t forget to vote for the best sign of those discussed in this article.

UPDATE: Voting is closed. See part 7 for all the signs that advanced to the final round.

tl;dr: I’m continuing my reviews of 2018 campaign signs in Howard County. This post features signs from Mary Kay Sigaty, Shawn Conley, Sabina Taj, Anne Dodd, Elizabeth Ann Fitch, Saif Rehman, Rich Gibson, Allan Kittleman, David Yungmann, and Chao Wu.

As in the last post I review ten different signs, again in random order. For more on this series see part 1.

This sign is put together reasonably well, but it seems a bit busy to me. That’s likely because the Maryland flag (attractive though it may be) is a bit busy visually, and this sign devotes a fair amount of background space to it.

Otherwise the sign is fine. The typography is varied, with the typeface used for “Mary Kay” providing a note of informality. The sign also follows the rules for the four colors of the Maryland flag: match yellow with black (as in the “Mary Kay” and ”Democrat for State Senate” text) and match red with white (as in the “District 12” text), but never juxtapose red with yellow if you can help it.

This is sort of a middle-of-the-road sign: it’s legible, prominently features the key information, and has a little bit of a design element in the white stripe joining up with the descender of the “y,” but otherwise there’s not a lot that makes it stand out from the pack.

The one exception is the inclusion of a small photo of the candidate. This must have been intended for people encountering the sign close up, like at a voting location, because this would be almost impossible to make out if you were just driving by.

The thing that really jumps out at you about this sign is the horizontal slightly wavy stripe that forms the crossbar of the capital “A”. There’s actually a fair bit of subtlety to this element: if you look really closely you can see that there’s a thin black stripe separating the upper blue part of the stripe from the lower red part. I’m not sure exactly why it was included; possibly it’s to avoid directly juxtaposing red and blue, two colors that cause visual issues when seen side-by-side.

The horizontal stripe is echoed by the smaller stripe separating “Howard County” from “Board of Education”. This smaller stripe is also composed of three smaller stripes, red and blue with black between them.

Like Clarence Lam, Sabina Taj is blessed with a three-letter last name that can be displayed at an extremely large size. Her first name isn’t that long either, so it can be shown at a large size as well. In combination with the stripe design element and the high contrast between the dark blue text and the white background the result is a sign that does a very good job of highlighting the candidate’s name.

Like other Judge of the Orphans’ Court incumbents, Anne Dodd is reusing the design from her 2014 sign. Here’s what I wrote about it in the last cycle:

This is a good example of a effective minimal sign design: Only as much text as needed, a single and simple sans serif typeface (the “for” appears to be simply in an oblique version of the main typeface), no extraneous design elements, and only a single color other than white. I have only one criticism: When viewed from a distance the “D” and “O” in “DODD” look somewhat similar, so that the name looks like “OOOO” or “DDDD”. A different typeface might have helped this, or alternatively using both upper and lower case (“Dodd” vs. “DODD”).

The only change this time was to add the word “Re-elect” in the upper left corner, similar to what Nicole Bormel Miller did with her sign. This somewhat mars the pure minimalism of the original sign, but overall the sign still looks good.

Another Orphans’ Court sign, this one is an interesting case: the color is great, the typeface is elegant and “Fitch” stands out nicely, but to me the white rectangle around “Orphans’ Court” makes the sign look slightly bottom-heavy.

I presume the designer tried just using white text on the same blue background for “Orphans’ Court” and preferred the approach they ultimately took, possibly to make the name of the office stand out a bit more. I’m just a rank amateur, so I’m not going to second-guess their decision.

I will confess to a bias here: I generally don’t like signs that are just black (or in this case, what appears to be almost dark blue) text on an overall yellow background. I just don’t think it’s an attractive color combination, especially when those are the only two colors on the sign. I’ll try to put away that bias a bit for the moment, but even taking a more neutral attitude this sign doesn’t really stand out too much.

One thing I wonder about is whether the designer contemplated putting the candidate’s first name in the upper left. There’s plenty of room for it, and it would have balanced out the “Ph.D.” mortarboard in the upper right. As it is the empty space causes the sign to look a bit bottom heavy.

For some reason people running for State’s Attorney have a track record of producing excellent campaign signs: I thought Dario Broccolino’s 2014 sign was the overall best of that election cycle, and Kim Oldham’s sign in this cycle stands out as well.

Rich Gibson’s 2014 sign was no slouch either, but his new sign is even better in all respects: the 2014 black and orange colors have been upgraded to a deep blue and a brighter orange. All text is now in the same sans serif typeface, with some text in orange for visual contrast. (Note that it’s less important text: the candidate’s last name and office sought are still in white for maximum impact.)

The Howard County map design element has been replaced with two more effective elements, an orange checkmark that lends visual interest to “Gibson” and an element in the lower right corner that evokes the Maryland flag. (In case you’re interested, the official name for that part of the flag is a “cross bottony.”)

All in all this is a very good-looking sign that also checks all the boxes for what you want to see in a campaign sign.

As far as I can tell this is almost but not quite the same sign Allan Kittleman used in his 2014 race for Howard County Executive. The main change appears to be a change in aspect ratio: relative to the 2014 sign that I reviewed the current sign is wider, so that the letters appear to be less narrow than on the previous sign. (This doesn’t apply to the red banner though, which appears to have kept its previous width and now takes up a bit less of the total width of the sign.)

The old sign also had the website name in the lower right. It was removed from the new sign—probably a good idea, since it was small, hard to read, and detracted from the overall design.

Since the 2014 sign was a pretty good sign and Kittleman won that race, I presume he decided to stick with a winning formula. I’ll do the same, and just quote part of what I wrote last time:

I’ve previously written about the problems inherent in using all four colors of the Maryland flag in a single sign. This sign handles those problems as well as they can be handled, mainly by avoiding the red text on yellow background found in signs from Trent Kittleman, Frank Mirabile, and others. Instead this sign carefully restricts itself to the exact color juxtapositions found the Maryland flag: black with yellow, and red with white. More specifically, it restricts itself to what I think are the best color combinations: black text on a yellow background and white text on a red background.

Some other things to note about this sign: The typeface is clean and readable; it’s bold enough to stand out but light enough to allow adequate space between the letters. Using both upper and lower case in “Kittleman” means that the text isn’t quite as wide as it would be if it were in all upper case, and thus it can fit better on the sign. . . .

The red banner-like design element in the upper right corner is well-done; note that on the left side of the element the yellow background seems to form an arrowhead pointing to the “Proven Independent Leader” slogan. The slogan itself points diagonally upward to the right to make the sign more dynamic (the same technique used on the Dario Broccolino sign). Finally, note that the horizontal line separating “Kittleman” from “Howard County Executive” is not just red on yellow (a poor combination) but is both red and white in order to maintain the preferred color juxtapositions I mentioned above.

The one thing that bothered me about this sign is that the “Howard County Executive” seems a bit thin. When I was walking around the neighborhood I had some trouble making that text out when viewing the sign from a distance.

The increased width of the 2018 sign doesn’t help readability of the “Howard County Executive” text, since it’s now stretched out a bit further.

The color scheme on this sign is very reminiscent of the colors on Warren Miller’s 2014 sign: a very dark blue/black combined with a red that’s bright but not garish. I thought that was a very effective combination on Miller’s sign, and it looks good here too. The major difference is that this sign has blue/black on the top and red on the bottom, reversing the colors from Miller’s sign. For the record, I prefer red on top; I think having red on the bottom makes the sign look a bit top-heavy.

The most significant issue with this sign is not the fault of the designer. Rather it’s that “Yungmann” is a relatively long name, and to fit it within the vertical area allotted to it requires making the letters relatively tall and narrow. This is turn makes the name look horizontally squished and impairs readability somewhat.

In the last cycle Clarence Lam had the shortest last name of any candidate, and Lam’s 2014 sign took full advantage of that fact to make the candidate’s last name as prominent as possible. In this cycle Chao Wu goes Lam one better with a two-letter family name.

However, rather than having “Wu” totally take over the design, his sign exploits the fact that Wu’s given name is also short, so that the entire name can fit comfortably in one line and still be large enough to have good readability and high impact. It also use mixed upper and lower case for the name, which I think was a good decision: besides improving readability somewhat, it also helps ensure that voters don’t misinterpret “Chao Wu” as a single undifferentiated family name “CHAOWU.”

As far as other aspects, though Chao Wu is running for a nonpartisan position and I have no idea of his party affiliation he’s an independent, the sign color scheme looks very similar to is reminiscent of that used by Republicans David Yungmann and Warren Miller, with a deep blue/black and bright red. The major difference is that the blue/black is used for the text, not the background. I wonder what the sign would have looked like with the slogan in white text on a blue/black background (which would have matched Warren Miller’s sign); I suspect it would not have worked as well but have not tried this out in an image editor.

All in all this is a good sign, readable for the important bits (name and position sought) and with straightforward attractive colors and typeface. My only concern is with the slogan: I think it’s OK to have a slogan because the sign has only three lines, but it seems just a tad cluttered compared to the rest of the sign.

39 signs reviewed thus far, at least 18 to go—perhaps more if I can find signs for a few candidates who didn’t have signs at the Miller Branch early voting location. Check Twitter and Facebook for the next article, and don’t forget to vote for the best sign of those discussed in this article.

UPDATE: Voting is closed. See part 7 for all the signs that advanced to the final round.

tl;dr: I’m now at the halfway point in my reviews of 2018 campaign signs in Howard County. This post features signs from Christiana Rigby, Carleen Pena, Calvin Ball, Nicole Bormel Miller, Danny Mackey, Harry Dunbar, Guy Guzzone and fellow Team 13 members Vanessa Atterbeary, Shane Pendergrass, and Jen Terrasa, Courtney Watson, Steve Hunt, and Anita Pandey.

As in the last post I review ten different signs, again in random order. For more on this series see part 1.

This sign has a couple of interesting aspects. First, it features the candidate’s first name more prominently than her last name: the type size is the same and her first name is in a bolder version of the same typeface used for her last name. Is Rigby trying to build name recognition for herself based primarily on her first name (like “Krish for Maryland”), or is it just a fluke of the design?

Either way, that causes a problem for the design, since now “Rigby” looks relatively unbalanced on the left side. The large “Teacher Recommended” helps rebalance the design, but it also (at least to me) makes the sign look more like a Board of Education sign than a County Council sign—especially since “Democrat for County Council” is on a lighter background that provides less contrast for the text and impairs readability a bit.

Don’t get me wrong: I think this is overall an attractive and professional sign. I just wonder about the decisions that went into this particular design.

Every election cycle sees its share of what I’ll call “utilitarian” signs. These are basic signs with a white background and one other color, typically divided into three sections with the text and background colors reversed on the middle section, with the same plain sans serif typeface used on all three sections.

For a past example of this type of sign in its purest form see Kay Hartleb’s plain 2010 sign. This one varies the formula a bit by having four lines of text, so the middle section includes both “Carleen” and “Pena.”

Critiquing the design of a sign like this is somewhat beside the point. It does the job of putting the candidate’s name out there, and that’s about it. (Although I will say that I think the typeface on the top and bottom lines of text seems a bit thin for best readability, and putting “Carleen” on the left rather than centered makes the sign unbalanced.)

A good solid sign, professional looking but not flashy. The color scheme is good and somewhat reminiscent of that on Byron Macfarlane’s sign (to be reviewed in a future post), but it doesn’t “pop” quite as much. There’s also a nice contrast in the typography: lower case serif for the first name, upper case serif for the last name, then upper case san serif for the office.

Note the subtle green design elements on either side of “Calvin”: they’re a nice touch, helping the name visually balance against the larger last name, and echoing the green rectangle around “Howard County Executive.”

Like fellow Judge of the Orphans’ Court candidates Leslie Smith Turner and (as we’ll see) Anne Dodd, Nicole Bormel Miller is reusing the basic design from her 2014 sign. Here’s what I wrote about it in the last cycle:

This sign has a nice purple background color (a break from the usual yellow or red), a good balance between the white foreground and purple background, and an interesting serif typeface. As with the [Shari] Chase sign, I take points away for not spelling “Orphans’” properly.

The major change for this year’s sign is the addition of the “Re-elect” text in the upper left corner, since (unlike 2014) she’s running as an incumbent. That in turn forces the “Nicole Bormel” text to be smaller and further to the right. It’s still an attractive sign, but it now looks just a tad unbalanced.

I should add that Miller’s last name is quite common—in fact, it’s shared by two other candidates in this cycle, Warren Miller and Robert Miller—and she apparently always uses her middle name. Thus she has a lot of text to fit on a sign. I think using lower case on the top and bottom lines of text, with only “Miller” in upper case, helps lighten the look of the sign and make it look less dense.

Finally, not to be pedantic, there’s still no apostrophe on “Orphans’.”

This is a good sign. I was originally going to write that I wasn’t a fan of the background color, but in looking at the sign again I think it’s quite handsome—and because there’s no yellow in the sign it doesn’t remind me of the Washington Redskins. (This has nothing to do with my attitude toward the football team, I just don’t like their team colors, especially when the burgundy tilts to the bright side.)

The “Mackey” is quite visible and impactful, and the text size and condensed typeface on “Danny” matches it well. In fact, all the text on this sign looks good and has variety, despite all of it being in upper case and using variants of the same sans serif typeface.

A further nice subtle touch is shown on the stars to the right of “Danny”. The stars (or some other design element) are needed to balance out the left-justified “Danny,” but if the stars were solid white then they would pull focus from the candidate’s name. (I tried this out in an image editor to gauge the effect.) Instead the stars look like they were hand-drawn in scribbles, which both lets some of the background through, lightening the look of the stars, and also provides some informality in an otherwise fairly formal sign. (Folks, this is why you hire graphic design professionals.)

This sign does a good job of putting the candidate’s name front and center, as well as highlighting the office being sought. The colors are good as well, especially the red. Normally I don’t like to see red design elements directly on a blue background, because the contrast can be problematic. (We’ll see some other signs where this is true.) In this case though the brightness of the red and the white text within the red rectangle provide improved contrast and alleviate this concern.

It’s an open question whether it would be worth adding a design element in the upper left to balance the left-justified “Harry”. I tried something like this in an image editor and I’m not sure it was worth it.

I previously referred to Team 13’s 2014 sign as “bare-vanilla minimalism,” since it consisted of red text on a white background with only very minimal design elements.

This sign is less minimal, introducing as it does a new color (black) and a non-trivial design element that also serves to identify the candidates as ”Team 13”. I don’t think the black text is all that readable against the black background, but the sign accomplishes its purpose, namely to associate the names of the candidates in your mind as members of a slate. The text for those names looks good and has good contrast with the background.

Another blast from the past, this time from Courtney Watson, as she updates the sign design she used in 2010 in her (successful) race for County Council, abandoning the 2014 design she used in her (unsuccessful) race for County Executive. A bit of superstition, perhaps?

Here’s my review of the 2010 sign:

Large text that conveys only the basic information needed, nice contrasting typefaces (with the top one lending an air of liveliness to the sign), a unique choice of complementary colors (including a subtle gradient on the bottom half), and good balance in the design between the top half, the bottom half, and the white border. But what really takes this design from good to great is the stand of wheat to the right: it adds visual interest, ties back to the official Howard County seal, and evokes the rural past of the country in a way calculated to appeal both to conservative older residents and more liberal newcomers concerned about environmental issues. This one got my vote for the best Howard County campaign sign of 2010.

The new sign adds her first name (in the same case and typeface as her last name) but otherwise retains the virtues of the 2010 sign, with one exception: I think the white border on this sign is too wide, especially at the top.

I think the typeface on this sign is too thin, and the Maryland flag design element on the right may be too subtle, but this sign has a problem that has nothing to do with the design itself: Apparently the material of which the sign is made is so thin/transparent that parts of the other side of the sign show through in reverse. It’s both disconcerting and makes the sign less readable.

This is the classic “chalk on blackboard” theme for a sign for a Board of Education race, a design last used by Bob Ballinger in the 2010 election, if I remember right. This version is a bit busier than Ballinger’s, mainly due to the slogan at the bottom, but otherwise it’s a good example of this particular type of sign, legible with an attractive color.

I’m not a big fan of slogans on campaign signs, but I have to admit that “best in class” is a good pun. I also like the little mortarboard design element taking the place of the “i” in “Anita.”

Note that on Facebook Anita Pandey pointed me to an alternate design for this sign. I couldn’t see it too well because the image was small, but it looked like the alternate version replaced the “i” in “Anita” with a more extensive design element that combines a scroll (representing a diploma, presumably) and mortarboard, both drawn in a more cartooney fashion. In my opinion the original version is preferable; its version of the mortarboard design element is more subtle and doesn’t pull focus from the candidate’s name.

I’ve now commented on 29 signs out of a total of almost sixty for which I have pictures. Hopefully it will be all downhill from here. Check Twitter and Facebook for the next article, and don’t forget to vote for the best sign of those discussed in this article.

UPDATE: Voting is closed. See part 7 for all the signs that advanced to the final round.

tl;dr: I continue my look at 2018 campaign signs in Howard County with signs from Melanie Harris, Janet Siddiqui, Shahan Rizvi, Reid Novotny, Scott Berkowitz, Deb Jung, Larry Pretlow, Vicky Cutroneo, Raj Kathuria, and Jim Walsh.

No rest for the weary, as I continue looking at 2018 campaign signs for local Howard County races. (“Local” here means not statewide and not for Federal positions.) This time I step up the pace a tiny bit and review ten different signs, again in random order. For more on this series see part 1.

This is a reasonable looking sign, albeit somewhat dense and crowded in terms of the amount of information it tries to fit in. However the candidate’s name is quite readable, and the sign makes it clear what office she’s running for. Though busy the design is also relatively clean, with good use of the Maryland flag and some variation in the typefaces across the multiple lines of text.

Regarding the amount of information, I can see in a way why she included her website name on the sign: “Melanie Harris” is a fairly common name, and an Internet search for it returns a lot of irrelevant results. Also, the obvious website choice of “melanieharris.com” seems to be taken by someone else, with the site not even loading properly. Thus presumably the desire to highlight the candidate’s website “harrisinthehouse.com”—which I admit is a clever domain name.

But was it necessary to add a slogan too? One point to note is that the slogan is somewhat at odds with the sign design: “Smaller Government” is of course a standard Republican slogan, but the sign colors are green and white, colors traditionally associated with Democrats. I can’t help thinking this sign would have been more internally consistent in its messaging if it were in red, white, and blue.

Another example of a candidate, or more precisely, the candidate’s family, having a favorite color: orange was also prominently featured in Nayab Siddiqui’s 2014 sign, although in his case it was orange with black rather than orange with blue (as here).

This sign uses a particularly bright orange that really stands out. The white outlines around the letters in ”Siddiqui” also helps readability, as can be easily seen if you compare them to the letters in “County Council”. The text of ”Janet” and “Siddiqui” is in a good bold serif typeface that makes an impact without being too chunky. Unfortunately the text for “County Council” doesn’t quite go with it; I’m not sure if it’s the typeface, the lack of outlining, or the use of blue for the text color. (Would white have been better?)

Finally, why include the “M.D.” under Siddiqui? I can see this for a Board of Education race, but would anyone voting for a County Council candidate really care that Janet Siddiqui is a physician?

This is the first of several examples of a phenomenon I don’t recall seeing in 2014: campaign signs for Central Committee candidates. (Or, to be more specific, male Democratic Central Committee candidates; I haven’t seen any signs for female Democratic Central Committee candidates, nor for Republican Central Committee candidates.) I find it interesting that Shahan Rizvi would undertake the expense of making campaign signs, especially given that he’s a member of the “HoCo Forward” slate, and thus would presumably benefit from any promotion of that slate.

As for the sign itself, the colors are attractive, and the main thing is that the name “Rizvi” is both prominent and legible. However the typeface for “Shahan” seems a bit thin in comparison, as does the typeface used for the website name. In fact, the website name isn’t really all that readable. I wonder if it would have worked better in lower case.

Finally, the little cartoon is cute and lends an air of whimsy to the sign, but including two of them almost makes me think Rizvi is running as a pair of twins.

This is a solid sign—which is good, since Reid Novotny seems intent on plastering my section of Route 40 with these. The overall blue and white scheme has good contrast, and the spot of red in the upper left livens up the design and prevents it from being too monotone.

The typefaces are legible, and I like the strategy of placing “Reid” in the space opened up by the capital “N”. It’s mirrored by the design element with the star, which not only helps separate “Novotny” from “State Senate” but also fills the space opened up by the descender in the letter “y.”

Finally, since the design is pretty clean and uncluttered I don’t mind the addition of a slogan at the top. The slogan also helps contrast—in a relatively subtle way—Novotny’s candidacy from that of his primary opponent, incumbent Gail Bates.

Here’s another example of a campaign sign for the Democratic Central Committee race—and for another member of the HoCo Forward slate. It’s an attractive sign, with good legibility for the last name and a nice shade of blue.

But again I have to ask: Is it really necessary to include the fact that you’re a doctor, especially for a Central Committee race? I wouldn’t be so down on this except that I think the “MD” in small letters throws off the rest of the design.

There are a lot of things to like about this sign, including the typeface used for the names, so I was wondering why I found it a bit offputting. Then I figured it out: there’s no white border around the sign. Maybe it’s just me, but I find including a border helps frame the sign and highlight its content.

I have to admit, my first thought upon seeing this sign was, “Who is Larry?” Then I saw the slogan “Break the Slate!” and thought, “Oh, maybe this has to do with the Central Committee election and the HoCo Forward slate.” But I couldn’t remember seeing any Larrys on the ballot when I voted last Sunday. Then I looked more closely and saw “for Delegate” and the “13” on the donkey’s shirt, and finally figured it out: he’s running against the candidates of “Team 13.”

This is not really Larry Pretlow’s fault: I completely missed the “for Delegate” part in the lower part of the sign, which is in a larger font size than the “Break the Slate”. But it does illustrate the potential for confusion when voters see signs that don’t include all the relevant information about a candidate. (Before anyone comments, I’m aware that Krish Vignarajah also has signs that read simply “Krish for Maryland”. But as a gubernatorial candidate she has a higher media profile and thus presumably better name recognition.)

Sorry about the detour, now back to the sign itself: First, it’s a somewhat unusual shape relative to other signs. Other than that it’s a perfectly good looking sign. Blue or black text on a white background makes for high contrast, and the typeface is readable. I’m not a big fan of cartoons on signs, but this one is perfectly fine and doesn’t overshadow the rest of the sign.

I do wonder though about including “June 26th” on the sign. It makes the sign more crowded and I’m not sure it adds anything: if you know who “Larry” is, wouldn’t you also know when to vote?

Things to like about this sign: It has good legibility and impact for the candidate’s name, and I like the contract between the sans serif typeface used for the name and the slab serif typeface used for “Board of Education”. I like the two colors and the division of the sign’s area between them. I like including the endorsement logos within the sign itself, as opposed to slapping on stickers after the fact.

Things I don’t like: The two thin horizontal lines on either side of “Vicky” I think are necessary, but I’m not persuaded that it was necessary to include a similar thin line below “Cutroneo,” especially since there’s already a white area dividing that section of the sign from the lower part. I tried editing out the bottom line in an image editor and I think the sign looks better and (dare I say) more impactful without it.

Finally, it bothers me that the “Teacher Recommended” and “Ethics Star” logos aren’t quite at the same height. (Yes, I’m picky.)

This sign seems overly dark to me, with all white text against colored backgrounds. It also doesn’t help that the red is a relatively dark red. (Raj Kathuria may want to look to fellow Republican Warren Miller, whose signs have really good shades of red and blue.) Otherwise the sign has good legibility for the candidate’s name, but seems overly crowded with the secondary text at the top and bottom.

Finally, I could take or leave the little star-in-circle design elements used in dotting the “j” and “i”. I used my trusty image editor to change those elements to plain white circles; I think the sign looks quite fine without the stars.

This is far from being a bad sign, but I feel compelled to nitpick it a bit: The typeface for “Walsh” is bold, perhaps too bold: I feel the letters run together a bit too much, in a way that threatens to impair readability.

Also, I’m curious about the design elements in the lower left. The element that looks like two stalks of wheat is defensible enough: assuming that it is supposed to represent stalks of wheat, it’s a symbol of Howard County (especially the farms of Council District 5) and echoes similar elements on past signs for Courtney Watson and Bob Flanagan (among others). But what’s a set of scales doing on this sign? Walsh is running for County Council, not for Judge of the Orphans’ Court.

That’s it for today’s crop of signs. Keep an eye out on Twitter and Facebook for the next crop. In the meantime, vote for the best sign of those discussed in this article. If I get enough votes I’ll have a final runoff to determine the winner among all signs; otherwise you’ll just have to accept my choice.

UPDATE: Voting is closed. See part 7 for all the signs that advanced to the final round.

tl;dr: I take a look at 2018 campaign signs in Howard County. This first post features signs from Jon Weinstein, Dan Medinger, Mavourene Robinson, Greg Jennings, Leslie Smith Turner, Bob Glascock, Jen Mallo, Terry McAndrews, and Kim Oldham.

One of my interests is graphic design—not that I have any talent for it myself—and one of the ways I’ve manifested that interest is in critiquing political campaign signs. I did a delayed retrospective on 2010 campaign signs, and then later did a more full discussion of as many 2014 campaign signs as I could track down.

I had thought I’d take a break this year, especially since I’m doing a series of political posts that are much more time-intensive. However in going this weekend to vote at the Miller Branch library, the array of signs was so impressive that I couldn’t stop myself from taking pictures of all of them. And what’s the use of taking pictures if I don’t do anything with them?

So without first ado here’s the first post in a series that I hope I can complete by the time (primary) election day rolls around. Rather than organizing the signs by race I’m posting them in a random order, just to mix things up.

I’ve previously outlined the criteria I use in judging signs, but I’ll briefly summarize them here once more:

• Legibility, especially at a distance from a moving car.
• Including the most important information: the candidate’s name and the office sought.
• Attractive colors that don’t clash or impede legibility.
• Clean, professional typography that adds an extra “oomph” to the sign’s visual appearance.
• Effective use of other design elements to enhance the impact of the sign, not detract from it.

I will say that local candidates have upped their game this year in the sign department: I’ve seen fewer things I consider to be basic mistakes, and a higher percentage of pretty good-looking signs.

And with that, let’s look at some signs!

Based on his 2014 campaign signs there are three things I’ve noticed about Jon Weinstein: He likes blue, white, and yellow, he likes little stars, and he likes to promote his web site.

He’s continuing those themes in 2018, as you can see above, though with a twist: where the 2014 signs used white and yellow text on a blue background, the 2018 signs use yellow and blue on a white background.

The main knock I have against the 2018 sign is that it looks fairly crowded and busy with all the design elements and the website name. The yellow horizontal lines and the line of blue stars help to separate the textual elements, but they also make the sign very dense. There’s also not much variation in the typography to lighten the density: same typeface throughout and mostly all upper case except for the website name.

Like Jon Weinstein, Dan Medinger has his favorite colors, in this case green and white, the same as those used on his 2014 sign. I wrote of that sign that it was “competent and unexceptionable,” and I think that’s true of this sign as well. There’s really not a whole lot more I can say about it.

One interesting aspect of campaign signs is that a sign can be perfectly effective in promoting the candidate while not being all that elegant from a design standpoint. This sign for Mavourene Robinson is a good example of that: The yellow on blue and blue on yellow stands out well and has good contrast for readability; in fact, the “Robinson” almost bores its way into your brain.

On the down side, I’m not that fond of the blue and yellow color combination, and design-wise there’s nothing particular interesting about the sign: just a basic horizontal yellow/blue/yellow division of the background, and a simple mixing up of the typefaces for variety: mixed upper and lower case sans serif in the slogan, mixed upper and lower case italic serif in “Mavourene,” all upper case san serif in “Robinson,” and then back to mixed upper and lower case sans serif for “Board of Education.”

The bottom line: while this sign won’t win any design awards, it gets the job done.

Here’s an example of the opposite phenomenon to what I just discussed: a sign that is quite elegant from a design perspective, but has I think one significant problem as a campaign sign: The “Democrat for County Council” text is not much larger than the authority line at the bottom, and I suspect it will not be that readable from a distance or when driving by.

Otherwise this sign is a winner: The typography is quite nice, and the white on blue contrast for “Jennings” makes it stand out well, while the orange on blue text for “Greg” is a nice combination that’s pleasing to the eye. Two other little touches I really liked: the contrasting orange/italic/serif type for the word “for,” and the “wave” design element below that line. Those are the kinds of things that from a design perspective take a good sign and make it great.

As far as I can tell this is the exact same sign Leslie Smith Turner used in the 2014 campaign, so I’ll just repeat my previous comments:

This sign does a nice job of highlighting the candidate’s last name and the position being sought; it also highlights the fact that she’s an incumbent, which many voters might not know given that this is a relatively obscure courthouse race. I’m less enthusiastic about the burgundy color used for the text, and I’m not a big fan of the script used for “Re-Elect Judge.”

This is a good but not great sign, in my opinion: The candidate’s last name is quite readable, but his first name looks too small compared to the last name and (especially) the “Vote” design element. I think it might have looked better just omitting the first name and making the “Vote” element slightly larger. I’m also not overly fond of the typography: I think having three pieces of text in a serif typeface and italics is a tad monotonous.

The main problem I have with this sign is that “HCPSS Board of Ed” seems both awkwardly worded and a bit small and hard to read. The word “Board” in particular looks like the letter spacing is a bit too wide, with the “B” and “A” needing to be a bit closer to the “O.”

Otherwise the sign has no major problems. I do find the choice of red, white, and blue a bit odd though for a Board of Education race, as that color scheme is mostly used for partisan races, and in particular is a favorite of Republican candidates. Is this the design equivalent of a dog whistle? (I have no idea what Jen Mallo’s party affiliation is.) (UPDATE: Jen Mallo emailed me to say that the color choice was made by the graphic designer and that no dog whistle was intended.)

This sign, like some others past and present, tries to enliven the design by doing more interesting things with the sign background. That goal is accomplished here, with the only downside being that the actual sign part of the sign (that is, the part with the candidate’s name and office sought) seems like it’s just a smaller (and thus less visually prominent) sign within a sign.

Also, using mixed upper and lower case serif text is an unusual choice for the candidate’s name, most signs use all upper case sans serif for that. That choice may have been made because “McAndrews” is in CamelCase (as the programmers say) and doesn’t seem to read as well in all caps as “MCANDREWS.”

Every election year there are one or two signs that stand out from the pack and make me stop and do a double-take. Kim Oldham’s sign is one of those this year. (There seems to be something about the State’s Attorney races that brings out good sign design; Dario Brocollino’s sign was a standout in 2014.) The bold white type on a yellow background really pops out, and the design element at the top based on the Maryland flag is done quite well. The red text reading “State’s Attorney” is just a tad small for maximum readability, but I think it’s balanced nicely with the larger text of the name.

One interesting design decision was to place the first name “Kim” at the left rather than centering it above “Oldham”. I actually tried my hand at changing the design in an image editor, and found it’s a tough call as to whether left justification or centering looks better. What swayed me toward left justification is that there’s a slight asymmetry in the Maryland flag design element at the top, caused by keeping the yellow and black bars of equal width. Putting “Kim” to the left seems to balance off the asymmetry a bit.

That’s it for today’s group of signs. More critiques should be coming your way soon in part 2. In the meantime I’m trying something new by giving you the opportunity to vote on your favorite signs, starting with this first group: just click on the link to the part 1 SurveyMonkey survey and then pick which of the signs above you like best. It’s completely anonymous.

UPDATE: Voting is closed. See part 7 for all the signs that advanced to the final round.

tl;dr: I have some final thoughts after completing my series on the Chrysalis and the background to its creation.

My previous post marked the end of my series “Creating the Chrysalis.” After twelve articles and a few hundred hours of writing I’m ready to take a break from writing about the Chrysalis and Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, although I’ll continue to support the work of the Inner Arbor Trust through my volunteer efforts (as at the recent Wine in the Woods event) and my donations.

However before I leave these topics (at least for now) I thought I’d take the opportunity to sum up my thoughts and opinions on the things I’ve been writing about. So without further ado here are some things I found noteworthy:

The neglect of Symphony Woods

For a tract of land that’s been the subject of so much attention and professed adoration these past few years, it’s really amazing to me how little a role Symphony Woods played in the life of Columbia for most of its history. Other than people crossing the property to get to Merriweather Post Pavilion, very little happened in Symphony Woods in the first 25 years of Columbia—even things associated with Symphony Woods in people’s minds, like the petting zoo and the Maryland Renaissance Festival, were mostly if not entirely located on the adjacent Rouse Company property and not in Symphony Woods proper.

1993 marked the first year in which more than token attention was paid to Symphony Woods, with the beginning of Wine in the Woods and attempts by Cy Paumier and others at LDR International to persuade the Columbia Association to develop Symphony Woods as a park. But again, nothing significant happened for another ten years, as proposals for a new park fell on deaf ears.

By 2003 Symphony Woods was completely absent from the Columbia Association’s list of (19!) strategic priorities (the outcome of an intensive two-year planning effort), and the LDR International proposal was so forgotten that Ken Ulman and Joshua Feldmark apparently stumbled onto it later that year like archaeologists discovering a long-lost civilization.

The lasting influence of GGP

This atmosphere of general disinterest in Symphony Woods was lifted only when a few years later General Growth Properties proposed its own plans for downtown Columbia, including building a road and various civic structures on the CA-owned Symphony Woods property. The resulting reactions from CA and others, along with the concurrent controversy over the proposal for a 23-story luxury condominium building near the lakefront (now the site of Little Patuxent Square), energized activists of all stripes to weigh in on the future of downtown Columbia in general and Symphony Woods in particular.

Whatever one’s opinions on the actual details, I think it’s clear that GGP’s proposals were the first attempts at serious planning for Columbia since the earliest days of the planned community, including reviving Jim Rouse’s practice of consulting outside experts in multiple disciplines. Many of the ideas for downtown Columbia we now take for granted first originated with GGP or in the parallel (and symbiotic?) Howard County planning effort.

This includes in particular the concept of an overall neighborhood encompassing Symphony Woods and Merriweather Post Pavilion, and the idea of that neighborhood (which GGP referred to simply as “Merriweather”) as “a new kind of cultural park where the landscape becomes a setting for arts, cultural and civic uses.” To my knowledge this language first appeared in GGP’s proposed General Plan Amendment from 2008 (see page 12) before being written into law as part of the Downtown Columbia Plan in 2010 (see page 13).

Not all of GGP’s ideas were so felicitous. One bad idea that refused to die was trying to establish some sort of linear or otherwise formally geometric connection between The Mall in Columbia and Merriweather Post Pavilion. Such a scheme was previously hinted at in the north-south “Corporate Boulevard” envisioned in the county’s 2006 draft master plan for downtown Columbia (see for example page 2.2) and in the “major promenade-style walkway” from the Mall to Symphony Woods mentioned in the 2007 Downtown Columbia: A Community Vision (page 23).

However its fullest expression was in GGP’s 2008 plan, which included a linear “Merriweather Connection to Symphony Overlook,” complete with associated buildings, from Little Patuxent Parkway all the way to Merriweather Post Pavilion (see the illustration on page 53).

The idea of putting buildings and roads in Symphony Woods between The Mall in Columbia and Merriweather Post Pavilion was soundly rejected, but the allure of a north-south axis between the two lived on, most notably in the Symphony Woods Park plan created by Cy Paumier and his associates—even if it meant cutting a significant number of trees to fit in a formal pathway geometry.

The idea of a formal mall-pavilion axis didn’t receive significant pushback until the Design Advisory Panel and Planning Board reviewed the Symphony Woods Park proposal, and wasn’t killed off entirely until the creation of the Inner Arbor plan, with its philosophy of meandering pathways and tree preservation.

Why classical music left Merriweather Post Pavilion

I had originally planned for the timeline post to focus solely on Symphony Woods, the Inner Arbor plan, and the construction of the Chrysalis. However I soon decided that Merriweather Post Pavilion was integral to the overall history (just as it’s integral to the overall vision for Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods), and so it was worth doing a parallel set of items discussing what was going on with the pavilion.

The conventional narrative about Merriweather Post Pavilion goes something like this: It was created as a home for the National Symphony Orchestra, the orchestra subsequently went bankrupt, and then the pavilion was permanently taken over by the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, the Who, the Grateful Dead, and Janis Joplin. This conventional narrative is not entirely wrong, but it omits some interesting wrinkles.

First, as best as I can determine the National Symphony Orchestra never went bankrupt. It did have financial difficulties and labor issues (including a musicians strike), and those problems did result in the NSO’s 1970 summer season almost being cancelled. However the NSO did survive (in fact, it still exists) and it continued to play concerts at Merriweather Post Pavilion, at least for a while.

I suspect that what really caused the National Symphony Orchestra to abandon Merriweather Post Pavilion was the opening (in 1971) of Filene Center at Wolf Trap Farm in northern Virginia (now Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts). Filene Center was a more elaborate facility closer to Washington DC, and was lavishly subsidized both by US taxpayers and by its namesake, Catherine Filene Shouse. (Compare Shouse to fellow heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post, who famously never gave a dime to support Merriweather Post Pavilion after Rouse named it for her.)

However the National Symphony Orchestra’s decamping to northern Virginia did not mark either the end of classical music at Merriweather Post Pavilion or its final takeover by rock acts. Instead, by means of some hefty subsidies the Rouse Company was able to entice the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra to begin playing summer concerts at the pavilion, starting in 1974. The BSO went on to play at Merriweather Post Pavilion for several years.

Like the National Symphony Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra was also lured away from Merriweather Post Pavilion, this time by the promise of a new performance center in Oregon Ridge Park north of Baltimore (off I-83 near Hunt Valley) and the efforts of Baltimore County Executive Donald Hutchinson and BSO patron Joseph Meyerhoff. Despite at least two attempts that promise never materialized. Nevertheless the BSO left Merriweather Post Pavilion for good after the 1981 summer season.

(Howard County chauvinism compels me to add that the BSO’s performance space in Oregon Ridge Park is no great shakes; it looks like nothing more than an upgraded version of the amphitheater at Centennial Park.)

In the meantime, during the BSO years the Rouse Company also tried to keep rock acts away from Merriweather Post Pavilion, as the pavilion played host to a parade of middlebrow pop stars like Engelbert Humperdinck and Perry Como. Rock acts eventually came back, but then in 1995 northern Virginia gave birth to another Merriweather Post Pavilion competitor, Nissan Pavilion (later, and unfortunately, renamed Jiffy Lube Live).

In the end the story of Merriweather Post Pavilion is not just that of the decline of classical music and the rise of rock, though that’s certainly a factor. I think it’s also a function of Howard County’s occupying a somewhat-awkward position between Washington and Baltimore, and not being the beneficiary of patronage from the cultural and political power brokers of either.

Thus Merriweather Post Pavilion’s continued survival has relied, and I think will continue to rely, primarily on the willingness of Howard County residents to support the pavilion both directly and indirectly. This includes the pavilion renovations (partly funded by the county), the work of the nonprofit Downtown Columbia Arts and Culture Commission (also partly county-funded), and of course the county’s contributions toward realizing the larger vision of Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods.

Beyond Jim Rouse and the “pioneers”

With this year marking the 50th birthday of Columbia we’ll hear a lot about Jim Rouse and his role in creating Columbia, and likely also a lot about the “pioneers,” those individuals and families who were the first residents of the newly-created community. Given that, I think it’s appropriate to spare a thought for two other groups of people who won‘t be highlighted quite as much in these celebrations.

The first is the Howard County commissioners who gave Rouse the green light to proceed with the development of Columbia, along with the county government personnel who cooperated with the Rouse Company in getting it planned and built. The commissioners in particular paid a heavy price for their role in creating Columbia, as the rapid influx of new residents tilted the voter population heavily toward Democratic-voting Columbia residents and led to a takeover of the county’s political establishment that sidelined the previous generation of politicians. (For more on this process see my book Dividing Howard: A History of County Council Redistricting in Howard County, Maryland.)

The second (and for our present purposes more important) group is the new generation of politicians, civic leaders, and activists who came to prominence in the first decade of the 21st century. In particular 2006 marked the election of Ken Ulman as Howard County executive, as well as the election of a completely new set of County Council members: Calvin Ball, Greg Fox, Mary Kay Sigaty, Jen Terrasa, and Courtney Watson.

The “class of 2006” remained intact and at the helm of Howard County government for the next eight years, during which the foundations for the future of downtown Columbia were laid, including the creation of the 2010 Downtown Columbia General Plan, detailed planning for the Crescent property inherited by the Howard Hughes Corporation from the Rouse Company and GGP, the agreement for and funding of renovation of Merriweather Post Pavilion, the pavilion’s transfer to the Downtown Columbia Arts and Culture Commission, and (last but not least from our point of view) the funding of the Inner Arbor Trust’s work on the Chrysalis after the Columbia Association board’s approval of the Inner Arbor plan.

That work has continued under the new administration of Allan Kittleman, with four out of the five “class of 2006” council members continuing to serve through 2018. (Courtney Watson resigned from the council to run unsuccessfully for County Executive against Kittleman.) Recent events have included the Tax Increment Financing plan for the Crescent development (or as Howard Hughes has taken to calling it, the Merriweather District), more funding for the Chrysalis, and (beyond downtown) plans for the village centers.

Also worthy of note are people who are not elected officials (at least, not yet) but who fill key leadership roles within Howard County and help knit together the civic fabric of the county. There are too many of these people to list them all, and I don’t want to slight anyone by not mentioning them, so I’ll simply say that you can find this next generation serving on government boards and commissions, serving as executive directors and board members of nonprofit organizations, and otherwise advocating for a positive future for Columbia and Howard County. You can also find some of their activities and achievements highlighted in my previous timeline post.

I hope that when Columbia celebrates its 100th birthday this second generation of Columbia and Howard County leaders will be given due recognition for their roles in creating the new Columbia of the 21st century.

It pays to bring in the best

At the dedication of the Chrysalis Michael McCall called up to the podium three people whose input concerning technical requirements influenced the final form of the Chrysalis: Brad Canfield of I.M.A. (who provided an example “technical rider” from the EDM artist Skrillex), Toby Orenstein of the Columbia Center for Theatrical Arts (who suggested the need for a smaller secondary stage), and Coleen West of the Howard County Arts Council (who was concerned that the stage floor to be springy enough for dance performances).

I’ve previously described the innovations inherent in the Chrysalis’s form as well as the demanding nature of the technical requirements put on it as a proposed venue for popular musical acts and theater and dance performances—requirements due in large part to the suggestions of Canfield, Orenstein, and West. As many an IT shop and defense contractor has learned to its regret, combining visionary technology with stringent and often evolving requirements can be a recipe for disaster.

Fortunately, that didn’t happen with the Chrysalis. (If it had I would have written a very different series, or perhaps no series at all.) In my opinion the reason why it didn’t happen is the overall high quality of the design, engineering, fabrication, and construction team put together by the Inner Arbor Trust: when potential problems arose there were people available who knew what they were doing and were able to work with others on the team to produce a successful outcome.

Bringing in the best possible people and organizations to get something done isn’t exactly a new thing in Howard County. The Rouse Company’s 1964 presentation on Columbia lists over sixty consultants and advisors that Jim Rouse sought out for help in planning the new city—not just from Washington and Baltimore but from all over the US.

The bottom line is that it pays to go for the best, both in the quality of the final product and in the avoidance of obstacles to producing it. That’s a lesson to keep in mind as we look to the future phases of Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods. We’re fortunate to have a beautiful design for the next major park feature, the Butterfly guest services building, created by the upcoming Brooklyn-based firm nARCHITECTS (recently named #9 for design in the Architect Magazine 2016 Top 50 list). Hopefully the Inner Arbor Trust will be able to attract the funding necessary to get that design realized as it was originally envisioned.

Local news and the risk of losing our history

The celebration of Columbia’s 50th birthday will also feature artifacts and documents collected by the Columbia Archives. The Archives has done a great job of preserving the early history of Columbia, and some of the fruits of that effort are available online, including its own timeline.

However the period of most interest to me is not the first decade or so of Columbia but rather the last decade or so, during which the future form of downtown Columbia was debated and plans for a park in Symphony Woods finally moved forward. For that period I relied almost totally on online sources both free and paid, and came to two conclusions:

The first is a cliché by now: that there is no substitute for professional news reporting done at the local level. Time after time I found myself consulting local newspapers, most notably the Baltimore Sun, in an effort to confirm what happened when and who said what about it.

Gone forever are the days when Howard County could support a multiple-person staff of Sun reporters, along with independent reporting from the Columbia Flier and Howard County Times. Now we’re lucky to have one person assigned to the Howard County beat, and those people typically move on to other things within a year or two. But I’m still grateful for what we have.

However, when it comes to researching the past (as opposed to following current affairs) our local papers do have some major disadvantages, for example, the lack of a usable online archive for older issues of the Columbia Flier and Howard County Times. And once you get beyond newspapers to other sources of online information the picture gets even worse.

For example, in some of my previous posts I linked to various documents on the Howard County government web site. Many of those links no longer work, victims of an apparent reorganization of the county’s internal document management system. Similarly, you can no longer find online records of many past Columbia Association board meetings, since CA’s board page now includes only meetings since January 2014. Even the Inner Arbor Trust’s extensive collection of construction photos and related materials is no longer visible due to a revamp of the Trust’s web site (although old links still work).

The list goes on: Looking for the columbiatowncenter.info web site that GGP used to promote its downtown plans? Gone, and preserved elsewhere only in fragments. How about online copies of presentations and other documents used in public meetings on proposed developments (e.g., pre-submission meetings, Design Advisory Panel meetings, and Planning Board meetings). Mostly never posted online, and now either sitting on a private hard drive somewhere or sent to the recycle bin. What about video recordings of those public presentations? Are you kidding me? Nobody bothered to film them.

The above may sound like the grumblings of a frustrated amateur historian, but I think it reflects a larger truth: For people living in and (especially) growing up in the 21th century, if something isn’t online and easily findable via search engines then it might as well not exist. How are our descendants going to celebrate the second fifty years of Columbia in 2067 if large chunks of the history of those years are lost forever, tossed in the digital dustbin?

I think this is so important a topic that I hope to post more on it later.

Questions and answers

Now for some semi-random questions and answers, in which I get to interview myself:

• Q: Why did you write this series?

  A: Because I wanted to promote the work of the Inner Arbor Trust in creating Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, and because I thought it would be an interesting thing to research and write about. (And indeed it was.)

• Q: How much time did you spend writing and researching the series?

  A: I have no idea. Probably a few hundred hours all told, given that each article took at least 10-20 hours from start to finish, and a few took significantly longer.

• Q: Why didn’t you include links to the newpaper stories in your timeline post? After all, many of them can be read online at no charge.

  A: Because I ran out of time and energy. There are almost four hundred references in the timeline, and unfortunately many if not most of the newspaper stories either are not online or if online cannot be found by searching for the title of the story as it appeared in print.

• Q: Do you plan to turn this series into a book?

  A: No. I’d be very surprised if the core readership of my blog exceeds one hundred people, and based on past experience the audience for any book would be an order of magnitude less than that. Reshaping the series into a book just isn’t worth the time that would be needed to do a good job of it.

• Q: Is there anything you wish you’d included in the series but didn’t?

  A: Yes. It wasn’t until a few weeks ago that I heard the story (from Kevin Day of Living Design Lab) of why the Chrysalis shingles have four different colors (and not, for example, three colors or five): it’s because there were four large coils of sheet aluminum used in fabricating the shingles, with each coil assigned a different color.

• Q: What’s your opinion on the future of Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods?

  A: I think the Inner Arbor Trust is in good hands, and I’m content to simply sit back and let Nina Basu and the Trust’s board decide how best to pursue funding and constructing the remaining phases of the park.

• Q: What will you write about now?

  A: I have some ideas, but I’m not ready to talk about them yet. As Jason Booms of the local blog Spartan Considerations puts it, “stay tuned, as more will follow” (but not necessarily that soon).

Thanks and acknowledgements

To conclude this post I want to thank the many people without whom creating this series would have been impossible, or at least much more difficult than it was:

• The reporters of the Baltimore Sun and the Columbia Flier, especially those who covered downtown Columbia developments (including those related to Symphony Woods) in the GGP and Howard Hughes eras, including (in chronological order) Laura Cadiz, Larry Carson, Janene Holzberg, June Arney, Lindsey McPherson, Sarah Toth, David Greisman, Luke Lavoie, Amanda Yeager, and Fatima Waseem. (Luke Lavoie’s work was especially important, accounting for over ten percent of the almost four hundred sources I cite.)

• Marc Fornes and THEVERYMANY, who graciously gave me permission to reproduce a broad collection of renderings and photographs of both the Chrysalis and other THEVERYMANY projects, along with Zahner, Arup, and Living Design Lab, who also contributed various illustrations.

• The Columbia Archives and Columbia Association staff, for providing online access to key historical documents.

• And, finally, Michael McCall, whose thorough documentation of the work of the Inner Arbor Trust made this project tractable, and whose comments and suggestions helped make the series as comprehensive and accurate as possible—and, of course, whose work in creating and implementing the Inner Arbor plan meant that there was something for me to write about in the first place.

And with that I’m signing off for now . . .

tl;dr: The “Creating the Chrysalis” series ends with a timeline of significant events in the history of the Chrysalis, Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, and the surrounding downtown Columbia area, from 1962 to the present, with references.

This article is the last in a series exploring in depth the creation of the Chrysalis amphitheater in Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods in Columbia, Maryland. For the complete list of articles please see the introduction to the series.

Previous articles in this series discussed in detail various aspects of Symphony Woods, the Inner Arbor plan, the Chrysalis, and Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods. This article provides a timeline of events concerning these and related topics, including in particular downtown Columbia development and the evolution of Merriweather Post Pavilion, from the creation of Columbia to the present. It includes references for all events discussed in the timeline, and a final section listing additional sources of online information concerning the topics of this article.

1962

Jim Rouse begins the process of creating Columbia.

• April: Jim Rouse begins investigating acquiring land in Howard County, Maryland.

  Gunts, Edward. “50 years ago, a city was started behind scenes.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 19 Feb. 2012, p. 1G.

• October 15: Jim Rouse proposes to Connecticut General Life Insurance a venture to “plan and develop . . . a New City of approximately 100,000 people” between Baltimore and Washington.

  Rouse, James W. Letter to Irving G. Bjork. 15 Oct. 1962, issuu.com/columbiaarchives/docs/1962-10-15-letter. Accessed 6 May 2017.

1963

Howard County learns of Rouse’s plans.

• October 29: Jim Rouse announces to Howard County officials and residents his intent to build a planned community on almost 14,000 acres of land recently acquired by Howard Research and Development, a joint venture between his company and Connecticut General Life Insurance.

  Pickett, Edward G. “14,000 acres in Howard to be developed.” Baltimore Sun, 30 Oct. 1963, p. 44.

1964

The idea of Symphony Woods first appears in print.

• November 11: Howard Research and Development publishes a marketing brochure for Columbia. Among other things, the brochure promises the establishment of a park on a 40-acre tract of wooded land in Columbia Town Center.

  Community Research and Development, Inc. Columbia: A New Town for Howard County. 11 Nov. 1964, p. 28, issuu.com/columbiaarchives/docs/columbia_a_new_town. Accessed 6 May 2017.

1966

Construction of Columbia begins.

• June: The Rouse Company retains contractors to do clearing and grading in and around the future Village of Wilde Lake, including grading the lake bed and building access roads for construction equipment.

  “Clearing to start in Columbia.” Baltimore Sun, 19 June 1966, p. 7F.

1967

Columbia, Merriweather Post Pavilion, and Symphony Woods are opened to the world.

• June 21: Columbia officially opens with the dedication of Wilde Lake, followed by an opening to the general public five days later.

  Lewis, Jack. “Columbia opening slated.” Baltimore Sun, 18 June 1967, p. 2F.

  “New village—familiar name.” Hartford Courant [Hartford CT], 23 June 1967, p. 19.

• July 14: Merriweather Post Pavilion officially opens with an inaugural performance by the National Symphony Orchestra. The pavilion is located within a 10-acre area owned by the Rouse Company, entirely surrounded by a 37-acre area designated as Symphony Woods and owned by the Columbia Association (the homeowner’s association created by Rouse for Columbia).¹

  Hill, Frederic B. “Wet throng hails Columbia, Rouse, Humphrey, and music.” Baltimore Sun, 15 July 1967, p. 20B.

  Hume, Paul. “Merriweather Post Pavilion opens to critical acclaim.” Washington Post, 16 July 1967, p. D1.

  Arney, June. “Makeover for Merriweather.” Baltimore Sun, 26 May 2008, p. 1B.

1968

Merriweather Post Pavilion focuses on classical music.

• Merriweather Post Pavilion hosts performances by the National Symphony Orchestra and other artists, including Van Cliburn, Benny Goodman, and the New York City Ballet.

  “Season preview at the Post Pavilion.” Baltimore Sun, 19 May 1968, p. 14D.

1969

As the National Symphony Orchestra experiences labor difficulties and financial problems, popular music begins its takeover of Merriweather Post Pavilion.

• Spring–summer: Merriweather Post Pavilion begins to host rock acts, including Led Zeppelin, Blood Sweat and Tears, Richie Havens, Janis Joplin, and Iron Butterfly.

  Cowan, Richard. “With a little help . . .” Washington Post, 25 May 1969, p. B8.

  “Summer adventure in performing arts.” Columbia Flier, 18 June 1969, p. 1.

• October–November: The National Symphony Orchestra endures a six-week strike by musicians.

  Ross, Nancy L. “Musicians call halt to strike.” Washington Post, Nov. 24 1969, p. A1.

1970

The popularity of Merriweather Post Pavilion with rock acts leads to expansion and crowd control issues.

• Merriweather Post Pavilion expands its capacity by 2,000 by adding loge seating under canvas tents to the sides of the main pavilion and putting more seats in the aisles of the main pavilion.

  “New addition to Columbia.” Baltimore Sun, 12 May 1970, p. B6.

• June 27: After uncertainty over its financial situation, the National Symphony announces that it will have a full summer season at Merriweather Post Pavilion after all.

  Kriegsman, Alan M. “Symphony saviors.” Washington Post, 27 June 1970, p. C1.

• June 28. Several hundred people enter Symphony Woods and break through fences to gate-crash a concert by Procol Harum at Merriweather Post Pavilion. Concerts the next two days by The Who and others draw up to 20,000 people with no further problems.

  Hodge, Paul. “Crowd crashes Post Pavilion.” Washington Post, 29 June 1970, p. 4A.

  Ross, Nancy L. “Rocking on.” Washington Post, 1 July 1970, p. B5.

1971

The Rouse Company outsources management of Merriweather Post Pavilion, as Wolf Trap opens and competes with the pavilion for classical music performances.

• January: The Rouse Company engages Nederlander Arts Associates to operate Merriweather Post Pavilion under a 10-year lease agreement.

  “New managers at Merriweather.” Baltimore Sun, 24 Jan. 1971, p. D15.

• June: The National Symphony Orchestra schedules four summer performances at Merriweather Post Pavilion.

  “National Symphony plans Post Pavilion concerts.” Baltimore Sun, 20 June 1971, p. B4.

• July: After testing a prototype elsewhere in Columbia, Antioch College proposes to construct a 30,000 square-foot inflatable structure on Rouse Company land next to Symphony Woods and Merriweather Post Pavilion to house the college’s Human Ecology Center.

  “The ‘Bubble’.” Columbia Flier, 21 July 1971, p. 40.

  Clark, Michael J. “Big air-bubble campus planned.” Baltimore Sun, 2 Dec. 1971, p. C20.

  Clark, Michael J. “Antioch lays the cornerstone to pneumatic campus in Columbia.” Baltimore Sun, 7 July 1972, p. A9.

• July 1: Filene Center at Wolf Trap Farm Park in Northern Virginia opens with a concert featuring the National Symphony Orchestra.

  Sanders, Donald. “Park for the arts puts music in the Vienna (Va.) woods.” Baltimore Sun, 27 June 1971, p. D1.

1973

The Rouse Company and the Columbia Association try to attract more visitors to downtown Columbia, as the bubble bursts on another downtown scheme.

• Symphony Woods and the adjacent Rouse Company property next to the Columbia Mall host a 5-acre petting zoo during the summer.²

  Clark, Michael J. “Howard zoo’s 1st born a mule.” Baltimore Sun, 11 Sept. 1973, p. C13.

• October-December: Amid concerns about practicality, maintenance cost, and vandalism, Antioch College tries to sell its inflatable structure next to Symphony Woods, but “Mother Nature and larcenous scavengers” prove to be its downfall, as winds collapse the structure and thieves pick over the remains.

  Clark, Michael J. “College has bubble trouble.” Baltimore Sun, 26 Oct. 1973, p. A10.

  Clark, Michael J. “Scavengers plunder Antioch’s burst bubble.” Baltimore Sun, 6 Dec. 1973, p. C7.

1974

The Rouse Company attempts to steer Merriweather Post Pavilion away from rock and back to more traditional fare.

• January 29: The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra announces a series of performances at Merriweather Post Pavilion supported by funding from the Rouse Company, as Rouse executive Michael Spear notes the pavilion’s need to “change its image.”

  Galkin, Elliott W. “Symphony season adds Columbia.” Baltimore Sun, Jan. 30 1974, p. B6.

  Clark, Michael J. “Merriweather drums out rock era.” Baltimore Sun, 30 Jan. 1974, p. C11.

• April: Nederlander Arts Associates suspends operations at Merriweather Post Pavilion for the 1974 summer season, citing restrictions on rock acts and the Rouse Company’s unwillingness to expand seating.

  “Columbia concerts reduced.” Baltimore Sun, 26 Apr. 1974, p. C4.

1975

The Rouse Company continues its efforts to avoid having Merriweather Post Pavilion become a rock venue.

• March 19: The Rouse Company discusses its efforts to get the state of Maryland to buy Merriweather Post Pavilion. Rouse executive Michael Spear notes that the responsibility for booking performers has left the Rouse Company “troubled by our ownership of the pavilion” ever since its creation, and that the pavilion has “lost several hundred thousand dollars since it opened.”

  Clark, Michael J. “Columbia pavilion up for sale.” Baltimore Sun, 20 Mar. 1975, p. D1.

• May: The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra schedules six summer concerts at Merriweather Post Pavilion.

  “Symphony slates summer concerts.” Baltimore Sun, 11 May 1975, p. D18.

1977

Crowd control problems continue at Merriweather Post Pavilion, and a new attraction opens near Symphony Woods.

• August 14: The Columbia Association bans trespassing in Symphony Woods during performances at Merriweather Post Pavilion. The ban is lifted less than two weeks later.

  Clark, Michael J. “Columbia revokes trespassing ban at Merriweather Post Pavilion.” Baltimore Sun, 25 Aug. 1977, p. 24C.

• September–October: The first annual Renaissance Festival is held next to Symphony Woods.³

  “A Renaissance Festival: First Annual Renaissance Festival, Columbia, Maryland.” Baltimore Sun, 16 Sept. 1977, p. 5B.

1978

More potential competition for Merriweather Post Pavilion appears, then recedes.

• April 8: Consultants to Baltimore County, including Frank Gehry, recommend constructing a new performance center at Oregon Ridge Park to replace Merriweather Post Pavilion as the summer home of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Advantages cited for the proposed center’s design include “better backstage facilities and wing and storage space than [Merriweather Post Pavilion].”

  Pietila, Antero. “Build Oregon Ridge pavilion, consultants say.” Baltimore Sun, 9 Apr. 1978, p. A1.

• November 7: By a 59%–41% margin Baltimore County voters defeat a plan to borrow $4 million to build the proposed Oregon Ridge performance center.

  “Voting on Baltimore county questions.” Baltimore Sun, 9 Nov. 1978, p. A11.

1979

Jim Rouse leaves the company that bears his name, and Merriweather Post Pavilion sticks to non-rock fare as the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra considers leaving the pavilion.

• March: Howard County Executive J. Hugh Nichols announces that the county will not issue concert permits for Merriweather Post Pavilion until a security plan is in place to control access to the pavilion and Symphony Woods during concerts.

  “‘Security plan’ required for pavilion at Columbia.” Baltimore Sun, 13 Mar. 1979, p. 5C.

• May: Jim Rouse steps down as CEO of the Rouse Company.

  “Annual meeting marks end of an era for Rouse.” Baltimore Sun, 24 May 1979, p. 15A.

• June 1: With “people like Paul Anka, [Engelbert] Whatshisdink, Perry Como, George Benson, Chuck Mangione, [Joan] Baez, and Judy Collins,” critic Tom Basham criticizes “blandness” in Merriweather Post Pavilion’s summer schedule, with the pavilion “serving cold turkey to rock fans this year.”

  Basham, Tom. “Dog days lie ahead.” Baltimore Sun, 1 June 1979, p. B6.

• June 21: Baltimore Symphony Orchestra President Joseph Meyerhoff proposes a scaled-down pavilion for Oregon Ridge park as the new summer home for the BSO.

  Trammer, Monte L. “Pavilion plan considered in county.” Baltimore Sun, 22 June 1979, p. C22.

1980

Symphony Woods continues to function mainly as the entry way to Merriweather Post Pavilion, as the pavilion continues to compete with Oregon Ridge Park for classical performances.

• Juny 2: Critic Stephen Sera reviews Baltimore Symphony Orchestra summer concerts and praises the acoustic quality of Merriweather Post Pavilion compared to Oregon Ridge Park.

  Cera, Stephen. “BSO does justice to Tchaikovsky.” Baltimore Sun, 2 July 1980, p. C3.

• September: In the course of a dispute between the Columbia Association and the operators of Merriweather Post Pavilion, Lt. James Robey of the Howard County Police Department (and later Howard County Executive) testifies that without the closing of Symphony Woods before and during Merriweather performances “there will be no pavilion.” Members of the Columbia Association Board of Directors⁴ complain that as a result families can’t picnic in Symphony Woods most weekends during the summer.

  Garland, Jeanne. “Pavilion operators ask the council to eliminate fee for closing woods.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 14 Sept. 1980, p. 3.

• November 4: By a margin of only 126 votes Baltimore County voters approve a $1.25 million bond issue to construct an Oregon Ridge performance center to be used by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. However the performance center fails to attract matching state funding.

  “Oregon Ridge barely won.” Baltimore Sun, 14 Nov. 1980, p. D2.

  Sin, Richard H. P. “Hutchinson drops bid for Oregon Ridge aid.” Baltimore Sun, 26 Feb. 1981, p. C20.

1982

Jim Rouse finds life after the Rouse Company, Michael and Barbara McCall move to Columbia as Michael begins working with Rouse, and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra abandons Merriweather Post Pavilion.

• January: Jim and Patty Rouse found the non-profit Enterprise Foundation (later renamed Enterprise Community Partners) and its for-profit subsidiary, the Enterprise Development Company.

  Peirce, Neal R. “For the poorest.” Baltimore Sun, 18 Jan. 1982, p. 11A.

• Spring: Michael McCall and his wife Barbara move from Minneapolis to Columbia, and McCall joins the Enterprise Development Company as its fourth employee to work on various projects, including a joint venture with Walt Disney Co.

  Lavoie, Luke. “‘An awesome responsibility’.” Columbia Flier, 14 Mar. 2013, p. 1.

  Strategic Leisure. “Who.” Strategic Leisure, strategicleisure.com/who.

• May 26: For the first time in almost a decade the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra does not play at Merriweather Post Pavilion, instead scheduling summer concerts at Oregon Ridge Park and Pier 6 at the Inner Harbor.

  Cera, Stephen. “Summer concerts set in 3 locations.” Baltimore Sun, 26 May 1982, p. C17.

1983

One of the last non-Merriweather attractions at or near Symphony Woods shuts down.

• April 5. Someone sets fire to the backstage area of Merriweather Post Pavilion, causing $250,000 damage.

  “Pavilion fire ruled arson.” Baltimore Sun, 7 Apr. 1983, p. D2.

• July: The petting zoo at Symphony Woods closes due to lack of interest.

  Wyskida, Sherry. “Declining attendance brings close of Children’s Zoo.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 13 July 1983, p. 11.

1985

Symphony Woods loses another non-Merriweather attraction.

• February 28: The Maryland Renaissance Festival receives approval to move its operations from next to Symphony Woods to a dedicated site in Crownsville, Maryland.

  Clark, Michael J. “Renaissance festival gets OK for site.” Baltimore Sun, 1 Mar. 1985, p. 3D.

  Sarris, Marina. “Cultural diversity lost as Renaissance festival moves.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 10 Mar. 1985, p. 2.

1992

The Rouse Company makes a first attempt at developing its property next to Symphony Woods, as Michael McCall strikes out on his own.

• March 19: The Howard County Council (acting as the Zoning Board) rejects a request from the Rouse Company to build 300 apartments in Columbia Town Center next to Merriweather Post Pavilion and Symphony Woods.

  Nelson, Erik. “Howard County officials trim plan for Columbia.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 21 Mar. 1992, p. 2B.

• April: Michael McCall founds Strategic Leisure, Inc.

  Lavoie, Luke. “‘An awesome responsibility’.” Columbia Flier, 14 Mar. 2013, p. 1.

  Strategic Leisure. “Who.” Strategic Leisure, strategicleisure.com/who.

  McCall, Michael. Personal communication. 27 May 2016.

1993

More than 25 years after its creation, interest grows in encouraging more use of Symphony Woods.

• May 15-16: The first Wine in the Woods festival is held in Symphony Woods.

  Nelson, Erik. “Wine gala is called a success.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 17 May 1993, p. 1B.

• November: The Columbia Association contracts with Land Design Research (later renamed LDR International), a firm founded by former Columbia planner Cy Paumier and his associates, to study ways to increase the use of Symphony Woods.

  Sachs, Adam. “Citizens group aims to influence plan for Symphony Woods.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 1 Dec. 1993, p. 3B.

1994

The first park plan for Symphony Woods appears, along with another new park attraction.

• November 10: LDR International presents the results of its study on development of Symphony Woods, recommending a pathway around the park with a more formal park entrance and boardwalks over environmentally sensitive areas, a formal garden and wildflower plantings, seating for picnickers, and a “sound garden” with hidden speakers or fountains. The plan is later estimated to cost $600,000.

  Sachs, Adam. “Path, boardwalk urged for Symphony Woods.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 11 Nov. 1994, p. 1B.

  Sachs, Adam. “Cost of upgrading Symphony Woods estimated at $600,000.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 12 Dec. 1994, p. 3B.

• December: The first Symphony of Lights display is held in and around Symphony Woods.

  “Drive through display of seasonal light scenes.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 15 Nov. 1994, p. 6B.

1995

Development in downtown Columbia and Symphony Woods is stalled, and the future of Merriweather Post Pavilion is uncertain.

• February 16: LDR International again presents its plan for Symphony Woods at a public hearing sponsored by the Columbia Association, amid concerns that the plan is “too extravagant” and recommendations to “move slowly” on the project, citing (among other things) the fact that the park is closed for Merriweather Post Pavilion concerts during the summer. Only one resident attends the hearing.

  Sachs, Adam. “Council to begin deliberations tonight on Columbia Association budget.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 16 Feb. 1995, p. 6B.

  Sachs, Adam. “Financial committee pans plan for recreational vehicle parking.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 17 Feb. 1995, p. 3B.

• February 27: Amid resident concerns about spending increases the Columbia Association Board of Directors votes to cut the CA budget, deferring several capital projects including a $102,000 project to dredge the pond in Symphony Woods, the first phase of the park plan proposed by LDR International.

  Sachs, Adam. “Council adopts budget.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 28 Feb. 1995, p. 1B.

• May: The Rouse Company asks Howard County for permission to build 345 apartments or condominiums next to Merriweather Post Pavilion and Symphony Woods.

  Nelson, Erik. “345 apartments proposed for Town Center.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 16 May 1995, p. 1B.

• June: In his comments before the Howard County Planning Board regarding the Rouse Company’s rezoning request, Rouse executive Alton Scavo raises the possibility of Merriweather Post Pavilion being closed down, and also speculates about adding an arts, educational, and cultural center near the pavilion.

  Coram, James M., and Adam Sachs. “No overhaul of Pavilion is planned.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 19 June 1995, p. 1B.

• July: The Howard County Planning Board rejects the Rouse Company’s proposal to develop apartments next to Merriweather Post Pavilion and Symphony Woods, citing the risk of the pavilion being forced to close due to noise complaints and the need to preserve downtown land for commercial development.

  Nelson, Erik. “Rouse plan for apartments near Post Pavilion denied.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 30 July 1995, p. 3C.

1996

The end of an era in Columbia.

• April 9: Jim Rouse dies.

  Lally, Kathy. “Urban visionary succumbs at 81.” Baltimore Sun, 10 Apr. 1996, p. 1A.

1997

The Rouse Company attempts to address issues with Merriweather Post Pavilion.

• April: Contracts are signed for an initial set of renovations at Merriweather Post Pavilion, designed to help it compete with other venues.

  “Post Pavilion improvements will permit larger-scale acts.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 23 Apr. 1997, p. 3B.

• October: As Merriweather Post Pavilion celebrates its 30th birthday, its size and outdated facilities make it less competitive compared to alternative venues like the new Nissan Pavilion (now Jiffy Lube Live) in northern Virginia.

  Hedgpeth, Dana. “Newer venues challenge pavilion.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 20 Oct. 1997, p. 1B.

1999

Merriweather Post Pavilion sees a new operator, but plans to create a park in Symphony Woods provoke little interest.

• March: Concert promoter SFX International takes over operations at Merriweather Post Pavilion from the Nederlander organization.

  Neal, Jill Hudson. “Merriweather concert lease goes to SFX.” Baltimore Sun, 23 Mar. 1999, p. 2C.

• March 25: Cy Paumier and LDR International present to the Columbia Association a proposal to make Symphony Woods more accessible to visitors.

  Niedowski, Erika. “Columbia looks to improve access to Symphony Woods.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 25 Mar. 1999, p. 3B.

• July 22: Cy Paumier and LDR International again present to the Columbia Association Board of Directors a proposal for Symphony Woods, and wait for the board to decide whether to begin discussions about it.

  Niedowski, Erika. “Symphony Woods renovation eyed.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 23 July 1999, p. 1B.

  Niedowski, Erika. “Marando calls for council review.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 13 Aug. 1999, p. 1B.

2003

The Rouse Company makes a last attempt at developing downtown Columbia and threatens to downsize Merriweather Post Pavilion, as others revive the idea of creating a park in Symphony Woods.

• March: The Rouse Company considers applying for permission to build more residential units in Columbia Town Center, and rumors circulate about the fate of Symphony Woods and Merriweather Post Pavilion.

  Cadiz, Laura. “Reconsidering Town Center.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 23 Mar. 2003, p. 1B.

• April 21: The Rouse Company proposes adding 1,600 residential units in Columbia Town Center next to Symphony Woods and Merriweather Post Pavilion, helping to create a “vibrant urban center.”

  Cadiz, Laura. “Rouse subsidiary seeks OK for 2,141 more units.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 1 May 2003, p. 1B.

• April 24: After two years of debate and discussion, the Columbia Association Board of Directors approves a strategic plan for CA, including a list of 19 priorities for 2004 and other items for future years. Developing Symphony Woods as a park is not among them.

  Cadiz, Laura. “Columbia Council lists its long-term goals.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 1 May 2003, p. 3B.

• May 29: The Howard County Planning Board approves the Rouse Company’s request to add 2,141 new residential units, including about 1,600 units in Columbia Town Center. Rouse executive Dennis Miller pledges that units will not be built on the Merriweather Post Pavilion or Symphony Woods properties: “[Merriweather Post Pavilion] will always be used for the arts.” Miller later repeats the pledge to counter rumors that Merriweather Post Pavilion will be closed, although he notes that development could affect the pavilion’s parking lots.

  Cadiz, Laura. “Planning Board OKs additional housing units.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 30 May 2003, p. 1B.

  Cadiz, Laura. “Merriweather Post rumors denied.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 22 July 2003, p. 1B.

• July 23: The Rouse Company proposes converting Merriweather Post Pavilion into a year-round indoor theater, noting that the pavilion has been “deteriorating through the years.” Members of the recently-formed advocacy group Save Merriweather speak out against the plan.

  Cadiz, Laura. “Board delays Rouse hearings.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 25 July 2003, p. 1B.

  Cadiz, Laura. “Theater proposed for Post Pavilion.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 24 July 2003, p. 1B.

  Alexander, Sandy. “Fans want Merriweather to stay the same.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 24 Aug. 2003, p. 1B.

  “History and accomplishments.” SaveMerriweather.com, Save Merriweather, 2004, www.savemerriweather.com/history.html. Accessed 11 May 2017.

• September–October: As the Howard County Council (in its role as the Zoning Board) conducts a series of contentious public hearings on the Rouse Company’s proposals, council member (and future County Executive) Ken Ulman and Columbia Association board member Joshua Feldmark attempt to revive the idea of developing Symphony Woods as a park, citing their rediscovery of LDR International’s 1999 proposal to CA.

  Cadiz, Laura. “Windfall seen in building proposal.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 11 Sept. 2003, p. 1B.

  Cadiz, Laura. “Residents testify on Town Center proposal.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 12 Sept. 2003, p. 1B.

  Cadiz, Laura. “Press Rouse for details on housing, panel told.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 25 Sept. 2003, p. 1B.

  Cadiz, Laura. “A vision of ‘Central Park’ in Howard.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 5 Oct. 2003, p. 1B.

  Carson, Larry, and Laura Cadiz. “Rouse Co. defends plan for zoning.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 21 Oct. 2003, p. 1B.

• October: The Rouse Company hires I.M.P., the owner of the 9:30 Club in Washington DC, to manage Merriweather Post Pavilion, replacing Clear Channel Entertainment (formerly SFX Entertainment).

  Cadiz, Laura. “New Merriweather management.” Baltimore Sun, 15 Oct. 2003, p. 3E.

• November 3: The Howard County Council holds its eighth and final public hearing on the Rouse Company’s proposal to add more residential units in Columbia Town Center and elsewhere.

  Cadiz, Laura. “Eighth hearing held on rezoning.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 4 Nov. 2003, p. 1B.

2004

The Rouse Company is absorbed into General Growth Properties, as the Howard County Council gets more involved in planning downtown Columbia and attendees see the first fruits of I.M.P.’s management of Merriweather Post Pavilion.

• January 21: The Howard County Council unanimously rejects the Rouse Company’s request to add 2,141 residential units to Columbia. Chair Ken Ulman cites the need for an analysis of possible revisions to Columbia’s New Town zoning scheme, as well as a desire for more details on pedestrian access, a possible Symphony Woods park, and other issues.

  Cadiz, Laura. “County board rejects Rouse’s downtown plan.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 22 January 2004, p. 1B.

  Cadiz, Laura. “Zoning denial spurs doubts about Rouse.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 25 Jan 2004, p. 1B.

  Pichaske, Pete. “Rejection could signal end of New Town zoning.” Columbia Flier, 29 Jan. 2004, p. 4.

• February–March: As the future of Merriweather Post Pavilion remains uncertain in the face of Rouse Company plans to convert it to an indoor theater, I.M.P. Productions previews its first season of events at the pavilion.

  Alexander, Sandy. “Venue posts concert dates.” Baltimore Sun, 5 Feb. 2004, p. 1E.

  Alexander, Sandy. “Merriweather Post holding on.” Baltimore Sun, 21 Mar. 2004, p. 62T.

• March 31: The Rouse Company files a court appeal of the Howard County Council’s rejection of its plans. (The appeal is ultimately unsuccessful.)

  “Rouse Co. appeals rejection of its plan to add homes in Columbia Town Center.” Baltimore Sun, 8 Apr. 2004, p. 3B.

  Wan, William. “Judge to rule on fate of land next to Merriweather Post Pavilion.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 13 Mar. 2005, p. 1G.

  Cadiz, Laura. “Plans for Columbia are moving forward.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 14 Sept. 2005, p. 1G.

• June: The Howard County Council decides to undertake its own comprehensive analysis of Columbia’s New Town zoning regulations, while Howard County plans to study the feasibility of purchasing Merriweather Post Pavilion from the Rouse Company.

  Cadiz, Laura. “Council abandons plans for citizen zoning panel.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 17 June 2004, p. 1B.

  Cadiz, Laura. “County weighs buying Merriweather.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 24 June 2004, p. 1B.

• July: As I.M.P. works to make improvements to Merriweather Post Pavilion and increase revenue, Howard County Executive Jim Robey proposes financing a county purchase of the pavilion using ticket sales and concessions revenue.

  Alexander, Sandy. “Merriweather pavilion dances to a new theme.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 1 July 2004, p. 1B.

  Cadiz, Laura. “Tickets seen as source of funds for pavilion.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 4 July 2004, p. 1B.

  Cadiz, Laura. “Managers combat pavilion’s reputation.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 25 July 2004, p. 1B.

• July 28: County Executive Jim Robey creates a citizens advisory panel to advise him on whether Howard County should purchase Merriweather Post Pavilion from the Rouse Company.

  Cadiz, Laura. “Robey names panel to study pavilion.” Baltimore Sun, 29 July 2004, p. 3B.

• August 20: General Growth Properties (GGP) announces its intent to acquire the Rouse Company for $12.6 billion. Rouse executive Bob Rubenkonig announces “it’s definitely business as usual” as far as plans for Columbia and Merriweather Post Pavilion are concerned.

  Hopkins, Jamie Smith. “Rouse to sell to competitor.” Baltimore Sun, 21 Aug. 2004, p. 1A.

  Cadiz, Laura. “Rouse plans survive sale.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 24 Aug. 2004, p. 1B.

• September: As the Rouse Company renews I.M.P.’s contract to manage Merriweather Post Pavilion, I.M.P. co-owner Seth Hurwitz urges the citizens advisory panel on the pavilion to maintain it as an open-air venue, and pavilion manager Jean Parker points to the need for at least $5 million in repairs.

  Cadiz, Laura. “Firm that operates pavilion opposes plan to enclose it.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 29 Sept. 2004, p. 1B.

• September 13: The Howard County Council begins a series of public hearings on proposals to revise zoning regulations for Columbia.

  Cadiz, Laura. “County holds zoning forum.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 14 Sept. 2004, p. 1B.

• November 12: General Growth Properties concludes its purchase of the Rouse Company. As a consequence of the acquisition, GGP assumes responsibility for planning in Columbia Town Center.

  Hopkins, Jamie Smith. “Rouse, real estate innovator, moves into history.” Baltimore Sun, 13 Nov. 2004, p. 11C.

• December: As General Growth Properties encounters resistance to its new role in Columbia, the Columbia Association proposes holding a weeklong “charrette” in which residents, developers, and county officials could create draft proposals for downtown Columbia development.

  Wan, William. “Rouse buyer meets friction.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 19 Dec. 2004, p. 1B.

  “Columbia leaders propose a summit on land use.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 17 Dec. 2004, p. 2B.

• December 17: As Howard County’s exclusive right to purchase Merriweather Post Pavilion expires, the citizens advisory panel on the pavilion issues its preliminary recommendations, advising against converting it to an indoor venue. The panel also offers suggestions on addressing future parking needs at Merriweather Post Pavilion, including entering into parking agreements with nearby office buildings or building parking garages on the Symphony Woods property.

  Wan, William. “Howard rights to venue set to expire.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 19 Dec. 2004, p. 8B.

2005

Merriweather Post Pavilion is saved and is proposed as a center for culture and the arts for Columbia and Howard County, as GGP, Howard County, and others plot the future of Columbia’s downtown.

• January: The citizens advisory panel on Merriweather Post Pavilion prepares to make its final recommendations amid confusion and controversy about General Growth Properties’s plans for the pavilion and for downtown Columbia.

  Wan, William. “Fate of Merriweather Post Pavilion may be decided soon.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 16 Jan. 2005, p. 1B.

• March 18: The citizens advisory panel on Merriweather Post Pavilion produces its final report, recommending that Howard County purchase the pavilion, and advising “positioning Merriweather as a center for the arts, education and culture and making it an important regional and cultural force.” The panel recommends making about $19.5 million in renovations to the pavilion, including raising its roof.

  Cadiz, Laura. “Panel recommends Howard buy pavilion.” Baltimore Sun, 19 Mar. 2005, p. 3B.

  Citizen Advisory Panel on Merriweather Post Pavilion. Final Report. Howard County, 2005, frankhecker.com/assets/texts/citizens-advisory-panel-on-merriweather-post-pavilion-final-report.pdf. Accessed 26 May 2017.

• April 11: Howard County Council members Guy Guzzone and Ken Ulman announce Howard County Executive Jim Robey’s decision to fund development of a community master plan for downtown Columbia, in parallel with efforts by General Growth Properties to develop its own plan.

  Cadiz, Laura. “2 Town Center plans coming.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 13 Apr. 2005, p. 1G.

  Cadiz, Laura. “Mastering a plan for Columbia.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 17 Apr. 2005, p. 1G.

• April 12: General Growth Properties abandons plans to convert Merriweather Post Pavilion into an indoor venue and subsequently takes the pavilion off the market, declaring that “the [Town Center and Merriweather Post Pavilion] are linked.”

  Cadiz, Laura. “Howard pavilion to stay open air.” Baltimore Sun, 13 Apr. 2005, p. 1B.

  Carson, Larry. “Downtown plan for Columbia tied to pavilion.” Baltimore Sun, 1 May 2005. p. 1G.

• May 18: General Growth Properties holds a public meeting to unveil a draft plan for downtown Columbia, including a proposed development of three buildings in the Crescent property south and west of Symphony Woods and Merriweather Post Pavilion.

  Cadiz, Laura, and Larry Carson. “Developer unveils its plan for Columbia.” Baltimore Sun, 19 May 2005, p. 1B.

• June: General Growth Properties holds public “town hall” meetings to present a framework for a future master plan for downtown Columbia and discuss issues of traffic and walkability.

  “You’re invited to attend the 2nd Columbia town hall meeting.” Baltimore Sun, 10 June 2005, p. 5G.

• October: Howard County sponsors a weeklong charrette, a series of public meetings (originally proposed by the Columbia Association) to solicit input on the future of downtown Columbia.

  Wheeler, Timothy B. “A ‘there’ there: Seeking a more urban Columbia.” Baltimore Sun, 2 Oct. 2005, p. 6F.

  Otto, Mary. “‘Whatever happened to Tivoli?’” Washington Post, 13 Oct. 2005. p. T12.

  Blakely, Andrei. “Charrette gives public voice in planning of downtown.” Columbia Flier, 13 Oct. 2005.

  Blakely, Andrei. “Mass input guides new downtown Columbia.” Columbia Flier, 20 Oct. 2005.

2006

A vision for downtown Columbia starts to form, as the Columbia Association pulls back on its participation in planning efforts and a new generation of Howard County politicians takes power.

• February 27: The Howard County Department of Planning and Zoning presents a draft master plan for downtown Columbia. It treats Symphony Woods, Merriweather Post Pavilion, and the Crescent property as an integrated neighborhood for planning purposes, and envisions it as “a cultural, residential, service retail, and office district.” It also suggests improving pedestrian access to Symphony Woods from the mall, and includes a rendering of a possible promenade from the mall terminating at a fountain in Symphony Woods just south of Little Patuxent Parkway.

  Cadiz, Laura. “Columbia plan is on way.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 26 Feb. 2006, p. 1G.

  Design Collective, Inc., and Howard County Department of Planning and Zoning. The Columbia Downtown Master Plan (Preliminary Draft). Howard County, Maryland, 27 Feb. 2006, archive.org/details/CDMP1Intro. Accessed 11 May 2017.

• March 9: The Columbia Association Board of Directors debates a resolution to prohibit CA staff, including CA President Maggie Brown, from having private discussions with General Growth Properties and Howard County officials regarding downtown Columbia planning. The board votes to amend the resolution to instead require the staff to report on the times, places, and attendees for all such meetings, and not enter into any agreements without public review by the board.

  Even with the clarification provided by the resolution, confusion and controversy persist regarding the extent to which CA staff can or should discuss downtown Columbia planning issues with GGP, Howard County, or others.

  Columbia Association. Minutes, Board of Directors Meeting, Held: Thursday, March 9, 2006, Approved March 23, 2006. 23 Mar. 2006, p. 3.

  Columbia Association. Resolution on Downtown Partnership Meetings [as introduced]. 9 Mar. 2006.

  Columbia Association. Amendment to: Resolution on Downtown Partnership Meetings [as approved]. 9 Mar. 2006.

  Arney, June. “Much ado about meeting.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 2 Apr. 2008, p. 2U.

  Arney, June. “CA board ‘off to a good start.’” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 28 May 2008, p. 3U.

• October 19: General Growth Properties and Howard Community College sponsor the first in a series of “Voices of Vision” presentations in which invited speakers present on topics relevant to Columbia downtime planning. Further events are held in November 2006 and January 2007.

  “Columbia: ‘Grow or die’.” Baltimore Sun, 22 Oct. 2006, p. 1G.

• November 7: Ken Ulman is elected Howard County Executive. Calvin Ball, Greg Fox, Mary Kay Sigaty, Jen Terrasa, and Courtney Watson are elected to the Howard County Council.

  Paley, Amit R. “Ulman wins as Democrats strengthen hold on council.” Washington Post, 8 Nov. 2006, p. A43.

2007

Downtown planning efforts continue, and identify Symphony Woods as a key component of the vision for downtown Columbia.

• September 28: The Howard County Department of Planning and Zoning releases a draft document Downtown Columbia: A Community Vision.

  Arney, June. “Howard releases ‘vision’ of town.” Baltimore Sun, 29 Sept. 2007, p. 1B.

  Howard County Department of Planning and Zoning. Downtown Columbia: A Community Vision (Draft). Howard County, Maryland, 28 Sept. 2007, archive.org/details/DCCVDraft092807All. Accessed 11 May 2017.

• November: Columbia Association board member Cynthia Coyle and Alex Hekimian and Alan Klein (of the advocacy groups Alliance for a Better Columbia and the Coalition for Columbia’s Downtown respectively) protest General Growth Properties scheduling private meetings with members of Columbia village boards to discuss downtown redevelopment, citing provisions of the Maryland Homeowners Association Act.

  Arney, June. “GGP is holding private meetings on Town Center.” Baltimore Sun, 14 Nov. 2007, p. 1G.

• December 10: Greg Hamm replaces Doug Godine as Regional Vice President of General Growth Properties and general manager of Columbia.

  Arney, June. “GGP selects Hamm for post.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 12 Dec. 2007, p. 1G.

• December 28: The Howard County Department of Planning and Zoning releases the final version of Downtown Columbia: A Community Vision. It recommends “both woodland restoration [of Symphony Woods] to enhance its value as a natural area and additional activities to meet its full potential as the ‘Central Park’ for Downtown.” It also recommends a promenade connecting Symphony Woods to the mall.

  Arney, June. “A downtown re-vision.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 30 Dec. 2007, p. 1G.

  Howard County Department of Planning and Zoning. Downtown Columbia: A Community Vision. Howard County, Maryland, 28 Dec. 2007, archive.org/details/DCCV2007. Accessed 11 May 2017.

2008

General Growth Properties promotes its new plan for downtown, including Symphony Woods, and the Columbia Association reacts.

• January: The Columbia Association adds a preliminary budget item for a new CA headquarters, possibly to be located on CA-owned land in Symphony Woods next to Toby’s Dinner Theater.

  Arney, June. “Association offers 2009, 2010 budgets.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 16 Jan. 2008, p. 4U.

• March: General Growth Properties begins a series of four public forums to discuss the future of downtown Columbia. Alan Ward, one of the designers working on a GGP plan for downtown Columbia, comments on possible arts and cultural uses for Symphony Woods: “Merriweather Post Pavilion is important, but what else goes on in Symphony Woods? What could make it more part of the life and future of downtown?”

  Arney, June. “Trying to get Columbia on the right foot.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 9 Mar. 2008, p. 8U.

  Arney, June. “Architect shares Town Center ideas.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 11 Apr. 2008, p. 4U.

• April 3: General Growth Properties and the Columbia Association meet for the first time to discuss issues relating to downtown Columbia.

  Arney, June. “Much ado about meeting.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 2 Apr. 2008, p. 2U.

  Arney, June. “GGP, CA upbeat on meeting.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 9 Apr. 2008, p. 3U.

• April 28: General Growth Properties presents to the public a proposed master plan for downtown Columbia. The plan proposes a “cultural spine” linking The Mall in Columbia with a renovated Merriweather Post Pavilion, including a pedestrian promenade from the mall to the pavilion, multiple civic and cultural buildings within Symphony Woods, and a new road south of and parallel to Little Patuxent Parkway.

  Arney, June. “GGP reveals downtown Columbia plan.” Baltimore Sun, 29 Apr. 2008, p. 2B.

  Gunts, Edward. “Putting a ‘there’ there.” Baltimore Sun, 5 May 2008, p. 1C.

  “Downtown Columbia Plan: Overview.” Columbia Town Center, General Growth Properties, columbiatowncenter.info/MasterPlan.aspx. Archived 9 May 2008.

• May 10: General Growth Properties begins a series of “Vision in Focus” public presentations describing the proposed master plan, as well as a separate “Community Discussions” series. Consultant Gail Dexter Lord emphasizes the need for new cultural attractions in downtown Columbia, as controversy arises over GGP’s proposal to put buildings on CA-owned land within Symphony Woods.

  Arney, June. “Future Columbia transit previewed for residents.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 11 May 2008, p. 3U.

  Arney, June. “Culture is keynote of Columbia forum.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 14 May 2008, p. 6U.

  Arney, June. “Residents give GGP proposal mixed reviews.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 14 May 2008, p. 7U.

  Arney, June. “Makeover for Merriweather.” Baltimore Sun, 26 May 2008, p. 1B.

• May 22: The newly-elected Columbia Association Board of Directors meets and receives updates on the CA staff’s recent initial meeting with General Growth Properties. The CA board also authorizes making a formal request to Howard County officials to delay any zoning changes to give the board time to talk with officials. Board member Tom O’Connor notes that “we haven’t talked to them at all because we’ve had this embargo on [CA] staff talking to the county.”

  Arney, June. “CA board ‘off to a good start’.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 28 May 2008, p. 3U.

• June 26: The Columbia Association Board of Directors adopts a seventeen point position statement crafted by the Planning and Strategy Committee that articulates CA’s position on desired outcomes for downtown development, including that “Symphony Woods will be protected and will serve as Columbia’s Community Park.” The board also approves sending a letter to Howard County and GGP outlining its position.

  Columbia Association. Minutes, Board of Directors Meeting, Held: Thursday, June 26, 2008, Approved August 28, 2008. 28 Aug. 2008, p. 5.

• July 11: General Growth Properties previews its planned rezoning submission to Howard County in a public meeting. Among other things, the plan proposes developing “culturally themed buildings and green spaces” in the northern portion of Symphony Woods. In response to a concern expressed about “the incredible shrinking Symphony Woods,” GGP Vice President Greg Hamm remarks that “Symphony Woods is a seriously degraded environment” and points to reforestation plans for woods along US 29.

  Carson, Larry. “Views of the future.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 11 July 2008, p. 4U.

• July 24: The Columbia Association Board of Directors approves a set of “Guiding Principles for Future Plans for Development of Symphony Woods,” to be used by CA staff in discussions with General Growth Properties:

  1. Restoration and maintenance of a vibrant and natural ecosystem.
  2. Provisions for a gathering place for individuals and community events.
  3. Merriweather Post Pavilion will be an exciting and active destination.
  4. Limited new roadways or buildings of a park-related scale.
  5. Connectivity and accessibility to the rest of the downtown.

  Columbia Association. Minutes, Board of Directors Meeting, Held: Thursday, July 24, 2008, Approved September 25, 2008. 25 Sept. 2008, p. 4.

• July 28: The newly formed advocacy group Columbia 2.0 announces its support for redevelopment of downtown Columbia.

  Carson, Larry. “Role by youth urged in Columbia’s plans.” Baltimore Sun, 29 July 2008, p. 2B.

• September 9: The newly-formed advocacy group Columbia Tomorrow meets in Symphony Woods to express support for the General Growth Properties proposal and for the restoration of what it calls an ”environmentally sensitive area that has been unintentionally neglected.”

  Carson, Larry. “New group backing Columbia proposal.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 11 Sept. 2008, p. 1G.

• September 24: General Growth Properties Vice President Greg Hamm issues reassurances that GGP’s financial problems will not affect its plans for downtown Columbia redevelopment.

  Carson, Larry. “Developer about to redo Columbia faces cash crunch.” Baltimore Sun, 28 Sept. 2008, p. 8A.

• September 25: The Columbia Association Board of Directors approves having CA staff work with Cy Paumier and associates “to collaborate and work toward developing a best approach and budget estimate for CA to move forward with a plan/programming/design for CA property in the Downtown.”

  Columbia Association. Minutes, Board of Directors Meeting, Held: Thursday, September 25, 2008, Approved October 23, 2008. 23 Oct 2008, p. 4.

• October 1: General Growth Properties formally submits its General Plan Amendment, Zoning Regulations Amendment, and supplemental materials to the Howard County Department of Planning and Zoning. That evening Greg Hamm presents GGP’s proposals for downtown Columbia to the Columbia Association Board of Directors.

  Carson, Larry. “Makeover under way.” Baltimore Sun, 5 Oct. 2008, p. 1A.

  Columbia Association. Minutes, Board of Directors Special Meeting, Held: Wednesday, October 1, 2008, Approved December 23, 2008. 23 Dec. 2008, p. 1.

  Carson, Larry. “Makeover underway.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 5 Oct. 2008, p. 1G.

• October 29: At a meeting sponsored by the advocacy group Coalition for Columbia’s Downtown, Alan Klein criticizes GGP plans to remove 40 percent of the trees in Symphony Woods, and Cy Paumier shows artist’s conceptions of an alternative proposal for Symphony Woods.

  Pitts, Jonathan. “Coalition critiques Columbia plan.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 2 Nov. 2008, p. 2G.

• November 8: The Howard County Department of Planning and Zoning issues its Technical Staff Report in response to General Growth Properties’s submission. Among other things, DPZ recommends either finding alternative locations for buildings proposed in Symphony Woods or finding other replacement parkland.

  Pitts, Jonathan. “Howard planners give conditional OK to GGP proposal for Columbia.” Baltimore Sun, 11 Nov. 2008, p. 9A.

  Howard County Department of Planning and Zoning. Technical Staff Report, ZRA 113. Howard County, Maryland, 13 Nov. 2008, frankhecker.com/assets/texts/ZRA113StaffReport.pdf. Accessed 11 May 2017.

  Carson, Larry. “Session examines GGP zoning proposals for Columbia.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 4 Dec. 2008, p. 1G.

• December 11: The Howard County Department of Planning and Zoning holds its first hearing to discuss the General Growth Properties submission to the Howard County Planning Board, as GGP seeks to address its financial problems.

  Pitts, Jonathan. “Specifics sought from GGP.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 14 Dec. 2008, p. 1G.

  Walker, Andrea K., and Larry Carson. “Columbia developer trying to refinance.” Baltimore Sun, 13 Dec. 2008, p. 10A.

• December 23: The Columbia Association Board of Directors unanimously approves beginning work on a concept plan for Symphony Woods development.

  Columbia Association. Minutes, Board of Directors Meeting, Held: Tuesday, December 23, 2008, Approved January 22, 2009. 22 Jan. 2009, p. 4.

2009

Howard County evaluates and reworks the General Growth Properties plan, while the Columbia Association moves forward with its own plans for a park in Symphony Woods.

• January 8: Greg Hamm of General Growth Properties presents GGP’s response to the Howard County Department of Planning and Zoning’s Technical Staff Report to the Howard County Planning Board. Among other things, GGP agrees “to provide 1 acre of new parkland for every acre of Symphony Woods where new buildings are planned.”

  Meanwhile architectural critic Roger Lewis revisits Columbia’s progress after 20 years and recommends “making [Columbia] denser . . . with a greater variety of uses in order to create destinations where you want to be 24/7 and 365.”

  Carson, Larry. “Dispute on downtown Columbia.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 11 Jan. 2009, p. 3G.

  Holzberg, Janene. “Rethinking Columbia.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 11 Jan. 2009, p. 1G.

• January 22: Former Columbia Association board member Jud Malone (a founder of the advocacy group Columbia Tomorrow) recommends that CA turn Symphony Woods over to Howard County for conversion into a public park.

  Carson, Larry. “Columbia developer agrees to lower-cost housing.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 25 Jan. 2009, p. 2G.

• February: Cy Paumier and associates announce they are working on a new plan for Symphony Woods for consideration by the Columbia Association.

  Simmonsen, Derek. “CA devising alternative plan for Symphony Woods.” Columbia Flier, 5 Feb. 2009.

• March 26: The Columbia Association Board of Directors unanimously approves a Symphony Woods concept plan created by Cy Paumier, John Slater, and associates, and directs that it be presented to the general public.

  Columbia Association. Minutes, Board of Directors Meeting, Held: Thursday, March 26, 2009, Approved June 25, 2009. 25 June 2009, p. 3.

• April 16: General Growth Properties files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy as concerns are raised about GGP’s ability to pursue the redevelopment of downtown Columbia.

  Walker, Andrea K. “General Growth Properties seeks bankruptcy protection.” Baltimore Sun, 17 Apr. 2009, p. 1A.

  Carson, Larry. “Columbia plan in danger?” Baltimore Sun, 17 Apr. 2009, p. 1A.

• May 1: Phil Nelson becomes the new President of the Columbia Association.

  Carson, Larry. “Residents meet CA’s new head.” Baltimore Sun, 28 June 2009, p. 2G.

• June 1: Merriweather Post Pavilion managers unveil $1 million worth of updates to the pavilion, including expanded bathrooms and a new concession stand.

  “Merriweather has a lot to crow about.” Baltimore Sun, 2 June 2009, p. 12A.

• August 27: The Columbia Association Board of Directors unanimously approves sending a letter to the Howard County Planning Board notifying it of CA’s intention to present a concept plan for Symphony Woods.

  Columbia Association. Minutes, Board of Directors Meeting, Held: Thursday, August 27, 2009, Approved September 24, 2009. 24 Sept. 2009, p. 4.

  Columbia Association. Letter to Howard County Planning Board. Aug. 2009.

• September 3: The Howard County Planning Board approves the conceptual portion of the General Growth Properties plan for downtown Columbia.

  Carson, Larry. “Columbia remake moves forward.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 6 Sept. 2009, p. 3G.

• September 16: The Columbia Association presents to the public the concept plan developed by Cy Paumier, John Slater, and associates for development of Symphony Woods, including a formal pathway system, a fountain, a café, “Woodland Garden,” and a 120-space parking lot.

  Coyle, Cynthia. “CA’s proposed design plan for Symphony Woods PARK.” Howard County Blog, 17 Sept. 2009, howardcountyblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/cas-proposed-design-plan-for-symphony.html. Accessed 24 July 2011.

  “CA officials plan to turn Symphony Woods into a park.” Columbia Flier, 18 Sept. 2009.

  Markus, Don. “Revitalization sought for Symphony Woods.” Baltimore Sun, 18 Oct. 2009, p. 1.

• November 2: Howard County Council Chair Mary Kay Sigaty formally introduces Council Bills 58 and 59 (CB-58-2009 and CB-59-2009), legislation for the Downtown Columbia Plan and the associated zoning regulations.

  Howard County Council. Bill No. 58-2009, AN ACT adopting the Downtown Columbia Plan, a General Plan Amendment for the purpose of revitalizing and redeveloping Downtown Columbia; and generally relating to the Downtown Columbia Plan, a General Plan Amendment. Howard County, Maryland, 3 Feb. 2010, apps.howardcountymd.gov/olis/GetFile.aspx?id=6249. Accessed 6 May 2017.

  Howard County Council. Bill No. 59-2009, AN ACT amending the Howard County Zoning Regulations to create a new Downtown Columbia revitalization process in the New Town District; defining new terms; establishing a new residential density for Downtown Columbia; establishing new land use percentages for open space in Downtown Columbia; establishing an affordable housing provision for Downtown Columbia revitalization; establishing new off-street parking requirements for Downtown Columbia revitalization; and generally relating to the New Town zoning district. Howard County, Maryland, 3 Feb. 2010, apps.howardcountymd.gov/olis/GetFile.aspx?id=6326. Accessed 6 May 2017.

• November 23: Lawyers assure the Howard County Council that the proposed plan for downtown Columbia will remain enforceable even in the event of General Growth Properties selling all or part of its holdings.

  Carson, Larry. “Plan for Columbia safe, council told.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 29 Nov. 2009, p. 4G.

• December 2. At a Howard County Council meeting to discuss plans for downtown Columbia redevelopment, Philip Kirsch, Chair of the Columbia Association Board of Directors, and General Growth Properties Vice President Greg Hamm exchange accusations about lack of communications and GGP’s alleged desire to take CA land to expand Merriweather Post Pavilion.

  Carson, Larry. “Tension surfaces over pavilion.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 6 Dec. 2009, p. 1G.

• December 8: Columbia Association President Phil Nelson and General Growth Properties Vice President Greg Hamm assure the Howard County Council that CA and GGP will cooperate on negotiating any necessary easements as part of renovating Merriweather Post Pavilion.

  Carson, Larry. “Clearing the air on redevelopment.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 13 Dec. 2009, p. 4G.

2010

Howard County officially adopts a new plan for downtown Columbia, including integrating Merriweather Post Pavilion and Symphony Woods, and the Columbia Association continues its own park project.

• January: The Columbia Association budgets an initial $2.3 million for development of Symphony Woods Park, as the Howard County delegation to the Maryland General Assembly approves a local bond bill for $250,000 in funding for the park.

  Carson, Larry. “Columbia cuts gym towels from budget.” Baltimore Sun, 16 Jan. 2010, p. 2A.

  Carson, Larry. “Money matters, but it might not be enough this year.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 24 Jan. 2010, p. 3G.

• February 1: The Howard County Council unanimously approves the new Downtown Columbia Plan as an amendment to the Howard County General Plan. The plan describes the Merriweather-Symphony Woods neighborhood as “a new kind of cultural park where the landscape becomes a setting for arts, cultural and civic uses.” In addition to Merriweather Post Pavilion and the park, the plan calls for “compatible commercial uses such as a café in the park or museum shop.” The language in the original plan calling for streets through Symphony Woods is replaced by language specifying that “access through Merriweather-Symphony Woods that connects the civic and cultural uses will be compatible with the topography.”

  Carson, Larry. “Columbia to undergo urban transformation.” Baltimore Sun, 2 Feb. 2010, p. 1A.

  Downtown Columbia Plan: A General Plan Amendment. Howard County, Maryland, 1 Feb. 2010, archive.org/details/downtown_columbia_plan. Accessed 6 May 2017.

• April: The Maryland General Assembly approves $250,000 in funding for the Columbia Association’s development of Symphony Woods.

  Carson, Larry. “Battle on liquor license limits moves to new front.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 18 Apr. 2010, p. 3G.

• May 15–16: The Wine in the Woods festival features a new layout, chosen in anticipation of the Columbia Association beginning work on Symphony Woods development.

  Holzberg, Janene. “Celebration in Symphony Woods boasts a new layout.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 9 May 2010, p. 1G.

• May 18: Columbia Association President Phil Nelson announces that an anonymous nonprofit from outside Howard County will donate $250,000 to support development of Symphony Woods as a park.

  Carson, Larry. “Donor gives money for Symphony Woods project.” Baltimore Sun, 23 May 2010, p. 7G.

• May 20: Columbia Association President Phil Nelson informs the Board of Directors of a potential county roadblock to CA’s development of Symphony Woods, based on the need to follow after or coordinate with the plans of General Growth Properties.

  Columbia Association. Minutes of the Board of Directors Meeting, May 20, 2010, Approved: June 10, 2010. 10 June 2010, p. 1.

• July: General Growth Properties prepares to split itself into two entities, with GGP retaining ownership of The Mall in Columbia, and ownership of Merriweather Post Pavilion and undeveloped land in downtown Columbia being transferred to a new entity.

  Gunts, Edward, and Larry Carson. “General Growth prepares to split.” Baltimore Sun, 14 July 2010, p. 14A.

• September 2: Faced with the need to dredge Lake Kittamaqundi, the Columbia Association contemplates taking money from the budget for the delayed Symphony Woods Park project.

  Carson, Larry. “More funds to dredge proposed.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 5 Sept. 2010, p. 2G.

• November 2: Ken Ulman is re-elected as Howard County Executive. Incumbents Calvin Ball, Greg Fox, Mary Kay Sigaty, Jen Terrasa, and Courtney Watson are all re-elected to the Howard County Council.

  Carson, Larry. “‘Satisfied’ Howard voters stay with the incumbents.” Baltimore Sun, 7 Nov. 2010, p. 2.

• November 9: The Howard Hughes Corporation is spun out of General Growth Properties, and assumes GGP’s responsibilities for planning in Columbia Town Center.

  General Growth Properties. “General Growth Properties Completes Spinoff of The Howard Hughes Corporation.” 9 Nov. 2010, investor.howardhughes.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=241177&p=irol-newsArticle_print&ID=1494391. Accessed 6 May 2017.

• November 26: As the Howard Hughes Corporation moves forward with its plans for downtown Columbia redevelopment, the Columbia Association schedules work on the Symphony Woods Park project to begin in December 2011.

  Carson, Larry. “Columbia plan for downtown picks up.” Baltimore Sun, 27 Nov. 2010, p. 3A.

• December: Merriweather Post Pavilion is named one of the top three amphitheaters in the country by Billboard magazine.

  McPherson, Lindsey. “Billboard: Merriweather Post rocks.” Columbia Flier, 2 Dec. 2010, p. 1.

2011

The Columbia Association unveils its plan for a park in Symphony Woods, but encounters problems in taking the plan through Howard County’s new and more rigorous planning process.

• March 7: The Howard County Council approves a new set of design guidelines for downtown Columbia, removing one potential roadblock to redevelopment of downtown Columbia, including Symphony Woods.

  Carson, Larry. “Council OKs Columbia sign rules.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 13 Mar. 2011, p. 4G.

  Howard County Council. CR138-2010, A RESOLUTION adopting Downtown-wide Design Guidelines for Downtown Columbia. Howard County, Maryland, 7 Mar. 2011, apps.howardcountymd.gov/olis/LegislationDetail.aspx?LegislationID=1101. Accessed 7 May 2017.

  Howard County Department of Planning and Zoning. Downtown Columbia Design Guidelines: Downtown-Wide. Howard County, Maryland, Nov. 2010, www.howardcountymd.gov/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=fcdab7B57Cs%3d&portalid=0. Accessed 7 May 2017.

• April: John DeWolf replaces Greg Hamm as the Regional Vice President of the Howard Hughes Corporation responsible for development of downtown Columbia.

  Carson, Larry. “He’s set to move quickly on Columbia changes.” Baltimore Sun, 6 May 2011, p. 8A.

  McPherson, Lindsey. “DeWolf eager to dive into downtown redevelopment.” Columbia Flier, 12 May 2011, p. 4.

• June 9: The Columbia Association Board of Directors unanimously approves the so-called “Plan B” layout for development of Symphony Woods.

  Columbia Association. Minutes of the Board of Directors Meeting, June 9, 2011, Approved: June 23, 2011. 23 June 2011, p. 3.

• June 16: In accordance with the new development review process for downtown Columbia, the Columbia Association hosts a pre-submission community meeting to present its plans for Symphony Woods. CA notes that $1.2 million in funding for the first phase of the project is included in the 2011 capital budget, and another $1.4 million in the 2012 budget, in addition to a $250,000 Maryland state grant and a matching $250,000 donation promised by an anonymous donor.

  Toth, Sara. “CA presents plans for Symphony Woods.” Columbia Flier, 23 June 2011, p. 16.

  Howard County Department of Planning and Zoning. Land development review process for downtown Columbia revitalization. Howard County, Maryland, Nov. 2010, www.howardcountymd.gov/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=_oT1cawSChY%3d&portalid=0. Accessed 27 May 2017.

• July 13: The Howard County Design Advisory Panel reviews the Columbia Association proposal for Symphony Woods (based on the Cy Paumier design). Various panel members criticize the design as lacking a suitable vision, and the panel’s decision recommends (among other things) defining a “specific vision for this site” and providing “more clarity to a theme for the neighborhood.” In his own comments, DAP chair Rob Hollis notes that “As one of the first projects in a ‘new’ Town Center, this park should set the example for other projects to follow. It is imperative that Symphony Woods Park be of the highest design standards.”

  Subsequently Barbara McCall brings to the attention of her husband Michael a Columbia Flier article on the Design Advisory Panel review. He agrees with what he reads as the DAP’s concerns, but assumes that CA will make appropriate adjustments to the proposed park design.

  Toth, Sara. “Design panel advises stronger vision for Symphony Woods.” Columbia Flier, 21 July 2011, p. 6.

  Columbia Association. Symphony Woods Park in Columbia Town Center: Design Advisory Panel Meeting for Final Development Plan. 13 July 2011, inartrust.org/s/DAP-meeting-7-13-11-copy-2.pdf. Accessed 7 May 2017.

  Hollis, Rob. Design Advisory Panel 07-13-2011, Symphony Woods Park - Phase 1. 13 July 2011, inartrust.org/s/DAP-review-of-CA-plan-copy-2.pdf. Accessed 7 May 2017.

  McCall, Michael. Personal communication. 27 May 2017.

• August 11: The Columbia Association Board of Directors considers updated plans for Symphony Woods and a revised vision statement for the park, and discusses architectural details of park facilities and potential uses. CA President Phil Nelson urges board members to focus on the plans for the first phase.

  Toth, Sara. “Carousel for Symphony Woods? CA to study.” Columbia Flier, 18 Aug. 2011, p. 13.

• September 22: The Columbia Association Board of Directors votes 7-2 to approve the Final Development Plan for Symphony Woods as presented. During the “resident speak out” portion of the same meeting Michael McCall, in his first public comments on Columbia, advocates for CA creating an overall strategy for all of Symphony Woods before deciding on the tactics by which to implement such a strategy.

  Greisman, David. “CA says yes to first phase of Symphony Woods Park.” Columbia Flier, 29 Sept. 2011, p. 1.

  Columbia Association. Minutes of the Board of Directors Meeting, September 22, 2011, Approved: October 27, 2011. 27 Oct. 2011, pp. 2-5.

  McCall, Michael. Personal communication. 27 May 2017.

• October 13: Having approved the Symphony Woods Park plan and already specified the park’s benches and furniture, the Columbia Association Board of Directors votes 8–2 to adopt a formal vision statement for Symphony Woods.

  In the audience is Michael McCall, who sees CA’s actions as contrary to the strategic planning principles he learned while working with Jim Rouse and the Walt Disney Company, especially given his view of the importance of the Symphony Woods property to the future of downtown Columbia.

  Columbia Association. Minutes of the Board of Directors Meeting, October 13, 2011, Approved: October 27, 2011. 27 Oct. 2011, pp. 2-5.

  McCall, Michael. Personal communication. 27 May 2017.

• October-November: In the wake of the October 13 meeting of the Columbia Association Board of Directors, Michael McCall meets with George Barker, his mentor and former manager at the Enterprise Development Company, former General Counsel of Howard Research and Development, and (along with Emily Lincoln) a leader of the advocacy group Bring Back the Vision.

  After hearing McCall’s concerns about CA’s plans Barker volunteers to introduce McCall to Howard County Executive Ken Ulman, and with Lincoln reviews McCall’s presentation for that meeting.

  McCall, Michael. Tribute delivered by McCall to George Penniman Barker’s family, colleagues & lifelong friends. 3 June 2016, static1.squarespace.com/static/51e1bf57e4b0e2abc3e95f77/t/579e8dd81b631bd12f0cbc79/1470008793102/George+Barker+Tribute+statement.pdf. Accessed 27 May 2016.

  McCall, Michael. Personal communication. 27 May 2017.

• November 18: Michael McCall, George Barker, and Emily Lincoln meet with Howard County Executive Ken Ulman, Jessica Feldmark and Ian Kennedy of the Howard County Executive staff, and Marsha McLaughlin and Bill Mackey, Director and Division Chief respectively of the Howard County Department of Planning and Zoning. McCall presents his criticisms of the Columbia Association’s plan for Symphony Woods.

  McCall, Michael. Personal communication. 27 May 2017.

• December: The Howard County Department of Planning and Zoning provides the Columbia Association comments and questions on CA’s submission for the Final Development Plan for Symphony Woods Park. As with CA’s previous FDP submission, most of the DPZ comments and questions concern the park’s relationship to and integration with Merriweather Post Pavilion, including access points from the park to the pavilion.

  Greisman, David. “County: Plan for Symphony Woods Park needs fine-tuning.” Columbia Flier, 22 Dec. 2011, p. 14.

2012

Howard County mandates changes to the Symphony Wood Park project, the Columbia Association board and staff discuss how to proceed, and an alternative appears.

• January 3: Michael McCall meets for the first time with John DeWolf, Regional Vice President of the Howard Hughes Corporation, to discuss plans for the Merriweather-Symphony Woods neighborhood.

  McCall, Michael. Personal communication. 27 May 2017.

• January 26: The Columbia Association Board of Directors reviews plans for a proposed fountain in Symphony Woods and offers critiques of the design.

  Greisman, David. “Reviews mixed for planned fountain.” Columbia Flier, 2 Feb. 2012, p. 1.

• February 6: The Columbia Association Board of Directors considers setting aside $1.4 million toward construction of a new CA headquarters, location to be determined.

  Greisman, David. “CA could begin saving for new headquarters.” Columbia Flier, 9 Feb. 2012, p. 6.

• February 22: The Columbia Association Board of Directors includes a total of $1.6 million for Symphony Woods park development in CA’s 2013 and 2014 budgets.

  Greisman, David. “CA adopts budget with spending cut.” Columbia Flier, 1 Mar. 2012, p. 8.

• March: The Columbia Association submits a revised Final Development Plan for Symphony Woods Park to the Howard County Department of Planning and Zoning, as part of Howard County’s new 16-step process for reviewing proposed developments in downtown Columbia.

  The revised plan includes mention of proposed park facilities usable by visitors to both Symphony Woods and Merriweather Post Pavilion, including an amphitheater, a pavilion, and a café, reflecting CA staff discussions with the Howard Hughes Corporation, owner of the Merriweather Post Pavilion property.

  Greisman, David. “Symphony Woods plan awaits OK.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 11 Mar. 2012, p. 3G.

  Rector, Kevin. “Downtown disconnect.” Columbia Flier, 1 Mar. 2012, p. 1.

  Howard County Department of Planning and Zoning. Land development review process for downtown Columbia revitalization. Howard County, Maryland, Nov. 2010, www.howardcountymd.gov/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=_oT1cawSChY%3d&portalid=0. Accessed 27 May 2017.

• May 8: Michael McCall meets for the first time with Columbia Association President Phil Nelson to discuss plans for the Merriweather-Symphony Woods neighborhood.

  McCall, Michael. Personal communication. 27 May 2017.

• July 12: The Columbia Association presents its Final Development Plan for Symphony Woods (FDP-DC-MSW-1) to the Howard County Planning Board. The presentation focuses on plans for a fountain and a formal pathway system, requiring the removal of up to 64 trees. Future possibilities noted in the plan include a woodland garden, amphitheater, children’s activity area, and picnic area, as well as a café and other facilities that could be shared with Merriweather Post Pavilion.

  McPherson, Lindsey. “Planning Board weighs Symphony Woods plan.” Columbia Flier, 19 July 2012, p. 12.

  Columbia Association. FDP-DC-MSW-1, Downtown Columbia, Merriweather-Symphony Woods Neighborhood, Final Development Plan, Town Center, Section 1, Area 1, Lot 23. 3 May 2012, archive.org/detail/FDP-DC-MSW-1. Accessed 7 May 2017.

• July 19: The Howard County Planning Board considers the Final Development Plan for the Columbia Association proposal for Symphony Woods (FDP-DC-MSW-1) and approves it conditional on various changes being made, including rerouting paths to avoid tree removal and developing a plan for integration of Symphony Woods with Merriweather Post Pavilion.

  McPherson, Lindsey. “Phase one of Symphony Woods redesign approved.” Columbia Flier, 26 July 2012, p. 12.

  McPherson, Lindsey. “Planning Board has suggestions for Symphony Woods changes.” Columbia Flier, 26 July 2012, p. 13.

• August 23: The Columbia Association Board of Directors hears a staff recommendation to put development plans for Symphony Woods on hold pending more information on Howard Hughes Corporation plans for redeveloping Merriweather Post Pavilion.

  CA Landscape Services Manager Jan Clark notes that Howard Hughes discarded its original conceptual plan for Merriweather Post Pavilion in favor of a new and significantly different concept plan more consistent with the overall downtown Columbia redevelopment plan. CA President Phil Nelson adds that “It’s not just Symphony Woods, it’s not just Merriweather Post [Pavilion]. The county expects us to be planning for a [Merriweather-Symphony Woods] neighborhood design.”

  Lavoie, Luke. “CA weighs putting Symphony Woods projects on hold.” Columbia Flier, 30 Aug. 2012, p. 4.

• September 6: The Howard County Planning Board issues its final decision and order relating to the Final Development Plan for the Columbia Association proposal for Symphony Woods (FDP-DC-MSW-1). The decision and order requires the Columbia Association to revise the FDP to state that “tree removal shall be minimized by aligning paths around healthy trees and minimizing grading,” and to work with the Howard Hughes Corporation to develop a “coordinated plan for the [Merriweather-Symphony Woods] neighborhood” based on a “shared vision and design for Merriweather-Symphony Woods as a unique cultural and community amenity.”

  Howard County Planning Board. The Columbia Association, Petitioner before the Planning Board of Howard County, MD, Planning Board Case No. 394, Decision and Order. Howard County, Maryland, 6 Sept. 2012, inartrust.org/s/Planning-Board-Decision-and-Order-9612.pdf. Accessed 7 May 2017.

• September 25: Columbia Association President Phil Nelson sends a letter to the CA Board of Directors recommending that they devote time in October and November to discussing how to proceed with development of Symphony Woods, including whether and how CA might participate in some sort of Trust partnership with Howard Hughes Corporation and Howard County for the Merriweather-Symphony Woods Neighborhood, and whether CA should try to develop a new plan for Symphony Woods taking into account plans for Merriweather Post Pavilion.

  Nelson, Phil. “Placing the Board Committee Process Temporarily on Hold.” Columbia Association, 25 Sept. 2012, inartrust.org/s/10112-BOC-Staff-Item-re-Policy-Sessions.pdf. Accessed 7 May 2017.

• October 5: Columbia Association President Phil Nelson sends a letter to the CA Board of Directors containing several questions for the board to discuss in the wake of the Planning Board’s “decision and caveats” and other factors affecting the future of the Merriweather-Symphony Woods neighborhood, including whether to continue with the previous plan or do something different.

  Nelson, Phil. “Discussion cover memo regarding CA’s future involvement in the Symphony Woods/Merriweather Post Neighborhood.” Columbia Association, 5 Oct. 2012.

• October 11: The Columbia Association Board of Directors discusses whether to work with Howard Hughes Corporation and Howard County to create a separate organization (“trust”) to develop Symphony Woods. In an informal “straw vote,” the board members present unanimously agree to explore the proposal.

  Lavoie, Luke. “CA explores agreement to coordinate Symphony Woods redevelopment.” Columbia Flier, 18 Oct. 2012, p. 13.

  Columbia Association. Minutes of the Board of Directors Meeting, October 11, 2012, Approved: October 25, 2012. 25 Oct. 2012, p. 3.

  Stack, Andy. “Background on CA and Inner Arbor Trust.” Blog of Dr. Chao Wu, 15 Sept. 2015, chaowu.org/2015/10/07/background-on-ca-board-inner-arbor. Accessed 7 May 2017.

• October: Columbia Association President Phil Nelson asks Michael McCall for advice regarding development of Symphony Woods, and McCall volunteers to create an alternative plan.

  McCall, Michael. Letter to Jessamine Duvall. 27 May 2014, p. 3, inartrust.org/s/Letter-on-the-Progress-and-History-of-the-Inner-Arbor-Trust-140527.pdf. Accessed 7 May 2017.

2013

The Columbia Association charges the Inner Arbor Trust with responsibility for creating a park in Symphony Woods, and the Trust goes to work amid controversy about CA’s decision.

• January 18: The Columbia Association releases the first image of the Inner Arbor concept plan in preparation for the January 24 Board of Directors meeting. Howard County Executive Ken Ulman expresses his support for the plan: “I have long viewed the property that is now Symphony Woods as a centerpiece and linchpin for downtown Columbia. . . . New York City has its Central Park. Chicago has its Millennium Park. And Columbia deserves and must have the same landmark status.”

  Lavoie, Luke. “Columbia is planning an arts district.” Baltimore Sun, 19 Jan. 2013, p. 2A.

  Lavoie, Luke. “Hearing set on new Symphony Woods plan.” Columbia Flier, 24 Jan. 2013, p. 4.

• January 24: Michael McCall presents the Inner Arbor concept plan to the Columbia Association Board of Directors and CA President Phil Nelson presents his recommendations relating to the plan. Council member Jen Terrasa attends the meeting and afterward expresses support for the project: “The design is pretty exciting. It’s something we would be proud to see.”

  Lavoie, Luke. “Excitement, caution for Symphony Woods proposal.” Columbia Flier, 31 Jan. 2013, p. 6.

• January 31: Michael McCall again presents the Inner Arbor concept plan in a public meeting sponsored by the Columbia Association.

  Hirsch, Arthur. “New proposal for Columbia.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 3 Feb. 2013, p. 1G.

  Lavoie, Luke. “Columbia Association hosts public unveiling of Symphony Woods plan.” Columbia Flier, 7 Feb. 2013, p. 8.

• February 7: Columbia Association President Phil Nelson sends a letter to the CA Board of Directors recommending that CA establish a separate organization to develop Symphony Woods according to the conceptual plan proposed by Michael McCall.

  Nelson, Phil. “Formation of a Trust for Symphony Woods Development.” Columbia Association, 13 Feb. 2013, inartrust.org/s/3-Formation_of_a_Trust_for_Symphony_Woods_Development.pdf. Accessed 7 May 2017.

• February 13: Columbia Association President Phil Nelson publishes an updated version of his letter of February 7, with additional details on and clarifications regarding his recommendations for Symphony Woods.

  Nelson, Phil. “Formation of a Trust for Symphony Woods Development.” Columbia Association, 13 Feb. 2013, inartrust.org/s/3-Formation_of_a_Trust_for_Symphony_Woods_Development.pdf. Accessed 7 May 2017.

• February 14: The Columbia Association Board of Directors votes 8–2 to establish the Inner Arbor Trust, grant it a perpetual easement to develop Symphony Woods, and provide $1.6 million in initial funding.

  Lavoie, Luke. “CA board nearing vote on Symphony Woods plan.” Columbia Flier, 14 Feb. 2013, p. 4.

  Lavoie, Luke. “‘Done deal’ vote advances Symphony Woods plan.” Columbia Flier, 21 Feb. 2013, p. 4.

  Columbia Association. Minutes of the Board of Directors Meeting, February 14, 2013, Approved: February 28, 2013. 28 Feb. 2013, inartrust.org/s/Approved-BOD-Minutes-2013_02_14.pdf. Accessed 7 May 2017.

• March: Cy Paumier and associates plan to present a revised version of their park design, touting it as compatible with the Inner Arbor concept plan. In response Michael McCall cites the Howard County Planning Board mandate to preserve trees by routing pathways around them.

  Lavoie, Luke. “New pitch for Symphony Woods fountain, cafe.” Columbia Flier, 28 Mar. 2013, p. 4.

• 28 March: The Columbia Association Board of Directors elects Ed Coleman and Gregg Schwind as its representatives on the Inner Arbor Trust Board of Directors. They join Phil Nelson, who holds an ex officio seat on the board as CA President.

  Lavoie, Luke. “Schwind and Coleman elected to Inner Arbor Trust.” Columbia Flier, 4 Apr. 2013, p. 16.

• April: The Inner Arbor plan becomes an issue in Columbia Association elections, with both supporters and opponents claiming victories.

  Lavoie, Luke. “Inner Arbor plan heats up CA election.” Columbia Flier, 11 Apr. 2013. p. 1.

  Lavoie, Luke. “CA board members debate meaning of elections.” Columbia Flier, 2 May 2013, p. 16.

• April 25: Howard County Executive Ken Ulman reiterates his support for the Inner Arbor plan, and proposes $5 million in county funding for downtown Columbia arts and cultural programs and facilities.

  Ames, Blair. “Ulman’s budget increases spending for schools, police.” Columbia Flier, 25 Apr. 2013, p. 6

• May 10: The Inner Arbor Trust officially begins life as an organization with the election of a seven-member Board of Directors, the appointment of Michael McCall as President and CEO, and adoption of bylaws. Besides Ed Coleman, Gregg Schwind, and Phil Nelson of the Columbia Association, other board members include Deborah Ellinghaus, Kent Humphries, Gill Wylie, and Beverly White-Seals.

  Lavoie, Luke. “Board of Inner Arbor Trust expands to seven members.” Columbia Flier, 30 May 2013, p. 13.

  Inner Arbor Trust. “Inner Arbor Trust Inc., the not-for-profit developer of Symphony Woods, was formed in Columbia, Maryland.” 28 May 2013, inartrust.org/s/Inner-Arbor-Trust-Press-Release-Bios-52813-0ydu.pdf. Accessed 7 May 2017.

• May 23: As part of the FY2014 capital and expense budget (CB25-2013) the Howard County Council approves up to $3.5 million in funding for construction of the Chrysalis amphitheater.

  Howard County Council. Council Bill 25-2013, AN ACT adopting the current expense budget and the capital budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2013, and ending June 30, 2014, to be known as the Budget and Appropriation Ordinance of Howard County, Fiscal Year 2014. Howard County, Maryland, May 2013, apps.howardcountymd.gov/olis/LegislationDetail.aspx?LegislationID=202. Accessed 8 May 2017.

• June: Merriweather Post Pavilion is named the fourth-best amphitheater in the US by Rolling Stone magazine.

  Case, Wesley. “Columbia pavilion named top venue.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 30 June 2013, p. 1G.

• September 20: Michael McCall presents the Inner Arbor concept plan to Leadership Howard County and discusses the selection of the design team, including initial members Martha Schwartz Partners and Mahan Rykiel Associates.

  McCall, Michael. “Introduction of Inner Arbor Trust to Leadership Howard County 9/20/13.” Vimeo, 20 Sept. 2013, vimeo.com/78288327. Accessed 7 May 2013.

• October: Martin Knott replaces Kent Humphries on the Inner Arbor Trust Board of Directors.

  Lavoie, Luke. “Inner Arbor Trust Inc. replaces board member.” Columbia Flier, 31 Oct. 2013, p. 13.

• October 30: Columbia celebrates the 50th anniversary of Jim Rouse’s announcement of his plan for Columbia, with development efforts underway or proposed at or near The Mall in Columbia and Lake Kittamaqundi, in Symphony Woods, and in the Crescent property south of Merriweather Post Pavilion and Symphony Woods.

  Hirsch, Arthur. “At 50, Columbia still a vision in progress.” Baltimore Sun, 30 Oct. 2013, p. 1A.

• November: The Inner Arbor Trust announces the selection of landscape designer Martha Schwartz as the lead designer for phase 1 of the Inner Arbor project.

  Lavoie, Luke. “Inner Arbor hires designer for Symphony Woods.” Columbia Flier, 7 November 2013, p. 6.

• November 18: At a public meeting the Inner Arbor Trust introduces the selected design team (“designers of delight”) at a public meeting. The team includes Martha Schwartz Partners, Marc Fornes of THEVERYMANY, Mimi Hoang and Eric Bunge of nArchitects, Arup, and Mahan Rykiel Associates.

  Lavoie, Luke. “Inner Arbor Trust introduces design team.” Columbia Flier, 21 Nov. 2013, p. 8.

  Inner Arbor Trust. “Unabashed Designers of Delight.” Vimeo, 18 Nov. 2013, vimeo.com/191568080. Accessed 8 May 2017.

• December 2: The Inner Arbor Trust presents the new Inner Arbor plan to the public at a pre-submission meeting prior to presenting the plan to the Howard County Design Advisory Panel and submitting a Site Development Plan (SDP) to the Howard County Department of Planning and Zoning. Features include the Chrysalis amphitheater, the Butterfly guest services building, the “art of bounds” Caterpillar berm, the Picnic Table, the Play Maze, Word Art, and Letter Garden.

  Lavoie, Luke. “Praise, questions for Inner Arbor plans.” Columbia Flier, 5 Dec. 2013, p. 1.

  Lavoie, Luke. “Trust envisions Symphony Woods as Merriweather Park.” Columbia Flier, 5 Dec. 2013, p. 18.

  Inner Arbor Trust. “Development of Symphony Woods: Site Development Plan (SDP) Public Meeting.” 2 Dec. 2013, inartrust.org/s/A-Inner-Arbor-Trust-Community-Meeting-Minutespdf-copy.pdf. Accessed 8 May 2017.

• December 11: The Columbia Association executes a perpetual easement agreement with the Inner Arbor Trust, granting the Trust the right to develop Symphony Woods. (The agreement is later amended on March 14, 2014, to make minor corrections.)

  Columbia Association and Inner Arbor Trust. Amended and Restated Declaration of Restrictive Covenants and Easement Agreement. 14 Mar. 2014, inartrust.org/s/IAT-001.pdf. Accessed 8 May 2017.

• December 18: The Inner Arbor Trust executes a $3.5 million grant agreement with Howard County.

  McCall, Michael. Letter to Jessamine Duvall. 27 May 2014, p. 3, inartrust.org/s/Letter-on-the-Progress-and-History-of-the-Inner-Arbor-Trust-140527.pdf. Accessed 7 May 2017.

• December 28: The Inner Arbor Trust submits its IRS Form 1023 application for tax exempt status.

  McCall, Michael. Letter to Jessamine Duvall. 27 May 2014, p. 3, inartrust.org/s/Letter-on-the-Progress-and-History-of-the-Inner-Arbor-Trust-140527.pdf. Accessed 7 May 2017.

2014

The Inner Arbor Trust finalizes the design for the first seven phases of the new park and successfully shepherds its plan through the Howard County planning process, as renovations for Merriweather Post Pavilion are planned and funded and Howard Hughes Corporation unveils its plans for developing the area around Symphony Woods.

• January 31: The Inner Arbor Trust receives official 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status from the IRS.

  Inner Arbor Trust. “A brief history of the Inner Arbor Trust (through October, 2015).” Oct. 2015, inartrust.org/s/A-Brief-History-of-the-Trust-October-2015-v3.pdf. Accessed 8 May 2017.

• February: Howard County Executive Ken Ulman presses the Howard Hughes Corporation on its plans for renovating Merriweather Post Pavilion, as required by the Downtown Columbia Plan and recommended by a report from consultants Ziger/Snead.

  Lavoie, Luke. “Ulman presses developer on future of Merriweather.” Columbia Flier, 13 Feb 2014, p. 6.

  Ziger/Snead. Merriweather Post Pavilion Physical Review Update (Draft). Feb. 2014, frankhecker.com/assets/texts/140214-draft-merriweather-physical-update-report.pdf. Accessed 26 May 2017.

• February 4: The Inner Arbor Trust submits the Site Development Plan for the northern portion of Symphony Woods to the Howard County Department of Planning and Zoning.

  Lavoie, Luke. “Inner Arbor unveils plan.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 16 Feb. 2014, p. 1G.

• February 19: The Inner Arbor Trust publishes the final form of the Inner Arbor plan for the northern portion of Symphony Woods, adding the Merriground play area and the Merriweather Horns sound sculptures, and dropping the Play Maze, Word Art, and Letter Garden.

  Lavoie, Luke. “Playscape, audio added to Symphony Woods plan.” Columbia Flier, 20 Feb. 2014, p. 14.

  Holzberg, Janene. “A sound vision for Columbia.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 2 Mar. 2014, p. 1G.

• February 26: The Howard County Design Advisory Panel reviews the final Inner Arbor plan and unanimously supports it as submitted, with panel members praising the design.

  Lavoie, Luke. “Inner Arbor plans ‘wow’ panel.” Columbia Flier, 6 Mar. 2014. p. 13.

  Howard County Design Advisory Panel. “Meeting Summary, February 26, 2014.” Howard County, Maryland, 26 Feb. 2014, inartrust.org/s/DAPsum-2014-2-26.pdf. Accessed 8 May 2017.

• March: After noting the Inner Arbor Trust’s use of the name “Merriweather Park” in its submissions to the Howard County Department of Planning and Zoning, the Columbia Association asks the Trust to retain the name Symphony Woods when referring to the property. Subsequently the Inner Arbor Trust adopts the name “Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods.”

  Lavoie, Luke. “CA vows to keep Symphony Woods name.” Columbia Flier, 27 Mar. 2014, p. 6.

• March 13: Howard County Executive Ken Ulman proposes to move up the date when ownership of Merriweather Post Pavilion will be transferred to the nonprofit Downtown Columbia Arts and Culture Commission. Soon afterwards the county and Howard Hughes Corporation begin discussions about pavilion renovations.

  Lavoie, Luke. “Bill would impact Merriweather ownership.” Columbia Flier, 20 Mar. 2014, p. 4.

  Lavoie, Luke. “Ulman shows optimism about Merriweather.” Columbia Flier, 27 Mar. 2014, p. 28.

• March 26. The Inner Arbor Trust Board of Directors appoints board member and local businessperson Martin Knott as Chair of the Trust.

  McCall, Michael. Letter to Jessamine Duvall. 27 May 2014, p. 3, inartrust.org/s/Letter-on-the-Progress-and-History-of-the-Inner-Arbor-Trust-140527.pdf. Accessed 7 May 2017.

• March 31: At a pre-submission community meeting the Howard Hughes Corporation presents plans for developing the Crescent property to the south and west of Symphony Woods.

  Lavoie, Luke. “Urban streetscape planned for crescent property.” Columbia Flier, 20 Mar. 2014, p. 6.

  Lavoie, Luke. “Downtown plans draw concerns about traffic and tall buildings.” Columbia Flier, 3 Apr. 2014, p. 16.

• April: The Inner Arbor Trust releases a report on its efforts to improve the environmental health of Symphony Woods, including planting 200 new trees (to replace 31 trees to be removed) and restoring stream beds in the eastern part of Symphony Woods.

  Lavoie, Luke. “Inner Arbor plans include adding trees.” Columbia Flier, 17 Apr. 2014, p. 4.

• April 10: The Columbia Association selects Nancy McCord to be one of its two representatives on the Inner Arbor Trust Board of Directors, replacing Ed Coleman.

  Lavoie, Luke. “McCord elected to Inner Arbor Trust.” Columbia Flier, 1 May 2014, p. 12.

  Columbia Association. Minutes of the Board of Directors Meeting, Held: April 10, 2014, Approved: April 24, 2014. 24 Apr. 2014, pp. 4-5.

• April 14: Howard County, Howard Hughes Corporation, and the Downtown Columbia Arts and Culture Commission sign a memorandum of understanding regarding a five-year, $19 million renovation plan for Merriweather Post Pavilion.

  Lavoie, Luke. “Agreement heralds Merriweather renovation.” Columbia Flier, 22 May 2014, p. 4.

• April 26: The Inner Arbor plan again becomes an issue in Columbia Association elections marked by low turnout.

  Lavoie, Luke. “Ketley, Lein, Schwind win Columbia elections.” Columbia Flier, 1 May 2014, p. 13.

• April 28: The Inner Arbor Trust formally submits its Site Development Plan (SDP) to the Howard County Department of Planning and Zoning.

  McCall, Michael. Letter to Jessamine Duvall. 27 May 2014, p. 3, inartrust.org/s/Letter-on-the-Progress-and-History-of-the-Inner-Arbor-Trust-140527.pdf. Accessed 7 May 2017.

• May 21: The Howard County Council approves County Executive Ken Ulman’s recommendation of an additional $1.5 million of funding for the Inner Arbor Trust in the form of a challenge grant. The Council also approves $10 million in funding for Merriweather Post Pavilion renovations and the Downtown Columbia Arts and Culture Commission.

  Lavoie, Luke. “Agreement heralds Merriweather renovation.” Columbia Flier, 22 May 2014, p. 4.

  Yeager, Amanda. “County Council passes 2015 budget.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 25 May 2014, p. 1G.

  Howard County Council. Council Bill 24-2014, AN ACT adopting the current expense budget and the capital budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2014 and ending June 30, 2015, to be known as the Annual Budget and Appropriation Ordinance of Howard County, Fiscal Year 2015. Howard County, Maryland, May 2014, apps.howardcountymd.gov/olis/LegislationDetail.aspx?LegislationID=800. Accessed 8 May 2017.

• May 28: The Boards of Directors of the Columbia Association and the Inner Arbor Trust hold a joint meeting to discuss the progress of the Inner Arbor plan.

  Lavoie, Luke. “Columbia Association, Inner Arbor meet.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 1 June 2014, p. 4G.

  Lavoie, Luke. “Symphony Woods plan subject of gathering.” Columbia Flier, 5 June 2014, p. 15.

• June: Howard County Executive Ken Ulman joins with musician Jack Johnson to preview plans for renovations at Merriweather Post Pavilion, as newly-arrived Howard Hughes Corporation Vice President Greg Fitchitt gets credit for helping to negotiate the plans with the county, and Howard Hughes signs a development agreement with the Downtown Columbia Arts and Culture Commission, the future owners of the pavilion.

  Lavoie, Luke. “Merriweather renovation plans rolled out.” Columbia Flier, 12 June 2014. p. 4.

  Lavoie, Luke. “Fitchitt new face of Howard Hughes.” Columbia Flier, 12 June 2014, p. 8.

  Lavoie, Luke. “Howard Hughes, arts commission sign Merriweather deal.” Columbia Flier, 26 June 2014, p. 8.

• June 2: Milton Matthews becomes the new President of the Columbia Association, replacing Phil Nelson.

  Lavoie, Luke. “Partnerships key for new CA president.” Columbia Flier, 10 July 2014, p. 4.

• June 12: The Columbia Association Board of Directors discusses whether the current form of the Inner Arbor plan is a “material change” from that described in the easement granted the Inner Arbor Trust. By a 7–3 vote the board decides that it is not.

  Columbia Association. Minutes of the Board of Directors Meeting, Held: June 12, 2014, Approved: June 26, 2014. 26 June 2014, pp. 2, 4-5.

• July 10: After a presentation by Michael McCall of the Inner Arbor Trust, the Columbia Association Board of Directors votes 6–4 to endorse the Inner Arbor Plan as currently conceived.

  Yeager, Amanda. “CA endorses Symphony Woods plan.” Columbia Flier, 17 July 2014, p. 6.

  Columbia Association. Minutes of the Board of Directors Meeting, Held: July 10, 2014, Approved: July 24, 2014. 24 July 2014, p. 3.

• August 7: Karen Newell is elected to the Inner Arbor Board of Directors.

  McCall, Michael. Personal communication. 9 Jan. 2016.

• October: The Boards of Directors of the Columbia Association and the Inner Arbor Trust hold another joint meeting to discuss the progress of the Inner Arbor plan, including phasing of park development, fundraising, and negotiation of an agreement with I.M.P., the operators of Merriweather Post Pavilion, for use of the Chrysalis amphitheater.

  Lavoie, Luke. “Symphony Woods development nears start.” Columbia Flier, 23 Oct. 2014, p. 8.

• November 4: Allan Kittleman is elected as Howard County Executive. Incumbents Calvin Ball, Greg Fox, Mary Kay Sigaty, and Jen Terrasa are re-elected to the Howard County Council, and are joined by newly elected council member Jon Weinstein.

  Wood, Pamela. “Republican Kittleman beats Watson in executive race.” Baltimore Sun, 5 Nov. 2014, p. 1A.

• November 20: After delaying its decision a week to allow more time for public testimony, the Howard County Planning Board unanimously approves the Inner Arbor Trust’s Site Development Plan for Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods (SDP-14-073). The Planning Board approves the design concepts, uses, and locations of park features for all seven proposed phases, and fully approves phases 1 and 2 (including the Chrysalis amphitheater) for construction.

  Lavoie, Luke. “Planning Board tables Inner Arbor decision.” Columbia Flier, 13 Nov. 2014, p. 4.

  Lavoie, Luke. “Initial Inner Arbor phases approved.” Baltimore Sun, 23 Nov. 2014, p. 1G.

  Lavoie, Luke. “Inner Arbor wins Planning Board approval.” Columbia Flier, 27 Nov. 2014, p. 6.

  Inner Arbor Trust. SDP-14-073, Downtown Columbia, Merriweather-Symphony Woods Neighborhood, Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods Phase 1 & Future Phases 2-7. inartrust.org/s/Part-1-of-5-SDP-14-073-R1.pdf, inartrust.org/s/Part-2-of-5-SDP-14-073-R1-copy-2.pdf, inartrust.org/s/Part-3-of-5-SDP-14-073-R1.pdf, inartrust.org/s/Part-4-of-5-SDP-14-073-R1.pdf, inartrust.org/s/Part-5-of-5-SDP-14-073-R1.pdf. Accessed 8 May 2017.

2015

The Inner Arbor Trust lays the groundwork for the start of Chrysalis construction and continues working with others to integrate Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods with Merriweather Post Pavilion.

• January 22: The Howard County Planning Board approves changes to the site development plan for renovations to Merriweather Post Pavilion. Inner Arbor Trust President Michael McCall testifies in support of the plan: “The park and the amphitheater will knit together well.”

  Lavoie, Luke. “Merriweather renovations poised to start.” Columbia Flier, 29 Jan. 2015, p. 10.

• March 6: The Inner Arbor Trust enters into a long-term operating agreement with It’s My Amphitheater, Inc., relating to joint use of Merriweather Post Pavilion and Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods. Under the agreement I.M.A. agrees to compensate the Trust for future use of Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods for Merriweather Post Pavilion events. The agreement also makes public areas of Merriweather Post Pavilion accessible to visitors outside of pavilion events.

  Inner Arbor Trust and I.M.A. License, Easement and Operating Agreement. 6 March, 2015, inartrust.org/s/IAT-IMA-Operating-Agreement-Executed-31615.pdf. Accessed 8 May 2017.

• March 19: The Howard County Planning Board approves the Final Development Plan for the Howard Hughes Corporation’s project to develop the Crescent property south and west of Symphony Woods.

  Yeager, Amanda. “Crescent plan given nod by Planning Board.” Columbia Flier, 26 Mar. 2015, p. 4.

• April: The first phase of renovations at Merriweather Post Pavilion is well underway.

  Ames, Blair. “Let the music begin.” Columbia Flier, 23 Apr. 2015, p. 28.

• April 15: Dave Sciamarelli is elected to the Inner Arbor Trust Board of Directors.

  McCall, Michael. Personal communication. 9 Jan. 2016.

• April 25: Columbia Association board elections again see low turnout. Any controversies over Symphony Woods go unmentioned in newspaper accounts.

  Yeager, Amanda. “Boulton, Evans win contested CA races.” Columbia Flier, 30 Apr. 2015, p. 4.

• May 22: At the request of Howard County Executive Allan Kittleman, the Howard County Council approves $1.4M for the Inner Arbor Trust in support of construction of the Chrysalis amphitheater and related purposes, as part of the FY16 Expense and Capital Budget (CB23-2015).

  Yeager, Amanda. “Kittleman proposes $1B operating budget.” Columbia Flier, 23 Apr. 2015, p. 6.

  Howard County Council. Council Bill 23-2015, AN ACT adopting the current expense budget and the capital budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2015 and ending June 30, 2016, to be known as the Annual Budget and Appropriation Ordinance of Howard County, Fiscal Year 2016. Howard County, Maryland, 22 May 2015, apps.howardcountymd.gov/olis/LegislationDetail.aspx?LegislationID=1390. Accessed 8 May 2017.

• May 27: The Inner Arbor Trust enters into a reciprocal easement agreement with Howard Hughes Corporation subsidiaries Merriweather Post Business Trust and Howard Research and Development relating to joint use of Merriweather Post Pavilion and Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods.

  Inner Arbor Trust, Merriweather Post Business Trust, and Howard Research and Development Corporation. Reciprocal Easement Agreement. 27 May 2015, inartrust.org/s/IAT-MPBT-HRD-REA-HoCo-Recorded-60315-copy.pdf. Accessed 8 May 2017.

• May 28: The Inner Arbor Trust appoints Nina Basu as General Counsel and Kirsten Coombs as treasurer.

  McCall, Michael. Personal communication. 9 Jan. 2016.

• August: After years of discussion about where to locate a new headquarters for the Columbia Association (including the possibility of building one on CA-owned land in Symphony Woods), CA moves to leased space in an office building off Broken Land Parkway.

  Yeager, Amanda. “Columbia Association to move its headquarters.” Columbia Flier, 20 Aug. 2015, p. 12.

• September: After a competitive bidding process the Inner Arbor Trust selects Whiting-Turner as general contractor for all Chrysalis construction except for the Chrysalis shell itself (to be fabricated and installed by A. Zahner Company).

  Inner Arbor Trust. “September, 2015 Chrysalis Development Report.” 1 Oct. 2015, inartrust.org/s/Inner-Arbor-Trust-Update-as-of-October-2015.pdf. Accessed 8 May 2017.

• September 1: The Inner Arbor Trust enters into a licensing agreement with Howard Hughes Corporation subsidiary Merriweather Post Business Trust for use of the word mark “Merriweather” in connection with Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods.

  Inner Arbor Trust and Merriweather Post Business Trust. Trademark License Agreement. 1 Sept. 2015, inartrust.org/s/Trademark-License-Agreement-Merriweatehr-Hughes-Executed.pdf. Accessed 8 May 2017.

• September 3: The Howard County Planning Board approves FDP-DC-MSW-1A, a comprehensive Final Development Plan for the Merriweather-Symphony Woods Neighborhood submitted jointly by the Inner Arbor Trust and subsidiaries of the Howard Hughes Corporation. The plan modifies the previous FDP-DC-MSW-1 for Symphony Woods to be consistent with the previously-approved Site Development Plan SDP-14-073 for Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, and improve integration of the park with Merriweather Post Pavilion.

  Howard County Department of Planning and Zoning. Technical Staff Report, Merriweather Symphony Woods Neighborhood, Planning Board Hearing of September 3, 2015, Case No. PB 416. Howard County, Maryland, www.howardcountymd.gov/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=LK3Z4voZgec%3d&portalid=0. Accessed 11 May 2017.

  Howard County Planning Board. “Planning Board Past Meetings.” Howard County, Maryland, 3 Sept. 2015, www.howardcountymd.gov/Departments/Planning-and-Zoning/Boards-and-Commissions/Planning-Board. Accessed 8 May 2017.

• September 9: The Howard County Design Advisory Panel considers plans for further renovations to Merriweather Post Pavilion, including a raised roof and a larger stage house, and offers some minor suggestions.

  Howard County Design Advisory Panel. Meeting Summary, September 9, 2015. Howard County, Maryland, 9 Sept. 2015, http://www.howardcountymd.gov/DesktopModules/DnnSharp/SearchBoost/FileDownload.ashx?file=11432&sb-inst=9164. Accessed 11 May 2017.

• September 12: The Inner Arbor Trust holds a groundbreaking ceremony for the Chrysalis amphitheater.

  Michaels, Andrew. “Amphitheater underway in Symphony Woods.” Columbia Flier, 17 Sept. 2015, p. 4.

• September 18: The Inner Arbor Trust executes a new amendment to its grant agreement with Howard County to reflect the additional funding of $1.4 million from the county.

  Howard County, Maryland, and Inner Arbor Trust. Amendment Three to Grant Agreement. 18 Sept. 2015, inartrust.org/s/Amendment-3-to-Grant-Agreement-9-18-2015.pdf. Accessed 8 May 2017.

• October: Howard County issues permits to the Inner Arbor Trust for grading of the Chrysalis site and construction of the foundation.

  Inner Arbor Trust. “October, 2015 Chrysalis Development Report.” 1 November 2015, inartrust.org/s/Inner-Arbor-Trust-Update-as-of-November-2015.pdf. Accessed 8 May 2017.

• November 3: The Inner Arbor Trust sponsors the “Math of Architecture and Architecture of Math” public event with Joni Newkirk of Integrated Insight, Inc., and Bill Zahner of A. Zahner Co.

  Michaels, Andrew. “Pair join Merriweather Park design team.” Columbia Flier, 29 Oct. 2015, p. 17.

  Holzberg Janene. “Chrysalis is seen as a huge draw.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 8 Nov. 2015, p. 1G.

  Inner Arbor Trust. “Math of Architecture, Architecture of Math, November 3, 2015.” Vimeo, 3 Nov. 2015, vimeo.com/155286541. Accessed 8 May 2015.

• November–December: Whiting-Turner continues construction work on the Chrysalis foundation, including constructing a cistern to control storm water runoff, pouring “mud mats” for the foundation, and laying underground electrical conduits.

  Inner Arbor Trust. November & December, 2015 Chrysalis Development Report. 20 Dec. 2015, http://inartrust.org/s/Inner-Arbor-Trust-Update-as-of-November-2015-3oxn.pdf. Accessed 8 May 2017.

• December 17: The Howard County Planning Board approves SDP-16-018, a joint site development plan for improvements to Merriweather Post Pavilion and Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, including shared restrooms, accessible paths, and handicap parking spaces.

  Inner Arbor Trust. November & December, 2015 Chrysalis Development Report. 20 Dec. 2015, http://inartrust.org/s/Inner-Arbor-Trust-Update-as-of-November-2015-3oxn.pdf. Accessed 8 May 2017.

  Howard County Department of Planning and Zoning. Technical Staff Report, Merriweather Post Pavilion and Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, Downtown Columbia - Merriweather Symphony Woods Neighborhood, Planning Board Meeting of December 17, 2015, Case No.: SDP-16-018. Howard County, Maryland, 3 Dec. 2015, www.howardcountymd.gov/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=Hylr2WVK7HA%3d&portalid=0. Accessed 8 May 2017.

  Inner Arbor Trust and Merriweather Post Business Trust. SDP-16-018, Site Development Plan, Merriweather Post Pavilion & Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, Town Center, Section 1, Lots 13 & 23, Redevelopment Phase 2 & 3. Jan. 2016, inartrust.org/s/MPBT-IAT-Joint-SDP-16-018.pdf. Accessed 9 May 2017.

2016

Chrysalis construction proceeds apace in concert with Merriweather Post Pavilion renovations.

• January: The Inner Arbor Trust sponsors an event “Let there be light” featuring the work of Arup lighting designer Star Davis. Unfortunately, it is cancelled due to a major snowstorm.

  Holzberg, Janene. “At Symphony Woods, lighting design comes alive.” Columbia Flier, 28 Jan. 2016, p. 4.

• February: Construction of the Chrysalis is well underway, with completion estimated for the spring of 2017. Whiting-Turner is placing rebar and pouring concrete for the piers and walls of the subfloor, while Arup and Zahner are preparing “shop drawings” (in digital form) for the steel framework and aluminum skin.

  Michaels, Andrew. “Chrysalis construction making headway.” Columbia Flier, 25 Feb. 2016, p. 4.

  Inner Arbor Trust. Report on the Chrysalis Development. 15 Feb. 2016, inartrust.org/s/Inner-Arbor-Trust-Update-as-of-February-2016.pdf. Accessed 9 May 2017.

• March: The steel tubes making up the steel framework of the Chrysalis are fabricated by the Walters Group, as Whiting-Turner continues work on the walls and piers of the concrete subfloor. Meanwhile renovations at Merriweather Post Pavilion continue as the stage house is replaced.

  Inner Arbor Trust. Report on the Chrysalis Development. 15 Mar. 2016, inartrust.org/s/Inner-Arbor-Trust-Update-as-of-March-2016.pdf. Accessed 9 May 2017.

  Michaels, Andrew. “Merriweather revamping sound monitoring.” Columbia Flier, 10 Mar. 2016, p. 4.

• April: Zahner fabricates the ZEPPS panels and aluminum shingles of the Chrysalis skin, while Whiting-Turner nears completion of the concrete subfloor.

  Inner Arbor Trust. Report on the Chrysalis Development. 15 Apr. 2016, inartrust.org/s/Inner-Arbor-Trust-Update-as-of-April-2016.pdf. Accessed 9 May 2017.

• May 3: The Inner Arbor Trust signs an agreement with Howard County for use of the Chrysalis during Wine in the Woods and other events.

  Inner Arbor Trust and Howard County, Maryland. Chrysalis Use Agreement. 3 May 2016, inartrust.org/s/Chrysalis-Use-Agreement-Fully-Executed-51116.pdf. Accessed 9 May 2017.

• May 12: The Columbia Association Board of Directors selects Lin Eagan and Gregg Schwind to be its representatives on the Inner Arbor Trust Board of Directors.

  Columbia Association. Minutes of the Board of Directors Meeting, Held: May 12, 2016, Approved: May 26, 2016. 26 May 2016, p. 2.

• June: Metropolitan Walters, part of the Walters Group, erects the steel framework of the Chrysalis while skin fabrication continues at Zahner.

  Inner Arbor Trust. Chrysalis Construction. 15 July 2016, inartrust.org/s/Inner-Arbor-Trust-Chrysalis-June-update-copy.pdf. Accessed 9 May 2017.

• July: Howard County Executive Allan Kittleman proposes to provide $90 million via a “tax increment financing” plan to fund development of infrastructure for downtown Columbia, including a parking garage to support visitors to Merriweather Post Pavilion and Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods.

  Waseem, Fatimah. “Project finance plan offered.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 3 July 2016, p. 1G.

• August: Metropolitan Walters completes erection of the steel framework of the Chrysalis. ZEPPS panels from Zahner arrive on the construction site and are beginning to be installed. Meanwhile Howard Hughes Corporation’s first building in the Crescent development nears its opening date as the second building is under construction.

  Inner Arbor Trust. Chrysalis Construction. 15 Aug. 2016, inartrust.org/s/Inner-Arbor-Trust-Chrysalis-August-update.pdf. Accessed 9 May 2017.

  Waseem, Fatimah. “$41M Columbia office building to open in ’17.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 21 Aug. 2016, p. 1G.

• September: Zahner continues installing ZEPPS panels, including fabricating some panels on site.

  Inner Arbor Trust. Chrysalis Construction. 15 Sept. 2016, inartrust.org/s/Inner-Arbor-Trust-Chrysalis-September-Update-copy.pdf. Accessed 9 May 2017.

• October: Zahner installs the last of the ZEPPS panels on the steel framework of the Chrysalis, and begins installing the green aluminum shingles forming the outer surface of the Chrysalis skin. The Howard County Council considers a public financing plan to help fund infrastructure improvements for downtown Columbia, including a new 2,545-space parking garage to serve Merriweather Post Pavilion and Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods.

  Inner Arbor Trust. Chrysalis Construction. 15 Oct. 2016, inartrust.org/s/Inner-Arbor-Trust-Chrysalis-September-Update-draggedjpg-4dbe.pdf. Accessed 9 May 2017.

  Wood, Pamela. “Howard weighs financing option for Columbia plan.” Baltimore Sun, 11 Oct. 2016, p. 1A.

  Waseem, Fatima. “TIF for core under scrutiny.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 16 Oct. 2016, p. 1G.

• November: More than half of the surface of the Chrysalis has been covered with green aluminum shingles, with Zahner projected to finish the work in December.

  Inner Arbor Trust. Chrysalis Construction. 15 Nov. 2016, inartrust.org/s/Inner-Arbor-Trust-Chrysalis-October-Update-sm.pdf. Accessed 11 May 2017.

• November 2: Mary Ann Scully, CEO of Howard Bank, is elected to the Inner Arbor Trust Board of Directors, as Howard Bank pledges to contribute $50,000 to the Trust.

  Inner Arbor Trust. “The Inner Arbor Trust unanimously elects Howard Bank’s CEO Mary Ann Scully to its Board of Directors.” 17 Nov. 2016, inartrust.org/s/Mary-Ann-Sculley-Press-Release-November-17-2016.pdf. Accessed 9 May 2017.

  Inner Arbor Trust. November 2, 2016 Board Minutes. 2 Nov. 2016, inartrust.org/s/Inner-Arbor-Trust-November-2-2016-Minutes.pdf. Accessed 9 May 2017.

• November 30: Howard Hughes Corporation transfers ownership of Merriweather Post Pavilion to the nonprofit Downtown Columbia Arts and Culture Commission.

  Waseem, Fatimah. “Merriweather Post eyes its new future.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 4 Dec. 2016, p. 1G.

2017

The Chrysalis comes to life and a new era begins for the Inner Arbor Trust.

• March 18: At the recommendation of Michael McCall, the Inner Arbor Trust Board of Directors elects Trust General Counsel Nina Basu to succeed McCall as President and CEO of the Trust, effective May 1. The board also elects Eric Metzman as a new board member, replacing retiring original board member Gill Wylie.

  McCall, Michael. Personal communication. 27 May 2017.

• April: The Maryland General Assembly approves a $150,000 grant to the Inner Arbor Trust in support of the Chrysalis.

  Yeager, Amanda. “Session makes a local impact.” Baltimore Sun, Howard ed., 16 Apr. 2017, p. 1G.

• April 22: The Chrysalis is dedicated with a public ceremony and concert.

  Holzberg, Janene. “Park by day, public sculpture by night.” Baltimore Sun, 16 Apr. 2017, p. 1 (A&E).

  Janney, Elizabeth. “Chrysalis dedicated to people of Columbia.” Columbia Patch, 24 Apr. 2017, patch.com/maryland/columbia/chrysalis-dedicated-people-columbia. Accessed 8 May 2017.

• May 1: Michael McCall steps down as President and CEO of the Inner Arbor Trust, after successfully leading the Trust through its formation as a nonprofit organization and achievement of 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status, the selection of a design team and creation of a detailed plan for the northern portion of Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, the approval of a seven-phase Site Development Plan by Howard County (including concepts and locations for all park features), the execution of legal agreements with the Columbia Association, Howard County, the Howard Hughes Corporation, and It’s My Amphitheater, Inc., and the completion of phase 1 of the Site Development Plan, including the construction of the Chrysalis. He is succeeded by former Trust General Counsel Nina Basu.

  Basu, Nina. “Started working at Inner Arbor Trust.” Facebook, 1 May 2017, www.facebook.com/ninabasu/timeline/story?ut=32&wstart=-2051193600&wend=2147483647&hash=10155301230471913&pagefilter=3&ustart=1&pnref=story. Accessed 26 May 2017.

For further exploration

In writing the “Creating the Chrysalis” series and this timeline, I consulted multiple sources both online and offline. Unfortunately almost all of the online sources available have one or more flaws, including being incomplete, overly expensive, lacking adequate search facilities, or being prone to broken links as the underlying sites are revamped. At times my only option was to manually scroll through microfilm at the Central Branch of the Howard County Library System.

Here are the main information sources of interest:

• Baltimore Sun. The Sun has multiple ways to retrieve its articles:

  • The standard Baltimore Sun search page linked to from the main newspaper web site includes results for the Columbia Flier and Howard County Times, but will only return results within the last couple of years. It also lacks critical features like being able to search within a date range; even the function to sort results by date is broken.
  • A Google search against the Baltimore Sun site will typically return many more useful results than searching on the Baltimore Sun site itself.
  • The official Baltimore Sun archives (maintained by Newspapers.com) has excellent historical coverage (back to 1837) and can be used to obtain full images of the printed papers, including photographs and illustrations. Searches can be restricted to a date range and results sorted by date. Snippets of the results are viewable at no charge; full pages may be viewed for $8 per month for an unlimited number of searches. Indexing of articles is generally excellent; however, in some cases articles cannot be found using the most straightforward query but will show up using a slightly different query.

• Columbia Flier and Howard County Times. The archives for the Columbia Flier and Howard County Times are combined with Baltimore Sun archives for recent years. For articles before that time there is no option at present except to look for articles on microfilm.

  There used to be a site archives.explorehoward.com that provided access to earlier articles. However it no longer exists, and its contents are not archived anywhere else as far as I know. I am also not aware of any separate online index to the contents of the Columbia Flier and Howard County Times.

• Washington Post. As with the Sun, there are multiple approaches to finding Post articles:

  • The Washington Post search function retrieves articles back to 2005. Its advanced search option allows sorting results by date (in descending order only).
  • The official Washington Post archive site provides two options, searching articles from 1877 to 1995, or from 1987 to the present; both options have an “advanced search” function that allows searching a date range and sorting results by date. The site provides article previews at no charge; prices for the full articles range from $4 per article to just over $1 depending on how many you purchase.

• Columbia Association records of Board of Directors meetings, including minutes, agendas, and board packets (i.e., material provided to the board in advance of meetings). At present only records back to January 2014 are available online. Earlier records have been removed from the main CA site and links to them no longer work.

• The Inner Arbor Trust web site contains many documents of interest scattered around the site. The two main document areas are as follows:

  • “The Making of the Trust” contains links to several documents of interest for the period leading up to the formation of the Inner Arbor Trust.
  • “Corporate Documents” contains links to several documents of interest for the period after the formation of the Inner Arbor Trust.

• Various web sites maintained by General Growth Properties and Howard Hughes Corporation, including the columbiatowncenter.info and downtowncolumbia.com sites. Unfortunately, the former site is no longer online, and many of its pages were not archived. However the following pages at the Internet Archive may be of interest:

  • “A history of the Downtown Columbia Project” (formerly “A history of the Columbia Town Center project”) contains a timeline of activities related to GGP and Howard Hughes planning for downtown Columbia from May 2005 to December 2010.
  • Various sections of GGP’s proposed 2008 General Plan Amendment, including the following:
    • “Making a special place” (archived 19 Feb. 2009)
    • “Moving and connecting people (archived 19 Feb. 2009)
    • “Sustaining the environment” (archived 19 Feb. 2009)
    • “Balancing and phasing growth” (archived 19 Feb. 2009)
    • “Involving everyone” (archived 19 Feb. 2009)
    • “Exhibits” (archived 7 Oct. 2009)

• Columbia and Howard County blogs. The following blogs include material from people active in the controversies around development of downtown Columbia and/or Symphony Woods.

  • Coale, Tom. HoCo Rising. 2006–present, www.hocorising.com. Tom Coale is a former CA board member.
  • Coren, Evan, and others. Howard County Blog. 2006–2009, howardcountyblog.blogspot.com. Evan Coren is a former CA board member.
  • Dunn, Brian. Columbia 2.0. 2008–present, columbia2.wordpress.com. Brian Dunn is a former CA board member. This blog also served as the website for the advocacy group Columbia 2.0.
  • Hecker, Frank. Frank Hecker blog. 2004–present, frankhecker.com. Frank Hecker is the author of this series.
  • Lane, Dennis. Tales of Two Cities. 2006–2013, writing-the-wrongs.blogspot.com. Dennis Lane was a commercial real estate developer and prominent local blogger.
  • McCready, Julia. Village Green/Town² . 2011–present, villagegreentownsquared.blogspot.com. Julia McCready is a former member of the Oakland Mills Village board.
  • Santos, Bill. Columbia Compass. 2006–2012, columbiacompass.blogspot.com, and 2012–2014, columbiacompass.weebly.com/blog. Bill Santos is a former member of the Howard County Planning Board.
  • Woodcock, Bill. The 53. 2008–present, 53beersontap.typepad.com/53beers. Bill Woodcock is a former member of the Oakland Mills Village board.

• Web sites of Columbia and Howard County advocacy groups. Most of these are out of date and many are no longer available on the web, except for fragmentary snapshots preserved by the Internet Archive. Note that I have included only organizations significantly involved in advocacy activities relating to Symphony Woods, Merriweather Post Pavilion, or downtown Columbia development in general.

  • Alliance for a Better Columbia. abettercolumbia.org (archived 18 Dec. 2014). Founded by Paul Amico and Alex Hekimian in October 1987.
  • Bring Back the Vision. bringbackthevision.org (archived 6 Aug. 2008). Founded by Emily Lincoln in 2007.
  • Coalition for Columbia’s Downtown. www.coalitionforcolumbiasdowntown.org/AboutUs.html. Founded by Alan Klein in October 2006.
  • Columbia 2.0. columbia2.wordpress.com. Founded by David Yungmann, Katie Dunn, and Mac Cassity in July 2008.
  • Columbia Tomorrow. columbiatomorrow.org (archived 10 Dec. 2012). Founded by Jud Malone in September 2008.
  • Howard County Citizens Association. howardcountyhcca.org. Founded in 1961.
  • New City Alliance. www.facebook.com/NewCityAlliance. Founded by David Yungmann in October 2009. The group also maintained a web site newcityalliance.org before moving to Facebook.
  • Save Merriweather. savemerriweather.org. Founded by Justin Carlson and Ian Kennedy in June 2003.

tl;dr: Getting the details right on the Chrysalis, featuring Living Design Lab and Mahan Rykiel Associates.

This article is one in a series exploring in depth the creation of the Chrysalis amphitheater in Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods in Columbia, Maryland. For the complete list of articles please see the introduction to the series.

Previous articles in this series discussed the design, fabrication and installation of the steel frame and skin of the Chrysalis, as well as the construction of the “subfloor” to which the steel frame is attached. This article completes that discussion, focusing on various details of the Chrysalis design and construction not previously covered. It features the work of Living Design Lab, architect for the Chrysalis, and Mahan Rykiel Associates, the landscape architect.

Living Design Lab

The “Chrysalis Team” page on the merriweatherpark.org web site includes a number of people and companies previously discussed in this series, including Marc Fornes and THEVERYMANY, Arup, Zahner, and Whiting-Turner. Right near the top of the list you’ll find listed Living Design Lab as architect.

To quote Wikipedia, an architect “plans, designs, and reviews the construction of buildings.” Whether or not there’s a separate designer on the project (as there was for the Chrysalis), ultimately the architect is responsible for the project being able to meet the needs of the people who are going to use it.

As noted above, for the Chrysalis the Inner Arbor Trust chose as architect Living Design Lab, a Baltimore firm founded in 2014 by Davin Hong, subsequently joined by Kevin Day. The principals of Living Design Lab have shown a willingness to stretch themselves, to take on complex and ambitious projects with multiple stakeholders, to practice design above the level of a isolated building or structure, and to do work that serves the community as a whole and not just their client.

Projects on which they’ve worked include advocacy for an integrated design approach to renewing Baltimore’s schools and their surrounding neighborhoods, a project to revitalize Greenmount Avenue in Baltimore, the Baltimore Green Network—an ambitious plan to create an interconnected system of greenspaces throught the city—and a project to build cities for refugees in the Middle East in place of their current camps.

This background prepared Living Design Lab to play a key role in the complex and ambitious project that was the Chrysalis, working with THEVERYMANY, Arup, and Zahner to take the formal concept of the Chrysalis—the 3-dimensional form created through the parametric design process—and make a buildable structure able to handle the demands to be placed upon it.

Sweating the details

Even a typical architectural project involves a myriad of details, more or less visible to the people using it. Less visible details include those needed to satisfy local authorities that a building or other structure will be safe for people and satisfy other requirements: Does it provide adequate fire protection? Does it comply with ADA requirements regarding access? What about handling of storm water runoff? And so on . . .

Even the more visible details often go unnoticed by many, but can elicit a sense of delight when done really well, or irritation when done poorly—think of how satisfied we feel when we hold and use a really well-designed smartphone, for example, or how we’re annoyed when we pay thousands for a new car only to find that the body panels aren’t consistently joined, or that an otherwise sumptuous interior is spoiled by misplaced controls and cheap plastic parts. And of course we want good design for an reasonable price.

For the Chrysalis Living Design Lab dealt with both types of details, working to understand and satisfy a myriad of technical requirements related to the function, construction, cost, schedule, and regulatory approval of the Chrysalis, all without compromising the design intent. For example, consider the question of fire protection: Above the stage floor the Chrysalis is a pure metal structure of steel and aluminum. Arguably a conventional building sprinkler system is neither necessary nor appropriate for the Chrysalis—just one of the many issues that had to be negotiated with Howard County officials for a structure very different than those that typically come before them.

Previous articles have discussed various strategies employed to preserve the design intent for the Chrysalis—so often compromised in projects—while making it possible for it to fulfill its purposes, including most notably serving as a professional performance stage. These strategies included the introduction of the steel framework with its “spine” of primary steel and “ribs” of secondary steel to support heavy theatrical loads and resist dynamic wind loads, and the use of ZEPPS panels to support the pleated surface of aluminum shingles.

This attention to design intent and the uniqueness of the Chrysalis extended to other aspects as well. To explore just one, consider the wooden pickets attached to the exterior of the Chrysalis subfloor (see the first figure above). These pickets are Living Design Lab’s elegant solution to three separate problems:

First, code requirements dictate that there be adequate protection to prevent people from falling off the stage and other surfaces greater than a certain height above the ground. Second, aesthetic considerations dictate that some sort of screening be provided for the otherwise uninterrupted expanses of concrete forming the exterior walls of the subfloor. Finally, budget considerations mean that any solution must not be overly expensive to fabricate and install.

The solution that Living Design Lab came up with was to use vertical wooden pickets (of the same ipe hardwood used for the stage floor) extending from the ground either to the stage floor (at the front of the stage) or beyond it (at the rear of the stage) to form guard rails. The result is more aesthetically pleasing than using conventional railings for the stage and a separate screen or facade for the exterior walls.

But how to build and install these wooden pickets, given that they have to both follow the curve of the stage floor and also match up with the angled legs of the Chrysalis at the points where the guard rails meet the legs? Every picket might have a different orientation in 3-dimensional space, and thus have to be attached in a slightly different way.

For the solution to the problem see the rendering above: Each picket is attached to a angled aluminum attachment bracket. Different attachment brackets have different angles, so that their respective pickets can assume different angles to the ground depending on the degree to which the underlying subfloor wall “leans in.” (Viewing the picket from above and comparing it to an airplane, this is the “pitch” angle.)

Each picket is free to rotate around the bolt attaching it to its bracket, so it can also be slanted to the left or right in a direction parallel to the exterior subfloor wall—in airplane terms, the “roll” angle of the picket can change. Finally, the bracket itself is attached to a horizontal aluminum support plate in such a way that the bracket and its attached picket can “yaw” back and forth slightly to match the curve of the stage floor and the positions of its neighboring pickets.

This arrangement of pickets, brackets, and support plates, elegant as it is, would be too expensive to fabricate if each bracket had to be unique, and too complicated to install as well, given the need to adjust the pickets to precise angles. To address this, the system was designed to require only a limited number of types of brackets, each holding a picket to a particular angle to the ground. The underside of each support plate was then marked to indicate to the installers the type of bracket to be used at each position, together with a line to indicate how the installer should align each bracket relative to the plate (the “yaw” angle).

This system is but one example where having a balance of technical expertise with design sophistication enabled Living Design Lab and the other members of the core Chrysalis team to realize the form of the Chrysalis as a buildable design within a reasonable budget and time schedule.

Mahan Rykiel Associates

While Living Design Lab is a relatively new firm, Mahan Rykiel Associates has been a fixture of the Baltimore scene for over 30 years. Founded by Catherine Mahan in 1983 as Catherine Mahan Associates, it became Mahan Rykiel Associates after Scott Rykiel joined the firm in 1993 and became a partner with Mahan.

Mahan Rykiel has completed or is currently working on a host of projects in the Baltimore-Washington region, including several involving parks: Harbor Point on the waterfront west of Fells Point, Pierce’s Park next to the Columbus Center at the Inner Harbor, Eager Park north of Johns Hopkins University, and Fern Valley and the National Capitol Columns at the US National Arboretum.

Closer to home, Mahan Rykiel has many associations with Columbia: Scott Rykiel used to work at the Columbia-based firm LDR International, two partners at the firm currently live in Columbia, and Mahan Rykiel has been involved with downtown Columbia projects for over ten years, including being the landscape architect for the Columbia Association’s Symphony Woods Park project.

After the Columbia Association decided to adopt the Inner Arbor plan and created the Inner Arbor Trust to carry it out, the Trust decided to take advantage of Mahan Rykiel’s deep knowledge of Symphony Woods and added them to the design team for Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods.

Getting to and from the Chrysalis

In joining the Inner Arbor design team one major task Mahan Rykiel took on was that of creating a new path system for Symphony Woods—fulfilling the mandate of the Howard County Planning Board to minimize tree removal by “aligning paths around healthy trees and minimizing grading.” Mahan Rykiel’s work at the Chrysalis represents the beginning of creating a comprehensive system of meandering paths for Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, as seen in the multiple pedestrian areas around the structure.

The first is an 8-foot-wide accessible path leading to the Chrysalis from a set of seven new handicap parking spaces at the Merriweather VIP parking lot. This path winds around the existing Merriweather Post Pavilion administrative offices and concludes in front of the Chrysalis between the alpha and beta stages.

In order to minimize the slope of the accessible path it goes below grade a bit for one section, in which it is flanked by low walls made of natural stone from the region. To minimize storm water runoff the accessible path features flexible pervious pavement made from recycled tire granules, aggregate rock, and a binding agent. (See the figure above.)

At the Chrysalis the accessible path terminates in a pedestrian area in front of the alpha and beta stages. This area uses light-colored pervious clay pavers, again to minimize storm water runoff. (See the figure above.)

At the south end of the Chrysalis concrete and wooden steps lead to the beta stage. At the north end of the Chrysalis the clay pavers transition to a wooden ramp that provides an accessible approach to the alpha stage floor. This ramp is surfaced with the same ipe hardwood used for the Chrysalis stage floor, and flanked by the same wooden picket discussed above, serving as guard rails. (See the figure above.)

At present this elevated wooden boardwalk is relatively short. However, in phase 2 of the development of Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods the boardwalk will be extended west and then northeast to provide an accessible path to the Chrysalis from a new entrance to the park at the corner of Little Patuxent Parkway and South Entrance Road, next to the multi-use pathway to Lake Kittamaqundi.

The final approach to the Chrysalis is via a short access road providing vehicular access to the loading dock at the rear of the alpha stage. Paved with asphalt and edged with cobblestones, this road provides another walkable approach to the Chrysalis.

Supplemented by landscaping work around the Chrysalis to restore a more natural landscape, the Chrysalis path system and the other areas surrounding the Chrysalis represent Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods in miniature, foreshadowing how Mahan Rykiel’s work will enhance Symphony Woods during the subsequent phases of park development.

Taking the stage

Another key element of the Chrysalis in its final form, important to performers and audience alike, is the stage floor.

This floor has to satisfy several requirements: it has to provide as level a surface as possible; bear the weight of performers, their equipment, and an on-stage audience that might number in the hundreds; be yielding enough for dance and related performances; be sturdy enough to last a long time while exposed to the elements; provide adequate space for electrical cabling and other below-stage equipment; allow for easy repair if damaged; and, finally, be installable above a concrete surface that may be somewhat uneven in places.

The path to a solution began with Michael McCall, the president of the Inner Arbor Trust: in the course of planning a deck for his own home, McCall came across the Bison system of wooden floor tiles and adjustable deck supports. (See the figure above.) Living Design Lab and Arup evaluated the system, and based on its multiple advantages the Chrysalis team decided to adopt it for the main stage floor.

Each Bison unit supports the corners of four adjacent wooden tiles. The deck supports are threaded to allow fine adjustments to be made to the height of the tiles to make the stage floor as level as possible. If needed the base of each unit can also be adjusted to compensate for the underlying surface sloping somewhat.

The wooden tiles for the floor are 2-foot by 2-foot and (like the wooden pickets and the ramp to the Chrysalis) are made of ipe hardwood. They are elevated several inches above the underlying concrete subfloor to allow space for electrical cabling and other equipment, and can be individually removed if needed to gain access to the space under the stage floor. They can also be individually replaced if damaged.

The Inner Arbor Trust also took advantage of the nature of the tiles to mount a fundraising campaign, allowing people or organizations to have their names or other texts laser-engraved on the individual planks of the tiles in return for donations. The final form of the Chrysalis stage floor thus reflects not only the contributions of Living Design Lab, Arup, and the other members of the Chrysalis team, but also the contributions of the many other people and organizations who have helped bring the Chrysalis to life.

For further exploration

This article is based on material from a variety of sources, including the following:

• For more on Living Design Lab and its principals, Davin Hong and Kevin Day, see the following:

  • Living Design Lab. The firm’s web site.
  • Davin Hong. Professional biography of Davin Hong.
  • Kevin Day. Professional biography of Kevin Day.
  • “Building communities through schools: An interview with Davin Hong. A 2013 interview with Davin Hong.

• For more on Mahan Rykiel Associates, see the following:

  • Mahan Rykiel Associates/Practice. About page on the Mahan Rykiel site.
  • “Moving heaven & earth,” by Stephanie Shapiro, page 1C, Baltimore Sun, October 9, 2006. Includes a profile of Scott Rykiel.
  • “Devoted to ‘creating wonderful outdoor spaces’”, by Lorraine Mirabella, page 3C, Baltimore Sun, April 1, 2012. An interview with Catherine Mahan on her retirement from Mahan Rykiel, discussing the history of the firm.
  • “Unabashed Designers of Delight” [121-minute video] (November 18, 2013). A presentation introducing the design team for the Inner Arbor plan. It includes a presentation by Scott Rykiel beginning at 41:54.

• For more on the Chrysalis stage floor see the following:

  • Bison Innovative Products and example deck supports and floor tiles.
  • Entry for ipe (the hardwood used in the stage floor tiles and pickets) at the online Wood Database.
  • Engraving for the Chrysalis stage floor tiles.

• For more on the Chrysalis amphitheater and its origins in the Inner Arbor concept plan, see the following:

  • Michael McCall presentation of the Inner Arbor concept plan to Leadership Howard County [33-minute video] (September 20, 2013).
  • The Chrysalis portion of the Inner Arbor pre-submission community presentation (December 2, 2013).
  • Michael McCall presentation to the Howard County Design Advisory Panel [20-minute video] (February 26, 2014).

For more of my opinions on and explanations of various aspects of the Chrysalis and Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, see the Inner Arbor-related posts in the series “The Inner Arbor plan takes shape” and elsewhere on this blog. (Note that some of these posts contain outdated information relating to park features that were later dropped or revised.)

tl;dr: Now that construction of the Chrysalis is complete, what are the next steps to fulfill the vision of Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods?

This article is one in a series exploring in depth the creation of the Chrysalis amphitheater in Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods in Columbia, Maryland. For the complete list of articles please see the introduction to the series.

The previous few articles in this series discussed the design and construction of the Chrysalis itself. Now that construction of the Chrysalis is complete I take a look at what’s next for Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods. In particular, this article focuses on other Merriweather Park features that are already part of the Site Development Plan approved by the Howard County Planning Board and are thus candidates for the next few years of park development.

A roadmap for Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods

When the Inner Arbor Trust went before the Howard County Planning Board in November 2014, it sought approval not just for the Chrysalis amphitheater, but for a whole range of planned features for Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods—or at least the northern portion of it. (Recall that the Symphony Woods property also includes areas to the east, south, and west of Merriweather Post Pavilion.) In their combination of beauty and utility these features make Merriweather Park a more attractive destination for visitors and provide various key functions needed to accomodate them.

SDP-14-073, the Site Development Plan for Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, outlines 7 phases of park development, with phase 1 being the construction of the Chrysalis and related infrastructure and phase 2 construction of an additional path connecting to the Chrysalis. In approving SDP-14-073 the Planning Board approved the design concepts, uses, and locations of park features for all 7 phases, and fully approved phases 1 and 2 for construction.

Each phase is tied to a particular area of Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods. The park features in each of the 7 phases are as follows:

1. The Chrysalis and related infrastructure, including an access road to the rear of the stage, a parking lot with 7 handicap spaces, and an accessible path from that parking lot to the Chrysalis.

2. A new park entrance at the corner of Little Patuxent Parkway and South Entrance Road, leading to the Chrysalis via an accessible boardwalk. This phase also includes the Sky Horns, a sound sculpture near the entrance (part of the Merriweather Horns public art) and restoration of the two streams on the eastern side of Merriweather Park.

3. The Butterfly guest services building and related infrastructure, including a rooftop terrace with lines of sight into both the Chrysalis and Merriweather Post Pavilion, and a large three-tiered deck facing the Chrysalis.

4. The Merriground play area and another new park entrance, from Little Patuxent Parkway across from the Mall in Columbia access road (to the west of the first park entrance). This phase also includes the Song Cycles, a second sound sculpture near the new entrance.

5. The Picnic Table and associated paths, including a third entrance to the park from Little Patuxent Parkway (to the west of the first two park entrances). This phase also includes the Land Horns, a third sound sculpture near the new entrance.

6. The Caterpillar and associated paths.

7. A renovated access road from Little Patuxent Parkway to Merriweather Post Pavilion, under the new name Free To Be Drive, along with a visitor drop-off area, a fourth park entrance, and the Tone Reeds, the fourth and final entrance sound sculpture.

The timing of phase 2 and beyond will depend on available funding, and the actual order of phases 3 through 7 may not be the same as that listed above.

All features listed above are discussed below, with the exception of Free To Be Drive and related vehicular roadways, parking spaces, and paths: much of that work has already been constructed by Howard Hughes Corporation under a later Site Development Plan (SDP-16-018) jointly submitted by Howard Hughes and the Inner Arbor Trust. (See also the last figure below.) Although paths, lighting, and elements of the Merriweather Horns will be constructed during their associated phases, for convenience they are discussed in separate sections.

The Merriweather Park path system

The plan for Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods includes over 2 miles of paths and walkable access roads and 4 separate pedestrian entrances into the park from Little Patuxent Parkway and Free To Be Drive, designed by landscape architects Mahan Rykiel Associates of Baltimore.

These paths and access roads will not all be constructed at once, but instead will be built incrementally as part of the various phases. For example, phase 1 (the Chrysalis) included construction of a walkable access road to the Chrysalis from the Merriweather Post Pavilion VIP parking lot, and an accessible path to the Chrysalis from a newly-built parking lot with 7 handicap spaces.

Phase 2 of the Site Development Plan includes construction of an accessible boardwalk from the Chrysalis to Little Patuxent Parkway. The planned boardwalk first heads west from the Chrysalis (skirting the existing stream to the north of the Chrysalis) and then goes northeast to the intersection of Little Patuxent Parkway and South Entrance Road, where the path will connect with the existing multi-use pathway leading to Lake Kittamaqundi. (See the two figures above.)

Additional paths will be constructed as part of the remaining phases, including adding two additional park entrances on Little Patuxent Parkway, one across from the access road to The Mall in Columbia, and one next to the existing access road from Little Patuxent Parkway to Merriweather Post Pavilion, and adding a fourth entrance from the future Free To Be Drive.

The pathways themselves are designed to be attractive, durable, and pervious to assist in handling storm water runoff. As it happens, the paths already constructed for the Chrysalis provide examples of all the planned pathway types:

• Larger pedestrian areas, like the area in front of the Chrysalis alpha stage, will use permeable clay pavers (blue areas in the figure above).
• Regular paths, like that leading to the Chrysalis from the 7-space handicap access parking lot, will use flexible pervious pavement made from recycled tire granules, aggregate rock, and a binding agent (green arrows in the figure above).
• Boardwalks and decks, like the ramp leading to the Chrysalis stage, will be surfaced with ipe (“ee-pay”), an extremely durable and low-maintenance hardwood (red arrows in the figure above).
• Walkable access roads, like that leading to the Chrysalis from the Merriweather Post Pavilion VIP parking lot, will be surfaced with asphalt and edged with cobblestones (purple areas in the figure above).

Any walls next to pathways (for example, as seen in the accessible path to the Chrysalis) will be constructed of stone from the region (yellow areas in the figure above).

Finally, the pathway system will provide plenty of opportunities for people to sit and take a rest, using seating built into the stone walls, long benches next to paths, circular benches, and circular bench and table combinations. Like the boardwalks and decks, these will be built using ipe hardwood. Altogether there will be seating for over 2,000 people.

The Butterfly

The Butterfly, designed by Mimi Hoang and Eric Bunge of the New York-based firm nARCHITECTS, is a guest services building containing café and gallery space, planned to be located between the Chrysalis and Merriweather Post Pavilion. Its main customer base will be people attending concerts and cultural events at either or both venues, supplemented by other visitors to the park. (The Butterfly will be open to the general public most of the time, except when ticketed events are being held at Merriweather Post Pavilion or the Chrysalis.)

In designing the Butterfly nARCHITECTS aimed for immersion, lightness, and connection: to immerse visitors in the natural setting, impart a sense of lightness to the structure, and connect it to both the Chrysalis and Merriweather Post Pavilion. One key element in promoting these goals is the design for the roof of the Butterfly. The roof is designed for active use by visitors: to watch performances at the Chrysalis or those held on the roof itself, or just to hang out with friends at the rooftop bar.

The roof will accomodate almost three hundred people, either standing or sitting on steps built into the upward curving wings of the roof. It will be reachable either by two exterior stairs or by an elevator within the Butterfly itself.

The ground floor of the Butterfly has four wings, housing food preparation areas, a small art gallery, and restrooms. The central space will have seating to accomodate patrons of the café. The Butterfly also has a three-level terraced outside deck facing the Chrysalis, again with seating to accomodate visitors.

The Butterfly can be entered from both the Merriweather Post Pavilion side (from the VIP parking lot) and the Chrysalis side (from the terraced deck), with glass walls providing a view through the building and a visual connection between the Merriweather Post Pavilion area and the woods leading to the Chrysalis—again promoting the goals of immersion, lightness, and connection.

The Merriground

The Merriground, designed by Martha Schwartz Partners, is a children’s play area containing multiple elements: a double helix spiral slide, a climbing tower and slide, various elements that can be used either for seating (at their lower levels) or climbing, a ring of rope swings, a “spider web” of rope that can be used as a hammock in which to relax, and—last but not least—the Wondrous Tower, a 45-foot-tall anodized aluminum tower within which visitors can ascend a spiral staircase and look out over the park.

The elements of the Merriground are custom-designed to have a common aesthetic and match the overall aesthetic of Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods: the elements incorporate circular and spiral shapes, and the wood used will be the same durable ipe hardwood used for the Merriweather Park boardwalk and decks.

The Merriground will be located on the boardwalk (from phase 2) that leads into Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods from the corner of Little Patuxent Parkway and South Entrance Road. It abuts the Lily Pads, a set of circular decks with benches that forms part of that boardwalk.

The Merriground thus not only serves as a play area, but also provides an attractive “entrance experience” for visitors arriving from the northeast, for example, walking from Lake Kittamaqundi on the multi-use pathway.

The Picnic Table

The Picnic Table, also designed by Martha Schwartz Partners, has a very simple function: it takes an area of Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods that is low-lying and damp and turns it into an area that can be used for picnics, seating for events like Wine in the Woods, and just plain lounging around.

As its name suggests, the Picnic Table can be seen as an alternative to and replacement for conventional picnic tables. However, it can accomodate many more people within its expanse of 300 by 25 feet: over three hundred people can sit on or near the edge for an event like Wine in the Woods. The Picnic Table also has a much lower profile than conventional picnic tables: it is only 18 inches high, and is designed so that it appears to float above the ground below: the edges of the Picnic Table are cantilevered over 6 feet out from the relatively small steel columns and girders holding it up.

Finally, the Picnic Table is designed to fit into the landscape: it is covered with artificial turf to help it blend in to the underlying lawn, and has cutouts to avoid existing trees. (Seven new trees will also be planted to fill spaces within the existing tree cover.) The artificial turf and the underlying surface of the Picnic Table will also be perforated to allow water to drain naturally through the surface.

The development phase that includes construction of the Picnic Table will also see construction of a third pedestrian entrance into the park from Little Patuxent Parkway, and the Land Horns sound sculpture near the entrance. This accessible entrance will be west of the two other entrances, near the existing access road to Merriweather Post Pavilion and the future Free To Be Drive.

Oriented northwest to southeast, the Picnic Table itself runs roughly parallel to a section of this new path, and also roughly parallel to a separate path (on the other side of the Picnic Tables) constructed as part of the same phase as the Merriground. Visitors will thus have easy access to the Picnic Table from multiple segments of the park pathway system.

The Caterpillar

The Caterpillar, designed by Martha Schwartz Partners, is the single most extensive feature proposed for Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, about twice as long as the Picnic Table. It stretches over about a third of Merriweather Park from east to west, a circular tube covered with plants and other landscaping features.

Although it’s designed to serve multiple functions, the Caterpillar’s primary purpose is very simple: to provide an attractive visual and physical barrier between the “performance park” envisioned in the Inner Arbor concept plan (Merriweather Post Pavilion, the Chrysalis, and associated venues) and the “public park” (just south of Little Patuxent Parkway). This is in support of the twin principles of “operational elasticity” and “the art of bounds” pursued by the Inner Arbor Trust: to allow both the park and the pavilion to expand as needed to accomodate particular uses, and to ensure that the park can remain open to visitors even when events are held at the pavilion.

The striking design of the Caterpillar follows directly from these principles: a fence or wall would be too visually forbidding and unwelcoming for park visitors (as is the current fence around the Merriweather Post Pavilion property), while an earth berm of the needed height would be so wide that it would encroach upon the surrounding trees and suffocate their roots.

Essentially a tubular green wall, the circular cross-section of the Caterpillar allows for it to be large enough to provide physical separation between the two park areas while having a relatively small footprint on the ground below. At almost 11 feet high the Caterpillar is high enough to discourage visitors from climbing over it, but its rounded shape creates a more organic and visually friendly impression than a vertical barrier. Gateways at either end (where the Caterpillar structure arches over the paths) will funnel pedestrian traffic between the northern part of Merriweather Park and the southern part.

The Caterpillar does not follow the line of the existing fence on the property line between the Symphony Woods and Merriweather Post Pavilion properties. Instead it is located some distance north of the property line (towards Little Patuxent Parkway), with the area just south of the Caterpillar (towards Merriweather Post Pavilion) containing a pedestrian plaza and serving as an additional public area for visitors to the pavilion.

In addition to acting as an attractive visual and physical barrier, the Caterpillar also helps with the prosaic problem of providing utilities for events such as Wine in the Woods that spread beyond Merriweather Post Pavilion or the Chrysalis. The structure is hollow, designed to contain electrical lines, water lines, computer network cables, and anything else needed to support events in Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods.

The space immediately north and south of the Caterpillar can be used for event tents and other temporary structures, the fronts of which would face the paths and pedestrian plazas, and the backs of which would be next to any power or other utility outlets embedded in the Caterpillar. The Caterpillar can also support wireless access points to provide WiFi signals to a good portion of Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods.

The Caterpillar will also support a number of other uses: At either end it will contain information booths for visitors to the park or the pavilion. Since the structure supports potted plants as the main visual element it can be used as a community garden to raise flowers or herbs, and since it’s intended to be lighted from within it can be used for visual art of various sorts.

Martha Schwartz has proposed other possible uses as well, including having “portals” through which people could view artworks or educational displays, supporting “audioscapes” either natural (e.g., activated by the wind) or artificial (using microspeakers), or having the structure interact with visitors via smartphone or tablet apps. The Caterpillar can thus serve as a platform for a myriad of possible uses, and will be one of the unique attractions of Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods.

The Merriweather Horns

As visitors enter Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods the Inner Arbor Trust wanted to make them feel that they were entering a special place. In support of that goal the Trust turned to a local artist with a national reputation, former Howard County resident William Cochran. The result was the Merriweather Horns, a set of sculptures for the entrances to Merriweather Park, as well as other sculptural elements to be located elsewhere in the park.

The Merriweather Horns are inspired by the ancient practice of producing sound via horns, from animal horns to musical instruments to the acoustic horns of old-time phonographs and audiophile speakers. As befits their inspiration, all of the pieces are designed to occasionally produce sounds of various types, soft enough to be heard only while standing near the sculptures, and muted during concerts held at Merriweather Post Pavilion or the Chrysalis.

Cochran designed one sculpture for each of the four entrances to Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods:

• The Sky Horns will be located at the northeast entrance to Merriweather Park, at the intersection of Little Patuxent Parkway and South Entrance Road. They are a set of about a dozen long thin straight horns, from 6 to 23 feet in length, suspended among the trees and pointing down towards visitors entering the park on the boardwalk. (See the figure above.) Their sounds are designed to combine and evoke the human voice.

• The Song Cycles will be located at the central entrance to Merriweather Park, at the bottom of the stairs leading down from Little Patuxent Parkway. Resembling traditional phonograph horns, two of them (terminating in fan wheels) are interactive sculptures: visitors can sit at them and use a set of bicycle pedals to produce a series of sounds from the sculptures. Pedalling faster changes the character of the sounds, until eventually they reach a crescendo and the cycle begins anew.

• The Land Horns will be located at the northwest entrance to Merriweather Park, off Little Patuxent Parkway. They are a set of 6 large (up to 28 feet tall) horns, all but one with the bell part of the horn facing the ground. Five of the horns will produce a low frequency melody directed into underground acoustic chambers, with the other horn producing somewhat higher pitched sounds in harmony.

• The Tone Reeds will be located at the southwest entrance to Merriweather Park, off the access road to Merriweather Post Pavilion from Little Patuxent Parkway (the future Free To Be Drive). They are a set of over 200 thin vertical rods ranging in height from 12 to 18 feet, positioned in a loose cluster several feet off the path. They produce a light delicate chiming sound.

In addition to the four main sculptures, there will also be about a dozen “pathfinder horns” at various points on the pathway system. These sculptures will serve as wayfinding devices, for example with two intertwined standing horns (from 8 to almost 10 feet tall) located at a fork in the path, each facing a different direction the visitor can take. The mouths of the horns will face down toward the visitor, with an interior gold finish covered by perforated stainless steel grilles with directional arrows and text.

The pathfinder horns will produce soft sounds characteristic of the forest and its underground wildlife. They can also be synchronized together to play a soft “evening song” melody to mark the end of the day.

Although they produce different sounds, all of the Merriweather Horns have a common visual aesthetic, combining white pearlescent fiberglass with stainless steel, designed to have a light appearance in a portion of the park that is in shade much of the time. The Merriweather Horns will also be lighted from within in various ways as part of the overall lighting scheme for Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods (see below).

Restoring the landscape in Merriweather Park

Although it’s sometimes referred to as a preserved forest, after years of use and relative neglect the Symphony Woods property is not close to being in a natural state: most of the property is simply a lawn with accompanying trees, and even the more wooded parts of the property lack the understory plants one would find in a truly natural forest.

A key part of the plan for Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods is therefore to restore the woods to a more natural state while still making it possible for visitors to use the park on a day to day basis and during events like Wine in the Woods. The planting design was created by landscape architects Mahan Rykiel Associates, the firm that also designed the systems of paths in Merriweather Park, working with the Baltimore-based firm Biohabitats.

Mahan Rykiel has designated 5 different types of landscape in Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, with each planned to be restored in a different manner (see the figure above):

1. Areas at the park entrances and next to many of the paths will have feature plantings: decorative bushes and shrubs (e.g., azaleas and rhododendrons), small trees, flowers, and the like. These will enhance the experience of visitors using the paths, beautify the outer edge of the park along Little Patuxent Parkway and Free To Be Drive, and form a natural complement to the Merriweather Horns.¹
2. Areas to be used by visitors, for example the hill next to the Chrysalis and the areas around the Picnic Table and Caterpillar, will be restored as natural lawns.
3. Various areas in the more heavily forested eastern portion of the park will become enhanced woodlands, with native woodland plants (shrubs, perennials, groundcovers, and grasses) added to form a proper understory for the trees.
4. A relatively open area in the north of the park and another to the southwest will be converted into native meadows.
5. Finally, the streambeds in the eastern portion of the park will be restored and riparian buffers created between the streams and the rest of the park.

Lighting Merriweather Park

The Chrysalis and Merriweather Post Pavilion will frequently host events in the evening. Visitors to Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods on those and other nights will want to be able to walk through the park and be able to find their way and have a sense of security. Proper lighting of the park is key to addressing these issues.

The New York office of Arup Associates, with Star Davis as lead, created the lighting master plan for Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods. The plan features multiple “layers” of lighting that work together to create an overall experience. The plan aims for the various lighting elements to have a natural quality, “as if growing from the earth and drawing power from the soil”:

• The first layer is lighting for the pedestrian pathways of Merriwweather Park. This will be provided by small fixtures near ground level spaced every 5 feet, designed to shine light on the path without bleeding light upward.
• The second layer is lighting for vehicular roadways within Merriweather Park: access roads, parking lots, and visitor drop-off points. This will be provided by pole-mounted lights of various heights (each no higher than necessary given its location), facing downward to minimize light loss upwards.
• The third layer is landscape lighting in Merriweather Park areas where people would be most likely to gather: between the Butterfly and the Chrysalis, at the Merriground and Picnic Table, and between the Caterpillar and Merriweather Post Pavilion. Some of these lights will be low to the ground (similar to the pathway lights), while others will be suspended among the trees.
• The fourth layer is lighting for the Merriweather Horns, including both those at park entrances and the pathfinder horns located throughout the park. These will be softly lit from within.
• The final layer is “integrated feature animation,” that is, lighting of park features like the Merriground, Picnic Table, and Caterpillar that is designed to subtly change over time or in response to the actions of visitors.

Illumination throughout Merriweather Park will vary by layer and feature, designed to meet recommended light levels for various uses and contexts while not producing excessive or misdirected light. The overall effect of the lighting master plan will be to show all the features of Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods to their best advantages, making the park at night a magical experience for all its visitors.

For further exploration

This article is based on material from a variety of online and offline sources, including the following:

• For more on Martha Schwartz Partners, nARCHITECTS, and William Cochran, see the following:

  • Martha Schwartz Partners/Practice/Profile. From the Martha Schwartz Partners web site.
  • “Q&A with landscape architect Martha Schwartz”. A Newsweek interview from March 11, 2015.
  • nARCHITECTS. nARCHITECTS web site.
  • “13 mins interview with Mimi Hoang - nARCHITECTS”. An Arch20 interview from 2016 [?].
  • “Unabashed Designers of Delight” [121-minute video] (November 18, 2013). A presentation introducing the design team for the Inner Arbor plan. It includes a presentation by Martha Schwartz beginning at 12:00 and a presentation by Eric Bunge and Mimi Hoang beginning at 1:18:24.
  • “Studio William Cochran/Bios”. Biographies of William Cochran and his wife and partner Teresa Cochran.
  • “William Cochran: changing streetscapes through public art,” by Erik Anderson, May 18, 2016, Frederick News-Post. An article about Cochran’s work in Frederick and beyond.

• For more on the planned features for Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, see the following:

  • By design/Community presentation. This page on the Merriweather Park web site features slides from the community presentation on December 2, 2013, including more renderings and design diagrams for the Caterpillar, Butterfly, and Picnic Table.
  • By design/The plan. This page on the Merriweather Park web site features a gallery of renderings of the Merriground and the Merriweather Horns.
  • SDP-14-073 (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5). Although it can be difficult to read for the layperson, the approved Site Development Plan for Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods provides a wealth of detail about planned park features.
  • SDP-16-018. A subsequent Site Development Plan (jointly submitted by the Inner Arbor Trust and the Howard Hughes Corporation) describing elements that are part of phase 7.

• For more on the plan for Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods as it has evolved from the original Inner Arbor plan, see the following:

  • The Inner Arbor pre-submission community presentation (December 2, 2013).
  • Michael McCall presentation to the Howard County Design Advisory Panel [20-minute video] (February 26, 2014). Among other things, this presentation outlines the principles of “operational elasticity” and “the art of bounds.”

For more of my opinions on and explanations of various aspects of the Chrysalis and Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, see the Inner Arbor-related posts in the series “The Inner Arbor plan takes shape” and elsewhere on this blog. (Note that some of these posts contain outdated information relating to park features that were later dropped or revised.)

tl;dr: I discuss how the Chrysalis and Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods can attract visitors, based on research conducted by Integrated Insight.

This article is one in a series exploring in depth the creation of the Chrysalis amphitheater in Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods in Columbia, Maryland. For the complete list of articles please see the introduction to the series.

The previous few articles in this series discussed the design and construction of the Chrysalis itself. There will be one more article discussing the final architectural details of the Chrysalis, but in the meantime before construction is completed I’ll take a detour and discuss other aspects of Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods. In particular, this article focuses on how Merriweather Park might attract visitors and how many visitors could be reasonably expected once the park is built out, based on research conducted for the Inner Arbor Trust by Integrated Insight, Inc.

Integrated Insight and the real Disney magic

Over the 50 years that Symphony Woods has existed many people have proposed ways to encourage more visitors, from early attempts by the Columbia Association to promote Symphony Woods as a picnic area for families to CA’s more recent efforts to formally develop the area as “Symphony Woods Park” (the so-called “Paumier plan”). However during that entire time few if any people made a serious effort to research exactly what types of park features might best attract visitors, and how many visitors might reasonably be expected as a result.

When the Inner Arbor Trust was given the responsibility of developing Symphony Woods as a park, one of its first actions was to commission exactly such a study. To perform the research the Trust turned to the Florida-based firm Integrated Insight, Inc.

Integrated Insight was founded in 2009 by Joni Newkirk, Scott Sanders, and other former executives of the Walt Disney Company. Newkirk had previously worked as a senior vice president responsible for researching, forecasting, and optimizing business for Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, the organization responsible for Walt Disney World, Disneyland, the Disney cruise line, and other Disney attractions around the world.

Jim Rouse was a fervent admirer of Walt Disney and his work in creating the Disney theme parks, once referring to Disneyland as “the greatest piece of urban design in the United States today . . ., [fulfilling] all its functions it set out to accomplish, un-self-consciously, usefully, and profitably to its owners and developers.” Rouse’s work in creating festival marketplaces like the Inner Harbor development in Baltimore can be seen as adapting various aspects of Disney’s ideas to an urban setting.

Although Jim Rouse did not have the opportunity to work with Disney while at the Rouse Company, afterwards he explored creating a joint venture between the Walt Disney Company and the Enterprise Development Company, the for-profit arm of his nonprofit Enterprise Foundation. The lead on that project was Michael McCall, who was later to found Strategic Leisure, Inc., and then to spearhead development of Symphony Woods as president of the Inner Arbor Trust. McCall was thus familar with Disney’s various projects, the executives responsible for them, and the capabilities that Disney had built in strategy and operations for its parks and resorts.

Those parks and resorts owe their success not just to the family-friendly image carried over from Walt Disney’s animated films, but to the Walt Disney Company’s application of sophisticated business practices to every aspect of running the parks: promoting the parks to potential visitors via various channels, forecasting park attendance to a high degree of accuracy, ensuring that visitors have a wide variety of park experiences available to them, engineering the layout and other aspects of the parks (including the lines for rides) to optimally accomodate visitors, and doing all this in a way that both delights visitors and is financially sustainable.

Joni Newkirk, Scott Sanders, and their colleagues played key roles in all of these areas. When they left Walt Disney Company to form Integrated Insight they brought with them a wealth of expertise in providing entertainment, travel and leisure organizations services including market research and consumer insights, forecasting and feasibility analysis, revenue and profit optimization, and capacity and operational planning. It was thus natural for Michael McCall and the Inner Arbor Trust to turn to Integrated Insight for advice on how to turn the Inner Arbor vision into a successful park.

Checking out comparable attractions

Integrated Insight first looked at the proposed Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods in the context of its likely market and of comparable and (in some cases) competitive attractions around the US and beyond.

In doing this Integrated Insight (following the lead of the Inner Arbor Trust) considered the Symphony Woods property not in isolation but rather as integrated with Merriweather Post Pavilion: events at the pavilion will drive visits to the park, and features of the park will enhance the pavilion experience.

Integrated Insight also considered all the park features envisioned in the original Inner Arbor concept plan: not just the Chrysalis, but also other elements like a sculpture garden, a café, and so on. This recognized that the appeal of Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods for visitors will not be tied to any one park feature (just as, for example, visits to Disneyland aren’t driven by any one attraction). Instead Merriweather Park’s appeal will be a function of the total park experience.

As it turns out, some of the elements in the Inner Arbor concept plan are not part of the currently-approved plan for Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, like the “treehouse” structures proposed as part of the elevated boardwalk. Others will likely be present, but not necessarily as part of Merriweather Park itself. For example, the proposed New Cultural Center on the Toby’s Dinner Theater site next to the park will provide indoor performance venues similar to those proposed in the concept plan.

However, the overall principle remains sound: what will attract visitors is the overall experience of the Merriweather-Symphony Woods Neighborhood and related cultural attractions in the Merriweather District—Howard Hughes Corporation’s term for the combination of the Merriweather-Symphony Woods Neighborhood and the Crescent Neighborhood surrounding it to the south and west.

There are 8 million people within 50 miles of Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, an additional 6 million people between 50 and 100 miles away, and another 10 million people between 100 and 150 miles away—a total of 24 million within a 3-hour drive. These form the core markets for Merriweather Park, although it is also possible that visitors from further away will spend some time at the park while visiting the Baltimore or Washington DC area (e.g., as tourists or for family visits).

Thus Integrated Insight’s list of comparable and competitive venues includes a mix of local attractions and more remote ones. For example, the Inner Arbor concept plan included a proposed sculpture garden south of Merriweather Post Pavilion. As part of the research study Integrated Insight looked at almost a dozen sculpture parks elsewhere in the US and around the world, with park sizes ranging from less than 2 acres to over 1,000 acres, park entry fees of up to $12, and annual attendance from about 80,000 people to 1 million people.

These figures, along with the detailed descriptions in the research reports, provide some reasonable guidance on the possible appeal to visitors of a comparable sculpture garden within Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, along with what it would take to make such a garden artistically and financially successful.

Integrated Insight performed similar research on other comparable and competitive features, including outdoor amphitheaters (comparable to Merriweather Post Pavilion and the Chrysalis), indoor venues (comparable to the indoor theaters proposed in the Inner Arbor concept plan and planned as part of the New Cultural Center), and events and festivals (comparable to Wine in the Woods and music festivals at Merriweather Post Pavilion). (See the figure above for the types of attractions covered, and a sample of those described.)

One comparison of particular interest is to “cultural districts,” that is, areas within cities that feature multiple cultural attractions and are marketed as a single overall entity to prospective visitors. For example, the Pittsburgh Cultural District (overseen by the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust) covers 14 city blocks and features 7 theaters, 8 public parks and art installations, 12 art galleries, 50 restaurants and other places to dine, and 90 retail shops. In total the Pittsburgh Cultural District hosts 3,000 events and attracts 2 million visitors each year.

Again, this emphasizes that, just as the individual features within Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods should not be considered in isolation, Merriweather Park should not be considered in isolation from the broader downtown Columbia area, especially the Merriweather District south of The Mall in Columbia.

That area alone includes a host of cultural attractions existing, planned, and proposed, including the renovated Merriweather Post Pavilion, the Chrysalis and other features planned for Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, the New Cultural Center planned for the Toby’s Dinner Theater site, and a proposed new Central Branch library and a possible indoor music venue in the Crescent Neighborhood. If all of these are realized they will work in concert (no pun intended) to make downtown Columbia an attractive destination for both locals and visitors interested in culture and the arts.

Surveying potential park visitors

In addition to researching comparable and competition attractions to Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, Integrated Insight conducted a survey of 1,000 people to (among other things) further estimate the total market for Merriweather Park, determine what proposed park features, special events, and other aspects were most appealing to potential visitors, learn what revenue opportunities there might be for park attractions, and estimate how many people were likely to visit the park and its associated venues.

The survey included four groups of people: locals (within 10 miles of the park), residents (within 11-50 miles), mid-Atlantic tourists (recent visitors to the Washington DC/Baltimore area from various mid-Atlantic states, and distant tourists (recent visitors to the Washington DC/Baltimore area from other states). In addition, participants were screened to include only those who had participated in various cultural events (concerts, festivals, live theater, etc.) within the last two years, had visited parks or cultural venues (museums, art galleries, sculpture gardens, etc.) within the same timeframe, or expressed significant interest in such participation or visits.

As noted above, the purpose of the research was to gauge potential visitors’ interest in Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods as envisioned in the Inner Arbor concept plan, not just the Chrysalis. Participants in the survey read a three-paragraph description of Merriweather Park (“In the middle of the Baltimore/Washington Corridor lies a beautiful and extraordinary escape, a forested culture park, founded in music and adorned with art.”) and watched a video that included renderings of the proposed park features. They answered various questions to determine demographics, elicit their opinions on the park, and gauge the likelihood of their visiting it.

Some of the more interesting conclusions from the demographic survey were as follows, starting first with tourists:

• Tourists are less affluent than locals (not surprising given the demographics of Howard County) and have a higher mix of families. Distant tourists are also relatively younger.

• Most tourists to the Washington DC/Baltimore area are repeat visitors likely to be looking for new and interesting things to do.

• Tourists have specific interests in cultural attractions, outdoor parks and performance venues, and festivals—all characteristics of Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods.

• The overwhelming majority of visitors will have access to a car, and thus easy road access and parking for Merriweather Park will be an important factor in their willingness to visit.

• Tourists participate in outdoor, cultural, and festival activities and have a high interest in continuing to do so. However attending concerts and live performances is not a primary driver of visits to Washington DC or Baltimore.

• The vast majority of tourists do not plan their entire trip but leave at least some time open for last-minute activities. They also tend to drop 1 out of 4 planned activities from their itineraries. Together these mean that people are open to stopping by Merriweather Park for some reason or other, but their likelihood of visiting is stronger if they’ve already committed to visit (e.g., by buying tickets to a festival or other event).

• Tourists have a lot of choices for activities in Washington DC and Baltimore. The majority of them have family in the area, and in many cases family members accompany them, so positive word of mouth and family endorsements will be key for attracting people to Merriweather Park.

Other findings with respect to locals and residents are as follows:

• Locals and residents generally have similar interests to tourists. Locals and residents with families are more interested in participating in activities than those without, except for attending concerts and visiting art galleries (for which interest is comparable).

• Awareness of Merriweather-related events is relatively low compared to awareness of nationally-recognized events like the Cherry Blosson Festival: no more than half of locals and residents were aware of Wine in the Woods, with even fewer aware of any of the various Merriweather Post Pavilion music festivals (Capital Jazz Festival, Virgin Freefest, etc.).

• Nevertheless, significant numbers of locals and residents have attended performances at Merriweather Post Pavilion or Toby’s Dinner Theater.

Public opinions on the proposed park

In addition to the questions about visits to and interests in atractions in the Washington DC/Baltimore area, the Integrated Insight survey also asked people their opinions about the proposed Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods. Those surveyed were asked to rate on a 10-point scale both their interest in attending an event at Merriweather Park and their interest in simply spending some time at the park. They were then asked to explain in their own words why they had rated their interest the way they did.

About two-thirds of all respondents indicated a strong interest (7-10 rating) in attending an event or just visiting the park. (See the figure above.) Of those indicating strong interest, reasons included the park sounding fun, being different and unique, providing outdoor activities, and providing entertainment.

Only 10% of all respondents indicated they had little interest (1-3 rating) in visiting Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods. The most common reasons for their low ratings were the distance they would have to travel (for example, for Virginia residents who would have to cross the Potomac River) and lack of interest in what the park had to offer. In general those with little interest were relatively older, were not living with other family members, and had less interest in attending live performances.

A significant fraction of respondents expressed extreme interest in both spending time at Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods and also attending events there (rating of 10 on both questions). The locals and residents expressing such extreme interest tended to be those who often hosted out-of-town visitors, more frequently attended performances at local venues, and more frequently visited The Mall in Columbia and a branch of the Howard County Library System.

The words survey respondents used to describe Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods were overwhelmingly positive: “great,” “wonderful,” “amazing,” “fantastic,” “spectacular,” and so on. Only 5% of the words used to describe the park were negative (e.g., “boring” or “overdone”).

The most appealing aspects of Merriweather Park were the outdoors aspect, the presence of multiple things to do, the events and performances, and the art and architecture. Almost half of all respondents could not name anything they did not find appealing. Of those who did name negatives the most frequently mentioned were distance, access, crowds, and parking—although it’s worth noting that less than 5% of respondents expressed concerns about parking and traffic.

Overall the survey respondents came away with a strong positive impression of Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods. A question eliciting word impressions of the likely effect of the park on people produced responses like “merry,” “happy,” “free,” and “relaxed,” while two thirds or more strongly agreed with statements that Merriweather Park would be “a place to explore,” “a place with diverse offerings,” “green,” and “a commmunity park I would be proud of.” Almost as many people strongly agreed that Merriweather Park would be “a good fit for Maryland” and “a good fit for Columbia.”

The survey also asked respondents to rate the appeal of 12 individual park features, including all the elements proposed as part of the original concept plan (like the Treehouse Skywalk) or added later (like the Merriground play area). The majority of respondents rated all park elements as highly appealing (8-10 on a 10-point scale). The 6 most popular features were the Treehouse Skywalk, Fountain Plaza, and sculpture garden (proposed in the concept plan), the Picnic Table and Caterpillar (part of the approved Site Development Plan), and Merriweather Post Pavilion itself.

Since this series has been focused on the Chrysalis, it’s worth noting that the survey respondents found the Chrysalis to be a unique park element—84% could not name another venue it reminded them of. The most common responses from people referred to the Chrysalis as “amazing” or “great,” and highlighted its relatively intimate scale, architecture, and setting; only a small minority did not like the Chrysalis.

The bottom line is that people responded most strongly to those proposed aspects of Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods that were most unlikely to be duplicated elsewhere—both unique events to attend (e.g., festivals and special performances) and unique park features that could be experienced during family outings. These aspects in turn increased the interest of those in the mid-Atlantic states and beyond in visiting the Washington DC/Baltimore area.

Estimating park attendance

Finally, Integrated Insight used various questions combined with known attendance at existing destinations to estimate future annual attendance at the completed Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods.

The first step was to ask respondents to estimate how often they might visit, and what might draw them to the park. About half of locals and residents combined indicated they would likely visit at least a few times a year, with others indicating they would visit more often. As noted above, the most common reasons given for likely visiting were to attend specific performances or have a family outing.

Interest among tourists was also strong, with about three quarters of respondents indicating they would likely visit Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods if it were open while they were visiting. About half indicated their interest was strong enough they might plan a special visit to the area to visit Merriweather Park.

However expressed interest in visiting a place does not always translate into an actual visit. To get a better estimate, Integrated Insight started with the populations in the various groups of potential visitors (locals, residents, mid-Atlantic tourists, and distant tourists), reduced the population to include only that fraction expressing strong interest in visiting (from the survey results), and then for tourists further reduced it to include only those visiting the Washington DC/Baltimore area in the past year.¹ This resulted in an estimated addressable market for Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods of about 30 million people.

Intergrated Insight then further adjusted its estimates to account for any overstatements respondents might have made regarding their intentions to visit the park. For example, if one took at face value the information provided by respondents regarding past visits to Merriweather Post Pavilion and extrapolated that to the size of the estimated addressable market, one would conclude that the pavilion had about 8 times more visitors per year than the actual attendance figures.

In other words, a more accurate estimate of projected attendance would be only about one-eighth or about 12% of what a naïve estimate might suggest—the so-called “overstatement factor” or “coefficient of overstatement.” Integrated Insight did similar calculations comparing survey respondents’ stated attendance at other venues compared to their actual attendance, and again obtained an overstatement factor of about 12%.

Integrated Insight used this overstatement factor in combination with other estimates (e.g., the number of potential venues at Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, their respective capacities, and the likely number of events per year) to generate estimates on park attendance due to events. They also compared these estimates to actual attendance at comparable other venues (included those discussed above, like the Pittsburgh Cultural District) to see whether the estimates were reasonable.

At the same time Integrated Insight generated similar estimates for people who might visit the park outside of special events, including those visiting for family or school outings. These were also adjusted using the same overstatement factor of 12% used in adjusting attendance estimates for events.

The final estimate for attendance at a completed Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods was approximately 2.5 million visitors per year. This estimate includes attendees at Merriweather Post Pavilion and other performance venues, general park visitors (e.g., for walks and family outings), visitors for school graduations and other school-related visits, and people attending various special events (e.g., weddings or family reunions).

This level of attendance would make Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods one of the more popular attractions in the Washington DC/Baltimore area—not nearly as popular as (for example) the National Air and Space Museum, but significantly more popular than Washington DC attractions like the US Botanic Garden and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

One problem presented by this level of attendance is how to accomodate visitors to Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, especially during large events where a lot of visitors might want to leave all at once after the event is over. Integrated Insight assisted with this task as well, applying its experience in “industrial engineering” from the Disney parks and resorts to the proposed park pathway system.

For example, in its endorsement of the design of Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, the Howard County Design Advisory Panel also recommended that the Inner Arbor Trust review the width of planned pathways within the park (shown in the figure below). Integrated Insight provided estimates on how many people would be able to exit the park within a given time (in this case, 800 people per hour for each foot of pathway width).

Based on these estimates the Trust revised its plans in order to widen certain pathway segments from 8 feet wide to 10 feet wide. The resulting pathway system, together with the entrance drive into the park off Little Patuxent Parkway, should be able to support the exit of more than 13,000 people going north within a 20-minute period. This will be more than sufficient for all but the very largest events, especially considering that traditionally most people have parked south of Merriweather Post Pavilion, not north, and that the 2,500-space parking garage planned to support the pavilion will also be to the south.

Integrated Insight thus applied its expertise to multiple aspects of Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, bringing deep experience in park marketing and management to the long-desired goal of developing Symphony Woods into an attractive and popular park. The next article in this series will focus on future features planned for Merriweather Park, features that will help round out the vision of the park that Integrated Insight’s survey respondents found so attractive.

For further exploration

This article is based on material from a variety of online and offline sources, including the following:

• For more on Integrated Insight, its history and team, and its work on the Merriweather Park project, see the following:

  • Integrated Insight, Inc.: Management consulting [PDF], July 2014. A presentation of Integrated Insight’s executive team and their background, its areas of expertise, and representative projects.
  • Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods: Market regions and comparative analysis [PDF], December 7, 2014. A presentation discussing the regions from which Merriweather Park would likely draw most of its visitors, and presenting information about other venues in the US and elsewhere with comparable attractions and appeal.
  • Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods: Product research and demand study (part 1, part 2, and part 3) [PDF], December 15, 2014. A presentation discussing the results of a public opinion survey concerning Merriweather Park and an analysis of potential annual attendance.
  • “Math of Architecture, Architecture of Math” [67-minute video]. An event on November 3, 2015, sponsored by the Inner Arbor Trust to promote the Chrysalis project. Includes a presentation by Joni Newkirk starting at 10:40, discussing Integrated Insight and its research.
  • Letter from Michael McCall to Randy Clay, March 14, 2014. A letter responding to the Howard County Design Advisory Panel’s request to the Inner Arbor Trust to review the widths of the planned pathways within Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods.

• For more on the Chrysalis amphitheater and its origins in the Inner Arbor concept plan, see the following:

  • Michael McCall presentation of the Inner Arbor concept plan to Leadership Howard County [33-minute video] (September 20, 2013).
  • The Chrysalis portion of the Inner Arbor pre-submission community presentation (December 2, 2013).
  • Michael McCall presentation to the Howard County Design Advisory Panel [20-minute video] (February 26, 2014).

For more of my opinions on and explanations of various aspects of the Chrysalis and Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, see the Inner Arbor-related posts in the series “The Inner Arbor plan takes shape” and elsewhere on this blog. (Note that some of these posts contain outdated information relating to park features that were later dropped or revised.)

tl;dr: I present more details on the Chrysalis integrated foundation/basement system (“subfloor”) and other construction at the Chrysalis site, featuring the work of Whiting-Turner.

This article is one in a series exploring in depth the creation of the Chrysalis amphitheater in Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods in Columbia, Maryland. For the complete list of articles please see the introduction to the series.

The previous two articles in this series discussed the fabrication and installation of the steel frame and skin of the Chrysalis. This article presents more information on the construction of the structural concrete integrated foundation/basement system (also known as the “subfloor”) to which the steel frame is attached. It features the work of the Whiting-Turner Contracting Company of Towson, Maryland.¹

Whiting-Turner

As discussed in the previous article, for the steel frame and aluminum shell of the Chrysalis the Inner Arbor Trust used A. Zahner Company as the “design-build” contractor. For the remainder of the Chrysalis construction, including construction of the reinforced concrete structural “subfloor” that serves as a robust foundation beneath the Chrysalis stage, the Trust followed the more traditional “design-bid-build” process. After competitive bidding the Trust selected as general contractor the Whiting-Turner Contracting Company of Towson, Maryland.

Like Zahner, Whiting-Turner is a private company with a heritage that reaches back over a hundred years. It was founded in 1909 in Baltimore, Maryland, by G. W. C. Whiting, a Baltimore native and recent graduate in civil engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his classmate LeBaron Turner. Turner left the company after five years, but Whiting continued his association with the company until his death in 1974 at the age of 91.

In its early days Whiting-Turner bid on contracts for paving roads and laying sewer pipes. In the 1920s it took on bigger projects, including the elevation of Loch Raven Dam in Baltimore (completed 1922) and the construction of various bridges. (Whiting-Turner later did work on both the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and the Delaware Memorial Bridge.)

1938 saw Baltimore native and Johns Hopkins engineering graduate Willard Hackerman join Whiting-Turner. After rising through the ranks Hackerman replaced G. W. C. Whiting as president in 1955, and remained in that position until his death in 2014 at the age of 95. (His replacement was current president and CEO Timothy Regan.) During Hackerman’s tenure Whiting-Turner literally changed the face of Baltimore, constructing (among others) Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, the National Aquarium, M&T Bank Stadium (home of the Baltimore Ravens), and (last but not least) Jim Rouse’s Harborplace development.

Closer to home, Whiting-Turner constructed the Teachers Building (completed 1967), the first office building in Columbia and the former headquarters of the Columbia Association. Whiting-Turner also built the Columbia Mall (completed 1971) and oversaw its later expansion and renovation as The Mall in Columbia (completed 1999).

Whiting-Turner’s involvement with Columbia is thus as old as the city itself, and its work on the Chrysalis marks 50 years of Whiting-Turner projects in downtown Columbia.

Preparing the Chrysalis site

Whiting-Turner’s role in the construction of the Chrysalis encompassed more than just the construction of the foundation/basement: they were ultimately responsible for tree protection, stormwater management, site utilities, electrical, plumbing and HVAC systems, roads and paths, and general site work—things that most users of the Chrysalis will likely not consciously notice, but which are critical to ensuring the safety, stability, and functioning of the Chrysalis as a whole.

As the general contractor Whiting-Turner selected and oversaw subcontractors who carried out these various tasks. However in the end it was Whiting-Turner’s work in coordinating the many details of construction and holding subcontractors to high standards of quality that would make the difference in bringing the project to a successful conclusion. This work was overseen by Whiting-Turner vice president (and Howard County resident) Jeff Cooper, project manager Peter “Tyge” Sheehan, and assistant project manager Sam Grayman.

After the Chrysalis groundbreaking in September 2015, Whiting-Turner established its on-site office and commenced preparing the site, once the Inner Arbor Trust had received a grading permit from Howard County. (This was separate from the building permit, which was issued later.)

Appropriately, given the concern expressed by many regarding the trees of Symphony Woods, Whiting-Turner’s first task was to ensure the health of trees near the construction area. In pursuit of this they hired a professional arborist to survey the trees in the vicinity and create a comprehensive plan to protect them. This included pruning the roots of trees next to areas scheduled to be excavated, placing mats to protect specific critical root zones, and doing nutrient feeding for certain key trees.

There is a small stream to the north of the Chrysalis and behind the Chrysalis to the east (toward South Entrance Road). In order to limit runoff and prevent construction debris from entering the stream buffer area, “super silt” fencing (filter fabric backed by chain link fencing) was placed around the construction area.

The next task was the construction of a new 8-inch water line to the Chrysalis site itself and to the Chrysalis service road (which runs from the Merriweather Post Pavilion VIP parking lot to the back of the Chrysalis). This water line serves fire suppression sprinklers in the Chrysalis itself, and supplies two new fire hydrants at the beginning and end of the Chrysalis service road. The line will also supply drinking water for general purposes in and around the Chrysalis, and provide water to subsequent phases of Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods.

The construction of the water line illustrates the complications of land ownership in the Merriweather-Symphony Woods neighborhood. The source of the water for the new water line is an existing water main in South Entrance Road, and the new line passes under Symphony Woods Road, a private road owned by the Howard Hughes Corporation. Howard Hughes provided the Inner Arbor Trust an easement to make such a connection as part of a wide-ranging reciprocal easement agreement concluded between the two parties.

The Chrysalis cistern

As evidenced by the July 2016 flash flood in Ellicott City, heavy rainstorms can result in very large quantities of runoff, especially when the rain falls onto impervious surfaces such as roads and buildings. A key task in construction, undertaken even before excavating the site, was therefore putting in place permanent measures to handle runoff into the nearby stream, particularly from the 12,000 square feet of the Chrysalis shell canopy—a pleated surface that acts as a very large rain gutter over the approximately 5,000 square feet of the Chrysalis stage.

On many building sites ponds are constructed to retain runoff prior to releasing it into the surrounding watershed. Aesthetic considerations and the limited area of the site required a different solution for the Chrysalis: instead of a pond Whiting-Turner installed an underground cistern, constructed of large corrugated metal pipes 5 feet in diameter and capable of storing almost 2,500 cubic feet of water in total (over 18,000 gallons).

The pleats of the Chrysalis shell carry rainwater and snow melt to the base of the nine shell legs where the canopy comes to the ground. At the base of each leg stormwater drains through beds of landscaping stone that sit on galvanized steel grates that top underground basins. The basins (resembling concrete bathtubs) then funnel the runoff into a network of underground pipes that empty into the cistern.

The runoff accumulates in the cistern until the cistern reaches its design capacity, at which point the cistern begins to release water into the stream system. The overall effect is to even out the flow of water and reduce high-velocity surges during severe downpours. This reduces the harmful effects of both local erosion of the stream bed and downstream sedimentation as the runoff proceeds into the Little Patuxent watershed.

Site excavation and mud mats

After the cistern was installed Whiting-Turner began the mass excavation of the Chrysalis foundation/basement, preparing the site for the foundation construction and for installation of underground utilities, including conduits for supplying electricity to the theatrical lighting and audio systems.

The Chrysalis construction site was designed as closely as possible to be in a “net zero fill” condition. In other words, earth that was removed during the initial stages of construction was saved and then redeployed later in the construction process, instead of being hauled away. This was more cost efficient and also resulted in a lower carbon footprint for the construction as a whole.

As part of this process dirt and small stones were stockpiled on-site and covered with plastic for future use in backfilling the inside and outside of the Chrysalis foundation walls. Larger stones that could not be used for fill were removed by Whiting Turner’s subcontractor, Highland Turf, Inc., and moved to other locations within the Merriweather-Symphony Woods and Crescent neighborhoods, for use by the Howard Hughes Corporation in its own stream restoration projects.

Once the foundation was excavated, workers poured concrete “mud mats” (also known as “mud slabs”) following the outline of the Chrysalis’s exterior and interior walls. The mud mats served as a non-structural “foundation for the foundation,” providing a solid flat surface upon which reinforcing steel bars (rebar) and wooden molds for concrete (formwork) could be placed, and the concrete for the subfloor’s walls then poured.

Reinforced concrete

Once the mud mats were poured, workers placed reinforcing steel bars or rebar in preparation for constructing the exterior and interior walls of the subfloor foundation.

First used extensively in the 19th century and perfected in the 20th, reinforced concrete is ubiquitous in modern construction. It works by combining the compressive strength of concrete with the tensile strength of steel—in other words, the concrete resists being pushed together and the steel resists being pulled apart. With the two bonded together in a composite, the resulting material resists loads placed on it without bending or breaking.

The reinforced concrete used in the Chrysalis is “cast in place” concrete: A mesh or “mat” of rebar was laid on top of the previously-poured mud mats, tied together, and inspected. The rebar was laid especially densely in areas designed to bear heavier loads, such as the concrete piers to which the legs of the Chrysalis steel frame are attached. (See the figure above.)

Wooden modular paneled formwork was then constructed around the rebar to act as a mold, and high-strength “5,000 psi” concrete poured into the formwork and around the rebar.² As the concrete cured it bonded to the steel bars (rebar is typically corrugated to make this bond stronger), giving the resulting walls or piers their strength.

Laying the rebar, constructing the formwork, and pouring concrete was made more complicated by the irregular shape of the Chrysalis foundation: looking at the structure from above (in so-called “plan view”) there are only four 90-degree angles apart from the stairs. In all other places the formwork needed to be carefully framed to correspond to the curves in the exterior walls and piers.

The foundation/basement walls and ceiling

In January 2016 construction of the Chrysalis was interrupted by the “Snowzilla” storm. After the storm was over and snow cleared from the site, the first major concrete pour of the foundation was successfully made, by Whiting-Turner’s subcontractor McGuire Concrete. First to be poured were the 8-inch-thick exterior walls and the associated concrete piers for attachment of the steel frame of the Chrysalis.

The exterior walls were reinforced with #3 and #5 rebar placed every 6 inches, laid crossways in two layers.³ The piers were reinforced with a larger size of rebar, laid so densely that special accomodations had to be made to fit in the anchor bolts to which the legs of the steel frame were attached.

(Special care was taken in surveying where to place these bolts, in order to position them as accurately as possible for connecting to the steel frame. The bolt positions were surveyed twice before pouring the concrete, and then surveyed again immediately afterward to ensure that the pouring operations had not disturbed them.)

Subsequently three interior walls were poured (also 8 inches thick, and similarly reinforced), running in parallel lines from the front of the Chrysalis to the back. These walls formed two interior rooms of a walkout basement, one to be used for electrical equipment providing 2,000 amps to the stage, and the other to be used for storage of Chrysalis-related equipment—almost 1,600 square feet in all.

In the back of the Chrysalis Whiting-Turner and its subcontractors constructed three sets of concrete stairs leading from ground level to stage level, for the use of performers, stagehands, and others. (Between the stairs is a loading dock with a space for a so-called ”scissors lift” to lift equipment from the dock to the stage.)

Once the interior walls were complete, the two basement rooms were covered with a 10-inch-thick slab of reinforced concrete, poured into formwork supported from below, with two layers of #5 rebar placed every 6 inches each way. This slab forms the ceiling for the basement rooms and a portion of the concrete floor for the stage.

The remaining spaces outside the two rooms were then filled with dirt saved from the earlier excavation, topped with a layer of gravel, and then capped with 10-inch-thick slabs of reinforced concrete to match up with the slab over the basement rooms. All of these slabs tied directly into the walls and piers, using rebar exposed for this purpose. (See the figure below.)

In total about 550 cubic yards of high-strength 5,000 psi concrete went into the structure. The concrete was reinforced by over 100,000 pounds of rebar.

The structural diaphragm

As previously discussed, all of these elements form what structural engineers call a “diaphragm,” integrating the vertical foundation walls and piers together with the horizontal floor into a single, strong structural whole. This is the same principle that makes a soup can much stronger with one of its lids fully attached to its cylinder, as the lid acts as a diaphragm, transferring forces exerted from one point throughout the rest of the can. The result is a strong rigid structure that can easily support the steel frame of the Chrysalis and the attached shell, and help the Chrysalis resist the various loads placed upon it.

Whiting-Turner’s role in constructing the Chrysalis did not end with the completion of the subfloor. As a general contractor its work is not finished until the completed Chrysalis structure and all related elements—railings, roads, pathways, etc.—are handed over to the Inner Arbor Trust. Discussion of the remaining elements, including some not yet finished at the time of writing, is deferred to a future article on the architectural details of the Chrysalis and the lansdcaping of its surroundings.

For further exploration

This article is based on material from a variety of online and offline sources, including the following:

• For more on Whiting-Turner, its history, its work on the Chrysalis project, and related topics, see the following:

  • Whiting-Turner portfolio of selected projects and areas of expertise.
  • “Whiting-Turner History.” Historical timeline on the Whiting-Turner web site.
  • “G.W.C. Whiting rites tomorrow,” page A17, Baltimore Sun, November 19, 1974. Obituary for G. W. C. Whiting.
  • “Construction Magnate and Philanthropist,” by Jacques Kelly, page A1, Baltimore Sun, February 11, 2014. Obituary for Willard Hackerman.
  • “Building Occupancy,” page F10, Baltimore Sun, September 17, 1967. Announcement of the opening of the Teachers Building in Columbia.
  • “Work Sped On Columbia Mall for Tomorrow’s Opening,” by Carleton Jones, page F1, Baltimore Sun, August 1, 1971. An article on the opening of the Columbia Mall.
  • “New wing of The Mall opens with a flourish,” by Jill Hudson Neal, page 14B, Baltimore Sun (Anne Arundel edition), September 19, 1999. The opening of a new wing of The Mall in Columbia after the mall’s renovation and expansion.
  • Inner Arbor Trust construction updates for September 2015, October 2015, November and December 2015, January and February 2016, March 2016, and April 2016. Ongoing updates describing the progress of the construction of the Chrysalis.
  • “Chrysalis steel and concrete construction.” A collection of photographs (and a video) showing the progress of the construction of the Chrysalis.
  • “Reinforced concrete.” A Wikipedia article describing the history and use of reinforced concrete.

• For more on the Chrysalis amphitheater and its origins in the Inner Arbor concept plan, see the following:

  • Michael McCall presentation of the Inner Arbor concept plan to Leadership Howard County [33-minute video] (September 20, 2013).
  • The Chrysalis portion of the Inner Arbor pre-submission community presentation (December 2, 2013).
  • Michael McCall presentation to the Howard County Design Advisory Panel [20-minute video] (February 26, 2014).

For more of my opinions on and explanations of various aspects of the Chrysalis and Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, see the Inner Arbor-related posts in the series “The Inner Arbor plan takes shape” and elsewhere on this blog. (Note that some of these posts contain outdated information relating to park features that were later dropped or revised.)

tl;dr: I explain how the skin of the Chrysalis was fabricated and installed by A. Zahner Company.

This article is one in a series exploring in depth the creation of the Chrysalis amphitheater in Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods in Columbia, Maryland. For the complete list of articles please see the introduction to the series.

The previous article in this series discussed the steel frame that underlies the skin of the Chrysalis and enables the Chrysalis to support theatrical, wind, and other loads. This article explains how the complex and dynamic topography of the Chrysalis shell was made real, and how the colored aluminum shingles forming the skin of the Chrysalis were fabricated and attached to that topography. It features the work of A. Zahner Company of Kansas City, Missouri.

A. Zahner Company

In typical construction practice a building is first designed and then contractors submit bids to do the actual construction—the so-called “design-bid-build” process. This process assumes that once a suitable design has been created any contractor will suffice to construct it, as long as they are suitably competent at their trade.

However, given its unusual design the Chrysalis is far from being an ordinary building; the typical contractor would be at sea trying to figure out how to build it. Thus for the Chrysalis shell (i.e., everything above the relatively conventional structural concrete subfloor) the Inner Arbor Trust instead followed the “design-build” paradigm, in which a single contractor bears responsibility for the detailed design of the structure and all phases of its construction. That single contractor was A. Zahner Company of Kansas City, Missouri, commonly known as “Zahner.”

How did Zahner come to be given this task? Its origin dates to the turn of the 20th century: Andrew Zahner, the son of a German immigrant, started a small business in Missouri that made metal cornices for buildings, tin ceilings, and metal ductwork for heating systems—one of hundreds of similar businesses across the United States. His son Leo Zahner and his grandson Leo Zahner, Jr., continued to operate it as a local Kansas City business under the names A. Zahner & Company and A. Zahner Sheet Metal Company.

After Leo Zahner, Jr., returned from serving in World War II he expanded Zahner’s work in so-called ”architectural metal” products, including metal roofs, decks, siding, and façades. The year 1958, when his son Bill was still a toddler, saw A. Zahner & Company put in the lowest bid to replace the roof of the Liberty Memorial museum in Kansas City (now the National World War I Museum and Memorial), for a total price of $2,293—only $1,998 if Zahner were allowed to keep the copper panels from the old roof.

Zahner’s evolution from a local and regional business began after Bill Zahner graduated from college and joined the company. Although he majored in civil engineering, Bill Zahner was and is as much an artist as an engineer, including working as an amateur sculptor. Just as in the 1930s Ove Arup became enthused about modern architecture and its use of reinforced concrete, in the 1980s Bill Zahner became excited about the possibilities of using architectural metals in contexts beyond the mundane—going so far as to later write two books on the topic.¹ He began promoting Zahner’s capabilities at national industry trade shows and reaching out to visionary architects like Frank Gehry (then relatively unknown).

Bill Zahner’s artistic bent was key to how Zahner evolved as a company and conceived of its mission. After he became the president of Zahner in the late 1980s, the soon-renamed A. Zahner Company began working on projects with ever higher profiles and ever more difficult challenges, like the American Heritage Center in Laramie, Wyoming (completed in 1993), with its distinctive dark copper roof, or the Museum of Science and Industry in Tampa, Florida (completed in 1995), with its doubly-curved stainless steel roof.

Bill Zahner’s friendship with Frank Gehry also bore fruit in a series of projects, including a 1988 exhibit for the 100th anniversary of the Sheet Metal Workers International Association, a collaboration for the Weissman Art Museum in Minneapolis (completed in 1993), and then, and most significantly, in the creation in Seattle of the Experience Music Project (completed in 2000), a museum funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

Engineering for uniqueness

The Experience Music Project Museum (now known as the Museum of Pop Culture) posed challenges well beyond those of previous Zahner or Gehry projects. The building featured a radically curved set of exterior metal surfaces in both stainless steel and aluminum, with almost all parts of the surfaces required to be unique in some way. (See the figure above.)

In solving the problem of how to marry such surfaces to the underlying building structure, Zahner invented the Zahner Engineered Profile Panel Systems, or ZEPPS®. The ZEPPS process was made possible by the same technological trends later leveraged by Marc Fornes and his colleagues, including in particular the development of advanced 3D modeling software and its ability to interface to machine tools via Computer Numeric Control (CNC).

Zahner used these technologies to simplify the task of fabricating and installing the complex metal surfaces by reducing them to a set of customized individual panels, each of which could be separately fabricated and installed onto the building structure. The ZEPPS process and related technologies formed the basis of Zahner’s growth in both revenue and reputation in the 21st century.² The fifth generation ZEPPS process was key to creating the Chrysalis.

Designing ZEPPS panels

Viewed in isolation an individual ZEPPS panel is a relatively prosaic object: a set of pieces of aluminum (referred to as “profiles,” and resembling trusses or purlins in traditional structures), with one side of each profile attaching to the underlying structure and the other side attaching to a sheet of metal forming part of the exterior surface.

The true sophistication of the ZEPPS process is apparent only when contemplating a collection of ZEPPS panels fabricated for a particular structure, and the underlying computer technology that makes their fabrication and installation possible: In a structure like the Experience Music Project Museum or the Chrysalis each and every part of the exterior metal surface may have a different degree of curvature, may be curved in two directions and not just one, may attach to the underlying structure at different angles, may impose a different set of loads, and may need customized instructions for how to install it.

Zahner designs ZEPPS panels using the CATIA software discussed in a previous article: given a 3D model of the underlying structure and a 3D model of the desired metal surface, Zahner determines how many ZEPPS panels are needed, what shapes they must take, and other characteristics. For example, the individual profiles within a panel must be spaced at a suitable distance in order to bear the weight of the metal skin. Based on the loads imposed on the ZEPPS panels, they may also be made out of slightly different material, for example, lower-strength aluminum vs. higher-strength aluminum.

In some cases the underlying structure itself may need to be modified somewhat in order to account for the need to fit panels together in a certain way, for example, for ease of installation. This was required for the Experience Music Project Museum, among others, and helps explain Zahner’s typical practice of working very closely with the architect and often taking the role of a design-build contractor. Finally, since ZEPPS panels are typically fabricated at Zahner’s shops, they must be designed so that they can be easily shipped to the work site. (Zahner does additional computer work to find the optimal way to load multiple ZEPPS panels onto each truck.)

Installing ZEPPS panels

In total the Chrysalis features 88 ZEPPS panels containing a total of over 300 profiles. Most of the panels were fabricated at Zahner and shipped to the Chrysalis site, but 16 were fabricated on site: those covering the seven triangles formed by the steel frame and those making up the segments of the nine legs of the Chrysalis from the level of the stage floor down to the ground.

Each ZEPPS panel was pre-positioned on the ground and tilted to the correct angle before being hoisted to its designated position on the steel frame. The orientation of the panels was further adjusted while they were suspended (using a system of chains and pulleys), so that when the workers guided them into place they would match up with the underlying steel frame as closely as possible.

Each of the ZEPPS panels was then attached (using self-tapping galvanized screws) to the primary and (in the case of the seven triangles) secondary steel of the steel frame. Special curved saddle brackets were used to mate the profiles of the panels with the curvature of the steel tubes; this allowed the panels to be attached at any angle with respect to the steel. (See the figure above.)

The panels installed in the Chrysalis also have clear anodized aluminum sheet metal attached to them. (See the figures above and the figure below.) Although this appears superficially similar to the external metal surfaces of other Zahner projects, it instead forms a substrate on which can be attached the true outer surface of the Chrysalis, factory-painted aluminum shingles in various shades of green, as well as an interior surface as discussed below.

Normally the ZEPPS panels themselves are invisible, residing between the underlying opaque building walls and the equally opaque exterior metal surface. In the Chrysalis, on the other hand, the steel tubes of the frame, the aluminum profiles of the ZEPPS panels, and the underside of the anodized aluminum sheet metal covering the panels are visible to anyone looking up, and contribute to the overall visual aesthetic of the structure. Among other things, this led the Inner Arbor Trust and Zahner to choose to use a matte finish on the sheet metal of the panels to provide a clean appearance and avoid glare from theatrical lights.³

The Chrysalis shingles

In the Experience Music Project Museum and other Zahner projects the metal skin is intended to appear as an unbroken surface to the viewer. The goal therefore is to minimize as much as possible the appearance of any seams between the metal sheets attached to the ZEPPS panels. The Chrysalis skin, on the other hand, is designed to have a highly scaled texture and variegated coloring. Hence it is formed of overlapping shingles, with the boundary between one shingle and the next quite apparent.

In order to securely attach the shingles they were riveted to the underlying aluminum sheets that were part of the ZEPPS panels. (See the figures above and below.) Zahner pre-drilled each shingle in the shop to hold four aluminum rivets, and placed the holes so that the rivets attaching each shingle to the underlying ZEPPS panel would be located only at the upper end of the shingle. The rivets of a given shingle would then be covered by the overlapping lower end of the shingle above it in the structure. The result is that although thousands of rivets (more than 45,000 in all) were used in attaching the shingles, none of them are visible to the eye of the viewer standing on the ground.⁴

While the shingles break up the surface of the Chrysalis into thousands of pieces (8,200 shingles in all), through their color they also unify the whole of the structure into a single organic form. As noted in a previous article, the shingles are painted in four different colors of green, with the various colored shingles placed on the structure to provide the appearance of a smooth color gradient from a darker green at the bottom to a lighter green at the top (a technique known as “dithering”).

Because the shingles will be exposed to the elements and (in the lower sections of the Chrysalis) to human beings, they are painted using Valspar Fluropon, a special architectural coating designed for exterior metal surfaces to provide resistance to UV rays, dirt and stains, and graffiti while retaining its original color and gloss over the years.

The shingles also had to be fabricated in 11 different shapes and sizes to account for the various positions on which they would be installed on the Chrysalis, which combined with the four possible colors made for up to 44 possible varieties of shingles. To assist the installers each shingle was imprinted with an alphanumeric code indicating what type of shingle it is, and thus at what points it could be installed on the structure. (See the figure below.)

The skin of the Chrysalis, including the ZEPPS panels and the shingles, thus forms a giant three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle, with all pieces needing to be precisely designed and fabricated so that they will come together easily without gaps or misalignments and be installable by a relatively small group of people. Unlike a jigsaw puzzle, the skin must also bear loads without failure or any significant deformation, adapt to changing temperatures throughout the four seasons, and retain its structural integrity and visual beauty over the years. Zahner is arguably one of the few contractors, if not the only contractor, that could have accomplished this task within the timeframe and budget allotted to it.

The next article in this series will discuss the structural concrete subfloor of the Chrysalis and related construction on the site.

For further exploration

This article is based on material from a variety of online sources, including the following:

• For more on A. Zahner Company, its work on the Chrysalis project, and related topics, see the following:

  • “William Zahner markets metal company on complex know-how,” by Don Lee, Kansas City Star, February 11, 1992 [paywalled]. An article from soon after Bill Zahner became president of A. Zahner Company.
  • “Zahner celebrates 100 years proving their mettle in metal,” by Randolph Heaster, Kansas City Star, November 25, 1997 [paywalled]. Discusses the past and present of A. Zahner Company on the occasion of its celebrating its centenary.
  • “Transcript from Interview with L. William Zahner & Crosby Kemper III”. A 2015 interview in which Bill Zahner discusses the history and working methods of A. Zahner Company.
  • “Kansas City, Powerhouse of American Architecture,” by Kriston Capps, The Atlantic, November 2015. A profile of A. Zahner Company. See also earlier profiles in Wired and Metropolis.
  • “Math of Architecture, Architecture of Math” [67-minute video]. An event on November 3, 2015, sponsored by the Inner Arbor Trust to promote the Chrysalis project. Includes a presentation by Bill Zahner starting at 46:44, discussing various Zahner projects, including most notably the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles.
  • “Full STEAM Ahead” [62-minute video]. An event on November 3, 2015, sponsored by the Inner Arbor Trust to promote STEM topics associated with the Chrysalis. Includes a brief presentation by Bill Zahner starting at 50:20 discussing the work of A. Zahner Company and the use of architectural metals.
  • “ZEPPS®”. An overview of Zahner’s ZEPPS technology, including a link to a 144-page document containing more details and a portfolio of projects.
  • “A. Zahner Company Customer Story”. A video and written case study describing how Zahner used Dassault Systèmes’s 3DEXPERIENCE platform (including CATIA) and its Design for Fabrication on Cloud service to fabricate the Chrysalis.
  • “Design-build”. A Wikipedia article providing an overview of the design-build concept.

• For more on the Chrysalis amphitheater and its origins in the Inner Arbor concept plan, see the following:

  • Michael McCall presentation of the Inner Arbor concept plan to Leadership Howard County [33-minute video] (September 20, 2013).
  • The Chrysalis portion of the Inner Arbor presubmission community presentation (December 2, 2013).
  • Michael McCall presentation to the Howard County Design Advisory Panel [20-minute video] (February 26, 2014).

For more of my opinions on and explanations of various aspects of the Chrysalis and Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, see the Inner Arbor-related posts in the series “The Inner Arbor plan takes shape” and elsewhere on this blog. (Note that some of these posts contain outdated information relating to park features that were later dropped or revised.)

tl;dr: I explore the steel frame underlying the skin of the Chrysalis, as designed by the structural engineering group of Arup.

This article is one in a series exploring in depth the creation of the Chrysalis amphitheater in Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods in Columbia, Maryland. For the complete list of articles please see the introduction to the series.

The previous article in this series discussed the demanding structural loads imposed on the Chrysalis by its function as a professional performance stage. In this article I explore the steel frame that underlies the skin of the Chrysalis and enables the Chrysalis to support those and other loads, as designed by Arup and fabricated and erected by the Walters Group and its subsidiary Metropolitan Walters.

Arup and structural engineering

The previous article in this series discussed the role of Arup’s theater consulting group. However, Arup began life as a consulting firm specializing in structural engineering, the task of which, according to founder Ove Arup, is “to design stable and economical structures of different kinds to meet the requirements for which these structures are needed”. In other words, the job of the structural engineer is to translate the vision of the architect into a structure that is fit for the purposes for which it is intended.

After beginning his career working on marine structures (e.g., piers, quays, and breakwaters), Ove Arup became interested in both modern architecture and the then-new technology of reinforced concrete that made new types of structures possible. He set out on his own in 1946, founding Arup and Associates as an independent consulting engineering firm. He and his colleagues soon found themselves working at the cutting edge of architectural practice, as exemplified by the firm’s work on the Sydney Opera House.

In the 1950s the government of the state of New South Wales in Australia set out to create a new center for the arts on a prominent site jutting out into Sydney Harbour. The selection committee for the design competition found itself entranced by an entry from Danish architect Jørn Utzon that featured a series of sail-like shells enclosing the two main performance spaces. (See the figure above.) Eager to get the project underway, the government authorized the start of construction, although no one had yet figured out how to build the shells Utzon had envisioned.

As the consulting engineers for the project, Arup the firm found itself at the center of the controversy over how to build what became known as the Sydney Opera House, including most notably how to analyze proposed designs to ensure their safety and stability. Working with Utzon, Arup engineers eventually found a workable solution: converting Utzon’s shells into a series of pre-cast concrete ribs of varying sizes, with the ribs arranged in sequence to form a shell-like roof.

To make the structural analysis tractable (especially given the limited computer technology available at the time), the ribs were designed so that both the sides of the arches formed by the ribs (looking at them head on) and the profile when they were connected (looking at them from the side, as in the figure above) were composed of circular arcs.¹

Although the Sydney Opera House was dogged by controversies, delays, and cost overruns, the structure was eventually completed and subsequently hailed as one of the world’s iconic structures—and, along with the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the symbol of Sydney to the world. It also bolstered the reputation of Arup as a “go to” firm for clients working with world-class architects to get visionary projects built.

That reputation in turn helped Arup in its competition to attract and retain the best engineering talent. As Ove Arup said in his “Key Speech” describing his vision for Arup and principles for its operation, in practice the work of Arup or any other engineering firm can devolve into a series of mundane and potentially boring tasks: “designing endless reinforced concrete floors, taking down tedious letters about the missing bolts, changing some details for the nth time, attending site meetings dealing with trivialities, . . .—what is exciting about that?”

Thus while the Inner Arbor Trust valued Arup for its proven excellence in working with cutting edge designers to manifest totally unique structures, the Chrysalis was for Arup an opportunity to engage its staff in an interesting and innovative project, even though the scale of the Chrysalis was much smaller than that of the projects that formed the bulk of Arup’s portfolio.

Analysing the structure

The responsibility for structural engineering for the Chrysalis fell primarily on those in Arup’s Washington DC office, including the young structural engineer Jordan Woodson and his senior mentors at Arup, Matt Larson and Brian Markham. Woodson had wanted to work at Arup ever since he was a freshman in college, and joined the firm soon after completing his graduate degree. In his time with Arup he had worked on projects ranging from the new Mexico City international airport (comprising 8 million square feet, over a thousand times the size of the Chrysalis stage) to the proposed 11th Street Bridge Park project in DC.

The task assigned to Woodson and his colleagues was to determine how the Chrysalis could be built in a manner that would maintain the artistic integrity of Marc Fornes’s design, handle the various loads placed upon it (including the skin itself, the natural forces of wind and snowfalls, and theatrical point loads), and fit within the budgetary and other constraints of the project.

This included looking at possible failure scenarios under load—as Woodson remarked, “To understand how something stands up you have to understand how it might fall down”. The high asymmetrical arch at the rear of the stage, one of the most visually striking features of the Chrysalis, required particular attention in order to ensure the overall stability of the structure.

Arup considered multiple ideas for instantiating the Chrysalis shell, including riveted aluminum or steel shingles (as in the “Pleated Inflation” structure discussed in a previous article), shingles supplemented by various types of structural reinforcements, and “sandwich panels” of metal sheets placed back to back.

In the end the configuration chosen as best meeting structural, budgetary, and other constraints was a “rib cage” or “skeleton” of steel tubes (“hollow structural section” or HSS pipe) to provide a frame underneath the shell skin, bearing the weight of the skin above and of theatrical loads hanging below. The form of the frame somewhat resembles that of the geometric mesh in the “mesh inflation” process used to create the form of the Chrysalis, with large “primary steel” tubes resembling the “lengthwise” curves of the mesh and smaller “secondary steel” tubes resembling the “crosswise” lines of the mesh.² (See the first figure above.)

In designing the steel frame Arup performed analyses to determine the effects of various types of load, dividing the primary and secondary steel of the frame into 2-inch straight sections to simplify the computations. Under Arup’s direction BMT Fluid Mechanics of London performed extensive wind tunnel testing on a model of the structure, looking at wind forces of up to 60,000 pounds from each of the eight compass directions (north, northeast, east, and so on).

Arup then combined the pressure profiles produced from the wind tunnel testing with 33 different types of theatrical loading of up to 42,000 pounds, arising from the various configurations of the alpha and beta stages discussed in the previous article. In total the final analysis covered 350 different load scenarios.

The results of the load simulations then determined the size of the structural elements in the frame: places in the structure where the loads were greatest called for larger diameter tubes, with smaller diameter tubes used in areas with lesser loads. The final frame includes 1,700 feet of tubes for the frame, with the primary steel being 10 inches in diameter and the smaller crosswise secondary steel 8 inches in diameter.

The primary steel tubes at the bottom of the frame (comprising the “touch down” points of the shell’s arches) are attached to concrete piers, which in turn are attached to a structural concrete subfloor. The subfloor acts as a “diaphragm” to provide further rigidity to the overall structure and resist the thrust of the arches. (See the first figure above and the last figure below.) The subfloor supports the stage floor itself (comprised of hardwood panels), while underneath is located a space for storage and electrical equipment.

Fabricating and erecting the frame

With Arup having designed the steel frame underlying the Chrysalis shell, the next step was to build it. The Inner Arbor Trust had tasked A. Zahner Company of Kansas City, Missouri, with overall responsiblity for the construction of the portion of the Chrysalis structure above the concrete subfloor. (The next article in this series will discuss Zahner’s role in more detail.)

Zahner then turned to the Walters Group of Hamilton, Ontario, a group of companies primarily focused on creating complex structural steel for commercial and industrial construction projects throughout North America, and its subsidiary, New York City-based Metropolitan Walters, specialists in erecting complex steel structures. (Metropolitan Walters and Arup had worked together previously on other projects, including Alice Tully Hall at the Juillard School of Music in New York City.)

As discussed above, as designed by Arup the Chrysalis frame included both long curved elements (the primary steel forming the arches of the Chrysalis and following the line of the pleats in the skin) and shorter straight elements (secondary steel) binding together the curved elements. The primary steel tubes were too long to be fabricated as single pieces, especially given their degree of curvature. Instead they were fabricated as combinations of less-curved shorter tubes, with the tubes then joined on-site to form the final curves of the frame.

Steel structural elements can be either welded together or bolted together. In order to simplify erection of structures and lower costs, the preferred procedure is to minimize the amount of welding to be done on-site. Metropolitan Walters followed this practice for the Chrysalis: the curved elements were fabricated with circular flanges welded in the shop to the 10-inch primary steel tubes and pre-drilled with holes for bolts. Matching elements were then bolted together after they arrived at the construction site.

A similar practice was followed for the secondary steel forming the straight cross pieces: in the shop short sections of 8-inch tubes with circular flanges were welded to the 10-inch primary steel tubes, matching circular flanges were welded to the ends of the straight 8-inch secondary steel tubes used for the cross pieces joining the larger elements, and holes drilled in the flanges. Bolts were again used to connect together the secondary steel and primary steel elements at the construction site.

Those familiar with traditional arches will recall that the two sides of an arch have to be supported during construction. Only after adding the top element of the arch (the “keystone” for stone arches) is the arch stable and able to stand on its own. From this viewpoint the Chrysalis steel frame is “all arches”: the entire structure was unstable while being erected until the point where it was (almost) complete. To address this, Metropolitan Walters used 16 temporary towers and supplemental guy wires to hold up partially-erected sections of the frame during construction.

Often when steel structural elements are joined they are designed so that the two elements are able to rotate somewhat relative to each other. In contrast, the bolted connections between the individual tubes of the Chrysalis frame are “moment connections”³ designed to remain rigid and act as a continuous element under load. Since the lowest elements in the frame are connected to the concrete piers and the structural concrete subfloor for the stage, the combined structure (frame plus piers plus subfloor) forms a single rigid structure able to resist loads with a minimum of deflection.

Theatrical steel and strong points

The primary and secondary steel tubes form an overall skeleton providing structural integrity for the Chrysalis. However they do not directly support the actual Chrysalis skin, nor (with some exceptions) do they directly bear theatrical loads.

As discussed in the previous article, theatrical loads for Chrysalis productions are to be hung from a set of “strong points” on the structure, each rated to bear a certain amount of load (2,200 pounds of vertically suspended weight for strong points serving the alpha stage). The strong points are designed to form a rectangular grid, but the arrangement of primary and secondary steel tubes is in no way grid-like.

The desired geometry is provided by the separate “theatrical steel,” a set of (relatively) thin steel tubes each of which runs from the front of the frame to the rear of the frame. The theatrical steel is bolted to the primary steel, using flanges welded in the shop for this purpose. The strong points themselves are in the form of small steel loops welded to the theatrical steel at regular intervals. (See the figure below.)

As hinted above, there are also a few strong points attached directly to the primary steel, mainly to support speakers to be hung at the sides of the main arch for the alpha stage. (See the strong point diagram linked to in the “For further exploration” section below.)

The combination of primary steel, secondary steel, and theatrical steel making up the frame is capable of supporting up to 58,000 pounds of equipment, assuming use of the alpha stage strong point grid, the attach points for speakers for the alpha stage, and the beta stage strong point grid.

In the steel frame of the Chrysalis Arup has provided an efficient and effective solution to the problem of handling structural loads while retaining the overall aesthetic virtues of the Chrysalis’s design. The frame also adds visual interest to the underside of the shell, complementing the dynamic green color of smooth aluminum shingles on the outer skin with the silver-gray industrial aesthetic of galvanized steel tubes and flanged, bolted splices.

The next article will discuss the outer skin of the Chrysalis and how it is attached to and supported by its steel frame.

For further exploration

This article is based on material from a variety of online sources, including the following:

• For more on Arup, its work in structural engineering in general, and on the Chrysalis project in particular, see the following:

  • Arup’s structural engineering practice
  • Ove Arup’s “Key Speech” outlining Arup’s philosophy, mission, and organizational practices
  • Ove Arup’s 90th birthday issue of The Arup Journal. Contains several articles and speeches by Ove Arup, including “What is a Structural Engineer.”
  • “Sydney revisited,” by Jack Zunz, in The Arup Journal, 1988, Issue 1. A 1987 lecture by Arup’s lead on the Sydney Opera House.
  • “Engineering is Not a Science,” by Patrick Sisson. A 2016 Curbed article that includes a good summary of Ove Arup’s life and work.
  • “How Arup Became The Go-To Firm for Architecture’s Most Ambitious Projects,” by Ian Volner. A 2013 ArchDaily article that discusses Arup’s more recent projects.
  • “Full STEAM Ahead” [62-minute video]. An event on November 3, 2015, sponsored by the Inner Arbor Trust to promote STEM topics associated with the Chrysalis. Includes a presentation by Jordan Woodson of Arup starting at 29:40 discussing structural analysis of the Chrysalis.
  • “Chrysalis Theatre Loading Plan”. A diagram showing the location of strong points and instructions for their use.

• For more on the Walters Group, Metropolitan Walters, their role in fabricating and erecting the steel frame of the Chrysalis, and structural steel in general, see the following:

  • “Walters Group”. Corporate “about” page.
  • “Metropolitan Walters selected as partner in Columbia Maryland’s Chrysalis project”. Press release.
  • “Tubular Transformation”. A 2016 article in Modern Steel Construction describing the steel frame of the Chrysalis.
  • “Erecting the Chrysalis steel” [8-minute video]. Offers a glimpse at the process of erecting the Chrysalis steel frame.
  • “Structural Steel Connections,” by the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC). A presentation discussing the various ways to connect structural steel members. Slides 16 and 17 address moment connections.

• For more on the Chrysalis amphitheater and its origins in the Inner Arbor concept plan, see the following:

  • Michael McCall presentation of the Inner Arbor concept plan to Leadership Howard County [33-minute video] (September 20, 2013).
  • The Chrysalis portion of the Inner Arbor pre-submission community presentation (December 2, 2013).
  • Michael McCall presentation to the Howard County Design Advisory Panel [20-minute video] (February 26, 2014).

For more of my opinions on and explanations of various aspects of the Chrysalis and Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, see the Inner Arbor-related posts in the series “The Inner Arbor plan takes shape” and elsewhere on this blog. (Note that some of these posts contain outdated information relating to park features that were later dropped or revised.)

tl;dr: I discuss how the Chrysalis will function as a professional stage, as designed by the theater consulting group of Arup.

This article is one in a series exploring in depth the creation of the Chrysalis amphitheater in Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods in Columbia, Maryland. For the complete list of articles please see the introduction to the series.

The previous article in this series focused on the overall architectural form of the Chrysalis amphitheater, designed to function as a stage, pavilion, and sculpture for Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods. In this article I discuss in more detail those aspects of the Chrysalis relating to its function as a professional performance stage.

Arup and theaters

Arup Group Limited, usually known simply as “Arup,” is a large consulting firm with more than 13,000 employees and offices in almost 100 locations around the world, including New York and Washington DC. Originally founded in 1946 by the British engineer Ove Arup, Arup the firm is known in particular for its collaboration with leading architects to create innovative and iconic structures, including (among others) the Sydney Opera House, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Øresund Bridge between Denmark and Sweden, the Lloyd’s of London headquarters and 30 St Mary Axe (“The Gherkin”) in London, the National Stadium (“Bird’s Nest”) and National Aquatics Center (“Water Cube”) built for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, and the China Central Television (CCTV) headquarters, also in Beijing.

For the most part eschewing the role of project architect, Arup instead concentrates on all the other design and engineering consulting work needed to translate architects’ visions into reality. In particular this includes practices in theater consulting, acoustic consulting, structural engineering, and lighting design, with Arup having worked on several dozen projects worldwide involving concert halls, indoor and outdoor theaters, and similar structures.

Given Arup’s broad range of expertise and their reputation for working with leading architects, Arup was a natural choice for the Inner Arbor Trust to include on the design team for Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods and for the Chrysalis in particular. Raj Patel of Arup’s New York office–Arup principal,¹ global lead for theater and acoustic consulting, and arts, culture, and entertainment business leader for the Americas—was introduced by the Trust at the “Designers of Delight” presentation in November 2013. Patel discussed several Arup theater projects, from the Snape Maltings Concert Hall (see the figure above) to the recent Jerome Robbins Theater in the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York City.

Alpha and beta

The purposes that the Chrysalis is to fulfill influenced its overall design. As noted previously, Michael McCall of the Inner Arbor Trust described the Chrysalis as a combined stage, pavilion, and sculpture. Setting aside the functions of pavilion and sculpture, the simple word “stage” contains a host of questions regarding what types of performances the Chrysalis might host, how the sights and sounds of those performances are to be conveyed to the audiences, how many and what kinds of people are part of the audiences, how those people experience the performances, and so on.

For an example of how the answers to these questions influence the form of a performance space, look no further than Merriweather Post Pavilion, neighbor to the Chrysalis. When it was originally constructed Merriweather Post Pavilion was conceived of as a summer home for the National Symphony and a venue for other “high culture” performances, including dance. Thus the audience area was relatively small and featured conventional seats, and the venue and stage were designed for acoustical performances. However, after the National Symphony went bankrupt Merriweather Post Pavilion eventually evolved into a venue for popular acts featuring amplified music, with the seating area expanded and additional audience seating space used on the lawn above the pavilion.

Some of the decisions about the Chrysalis were made early on, as part of the development of the Inner Arbor concept plan and prior to the design of the Chrysalis itself. In particular, the concept plan included provision for both indoor theaters and an outdoor stage, the so-called Treehouse amphitheater, in a proposed “performance park” area of Symphony Woods. The role of the indoor theaters was eventually taken over by the cultural arts center now being proposed for a site across the street from Merriweather Park to house Toby’s Dinner Theatre and other functions, leaving the outdoor amphitheater to be addressed by the revised Inner Arbor plan.

Since the amphitheater was to be located in a more forest-like section of Symphony Woods, and since an explicit goal of the Inner Arbor plan is to preserve as many trees as possible, the Inner Arbor Trust opted not to install fixed seats or benches in Symphony Woods itself. Instead audiences will sit on the lawn or (for larger events) stand.

Also, since the amphitheater was only a few hundred feet from South Entrance Road and the proposed route of a future larger street, the ambient noise level dictated the use of amplification for performances. This in turn opened up more possibilities for the amphitheater structure itself, which did not need to take the traditional form of an acoustic shell. The result was the unconventional form of the Chrysalis as we know it today.

The combination of lawn seating and sound amplification matched up well with the planned uses of the Chrysalis as a secondary stage for Merriweather Post Pavilion (for example during music festivals) or as a primary stage for events like Wine in the Woods. The hill facing the Chrysalis, which serendipitously has a gently sloping natural 5% grade, can easily accommodate audiences of up to 2,000 people if seated (see the figure above) and many more than that if standing.

At the same time there are other possible events that generally play to smaller audiences—local groups and solo performers, small plays, and the like—and will not need that much stage space. Rather than force these performances to use a large stage, the Chrysalis was designed to have a second or “beta” stage facing a different part of the hill, one that can accommodate audiences from 100 to 1,000 people if seated, and more if standing. Unlike the main or “alpha” stage, the beta stage also has terraced steps forming a thrust stage to provide a more informal and intimate relationship between the performers and the audience.

Configuring the stages

However, even the addition of the beta stage did not address the full range of demands that are likely to be placed on the Chrysalis. Some performances and other events will be so small scale that they may need to accommodate an audience of only a few dozen to a couple of hundred people. For many such events, such as book readings or lectures, it may also be preferable to provide formal seating arrangements for the audience, as opposed to having them sit or stand on the lawn.

To address these requirements the Chrysalis is designed so that the stage can also be used as a seating area for the audience in addition to a performance space, with the whole event then taking place under the canopy of the Chrysalis. This also provides the audience at least partial protection from any inclement weather.

The resulting Chrysalis stage as designed and constructed is quite large: about 4,500 square feet for the main stage floor, with a “performance zone” for the alpha stage about 50 feet wide and 40 feet deep—roughly comparable to the stage at Carnegie Hall and to the old Merriweather Post Pavilion stage prior to the construction of the new stagehouse. There are also additional areas “in the wings” at stage left and stage right of the alpha stage, as well as an area of over 500 square feet for the terraced levels of the beta stage that project outside the Chrysalis proper.

The resulting venue can accommodate a wide variety of events and associated stage configurations:

• Popular music acts on the alpha stage, including rock or hip hop performance (see the figure above) or DJs playing electronic dance music (EDM), with the audience seated or standing on the lawn.
• Theater, dance, orchestral, and chorus performances on the alpha stage, with the stage being large enough to support a symphony orchestra with close to 100 performers and a backing chorus of comparable size.
• Smaller performances with the audience seated on the alpha stage itself, with 100-150 people seated in one or two banks of seats and the performers either at center stage or at stage right (near the beta stage).
• Larger events with 300-400 or more people seated on the stage, for example for a lecture or book reading (see the figure above).
• Performances on the beta stage with audiences seated or standing on the lawn.

In practice each event will be slightly different, with the size and shape of the Chrysalis stage providing the flexibility for creative presenters and event organizers to select the configuration that best helps them achieve their particular artistic and business goals.

Expected technology, unexpected form

Of the possible configurations and their requirements, the most demanding are those needed to accommodate popular music acts like those that form the majority of the performances at Merriweather Post Pavilion and its associated music festivals.

One aspect of the public image of major rock stars is that they make whimsical and often nonsensical demands of the venues in which they perform. Of these the most famous is the “no brown M&Ms” rule associated with the rock band Van Halen: that they be served a bowl of M&M candies in their backstage dressing rooms, with all brown M&Ms removed.

On the surface this portrays the members of Van Halen as divas of the highest order, but in reality the purpose of this contract clause was much more prosaic: Van Halen’s stage show used a lot more equipment than many of the venues they played at were used to, and they wanted to ensure that the venue staff were fully aware of Van Halen’s technical needs and prepared to meet them. The “no brown M&Ms” provision thus served as a test of whether the venue staff had actually read Van Halen’s contract in full, including the associated “hospitality rider” and “technical rider.” As Van Halen’s leader singer David Lee Roth put it, “If I saw a brown M&M in that bowl … [we’d] line-check the entire production.”

Thus when designing the stage the Chrysalis team looked at technical riders for acts that might play at Merriweather Post Pavilion and had particularly stringent requirements. One result was the choice of stage size mentioned earlier. Another was the height of the Chrysalis, designed to provide a 60 feet wide and 36 feet tall proscenium opening at the front of the alpha stage, and a performance “box” 30 feet in height (and 50 feet wide by 40 feet deep) even before allowing for rigging above the stage.

Yet another was the electrical facilities for the two stages. (The term “electrical outlets” doesn’t do justice to the size and complexity of the setup.) The Chrysalis features four “company switches” at stage level each capable of providing 400 amps, or 1,600 amps in total, with two other switches each providing 200 amps on isolated circuits for audio equipment, and yet another switch to drive motorized chains for the stage rigging. The total capacity of over 2,000 amps is roughly equivalent to that provided for the new stage at Merriweather Post Pavilion, designed to serve the needs of the most power-hungry acts. (In comparison, a typical medium-size home has 100 amps of electrical service.)

The Chrysalis and its stage are designed to address many other issues, including providing a sturdy stage floor that can also be easily repaired as needed, drainage for the stage, fire suppression, ADA access to the stage for people using wheelchairs or otherwise having limited mobility, sturdy but attractive railings to prevent falls, a loading dock and lift to bring equipment from the dock to stage level, storage under the stage for unused equipment, and so on.

The most important requirement, and a major influence on the final form of the Chrysalis, is to support elaborate rigs for lighting, speakers, suspended scenery, and related elements. The Chrysalis structure supports several dozen “strong points” and multiple “line sets” for hanging production elements.² Each strong point on the alpha stage is rated to support up to 2,200 pounds of vertically suspended weight, almost as much as a typical subcompact car. (Beta stage strong points are rated to support 1,000 pounds.) The entire set of strong points and line sets, including strong points at the front of the alpha stage for speakers, can support up to 46,000 pounds, equivalent to ten SUVs.

The end result is a professional theater and stage that provides “expected technology in an unexpected form,” as Ed Arenius, Associate Principal of Arup, put it: all the features needed for modern musical acts and other performances in a flexible and beautiful structure that is a far cry from the typical outdoor amphitheater.

For further exploration

This article is based on material from a variety of online sources, including the following:

• For more on Arup and its work in theater design and consulting, see the following:

  • “About Us” page from the Arup web site.
  • Ove Arup’s “Key Speech” outlining Arup’s philosophy, mission, and organization practices.
  • Arup’s theater consulting and acoustic consulting practices.
  • “Unabashed Designers of Delight” [121-minute video] (November 18, 2013). A presentation introducing the design team for the Inner Arbor plan. It includes a presentation by Raj Patel beginning at 1:39:30 that discusses a number of Arup theatrical projects.

• For more on technical requirements for acts playing concert venues, and theatrical requirements in general, see the following:

  • “Brown Out.” Snopes.com investigates Van Halen’s “no brown M&Ms” demand.
  • “Merriweather Post Pavilion Production Information.” Includes detailed technical specifications of the stage and other features for acts playing at Merriweather Post Pavilion.
  • “How to Make the Perfect Tech Rider for Your Band.” A good example of what goes into a typical technical rider, although it doesn’t make much mention of lighting requirements.
  • “Fly system.” A Wikipedia article that provides a good overview of the components and complexity of the equipment needed for a modern stage production.
  • “Stagecraft Industries Site Glossary.” A glossary of technical terms used in the context of theaters and theatrical productions.

• For more on the Chrysalis amphitheater and its origins in the Inner Arbor concept plan, see the following:

  • Michael McCall’s presentation of the Inner Arbor concept plan to Leadership Howard County [33-minute video] (September 20, 2013).
  • The Chrysalis portion of the Inner Arbor pre-submission community presentation (December 2, 2013).
  • Michael McCall’s presentation to the Howard County Design Advisory Panel [20-minute video] (February 26, 2014).

For more of my opinions on and explanations of various aspects of the Chrysalis and Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, see the Inner Arbor-related posts in the series “The Inner Arbor plan takes shape” and elsewhere on this blog. (Note that some of these posts contain outdated information relating to park features that were later dropped or revised.)

tl;dr: I explore the design of the Chrysalis amphitheater, the work of its designer Marc Fornes of THEVERYMANY, and the concepts underlying the design.

This article is one in a series exploring in depth the creation of the Chrysalis amphitheater in Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods in Columbia, Maryland. For the complete list of articles please see the introduction to the series.

The previous articles in this series focused on the history of Symphony Woods, the site of the Chrysalis amphitheater, and the overall design of Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods. With this article I finally turn to the Chrysalis amphitheater itself, the structure after which this series is named. In particular I discuss the concepts and techniques underlying the innovative way in which the form of the Chrysalis was designed, and explore the work of its designer, Marc Fornes of THEVERYMANY, in the years leading up to the creation of the Chrysalis. (Later articles will cover other aspects of the Chrysalis design and other members of the design team, including the work of Arup Group Limited and A. Zahner Company.)

This post is more technical than others in this series, because it’s difficult to get a sense for the significance of what Marc Fornes and his associates have achieved without delving a bit into the mathematics and programming techniques that make those achievements possible. I encourage you to check out the videos and interactive demos to which I link, and to lightly skim over sections if the going gets rough.

Nonlinear beginnings

Marc Fornes is an architect using advanced computer techniques to create structures based on complex nonlinear forms. In a way his work, and that of others like him, represents a coming-together of two ancient ways of building.

The first, dating back to our hunter-gatherer ancestors and continued with nomadic and small-scale agricultural societies, is the long tradition of “folk architecture” built along natural and organic lines, including most notably tents and tent-like structures in their various forms: wigwams, wikiups, tipis, yurts, and so on. These structures were (and are) typically small scale (built as family residences), based on natural forms and materials (wood bent to shape, cloth under tension), constructed by small teams working quickly, and often explicitly intended as temporary (since a group might spend only a relatively short time in one place).

As such these structures were not “architected” in the sense of being based on detailed specifications created by an architect for use by those who build the structures—there was no real need to do so, since the “architect” and “builder” were one and the same (and often were the user of the structure as well). In any case the nonlinear form of the structures made it difficult to describe them using conventional architectural plans as we think of them today. Instead such structures were constructed using methods worked out by trial and error over many years and taught by one generation of builders to the next.

We can think of these methods, each producing a specific type of structure, as being algorithms—not algorithms that were written down but algorithms that were transmitted verbally and then executed by the builders to create each structure. The algorithms were not arbitrary, but were constrained by the type of material used and the general type of structure to be produced. The final form of the structure was then determined by the algorithm, the materials, and the interplay of forces of compression and tension acting on those materials as they happened to be arranged.

Leveraging the natural forms and properties of the underlying materials also produced structures that were optimized in terms of their use of materials, neither using too much material (and thus wasteful of effort) or too little material (and thus failing to fulfill their intended functions as shelter, etc.). The structures’ materials naturally assumed an organic form determined by the forces acting on them, and if additional forces (e.g., due to wind and weather) caused a structure to fail in certain places then builders learned how and where to use additional materials to reinforce the structure.

Building blocks and linear thinking

Although hunter-gatherers, nomads, and small-scale farmers can be thought of as being informal architects, the way of building we most think of as “architectural” in character dates back several thousand years to the beginnings of large-scale hierarchical societies, when bricks and cut stone blocks began to be used in the construction of structures both small and large.

In particular bricks and blocks were ideal for constructing large-scale structures, since builders could leverage techniques of mass production: have a large work force create bricks or cut blocks in parallel, and then have a second work force assemble the bricks or blocks into finished structures.

However this meant that “master builders” needed some method by which workers could be instructed to lay the bricks or blocks in accordance with the builders’ mind’s-eye vision for the structure. This was especially important for large structures that might take multiple decades to build, long enough that the original master builders might be gone from the scene by the time the structures were completed.

In response to this need builders created the concepts students learn today in geometry class—straight lines, right angles, rectangles and triangles, and so on—to represent various architectural forms, along with simple but powerful tools to help workers embody those forms in physical structures—for example, plumb bobs to create vertical lines, or wooden triangles with sides in the proportion of 3 to 4 to 5 to create right angles.

These basic techniques to create various linear forms, along with additional techniques to allow construction of circular segments for arches and domes, served builders well for many centuries and became deeply embedded in the architectural and contruction practices of agricultural and (later) industrial societies. (The tale of the three little pigs and their respective houses captures this dynamic, promoting the superiority of linear forms constructed using solid materials over folk architecture using straw or sticks.)

Ducks, splines, and lofts

The use of arbitrary nonlinear forms in architecture was thus, for the most part, abandoned as societies became more complex and constructed larger and more elaborate structures. One major exception was in shipbuilding. Kingdoms, empires, and nation states creating large navies needed to construct large numbers of relatively identical ships, each of which required a relatively large construction force.

However the hulls of ships must be composed of streamlined curved forms that cannot be described in terms of linear or even circular segments, so naval architects needed to find other ways to define hull shapes in ways that could be reliably translated by ship builders to create the actual vessels.

One time-honored way in which this is done is to use flexible wooden strips (“splines”) in combination with multiple lead weights (“ducks”). The ducks are attached to a spline and force it to flex into a particular shape; the ducks are then moved around until an appropriate smooth curve is produced. The resulting curves are then followed in producing plans for the ship’s hull. Since the plans are full size (i.e., using a 1-1 scale) they need to be constructed in a large open space or loft, hence the name “lofting” for the overall process.

Mathematics to the rescue

Manual lofting continued to be used for ships well into the 20th century, and was later adapted for use in designing and constructing other streamlined forms, including airplanes and automobiles. However the process was very labor intensive and difficult to get right, so as electronic computers came into more widespread use after World War II automakers and aircraft manufacturers sought to enlist them in the design process, especially in conjunction with computer-driven machine tools that could take numeric instructions and create finished parts or molds.

At the same time traditional architecture was beginning to liberate itself from the constraints of linear forms, as the use of steel, reinforced concrete, and other new materials made it possible, at least in theory, to produce new types of structures that went beyond rectilinear and circular forms. But, as in designing ships, airplanes, and automobiles, it was easier to imagine new nonlinear forms than to describe them in detail sufficient to guide their construction—not to mention the problem of analyzing such structures to determine whether they would be structurally sound.

Using computers to create forms with complex curves and surfaces required finding compact mathematical ways to represent complex curves, programming computers to accurately and efficiently draw such curves, and (last but not least) making these techniques usable by people who didn’t have specialist mathematical or programming knowledge.

This was the challenge faced by Paul de Faget de Casteljau in 1959 when, fresh from earning a PhD in mathematics, he joined the French automaker Citroën. The recently-introduced Citroën DS model was acclaimed for the elegance of its curved unibody design, a form that was produced in a traditional way using clay and wood models. The models’ dimensions were then transferred to paper blueprints used in producing the body panels and related parts. All of these steps required painstaking manual work.

De Casteljau’s assigned task was to find a simpler way to represent the curves of an automobile’s body and parts, one that would be easier to use with the computer-controlled machine tools then coming into use at Citroën and elsewhere—a task made particularly urgent because while de Casteljau was working on the problem the wood modelers at Citroën went out on strike.

From points to curves

De Casteljau found a way to represent curves using a fixed set of mathematical expressions (known as Bernstein polynomials¹) in combination with a set of variable control points (see the figure above), each having horizontal (x) and vertical (y) values jointly specifying its position.

For example, if four control points are to be used then we start with the standard set of four Bernstein polynomials. The four control points can then be placed anywhere on the flat surface on which the curve is to be drawn (i.e., they can have arbitrary x and y values); each control point is associated in turn with one of the four Bernstein polynomials being used.

The problem of drawing a curve is then reduced to the following procedure, which can be thought of as occurring over an interval of time running from zero to one (e.g., from zero to one minute):

1. Start at the initial value of time (t = 0), evaluate the given mathematical expressions (the Bernstein polynomials) for that time value, and use the resulting values in conjunction with the control points’ x and y values to derive the position for the first point on the curve.²

2. Advance the time by a small increment, recompute the Bernstein polynomials for that new time value t, and again use the resulting values in conjunction with the control points to derive the position for the next point on the curve.

3. Repeat step 2 until you arrive at the final value of time (t = 1), at which point the final point on the curve is derived and the curve is complete.

The number of control points used determines the type of mathematical expressions used and the type of curves that can be drawn: using two points produces a line segment, using three points produces a segment of a parabola (the type of curve produced by a ball thrown into the air), using four points produces a cubic curve (so-called because the underlying parameter is multiplied by itself and then multiplied by itself again, as is done in computing the volume of a cube), and so on.

Because of the way the Bernstein polynomials are defined and associated with the control points, the curve produced is guaranteed to start at the first control point, to end at the last control point, and to pass (relatively) close to each intermediate control point. Changing the shape of the curve, or its starting and ending points, can be done by moving the positions of the control points (analogous to moving the ducks attached to a traditional spline). More complicated curves can be created by using more control points (analogous to adding more ducks) and correspondingly more complicated mathematical expressions (Bernstein polynomials of higher degree).

Note that this is not the only way to draw such curves. In particular, de Casteljau invented an elegant way to find points on a given curve using a geometric process involving lines between the control points. (See the figure above for a more in-depth explanation.) What is now known as the de Casteljau algorithm is mathematically equivalent to computing curve points using the Bernstein polynomials.

De Casteljau’s work saw immediate application at Citroën in the early 1960s, and was considered so important that Citroën treated its mathematical foundations as a trade secret for many years. However in the meantime engineers at rival French automaker Renault heard rumors about what was happening at Citroën and set out to implement a similar system.

Renault engineer Pierre Bézier independently discovered a representation for complex curves later shown to be mathematically equivalent to that of de Casteljau. Bézier’s associate Daniel Vernet independently invented de Casteljau’s geometric algorithm. Bézier, Vernet, and others at Renault then used these techniques to develop UNISURF, one of the first widely-used computer programs for what came to be known as computer aided design or CAD.

Unlike Citroën, Renault took a more relaxed attitude towards publicizing the technical achievements of its employees, and allowed Bézier and Vernet to publish various papers about their work in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Bézier also promoted Renault’s accomplishments in personal visits to other CAD researchers in academia and industry. As a result curves created using Bernstein polynomials are now universally known as Bézier curves.³

Beyond Bézier

The invention of Bézier curves and their application in engineering marked the beginning of the discipline of CAD (also known as computer aided geometric design or CAGD), and the 1960s and 1970s saw a steady flow of improvements and refinements of the work done at Citroën, Renault, and elsewhere.

Designing real-world artifacts required ways to generate surfaces (not just curves), as well as ways to generate more complicated curves than could be represented using simple Beziér curves. Let us first focus on the issue of generating more complex curves, and look at two ways to create such curves using Bézier curves.

The first approach is simply to use more control points (corresponding to higher-degree Bernstein polynomials). The problem with this approach is that in a Bézier curve each of the control points has at least some influence over essentially all of the curve. This makes it difficult to tweak a Bézier curve to match a pre-defined idea of what the curve should look like: if you move one of the control points in an effort to make a change in one portion of the curve, that movement will end up affecting other portions of the curve that you don’t want to change.

A second way to create a more complex curve is to build it out of multiple Bézier curves joined end to end. The problem with this approach is that it is difficult to get the resulting composite curve to smoothly transition from one of the underlying Bézier curves to the next, as is required in applications like auto body design.⁴

Greater smoothness can be obtained by constraining the control points of one of the underlying Bézier curves relative to the control points of the previous or next curve, but for reasons mentioned above this can lead to difficulties when trying to tweak the shape of the overall curve in certain places.

The solution to this problem was to replace Bernstein polynomials with more general functions known as basis splines. In mathematics “splines” are functions pieced together out of multiple polynomial expressions, with each expression being non-zero only on a particular interval. They are named by analogy to traditional wooden splines, since the expressions and their associated intervals are chosen such that the curve produced by the function flows smoothly from one interval to the next.

“Basis splines” or B-splines form a special set of spline functions that can be combined to represent any spline function created using polynomial expressions of the same level of complexity, or order.⁵

A fixed set of B-spline functions is then combined with a set of variable control points to draw a curve, similar to what was described above for Bernstein polynomials and Bézier curves. The underlying parameter used in the B-spline functions goes from some minimum value to some maximum value. Unlike Bézier curves the minimum value may be different than zero, and the maximum value different than one.

A set of numbers known as knots then defines a set of intervals for the parameter between its minimum and maximum values. If the knots are chosen appropriately then a particular B-spline function will have non-zero values only on a few adjacent intervals, and will be zero on all other intervals.

When the B-spline function associated with a given control point has non-zero values only on certain intervals of the underlying parameter, moving that control point affects only the parts of the curve drawn over those intervals. This addresses the first deficiency of Bézier curves discussed above.

The second concern (smoothness of the curve between the intervals) is addressed by the mathematical definition of the B-spline functions: their shape is such that their influence (and thus the influence of their associated control points) tails off smoothly at the beginning and/or end of the intervals for which they are non-zero.

By varying the knot values the curve can be constrained and shaped in various ways. For example, setting multiple knot values to be the same at the beginning of the knot series can be used to constrain the curve to start at the first control point, while setting multiple knot values to be the same at the end of the knot series can be used to constrain the curve to end at the last control point. The curve also varies depending on whether the knot values are evenly spaced (uniform) or otherwise (non-uniform). For example, setting multiple knot values equal to each other in the middle of the knot series can be used to produce kinks in the resulting curve.

Finally, the control points themselves can be given differing weights when combined with their B-spline functions. A control point with a higher weight will have a greater influence on the curve, so that the curve will pass closer to the control point in question. Another control point may have a lower weight and thus only a fraction of the influence of other control points, so that the curve passes relatively further away from the point. Another word for fraction is ratio, and thus B-splines with differing control point weights are known as rational B-splines.

In the most general case the knot values are non-uniform, and the control points have different weights. The resulting curve is referred to as a non-uniform rational B-spline curve, or a NURBS curve for short.

From curves to surfaces

The mathematical formalisms underlying practical applications of NURBS curves were worked out in the 1960s and 1970s. Among other things, it was discovered that Bézier curves are just a special case of NURBS curves. It also turned out that NURBS curves could be used to represent conic sections, that is, curves like circles and ellipses formed by slicing a plane through a cone. NURBS curves thus became a universal standard for representing 2-dimensional curves of almost any type.

What about 3-dimensional curves and surfaces? Extending NURBS curves into three dimensions is very simple: just use control points with three coordinates instead of two (in mathematical terms, adding a z value to the previous x and y values). Creating 3D surfaces from NURBS curves is somewhat more complicated.

One way to do it is to use a grid of (3-dimensional) control points (and associated weights), two different parameters (instead of the one parameter used for a NURBS curve), two sets of B-spline functions (which can be of different orders), and two sets of knots.

One set of B-spline functions and knots is used with the first parameter (u) and the x-y-z coordinates of the control points running in one direction on the grid, with the second set of B-spline functions and knots then used with the second parameter (v) and the coordinates of the control points running in the other direction on the grid. A point on the surface is then computed for a given pair of parameter values u and v, using an expression that involves both sets of B-spline functions and both sets of knots along with the control point coordinates.

Computer aided design

In practice designers creating NURBS curves and surfaces are not concerned with the detailed mathematical computations underlying these objects. Instead they create curves and surfaces using special CAD software products that abstract away as much of the underlying mathematical complexity as possible, and provide relatively intuitive interfaces to define the curves and surfaces.

For example, using CAD software a designer can create a NURBS curve by explicitly placing control points and defining knot values and weights, or they can draw a curve freehand and then have the software determine the control points, knots, and weights needed to approximate the freehand curve. In either case a designer can further tweak a curve as needed, for example by dragging control points to new positions, deleting existing control points or adding new ones, changing knots and weights, and so on.

Once NURBS curves are defined they can then be used to create NURBS surfaces. For example, if four NURBS curves are connected together to form a four-sided shape, the software can use the four edges to interpolate a four-sided NURBS surface between. (See the figure above.) Multiple such surfaces can then be patched together to form a larger surface.

The earliest major CAD programs were developed internally at major automotive and aerospace companies. They include Renault’s UNISURF as well as similar software created at General Motors and elsewhere. It was no coincidence that these companies also employed many of the researchers working on NURBS curves and surfaces and related techniques, and also collaborated with academic researchers in the same area.

One such program worth noting is CATIA, originally developed in the 1970s by the French aircraft manufacturer Avions Marcel Dassault. Instead of keeping CATIA in-house, Dassault turned it into a commercial product and sold it to other aerospace companies (including Boeing), automotive companies, and others.

In the 1990s the architect Frank Gehry (co-designer of Merriweather Post Pavilion) and his firm adopted CATIA for use in designing his breakthrough commission, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain (completed in 1997), and subsequent high-profile projects. Among these were the Experience Music Project in Seattle (completed in 2000) and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles (completed in 2003).

(The EMP in particular was one of the first major collaborations between Gehry and A. Zahner Company, another member of the Chrysalis design team, which fabricated the building’s skin. Zahner’s work on the Chrysalis will be discussed in a future article in this series.)

Gehry’s success produced a lot of excitement about the possibility of using advanced nonlinear forms in architecture. However there were at least two factors that limited the adoption of CATIA and similar software by architects and made the impact of CAD software on architectural practice less revolutionary than it might otherwise have been.

First, CATIA and similar products and the computers needed to run them were very expensive: just the hardware alone for the Guggenheim Bilbao project was over half a million dollars at 1990s prices. (Gehry could afford it only because IBM loaned him the necessary graphics workstations.) Even today a full installation of CATIA or similar high-end CAD software can cost several thousand dollars per “seat,” that is, for each person using the product. Thus only the largest architectural firms could afford to employ such advanced technology.

Second, CAD software was primarily used as an adjunct to traditional architectural drafting and modeling techniques. Gehry himself boasted of his inability to use a computer. Instead he created designs like the Guggenheim Bilbao by first modeling them in paper or cardboard. He then handed them off to more junior architects to create more refined models to be digitized and imported into CATIA for final refinement and generation of the actual instructions for builders and fabricators. (These are not necessarily paper blueprints. Instead the models are typically translated into instructions for computer-controlled tools.)

Thus although Guggenheim Bilbao and similar projects offered a glimpse of a new way of doing architecture, fully realizing that new way would await a new generation of powerful but low-cost hardware and software, and a new generation of architects, “digital natives” prepared to fully exploit the possibilities inherent in these new technologies.

Form finding

The road that led to Marc Fornes’s work on the Chrysalis began in the early years of the 21st century, as the trends bringing faster, cheaper, and easier-to-use software and hardware gathered momentum. Fornes studied as an architect in France and then at the Architectural Association Design Research Lab in London, graduating in January 2004 with a Masters in Architecture and Urbanism.

After graduating from the DRL Fornes joined Zaha Hadid Architects in London, where he worked for over two years on a project to design a “médiathèque” (media library) for the French city of Pau, including an innovative self-supported roof constructed from a carbon fiber composite material. Although the Pau médiathèque project was ultimately cancelled for political reasons, much to the frustration of Fornes and his colleagues, it sparked his interest in complex curved surfaces and led him to begin experimenting with computational methods to design such surfaces.

That experimentation continued as Fornes moved to New York in the fall of 2006. Working under the project name “THEVERYMANY,” Fornes took advantage of multiple technological advances, of which the most important was the creation of the PC-based 3D modeling software Rhinoceros, popularly known as Rhino or Rhino 3D.

Rhino was created by Robert McNeel & Associates (“McNeel”), a Seattle-based company that was founded in 1980 as an accounting firm and spent most of the 1980s and 1990s as a reseller of the CAD product AutoCAD and a marketer of AutoCAD add-on software. Eventually McNeel developed and sold Rhino as its own Windows-based 3D modeling product, with version 1.0 released in 1998.

McNeel followed several business practices unusual for traditional vendors of proprietary CAD software, practices more akin to those of then-new Internet companies like Netscape or developers of free and open source software: McNeel not only priced Rhino at a level affordable to small companies, including “boutique” architectural firms and individual architects, it allowed liberal downloads of evaluation copies at no charge. McNeel also followed the open source dictum “release early, release often” and distributed “beta” copies of new versions in development almost as soon as the previous versions were released, soliciting ideas for new features from its customers.

As a result Rhino quickly acquired an installed base of over a hundred thousand users, and (among other things) became the tool of choice for an emerging community of experimental architects and designers, including Marc Fornes. That community in particular explored the possibilities opened up by one key feature of Rhino, namely its ability to be driven by a computer program rather than by a human designer.

Each operation executed through Rhino’s graphical user interface has an equivalent operation invoked by a textual command. Rhino supported the ability first to group multiple such commands together to execute a sequence of operations, and then provided full programmability using a scripting language (RhinoScript) and an associated application programming interface (API).⁶

Beginning in the mid-2000s Fornes and others pioneered techniques for form finding, that is, using the computer to generate potential structural forms from scratch, instead of using it simply as a way to digitally instantiate forms originally created by hand. They proselytized this new way of working through traditional in-person workshops and conferences as well as via the new medium of Internet blogs, including Fornes’s own blog theverymany.net.

Fornes conceived of this work as experimental: starting with certain premises, assuming certain constraints, and then finding ways to create designs within those constraints. The designs were created using “very clear protocols, sets of mathematical relationships, algorithms, [and] geometrical transformations” (in other words, what Fornes referred to as an “explicit” way of working), which in turn were instantiated (or “encoded,” as Fornes put it) in text files written in a particular computer programming language.

These designs also featured what Fornes referred to as “precise indetermination”. “Precise” meant that the programs made little or no use of randomness (the example in the figure above is a rare exception) and thus produced consistently reproducible output from run to run (especially important for fabrication of the resulting design). However the designs were also “indeterminate,” because the inherent complexity of the programs (including the interaction between different subprograms and their algorithms “fighting against each other”) made it difficult for the designer to predict ahead of time exactly how a design would turn out.

At first Fornes’s experiments were in digital form only, and in most cases they bore little resemblance to real-life structures. (See for example the above figure.) Many resembled nothing so much as exercises in advanced mathematics, which in a sense they were.

Following on from the original academic and industry researchers who created the mathematics and associated algorithms for NURBS curves and surfaces, Fornes and others used software like Rhino to play with the application of mathematical concepts to design: recursive definitions of surfaces and solids, fractals and L-systems, cellular automata, vector fields, Voronoi tesselations and Delaunay triangulations, and so on.⁷ Fornes’s blog posts in 2006 and 2007 document this work, typically pairing striking images with the RhinoScript code or pseudocode that produced them.

Fornes also combined his day-to-day work as an architect with an increasingly heavy schedule of academic work at Columbia University in New York, the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, die Angewandte (the University of Applied Arts) in Vienna, and elsewhere, as well as instructional classes in RhinoScript programming for McNeel and related activities at workshops, conferences, and exhibitions.

Iterative improvement

Although the designs produced by Marc Fornes and others could be viewed as striking works of art, Fornes conceived of himself not as an artist but as an architect, someone whose designs were actually built, or at least buildable.

Thus beginning in 2008 Fornes and his associates in THEVERYMANY began work on a series of what he called “prototypical structures”: structures not intended for permanent use by actual inhabitants, but rather created to explore various design techniques and methods for fabrication and assembly. Fornes and his team both designed the structures and assembled them, thus echoing the ancient tradition of folk architecture based on nonlinear forms, in which the roles of the “architects” and the “builders” were blurred.

In creating these prototypical structures Fornes and his associates also adopted an approach reminiscent of both traditional architecture and the Silicon Valley dictum “fail fast, fail often”. (Fornes hyberbolically referred to several of these projects as “big-time failure[s].”) Any problems encountered in creating the structures were treated not as fatal errors but as opportunities to learn what went wrong and fix it for the next iteration.

One of the first problems that presented itself was translating the curved surfaces of the design into flat elements that could be fabricated (e.g., in sheet plastic or aluminum) and then assembled. Because at the time there was no automated way to do this for arbitrary elements, Fornes created ways to design surfaces that both provided for three-dimensionality (necessary to create self-supporting structures) and also were composed of a relatively small number of unique regular elements that could be relatively easily arrayed on a sheet of material and then cut out and riveted together.

But even though the parts were relatively easy to fabricate, assembling them into an actual structure proved very difficult, requiring constant referral to the original digitally-rendered design in order to determine which elements attached to which others. In the end Fornes and his team were never able to complete the assembly of one such structure—although as it turned out the gallery for which it was intended had never seen the correct rendering, liked the structure as is, and even invited them to create another one.

In order to reduce assembly time Fornes and his associates adopted the practice of tagging the individual fabricated elements with encoded information regarding the other elements to which they connected. This reduced the need to refer back to the digital model and decreased assembly time by an order of magnitude.

Still other problems soon presented themselves. In scaling up to larger structures Fornes used thicker materials for the structural elements. This caused the weights of the structures to increase, which in turn made it more difficult for the structures to bear their own “dead load” and stand up by themselves. Because all elements of the structures had to be riveted to each other using pre-made holes, Fornes and his team of assemblers also encountered problems when tiny misalignments in connecting the elements built up and caused problems when assembling the final elements in the structures.

Advances in CAD software helped with some of the problems previously encountered, as the popularity of the Rhino 3D modeling product spurred the growth of a “ecosystem” of add-on products and related capabilities. For example, McNeel’s Grasshopper add-on provided a visual programming language to supplement traditional RhinoScript programs, while the third-party product RhinoNest optimized the process of “nesting” arbitrary structural elements onto flat sheets to be laser cut or milled with minimal wasting of material.

These advances were not panaceas. Fornes and his designers might now be able to create designs featuring arbitrarily-large numbers of unique structural elements and to nest those elements onto sheets for cutting or milling, but assembling such elements was still time-consuming—so time-consuming as to often be impractical for a small team working against a deadline.

One way Fornes reduced assembly time was to combine multiple individual elements into one elongated element, producing strips of material to be further combined into structural components. (See the figure above, in which painting some of the strips made this technique visible as colored stripes on the final structure.) But building a structure out of long strips could lead to other problems, as Fornes found when he designed a structure to be made of wood veneer and accidentally nested the strips in a way that went against the grain of the wood, thereby weakening them. (The resulting structure collapsed while being transported to the exhibition site.)

Nonetheless Fornes and his associates perservered in their pursuit of learning through failure and iterative improvement, and succeeded in creating more and more striking and successful projects: structures large enough to be experienced as spaces rather than just as sculptures, structures whose unassembled elements were small and light enough to be transported halfway around the world in the team’s suitcases (echoing the experiences of nomads who carried their homes with them), structures designed for easy storage when necessary, structures made of aluminum, or plastic, or carbon fiber—all leveraging an increasingly sophisticated repertoire of design, fabrication, and assembly techniques.

The genesis of the Chrysalis

As the second decade of the 21st century began, Marc Fornes received increasing attention as an architect to watch. In 2010 he quit his day job at a large architectural firm and converted THEVERYMANY from an informal project into an independent design studio, gaining more freedom to pursue his own projects. (As he put it to writer Terri Peters, “I realized nobody is ever going to commission me to do what I want to do, so I thought, what can I commission myself to do?”)

The years 2011 and 2012 saw a number of new projects for THEVERYMANY, including for the Centre Pompidou (shown above), FRAC Centre, and Atelier Calder in France, and Washington University at St Louis and Art Basel Miami in the US. Those years also marked the beginning of the events that would eventually lead to the creation of the Chrysalis.

As previously described, after his appearance at the Columbia Association resident “speak out” in September 2011 Michael McCall of Strategic Leisure began thinking seriously about creating a concept plan for a new park in Symphony Woods. Throughout 2012 McCall created a series of presentations outlining such a plan.

When creating Columbia, Jim Rouse had sponsored the work of Frank Gehry when Gehry was just starting his career; the results included Merriweather Post Pavilion and the Rouse Company headquarters building. In creating his concept plan for Symphony Woods (at the heart of Columbia), Michael McCall, formerly a Vice President at Rouse’s Enterprise Development Corporation, saw the opportunity to emulate his mentor by calling upon the talents of a new generation of promising architects. Thus when McCall created his concept plan presentations, to inspire his audiences and show how the plan might be implemented he highlighted the work of various innovative architects and artists, including in particular Marc Fornes.

In February 2013 McCall made a public presentation of the new “Inner Arbor” concept plan proposed by the Columbia Association as an alternative to the previous “Paumier plan”. Again this presentation mentioned Marc Fornes, in the context of the “Treehouse amphitheater” element of the concept plan.

In the subsequent months the Inner Arbor Trust was officially established and began the process of selecting designers for the various plan elements. In a presentation to Leadership Howard County in September 2013 McCall again mentioned Fornes as one of the designers who were candidates for possible commissions.

In that same presentation McCall also laid out the goals of the amphitheater element of the Inner Arbor plan: to serve as a stage for performances (including as a secondary stage for Merriweather Post Pavilion), as a pavilion for family reunions, church picnics, weddings, and similar events, and as a sculpture that would be a beautiful addition to the park during other times.

In November 2013 the Inner Arbor Trust formally announced the selection of Marc Fornes as part of the design team for the Inner Arbor plan, what Michael McCall termed the “Designers of Delight”. Shortly thereafter, at a community meeting on December 2, Fornes presented the design for what was now referred to as the “Chrysalis.”

Mesh inflation

The design of the Chrysalis was created using a process Fornes called “pleated inflation,” a variant of “mesh inflation”. The technique of mesh inflation was made possible by the increasingly sophisticated applications built on the Rhino modeling software, including the Grasshopper visual programming language, the Kangaroo physics simulation add-on to Grasshopper, and similar tools.

In mesh inflation the tools start with a flat surface of a certain shape specified by the designer. The form of the surface will determine the final form of the structure. For example, in the Chrysalis mesh inflation (see the first figure above) the initial surface (outlined in yellow) has nine “projections” or “peninsulas” that will end up as the legs of the Chrysalis.

The tools then divide up the surface to create a mesh of four-sided shapes (quadrilaterals). In the case of the Chrysalis the lines of the mesh run “lengthwise” along the projections (purple in the first figure above) and “crosswise” across them (blue in the figure). The way those projections (or more specifically, the lengthwise lines of the mesh) join to each other then determines the way the “vaults” of the Chrysalis intersect with each other.

Once the mesh is defined, the tools then treat the lines of the mesh (the sides of the quadrilaterals) as if they were springs (of varying degrees of stiffness) connecting together the vertices of the mesh (the places where the lines of the mesh cross) and providing tension between them. The exact simulated stiffnesses can be tweaked by the designer to achieve various effects.

Some vertices at the edge of the mesh are constrained to remain attached to the “ground”. These places are to be the bases of the “legs” of the final structure. (For the Chrysalis these vertices are the ones at the ends of the nine projections of the initial surface.)

The tools then simulate an upward force applied to the vertices of the mesh. The simulated force causes the vertices to move vertically into the “air,” but they are constrained by the tension placed on them by the simulated springs between them, or (for designated vertices at the edge) by their attachment to the “ground.”

Other simulated forces can be applied in other directions, most notably outward from the surface as it evolves. The net effect is that the initially flat mesh “inflates“ into a 3-dimensional structure, analogous to a balloon being blown up or an inflatable tent being filled with air.

Fornes used the mesh inflation technique (what he called “a computationally derived dynamic spring network with behavioral attributes”) in designing the sculpture “Vaulted Willow” for Borden Park in Edmonton, Alberta. The first figure above and its linked video show a similar technique as used in creating the Chrysalis design.

The Chrysalis design as presented in the pre-submission meeting and to the Design Advisory Panel was more complicated than could be produced using the same type of mesh inflation used for the Vaulted Willow project. Instead Fornes used a variant technique he called “pleated inflation,” previously used in designing a structure of the same name in Argelès-sur-Mer in France.

In the pleated inflation technique certain “lengthwise” lines through the original mesh and their associated vertices are marked out as special. During the inflation process the simulated forces and/or tensions are varied such that the resulting surface is not smooth, but instead assumes a corrugated or pleated appearance, with the peaks of the pleats running along the previously marked lines.

In the Argelès-sur-Mer amphitheater, which is built solely from flat aluminum shingles folded and then riveted together, the resulting pleats supply stiffness to the overall architectural form and help ensure the integrity of the structure. The pleats in the Chrysalis also provide structural integrity, supplemented by additional elements as discussed below. In addition the Chrysalis pleats help channel rain water and snow melt off the structure.

Sculpture, pavilion, stage

Recall again the three roles of the Chrysalis: as a sculpture, a pavilion, and a stage. As a sculpture the Chrysalis follows in the tradition of previous THEVERYMANY projects in its nonlinear form, though its shape is relatively simple and straightforward compared to projects like Y/Surf/Struc (shown above).

Though the Chrysalis design has a simpler shape than that of Y/Surf/Struc, it makes more sophisticated and subtle use of color. In structures like Y/Surf/Struc color was used mainly to highlight the underlying plan of the design—as Marc Fornes remarked, “It’s not for [the color] that we got invited [to the Centre Pompidou].”

Fornes used color more imaginatively and playfully in later projects like Vaulted Willow, befitting its role as a public art piece for a park. The aluminum shingles forming the structure go from predominantly purple and blue at the base to blue and green and then to green and yellow at the top, with the eye perceiving a gradient of color built from a series of single-color shingles.

The Chrysalis uses a similar scheme, albeit with a more restricted range of colors (being similar to the Pleated Inflation structure in that respect). As a larger structure in a wooded setting, its colors span a range of greens to echo its surroundings. As with Vaulted Willow, the Chrysalis as constructed (see the figure above) shows the effect of a sophisticated “dithering” technique, designed to use a limited color palette (only four colors of shingles in the Chrysalis) to simulate a broader range of colors. The end effect as perceived by the eye is a relatively smooth gradient running from a darker green at the bottom to a lighter green at the top.

In its role as a pavilion the Chrysalis differs from previous THEVERYMANY projects mainly in being designed to provide a solid shell. Previous projects, including the Pleated Inflation amphitheater, used shingles that were perforated in various ways, using a technique to determine the shape and location of the perforations that Fornes calls “agent-based porosity”. Since the Chrysalis is intended for uses such as picnics and weddings that might be held in inclement weather, its surface is solid and designed (using the pleats) to channel water away from participants.

The Chrysalis is also considerably larger than any other THEVERYMANY project, easily twice the width, depth, and height of its “little brother,” the Pleated Inflation structure. This means that the area under the shell (about five thousand square feet in total) is much larger than that associated with the other projects, providing sufficient room to shelter fairly large gatherings.

The final role of the Chrysalis, as a performance stage, put the most demands on the design. The Chrysalis stage is actually two stages in one: the larger or “alpha” stage facing west, and a smaller “beta” stage facing south. These stages were not intended just for community and school plays and concerts and other relatively small-scale events. Instead the alpha stage was also intended to serve as a secondary stage for Merriweather Post Pavilion, for example during large music festivals.

Over the years the increased appetite of concert-goers for elaborate productions has led acts to impose ever greater technical requirements on the venues seeking to host them: more stage space, greater electrical capacity, and—most important—the ability to hang ever larger and heavier lighting rigs and audio equipment.

In the case of Merriweather Post Pavilion this trend led to the eventual replacement of the existing stage and stagehouse with larger facilities. In the case of the Chrysalis it greatly increased the loads that the Chrysalis would have to bear, as specified in the technical requirements worked out among the Inner Arbor Trust, I.M.A. (the operators of Merriweather Post Pavilion), and other parties.

In particular the Chrysalis shell would have to support a much greater load due to hanging equipment (up to 40,000 pounds in total per the technical requirements), and a correspondingly greater risk of having “point loads” damage the structure. (For example, think of roadies inadvertently attaching heavy equipment at one place on the structure without balancing the load at attach points elsewhere.)

This load was in addition to the static load of the structure’s own weight, potential additional load due to snowfalls, and potential dynamic loads due to high winds hitting the structure from various angles. The total surface area upon which wind can act is much greater for the Chrysalis than for other THEVERYMANY projects, and the resulting wind force correspondingly larger. The planned-for wind load, at about 60,000 pounds, is actually higher than the anticipated load due to theatrical equipment.

Given the anticipated and planned-for loads, the Chrysalis does not rely solely on pleated metal shingles to provide structural integrity. The Chrysalis design uses pleated shingles for the outer surface and then supplements them with an inner framework of curved steel elements underneath the shingles. (See future articles in this series for more information on this steel framework and the means by which the shingles are attached to it.)

The significance of the Chrysalis

The Chrysalis is special in many ways. First, it represents the largest structure yet designed by Marc Fornes, and in its role as a modern performance stage must meet more demanding real-life requirements than any previous THEVERYMANY project. Its creation marks another step in the evolution of Fornes as an architect and THEVERYMANY as a studio, consistent with his goal to “learn, grow, and grow in scale.”

Second, for the Inner Arbor Trust the Chrysalis is the first element of the Inner Arbor plan to take tangible form. Its successful completion confirms the wisdom of the Columbia Association in investing the Inner Arbor Trust with the responsibility of creating a new park for Symphony Woods, and helps position the Trust for future success in carrying out the remainder of the Inner Arbor plan.

Finally, for the people of Columbia and Howard County, who funded the design and construction of the Chrysalis and will be its primary users, the Chrysalis is a unique and beautiful addition to downtown Columbia, fully capable of fulfilling its roles as stage, pavilion, and sculpture, and a structure that—along with a renovated Merriweather Post Pavilion—will serve as an anchor around which the vision of Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods can be realized.

For further exploration

This article is based on material from a variety of online sources, including the following:

• For more on Bézier and NURBS curves see the following:

  • “On the Spline: A Brief History of the Computational Curve,” by Alastair Townsend. A non-mathematical explanation of the historical and technical aspects of Bézier and NURBS curves.
  • “A History of Curves and Surfaces in CAGD,” by Gerald Farin. A more technical history of computer aided geometric design.
  • “My Time at Citroën,” by Paul de Casteljau. An autobiographical article that provides some amusing insights concerning de Casteljau and the environment in which he worked at Citroën.
  • “NURBS-Calculator.” An interactive web-based demo that allows you to manipulate and create NURBS and Bézier curves. (You can even use it on smartphones and tablets.)

• For more on architectural design software and associated techniques see the following:

  • “The Software Behind Frank Gehry’s Geometrically Complex Architecture,” by Lian Chang. Outlines the history behind the adoption of CATIA for Frank Gehry’s projects.
  • “The Way of Rhino” (part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4), by Randall Newton. A 2007 series of articles providing an in-depth look at Robert McNeel & Associates, creators of Rhino, and their impact on the CAD market.
  • “Rhino Grasshopper,” by Martyn Day. A 2009 article describing the then-new Grasshopper add-on to Rhino for visual scripting of geometry.
  • “Grasshopper Primer,” by Mode Lab. For readers who are programmers this offers an interesting glimpse into a visual programming language specialized for manipulation of geometric objects.

• For more on Marc Fornes and his work see the following:

  • theverymany.com is the most comprehensive source of information on Fornes and the work of THEVERYMANY. In addition to the projects highlighted on the main page, the archived blog posts on theverymany.com form a continuous record of Fornes’s work from late 2005 to 2014. (Keep scrolling to read earlier posts.) The posts in 2006 and 2007 are particularly interesting for their inclusion of sample RhinoScript code.
  • “Marc Fornes Creates Spaces He Has Never Seen Before,” by Terri Peters. A 2010 article that provides a good summary of Fornes’s design philosophy and working methods.
  • “Tech Specs: Marc Fornes, Founder of THEVERYMANY,” by Mason Currey. A 2015 article in which Fornes discusses the computer software and other tools he uses in his work.
  • scriptedbypurpose. A 2007 exhibition curated by Fornes, its website contains many examples of experimental designs produced by RhinoScript code.
  • (n)Certainties (original, v2.0, v3.0, v4.0, and v5.0). A series of workshops held at Columbia and USC from 2007 to 2009 by Fornes, Francois Roche, and Stephan Henrich, their websites also contain many experimental designs with accompanying RhinoScript code.
  • “D01 06 Marc Fornes Structurant Bark” [40-minute video]. A presentation by Marc Fornes at the symposium “PROTO/E/CO/LOGICS 002: The Field is Open,” held September 1-2, 2012, in Rovinj, Croatia. It includes discussions of the series of “prototypical structures” and lessons learned in creating them.
  • “Unabashed Designers of Delight” [121-minute video] (November 18, 2013). A presentation introducing the design team for the Inner Arbor plan. It includes a presentation by Marc Fornes beginning at 58:26 that discusses a number of THEVERYMANY projects, including the amphitheater at Argelès-sur-Mer.
  • “The Art of the Prototypical” [74-minute video] (October 26, 2015). A presentation by Marc Fornes at his alma mater, the Design Research Lab of the Architectural Association in London. It includes a discussion of more recent projects, including brief comments on the Chrysalis.

• For more on the Chrysalis amphitheater and its origins in the Inner Arbor concept plan, see the following:

  • Michael McCall’s presentation of the Inner Arbor concept plan to Leadership Howard County [33-minute video] (September 20, 2013).
  • The Chrysalis portion of the Inner Arbor pre-submission community presentation (December 2, 2013).
  • Michael McCall presentation to the Howard County Design Advisory Panel [20-minute video] (February 26, 2014).
  • “Chrysalis mesh inflation” [68-minute video]. A video showing the process of mesh inflation for the Chrysalis. Note that most of the video is blank, with the only content being the initial two minutes and from 41:40 on.
  • “Mesh pleated inflation, Argeles” [2-minute video]. A brief video showing the process of mesh inflation for the “Pleated Inflation” amphitheater in Argelès-sur-Mer, including the creation of the pleats in the surface (not shown in the equivalent Chrysalis video).

For more of my opinions on and explanations of various aspects of the Chrysalis and Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, see the Inner Arbor-related posts in the series “The Inner Arbor plan takes shape” and elsewhere on this blog. (Note that some of these posts contain outdated information relating to park features that were later dropped or revised.)

tl;dr: I discuss the various institutional activities related to implementation of the Inner Arbor plan, with a focus on the Columbia Association, the Inner Arbor Trust, and the Howard County government, including its planning process.

This article is one in a series exploring in depth the creation of the Chrysalis amphitheater in Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods in Columbia, Maryland. For the complete list of articles please see the introduction to the series.

The previous article in this series described the vision and strategy for creating a new park in Symphony Woods according to the Inner Arbor plan. This article picks up where the first article in the series left off, describing the process that led to the Columbia Association’s adopting the Inner Arbor plan and creating the Inner Arbor Trust as an independent organization to implement it, along with the history of the Inner Arbor Trust and related events up to the present.

Organizations and their roles

As in the previous events relating to downtown Columbia development in general and Symphony Woods in particular, multiple organizations played a role in this history in addition to the Inner Arbor Trust itself:

• The Columbia Association was at the center of the story, at least initially, due to its ownership of the Symphony Woods, its plan in progress for developing a park on that property, and its creation of and ongoing relationship with the Inner Arbor Trust.
• The Howard County government served variously as a promoter of downtown Columbia development (both formally through the Downtown Columbia Plan and informally in various ways), the regulator of such development (through the Department of Planning and Zoning, the Planning Board, and the Design Advisory Panel), a funder of Symphony Woods development (through the County Executive and County Council), and a future user of park features (through the Department of Parks and Recreation and its sponsorship of the Wine in the Woods festival).
• The Howard Hughes Corporation had by this time assumed the role previously filled by General Growth Properties (and before GGP the Rouse Company) as the owner of Merriweather Post Pavilion, situated within and surrounded by Symphony Woods. Howard Hughes and It’s My Amphitheater, Inc. (the operators of the pavilion) played key roles in promoting integration of Symphony Woods development with redevelopment of Merriweather Post Pavilion. They were joined by the Downtown Columbia Arts and Culture Commission, the county-created nonprofit organization slated to take over ownership of the pavilion property from Howard Hughes.
• Other players included the state of Maryland (which had previously provided a grant to CA for Symphony Woods development) and the Columbia Festival of the Arts (a future user of park features).

2012: Rethinking

As of the fall of 2012 the Columbia Association was faced with a decision on what to do about Symphony Woods development. Although the Howard County Planning Board¹ had nominally approved the CA-created Final Development Plan for Symphony Woods Park (FDP-DC-MSW-1, based on the so-called “Paumier plan”), the Planning Board had attached recommendations to that approval that in practice required a major rethink of the original plan.

At that point after two years of work the Columbia Association had a diagram for a pathway system and a concept design for a fountain, but no detailed designs for other park features. CA was in the position of having to make significant changes to its existing design prior to taking them to the next stage of the county planning process (i.e., in the form of a Site Development Plan), as well as having to flesh out those parts of the design yet unfinished. Besides the impact on CA staff, the financial stakes were also high since the costs of preparing and implementing an SDP would be considerably greater than those incurred for the FDP.

The Columbia Association had been urged for some time to coordinate its plans with those being created by the Howard Hughes Corporation. The previous April Howard Hughes had recommended that CA look at a new concept plan being created by Michael McCall for the Merriweather-Symphony Woods neighborhood. This advice was apparently being echoed by others.²

The CA board considers alternatives

On October 5, 2012, Columbia Association President and CEO Phil Nelson recommended that the CA board devote time in its first October meeting to discussing various questions relating to Symphony Woods development, including the possibility of partnering on Symphony Woods development with another organization, and of revising the Symphony Woods plan to take into account planned redevelopment of Merriweather Post Pavilion.

On October 11 the Columbia Association Board of Directors held a work session at which Phil Nelson discussed options for Symphony Woods development and the CA board took a number of straw polls on how to move forward. Those board members present (all except Cynthia Coyle) expressed unanimous support for the idea of forming a separate organization to develop Symphony Woods. Although the work session was public, no one spoke during the Resident Speak Out portion of the meeting—in fact no one from the general public attended the board meeting at all (according to a later recollection by board member Andy Stack).

Thus the possibility that the Columbia Association might change its strategy for Symphony Woods development, as well as the behind-the-scenes work to create a new concept plan, went unnoticed and unremarked for the most part, as the CA board devoted its meetings to other topics the rest of the year.

2013: Creating

That period of relative quiet ended in late January 2013 with the public unveiling of the Inner Arbor concept plan created by Michael McCall of Strategic Leisure. (See the previous article in this series for an in-depth discussion of this concept plan.)

Implementing the Inner Arbor plan via a separate organization

After the Columbia Association released information on the concept plan on January 18, at the January 24 CA board meeting CA President Phil Nelson presented several recommendations to the board:

• That the Columbia Association adopt the Inner Arbor concept plan as the overall framework to guide future development of Symphony Woods as a whole.
• That CA adopt Symphony Woods as the preferred location for a new CA headquarters. This proposal had been discussed back in 2005, and was included in the Inner Arbor concept plan as a suggestion for the eastern part of Symphony Woods.
• That the CA board instruct CA management to establish a separate “Trust” to carry out development of Symphony Woods on behalf of CA.³
• That CA enter into a perpetual easement agreement providing the trust organization the necessary rights to carry out development according to the Inner Arbor concept plan.
• That CA transfer to the trust organization funds that CA had allocated for Symphony Woods development in its current and future budgets.

Nelson also noted that, per the Howard County Department of Planning and Zoning, development of the northern section of Symphony Woods could proceed according to the already-approved Final Development Plan. (As previously discussed, the northern section of Symphony Woods encompassed the “public park” envisioned in the Inner Arbor concept plan, as distinguished from the “performance park” and “curated park” in the eastern and southern sections. The approved FDP incorporated not only a pathway system but also various proposed park elements in addition to a fountain, including an amphitheater, café, play area, and public art.)

On January 31 Michael McCall presented the Inner Arbor concept plan at a public meeting sponsored by the Columbia Association. On February 7 CA President Phil Nelson sent a memo to the CA board with an expanded and refined set of recommendations, proposing that CA

• adopt the Inner Arbor concept plan;
• create a separate nonprofit organization that could qualify for 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status as the vehicle to carry out the plan;
• negotiate a perpetual easement on the Symphony Woods property with the new organization; and
• provide initial funding of $1.6 million to the new organization (representing CA’s already budgeted amount for Symphony Woods development).

Nelson subsequently sent a revised memo to the Columbia Association Board of Directors on February 13, formalizing the recommendations made in the February 7 memo in preparation for the board’s consideration of them.

On February 14 the Columbia Association Board of Directors voted 8–2 to accept Nelson’s recommendations and move forward with the creation of a separate “Symphony Woods Trust”. Voting in favor were Regina Clay, Ed Coleman, Tom Coale, Michael Cornell, Gregg Schwind, Andy Stack, Suzanne Waller, and Shari Zaret; voting against were Cynthia Coyle and Alex Hekimian.

Inner Arbor supporters and opponents

However this overwhelming approval by the Columbia Association Board of Directors did not end the dispute over CA’s change in direction regarding Symphony Woods development. The ensuing controversy in some ways mirrored the previous controversy in 2005 over General Growth Properties’s proposed master plan for downtown Columbia.

Several opponents of the previous GGP plan, including former CA board members Barbara Russell and Russ Swatek and community activist Alan Klein of the Coalition for Columbia’s Downtown, argued against the Inner Arbor concept plan for its proposal to put buildings in Symphony Woods, and also charged that the process of adopting the plan did not reflect adequate time for public input and discussion. They were joined in their opposition by Cy Paumier and some of his associates, who lobbied the CA board both privately and publicly for retention of the prior plan for Symphony Woods Park that they had created.

Beyond the Columbia Association Board of Directors itself, strong Inner Arbor plan supporters first and foremost included county elected officials, with Howard County Executive Ken Ulman making a public statement in support of the concept plan when it was first unveiled. Howard County Council members Calvin Ball and Mary Kay Sigaty followed up with a public letter referring to it as a “bold vision” in line with the Downtown Columbia Plan’s vision of a “cultural park where the landscape becomes a setting for arts, cultural and civic uses,” and County Council member Jen Terrasa argued in another public letter that the plan “invites the community back and creates a heart for Columbia right in Symphony Woods.” Other expressions of support came from people and organizations previously promoting downtown Columbia development, including George Barker of Bring Back the Vision, Brian Dunn of Columbia 2.0, Phil Engelke of the New City Alliance, and Ian Kennedy of Awesome Columbia, as well as from various local bloggers, including Dennis Lane, Julia McCready, and Bill Woodcock, and (last but not least) from the editorial board of the Baltimore Sun.

The Columbia Association Board of Directors election on April 20, although marked by typical low turnout,⁴ was seen by some as a referendum on the Inner Arbor plan. Plan opponent Russ Swatek and the relatively neutral Nancy McCord defeated plan proponents Ed Coleman and Regina Clay. However although reduced the pro-Inner Arbor plan majority on the CA board remained intact, with at least six of ten board members counted as clear supporters.

(In June later that year Tom Coale, one of the highest-profile champions of the Inner Arbor plan, resigned from the Columbia Association Board of Directors in order to run for the Maryland House of Delegates seat in District 9B. He was replaced by Tom O’Connor, also a supporter of the Inner Arbor plan. Thus the relative balance between supporters and opponents on the CA board remained unchanged.)

Creating the Inner Arbor Trust and ensuring its independence

Meanwhile creation of the separate trust organization proceeded as previously approved by the Columbia Association Board of Directors back in February. On April 26 lawyers representing CA incorporated the new organization in Maryland as the Inner Arbor Trust, Inc., “to promote and support the revitalization of the Merriweather-Symphony Woods Neighborhood” in a manner compatible with IRS regulations relating to 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. On May 10 the Inner Arbor Trust Board of Directors first met and adopted a set of bylaws.

As originally envisioned by the Columbia Association Board of Directors, and as specified in the articles of incorporation, the Inner Arbor Trust had a five-member board, with two members being elected from the CA board and the CA President being a third member. On March 28 the CA board elected Ed Coleman and Gregg Schwind to be its representatives on the Inner Arbor Trust board, with CA President Phil Nelson also taking a Trust board seat by virtue of his position as CA’s President and CEO. (The first at-large Trust board members were Deborah Ellinghaus and Kent Humphries.)

However one of the first actions of the Inner Arbor Trust Board of Directors, taken at its initial meeting, was to expand the board from five members to seven, including four independent directors not associated with the Columbia Association. According to CA General Counsel Sheri Faranoff this was motivated by a need to show that the Inner Arbor Trust board was independent of and not controlled by the CA board in order to make a case to the IRS for 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status.⁵ At the May 10 meeting this change was approved unanimously by the Inner Arbor Trust board, including the CA-associated board members, and reflected in the bylaws as signed and dated May 13.

The Inner Arbor Trust Board of Directors then proceeded to elect two new members not associated with the Columbia Association, Gill Wylie and Beverly White-Seals. White-Seals, a former attorney for the Rouse Company, was also appointed Secretary for the Trust. Ed Coleman remained on the Trust board despite losing his CA board seat only a few weeks before, as the CA board did not appoint a new representative to take his place. Finally at its second meeting on May 30 the Trust selected as its Treasurer Rafia Siddiqui, the former Chief Financial Officer of the Columbia Association.

Once created the Inner Arbor Trust turned to the various tasks before it—negotiating an easement with the Columbia Association, applying for IRS 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status, acquiring funding, and refining the Inner Arbor plan—under the direction of Michael McCall, who had been appointed President and CEO of the Inner Arbor Trust, and whose firm Strategic Leisure, Inc., had been retained by the Inner Arbor Trust to provide support for Trust activities.

Howard County funding of the Inner Arbor project

May 2013 also saw the Howard County Council—via an amendment by Council member Mary Kay Sigaty with the support of Howard County Executive Ken Ulman—unanimously appropriate up to $3.5 million in the FY14 budget for “planning, design, engineering, and construction costs for an amphitheater located in Symphony Woods”. This was on top of the previous commitment by CA to provide $1.6 million in initial funding for the Inner Arbor Trust. (An initial $450,000 of this commitment was paid by CA to the Trust prior to July 31.)

Designing the public park

During the summer of 2013 the Inner Arbor Trust began selection of design firms and architects for the various proposed park features. On September 20, as part of a presentation to Leadership Howard County, Michael McCall announced the selection of Martha Schwartz Partners as landscape designers and artists and Baltimore firm Mahan Rykiel Associates as the landscape architect of record, along with the Burtonsville firm Gutschick, Little & Weber as the civil engineers. (Mahan Rykiel and GLW had previously been involved with the work leading to the Final Development Plan.)

Two months later, on November 18, Michael McCall introduced the full design team (dubbed by him the “Designers of Delight”), adding THEVERYMANY (Marc Fornes), nArchitects (Mimi Hoang and Eric Bunge), and Arup (represented by Raj Patel) to Martha Schwartz Partners (represented by Martha Schwartz) and Mahan Rykiel Associates (represented by Scott Rykiel).

The Inner Arbor Trust closed 2013 with three important milestones:

First, on December 2 the Trust made its first public presentation of its plan for the northern “public park” portion of Symphony Woods, including the Chrysalis amphitheater, Butterfly guest services building, Caterpillar sculptural berm (embodying the “Art of Bounds” theme), and other park features. This presentation marked the “pre-submission meeting” stage of the Howard County planning process prior to submittal of a formal Site Development Plan. The meeting featured presentations from all members of the design team, as well as a presentation by Biohabitats, the firm hired by the Inner Arbor Trust to assist with environmental issues, including stream restoration.

The easement agreement between CA and the Inner Arbor Trust

Second, on December 11, 2013, the Inner Arbor Trust reached an agreement with the Columbia Association for a perpetual easement for the 37 acres of Symphony Woods, as well as for an additional 15 acres of open space in the Crescent property to be donated to CA in future by the Howard Hughes Corporation. The easement grant was split into multiple phases:

Phase 1 included the “public park” portion of Symphony Woods outlined in the concept plan, along with additional acreage adjacent to Merriweather Post Pavilion to the east, south, and west. (The inclusion of this additional land would prove critical in later dealings of the Inner Arbor Trust with the Howard Hughes Corporation.) Phase 2 roughly corresponded to the “performance park” portion of the concept plan, phase 3 to the “curated park” portion, and phase 4 to the future Crescent acreage from Howard Hughes. (The easement agreement was subsequently revised on March 14, 2014, to include a thin strip of land along Little Patuxent Parkway—part of so-called “Lot 9B”—that had been inadvertently left off the original agreement.)

The easement agreement granted the Inner Arbor Trust an extensive set of rights, including rights to construct park features (including taking proposed features through the county planning process), to operate park features and hold park events (and realize revenue from such), and to enter into a broad range of legal agreements with third parties, including agreements supporting integration of the park with Merriweather Post Pavilion.

The Inner Arbor Trust did not immediately acquire that full set of rights for all four easement areas. The Columbia Association granted the full set of specified rights for the Phase 1 easement area upon the signing of the agreement. However granting of full rights outlined in the agreement for the other three easement areas—including in particular the rights to construct and operate new park features—was made contingent on the Trust completing construction of the Chrysalis amphitheater (which the agreement referenced under the name “Treehouse Stage” used in the concept plan) or another designated park feature in the Phase 1 easement area, as well as on other events unique to each phase.

Granting of full rights specified in the agreement for the Phase 2 easement area was also made contingent on “substantial completion” of the pathway system in the Phase 1 easement area, as well as on progression through step 9 of the county planning process (including approval of a Final Development Plan) for a structure in the Phase 2 easement area, as part of the “performance park” portion of the concept plan.

For Phase 3 granting of full rights under the agreement was also made contingent on the Inner Arbor Trust having sufficient funding to create and submit a Final Development Plan for a sculpture garden or botanical garden in the Phase 3 easement area as part of the “curated park” portion of the concept plan. Finally, granting of full rights for the Phase 4 easement area was also made contingent on the actual transfer of the Phase 4 acreage from Howard Hughes to the Columbia Association.

Although the phases were numbered sequentially, Phases 2 through 4 were in fact made independent of each other: Once the Inner Arbor Trust had completed the Chrysalis or other designated park feature in the Phase 1 easement area, granting the Trust the full rights specified in the agreement in any other easement area was dependent only on the requirement(s) for that particular area. (Thus, for example, the Trust could acquire full rights under the easement agreement for the open space transferred to the Columbia Association by the Howard Hughes Corporation prior to any work being done on the “performance park” or “curated park” portions of the concept plan.)

Permitted uses under the easement agreement were specified as those for “arts, cultural and civic purposes as broadly illustrated by the Concept Plan,” including performances, arts and cultural attractions, sculpture and art installations, gardens, various park features (including picnic areas and fountains), construction and operation of buildings to support the permitted uses, food and beverage sales, and temporary retail operations (e.g., for festivals).

The first Howard County grant agreement

Finally, on December 18 the Inner Arbor Trust entered into a grant agreement with Howard County under which the county agreed to provide funding in support of the design and construction of the Chrysalis amphitheater, as previously approved by the County Council in May. The first grant under this agreement was in the sum of $300,000, and supplemented the $1.6 million of committed CA funding. (In fulfillment of this commitment CA made a second payment of $450,000 prior to January 31, 2014.)

2014: Planning

The main theme of 2014 was the steady progression of the Inner Arbor plan through the Howard County planning process over organized opposition, including from some Columbia Association board members. For the Inner Arbor Trust this was in fact a race against time to meet key deadlines in the perpetual easement agreement signed with CA the previous December.

Deadlines for the Inner Arbor Trust

The first deadline met was actually the one that was furthest in the future, namely the achievement of 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. The easement agreement required this to be done by June 30, 2015, but it was actually accomplished on January 31, 2014, just over a month after the signing of the agreement. This was the first step in enabling the Inner Arbor Trust to more actively raise funds from donors for whom the tax deductibility of donations was important. (Under Maryland law the Trust could not actively solicit donations until it was certified by the state. This did not occur until October 22 later that year.)

However the easement agreement with the Columbia Association also required the Inner Arbor Trust to submit a Site Development Plan for the “Phase 1 easement area” (the northern section of Symphony Woods) by April 30, 2014, and to obtain county approval for that plan by November 30 of the same year. If it failed to meet one of these deadlines then the Trust would have to go back to CA to obtain an extension. If it could not obtain an extension then the Trust would risk being deemed in violation of the easement agreement.

Review by the Design Advisory Panel

The Inner Arbor Trust started the formal planning process on February 4, 2014 when it submitted a complete Inner Arbor design to the county for consideration by the Howard County Design Advisory Panel.⁶ This design formalized the park design presented the previous December and addressed the recommendations made by the Planning Board in its approval of the Final Development Plan previously submitted by the Columbia Association (FDP-DC-MSW-1).

The design as submitted contained two relatively minor revisions to the plan presented in December. The first was the addition of the Merriground, a play area for children. Such a play area was originally envisioned in the Final Development Plan, and in the first Inner Arbor plan was in the form of a “play maze” located across Little Patuxent Parkway relatively close to the entrance drive to The Mall in Columbia. The Merriground replaced this concept with a more “sculptural” set of features located further to the east of the northern section of Symphony Woods, in the location of the “iconic sculpture” originally envisioned by the Inner Arbor concept plan.

The other new feature was the Merriweather Horns, a set of sound sculptures designed by local artist William Cochran for the four proposed park entrances and along the park’s pathways. The Merriweather Horns replaced the Word Art and Letter Garden features in the plan presented in December, and were proposed as the public art component of the park as envisioned in the Final Developmemt Plan.

On February 26 Michael McCall of the Inner Arbor Trust and various members of the design team took the Howard County Design Advisory Panel through a 236-slide presentation covering all aspects of the park and the proposed park features. The presentation went very well: The Design Advisory Panel voted unanimously in favor of the plan, raising only a relatively minor concern about the width of some of the pathways, and individual panel members were enthusiastic in their praise of the plan.

Opposition on the CA board

Meanwhile, as the Inner Arbor Trust prepared for the next step in the planning process opponents of the Inner Arbor plan stepped up their activities. During the previous year the changed composition of the Columbia Association Board of Directors had had relatively little effect on its relations with the Inner Arbor Trust. (The CA board had limited itself mainly to consideration of the easement negotiated with the Inner Arbor Trust, and a revision of the CA conflict of interest policy to clarify that it did not preclude CA board members from serving on the board of the Inner Arbor Trust.)

That period of relative quiet ended in the spring of 2014. The first issue to gain traction related to the name of the park: In its submissions to the county planning process the Inner Arbor Trust used the new name “Merriweather Park” (instead of the previous “Symphony Woods Park”) to emphasize the integration with Merriweather Post Pavilion and leverage public recognition of the “Merriweather̦” name.

Various members of the Columbia Association Board of Directors objected to the Inner Arbor Trust dropping the use of “Symphony Woods,” and on March 13 the CA board voted unanimously to formally request of the Inner Arbor Trust that the name “Symphony Woods” be retained. Later that spring the Inner Arbor Trust attempted to address this controversy by renaming the project “Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods” (similar to the strategy the Baltimore Orioles followed in naming their new stadium “Orioles Park at Camden Yards”).

More serious in its implications for the Inner Arbor project was the April 26 election of the Columbia Association Board of Directors. As they were in 2013, opponents of the Inner Arbor plan were successful in electing new CA board members in another relatively low turnout election.⁷ Plan opponents Jeanne Ketley and Alan Klein won in contested elections against incumbent board member Suzanne Waller and new candidate Bob Fontaine (both plan supporters). Plan opponent Alex Hekimian announced his intent not to run just prior to the filing deadline and was replaced by Reg Avery, who was allegedly recruited by Hekimian and ran unopposed.

Although he was a supporter of the Inner Arbor plan, re-elected incumbent Gregg Schwind, one of the Columbia Association’s representatives on the Inner Arbor Trust Board of Directors, expressed concern about public reception of the plan and indicated his willingness to consider “reworking” it. Finally, just prior to the election the CA board finally replaced Ed Coleman (defeated the previous year in the CA board election) as one of the CA representatives on the Trust board, in a 6-3 vote selecting Nancy McCord (who was relatively neutral in her public statements on the Inner Arbor plan) over Inner Arbor supporter Michael Cornell.

Meeting the SDP deadline

In the midst of all this controversy the Inner Arbor Trust met a second key deadline, as it submitted a 83-sheet Site Development Plan (SDP-14-073) to the Howard County Department of Planning and Zoning on April 28, only two days before the April 30 deadline set by the easement agreement with the Columbia Association.

More Howard County funding for the Inner Arbor project

In further good news for the Inner Arbor Trust, Howard County continued its financial support of the Inner Arbor project, with the County Council on May 21 appropriating an additional $1.5 million for Chrysalis construction and related activities in the county’s FY15 budget (Council Bill 24-2014), as requested by County Executive Ken Ulman. (The $1.5 million was in the form of a challenge grant requiring the Trust to provide matching funds, although at the time the Trust was not yet authorized to solicit donations.)

The CA board’s endorsement of the Inner Arbor plan

However opposition to the Inner Arbor project from some Columbia Association board members continued. The primary strategy by which Inner Arbor opponents pursued their goal was a claim that the Trust had violated the terms of the previously-negotiated easement agreement for Symphony Woods by making “material changes” to the Inner Arbor concept plan.⁸ After discussing the easement issue in public meetings on May 27 and 28, in its June 12 meeting the Columbia Association Board of Directors narrowly approved by a 5–4 vote a last-minute agenda change to formally consider whether an easement violation had occurred. However the actual motion to hold the Inner Arbor Trust in violation failed on a 3–7 vote, with only Reg Avery, Alan Klein, and Russ Swatek voting in favor.

One question raised in connection with the easement controversy was whether or not the Columbia Association needed to, or at least should, formally approve the Inner Arbor plan in its current form (i.e., beyond the concept plan referenced in the easement agreement). At the July 10 CA board meeting the board considered this question, with Michael McCall of the Inner Arbor Trust present to answer questions posed by the CA board. After discussion the CA board voted 6–4 to endorse the Inner Arbor plan as submitted in the Site Development Plan, with Nancy McCord joining previous Inner Arbor supporters Michael Cornell, Brian Dunn, Tom O’Connor, Andy Stack, and Gregg Schwind in the majority, and Reg Avery, Jeanne Ketley, Alan Klein, and Russ Swatek on the losing side of the vote.

Meanwhile the Columbia Association had completed its original commitment to fund the Inner Arbor Trust: CA paid the Trust an additional $510,000 in the spring of 2014, for a total of $1,410,000 up to that point. The final $190,000 came from what was left of the $250,000 grant that the state of Maryland had made to CA for the original Symphony Woods Park project. ($60,000 of that money had already spent on design work for that project.) On June 18 the state approved CA reassigning the remaining $190,000 to the Inner Arbor Trust.

After the July 10 endorsement of Inner Arbor project by the Columbia Association Board of Directors the CA board transitioned into a role of providing oversight of the Inner Arbor Trust, for example through joint board meetings with the Trust on October 8 and subsequent dates. CA did not commit any further funding to the Inner Arbor Trust once the original $1.6 million commitment was satisfied.⁹

Review by the Planning Board

Instead the focus shifted again to the Howard County planning process, as the Inner Arbor Trust went before the Planning Board¹⁰ in November 2014 to request approval of SDP-14-073, the Site Development Plan for Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, with the clock ticking toward the November 30 deadline specified in the easement agreement with the Columbia Association.

The Planning Board first held a meeting to consider the Site Development Plan on November 6 but held off making a decision that night. Partly this was to allow more time for the many people who wanted to testify for and against the plan. In the end over forty people spoke about the plan, with opponents outnumbered 2–1 by supporters, who included new Columbia Association President and CEO Milton Matthews (who had replaced Phil Nelson in June) and Howard County Council Chair Mary Kay Sigaty (who referred to the plan as “an exceptional design” and urged the Planning Board to “vote it with enthusiasm”). Many others submitted written testimony, with County Council members Calvin Ball, Greg Fox, and Jen Terrasa writing in support of the plan along with Council member-elect Jon Weinstein.

The Planning Board also held up its deliberations to address concerns raised by the Howard County Citizens Association about allowing adequate time after publication of the Department of Planning and Zoning Technical Staff Report on SDP-14-073. Final consideration was postponed to two weeks later, for the last meeting of the Planning Board in November.

At the November 20 meeting, only ten days before the easement agreement’s deadline, the Planning Board rendered its decision, voting unanimously to approve the Site Development Plan. As requested by the Inner Arbor Trust the Planning Board’s decision encompassed not only the first two phases of park development, namely constructing the Chrysalis amphitheater and a pathway system, but the remaining five phases as well, including all other park features proposed in the revised Inner Arbor plan for the northern part of Symphony Woods. Phases 1 and 2 were approved without further conditions, while phases 3–7 were approved subject to further review and approval of final design details by the Department of Planning and Zoning and the Planning Board prior to beginning construction.

Speaking about his own decision, Planning Board Chair Josh Tzuker thanked Inner Arbor opponents Cy Paumier, Barbara Russell, and others for their roles in the creation of the community of Columbia—“probably the second most influential thing in my life [after my parents]”—but noted that “We’re on a precipice. . . . It’s time for something new and fresh.” In comparing Columbia to other Washington-Baltimore suburban communities “competing to create a cosmopolitan cultural center,” Tzuker noted that “We have Merriweather—that’s what sets us apart. . . . Merriweather is going to be this cultural touchstone that I think will bring people to Columbia.” He concluded by stating that the Site Development Plan submitted by the Inner Arbor Trust met the Planning Board’s criteria for Merriweather-Symphony Woods development, and that the board set the criteria the way it did because it wanted to promote a “holistic” vision of downtown Columbia—“the vision we all wanted to see.”

The county’s approval of the Site Development Plan meant that the Inner Arbor Trust had met all three of the key deadlines in the easement agreement with the Columbia Association. The Trust thus ended 2014 free to move forward with the project of developing Symphony Woods according to the Inner Arbor plan.

2015: Building

With the Howard County Planning Board having approved the Site Development Plan for Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, in 2015 the Inner Arbor Trust began the work of realizing that plan, both in terms of building the actual foundation for the Chrysalis amphitheater and also in terms of strengthening the organizational foundation for the Trust moving forward. A great deal of that work involved solidifying the Inner Arbor Trust’s relationships with the other entities involved in Merriweather-Symphony Woods development, in pursuit of tighter integration between the Symphony Woods and Merriweather Post Pavilion properties.

The I.M.A. agreement

On March 6, 2015, the Inner Arbor Trust entered into a long-term agreement with It’s My Amphitheater, Inc., the operators of Merriweather Post Pavilion. This agreement provided for an ongoing stream of payments from I.M.A. to the Trust for the use of Symphony Woods for Merriweather Post Pavilion events, amounting to a total of $1.7 million in Trust revenue for the first ten years of the agreement. (This $1.7 million was counted by Howard County as satisfying the matching requirement associated with the $1.5 million grant in 2014.) The agreement also provided for the use of public areas of the Merriweather Post Pavilion by park visitors during times when no events were being held there, in line with the theme of “operational elasticity” promoted by Michael McCall in his original Inner Arbor presentations.

On April 15 the Inner Arbor Trust Board of Directors assumed its present form as Dave Sciamarelli was elected to replace Paul Monteiro, who had in turn succeeded original board member Beverly White-Seals. The next-newest board member, Karen Newell, had previously been elected on August 7, 2014, to replace Deborah Ellinghaus. This left Gregg Schwind and Gill Wylie as the longest-serving Inner Arbor Trust board members, both having been on the board since the first board meeting on May 10, 2013.

Meanwhile on April 25 the Columbia Association again held an election for its Board of Directors. While still present, the controversies over the Inner Arbor plan were more muted in this election than in prior ones. Inner Arbor opponent Dick Boulton replaced supporter Tom O’Connor, Inner Arbor supporter Ed Coleman (running for an open seat) was defeated by Janet Evans, and Dr. Chao Wu replaced Inner Arbor supporter Michael Cornell, who did not run again. On May 14 the CA board selected Dick Boulton to replace Nancy McCord as one of CA’s representatives on the Inner Arbor Trust, with Gregg Schwind again selected for that role as well.

Continuation of Howard County funding

In May Howard County continued its financial support of the Inner Arbor Trust, as County Executive Alan Kittleman proposed, and the Howard County Council approved, $1.395 million of additional funding for the Trust as part of the FY16 budget. (The relevant legislation, Council Bill 23-2015, was introduced May 4, approved May 22, and signed into law June 1.) With this additional funding the county increased its support of Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods and the Chrysalis amphitheater to a total of $6.395 million, almost four times the funding contributed by the Columbia Association. (The relevant grant agreement was signed later that year on September 18, the third consecutive agreement between Howard County and the Inner Arbor Trust.)

The Howard Hughes agreements

On May 27, 2015, the Inner Arbor Trust continued its activities relating to integration with Merriweather Post Pavilion by entering into a reciprocal easement agreement with Howard Hughes Corporation subsidiaries Merriweather Post Business Trust and Howard Research and Development. This agreement provided for the Trust and Howard Hughes to coordinate activities relating to development of land and facilities intended for joint use between Merriweather Post Pavilion and Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, as envisioned by the downtown Columbia plan and the design guidelines for the Merriweather-Symphony Woods neighborhood.

(This agreement was made possible only because the Trust already had an easement from the Columbia Association for the land adjacent to Merriweather Post Pavilion on which the joint uses would occur. That adjacent acreage had been included in the Phase 1 easement area in the Trust’s previous easement agreement with CA.)

The next day, May 28, the Inner Arbor Trust appointed Nina Basu as its first General Counsel—a reflection of the increasing number of legal agreements the Trust was entering into and the increased amount of legal activity associated with the upcoming park construction and related activities. The Trust also appointed a new Treasurer, Kirsten Coombs. (Coombs replaced previous Treasurer Noreen Qureshi, who in turn had replaced Rafia Siddiqui, the Trust’s original Treasurer.)

On September 1 the Inner Arbor Trust entered into a trademark license agreement with Howard Hughes Corporation subsidiary Merriweather Post Business Trust. This agreement allowed the Trust the perpetual royalty-free use of the word mark “Merriweather” in connection with the naming and marketing of Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods. The Trust could thus leverage not only the existing broad public recognition of the Merriweather name, but also future marketing efforts by Howard Hughes in support of its own development activities in what it had taken to calling the “Merriweather District.”

Further integration with Merriweather Post Pavilion

On September 3, 2015, the Howard County Planning Board unanimously approved a new Final Development Plan, FDP-DC-MSW-1A, a revision of the Final Development Plan FDP-DC-MSW-1 originally submitted by the Columbia Association for Symphony Woods Park. While FDP-DC-MSW-1 covered only a 16-acre portion of Symphony Woods (the “public park” envisioned in the Inner Arbor concept plan), FDP-DC-MSW-1A covered a total of 35 acres including the entire Merriweather Post Pavilion property as well as additional portions of Symphony Woods comprising the “performance park” of the Inner Arbor concept plan. (The concept plan’s “curated park” in southern Symphony Woods—the proposed location for a sculpture garden—was not addressed by FDP-DC-MSW-1A.)

Specific changes in FDP-DC-MSW-1A included an increase in the height limit for the Merriweather Post Pavilion stagehouse, provision of ADA-compliant parking spaces, and a shared-use restroom in Symphony Woods. However FDP-DC-MSW-1A was equally significant for marking a new level of formal coordination in Merriweather-Symphony Woods planning among the various parties responsible for the properties, and even tighter integration between Merriweather Post Pavilion renovation projects and the development of Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods. (FDP-DC-MSW-1A was followed up in December by SDP-16-018, a Site Development Plan for renovations to both properties.) Finally, FDP-DC-MSW-1A replaced the original CA-submitted Final Development Plan (FDP-DC-MSW-1) and eliminated any lingering consistencies between that plan and the subsequent Site Development Plan SDP-14-073 approved by the Planning Board.

Together these and other relationships among the various organizations involved in downtown Columbia development formed the basis for a new identity for downtown, with Merriweather Post Pavilion at the center, Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods surrounding it, and both within a newly-named Merriweather District combining the Merriweather-Symphony Woods and Crescent neighborhoods—all within the context of the broader Columbia planned community.

Breaking ground on the Chrysalis

This heightened level of cooperation was celebrated on September 12, 2015, at the groundbreaking ceremony for the Chrysalis amphitheater, which featured representation from all the major players involved in the creation of Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, including the Inner Arbor Trust, the Columbia Association, Howard County Executive Alan Kittleman and members of the Howard County Council, the Howard Hughes Corporation, I.M.A., the Downtown Columbia Arts and Culture Commission, and the state of Maryland.

Also represented was the Columbia Festival of the Arts, whose executive director Todd Olson publicly announced the festival’s intent to host future performances at the Chrysalis amphitheater when completed—moving from the previous venue at the lakefront, Columbia’s traditional downtown, to the heart of Columbia’s future downtown. Finally, the ceremony featured participation by the Howard County Public School System, in the form of a student team from Oakland Mills High School that used the Minecraft world-building software to create a virtual model of the Chrysalis amphitheater and other planned features in Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods.

The beginning of Chrysalis construction

The months after the groundbreaking saw the plans for Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods started to be realized, as Whiting-Turner (the construction contractor selected by the Inner Arbor Trust) began the work of preparing the Chrysalis site. Appropriately enough, given the past controversies over tree preservation in Symphony Woods, Whiting-Turner’s first task was to carefully prune tree roots in areas to be excavated and place mats to protect critical root zones. Subsequent weeks saw the laying of water lines, construction of an underground cistern to control storm water runoff, and the beginnings of the foundation for the Chrysalis amphitheater.

As 2015 ended the visible evidence of the Chrysalis amphitheater’s presence was still below ground. 2016 will see the Chrysalis rise above the surface of Symphony Woods. Future articles in this series will describe the people and organizations bringing the Chrysalis to life and how their work will contribute to the final structure and the park surrounding it.

For further exploration

This article is based on material from a variety of online sources, including the following:

• Newspaper articles from the Baltimore Sun online archives for 2013, 2014, and 2015, including the following:
  • “CA board approves concept plan for Symphony Woods” (February 15, 2013)
  • “Details of Symphony Woods arts park revealed” (December 1, 2013)
  • “Inner Arbor plans ‘wow’ Howard design panel” (February 27, 2014)
  • “CA board endorses plans for Symphony Woods” (July 11, 2014)
  • “Howard Planning Board gives green light to Inner Arbor” (November 20, 2014)
  • “Downtown Columbia celebrates Chrysalis groundbreaking in Symphony Woods” (September 14, 2015)
• Newspaper articles from the Columbia Flier online archives
• Various Inner Arbor Trust documents, including the following:
  • IAT-CA easement (amended to include Lot 9B) [PDF] (March 14, 2014)
  • Letter to Hickory Ridge Village Manager Jessamine Duvall [PDF] (May 27, 2014) (summarizes history of the Inner Arbor Trust up to that time)
  • A Brief History of the Inner Arbor Trust [PDF] (October 2015)
• Various Howard County planning and legislative documents:
  • Downtown Columbia Plan: A General Plan Amendment [PDF] (February 1, 2010)
  • Land Development Review Process for Downtown Columbia Revitalization [PDF] (November 2010) (Outlines the 16-step county planning and zoning process applicable to the Merriweather-Symphony Woods Neighborhood)
  • Howard County Planning Board Decision and Order, Case No. PB 394 [PDF] (September 6, 2012) (Planning Board recommendations for changes to Symphony Woods Park plan, FDP-DC-MSW-1)
  • DPZ Technical Staff Report on SDP-14-073 [PDF] (October 30, 2014)
  • Planning Board decision on SDP-14-073 [PDF] (November 20, 2014) (Approval of Site Development Plan for Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods)
  • DPZ Technical Staff Report on FDP-MSW-1A [PDF] (August 20, 2015)
  • DPZ Technical Staff Report on SDP-16-018 [PDF] (December 3, 2015)
  • Council Bill 25-2013 (May 2013) ($3.5 million appropriation for Chrysalis design and construction)
  • Council Bill 24-2014 (May 2014) ($1.5 million appropriation for the Inner Arbor Trust along with a requirement for the Trust to provide matching funds)
  • Council Bill 23-2015 (May 2015) ($1.395 million appropriation for the Inner Arbor Trust)
• Various Columbia Association documents, including in particular the following with specific materials as noted:
  • FDP-DC-MSW-1, “Downtown Columbia Merriweather-Symphony Woods Neighborhood Final Development Plan” [PDF] (the original Symphony Woods Park plan as submitted to Howard County)
  • Board agenda for August 23, 2012 [PDF] (Jan Clark memo re Howard Hughes Corporation plans and their impact on CA)
  • Board agenda for October 11, 2012 [PDF] (Phil Nelson memo of October 5, 2012)
  • Board minutes for October 11, 2012 [PDF] (Phil Nelson presentation and straw polls)
  • Board minutes for January 24, 2013 [PDF] (Michael McCall presentation on the Inner Arbor concept plan)
  • Board agenda for February 14, 2013 [PDF] (Phil Nelson memo of February 7, 2013, “Formation of a Trust for Symphony Woods Development”)
  • “Formation of a Trust for Symphony Woods Development” [PDF] (Phil Nelson memo of February 13, 2013, updating the February 7 memo)
  • Board minutes for February 14, 2013 [PDF] (Approval of Inner Arbor concept plan, creation of independent 501(c)(3) organization, granting of easement)
  • Board minutes and related material for April 25, 2013 [PDF] (Discussion of the need to maintain an “arms-length distance” between CA and the Inner Arbor Trust)
  • Board work session on May 28, 2014 [PDF] (Appearance by Michael McCall and Inner Arbor Trust board members to discuss the project and questions concerning it)
  • Board minutes for June 12, 2014 [PDF] (Vote on whether the Inner Arbor Trust had violated the easement on Symphony Woods)
  • Board minutes for July 10, 2014 [PDF] (Vote on CA endorsement of the Inner Arbor plan)
  • Board Operations Committee agenda for November 14, 2015 [PDF] (Sheri Faranoff memo discussing guidelines for CA board members serving on the Inner Arbor Trust board)
• Various local blogs and blog posts, including in particular:
  • HocoRising (Tom Coale)
    • “Symphony Woods” (January 22, 2013)
    • “CA Board Recap: January 24, 2013 Board of Directors Meeting” (January 25, 2013)
  • Dr Chao Wu
    • “Background on CA and Inner Arbor Trust” (October 7, 2015) (Re-post of an article “Background on CA Board & Inner Arbor” by Andy Stack, dated September 15, 2015)

For more of my opinions on and explanations of various aspects of the Chrysalis and Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, see the Inner Arbor-related posts in the series “The Inner Arbor plan takes shape” and elsewhere on this blog. (Note that some of these posts contain outdated information relating to park features that were later dropped or revised.)

tl;dr: I explore the vision for a new park in Symphony Woods and the strategy to implement it.

This article is one in a series exploring in depth the creation of the Chrysalis amphitheater in Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods in Columbia, Maryland. For the complete list of articles please see the introduction to the series.

The previous article in this series recounted the history of Symphony Woods up to the fall of 2012. At that time the Columbia Association Board of Directors, at the suggestion of CA staff, decided to re-evaluate its plans for creating a park in Symphony Woods. That process ultimately led to CA’s adopting a new approach, dubbed the Inner Arbor plan, and creating a new organization, the Inner Arbor Trust, to implement that plan. This article describes the vision motivating the plan and the strategy to implement that vision as it was created and refined by Michael McCall, now President and CEO of the Inner Arbor Trust.

The roots of the Inner Arbor plan

Meetings of the Columbia Association Board of Directors feature a “Resident Speak Out” period during which Columbia residents and other users of CA services can briefly address the CA board on topics relevant to the Columbia Association. On September 22, 2011, one of the people speaking during the board meeting was Columbia resident Michael McCall.

McCall spoke of reading newspaper articles about the Design Advisory Panel meeting on the Symphony Woods Park Final Development Plan, and noted his agreement with the panel members’ concerns: “There’s not a vision for the whole park—not just the front that faces Little Patuxent [Parkway], but the entire ‘doughnut’, . . . the whole thing.” He went on to note, “We have to start with the end in mind: What do we want Symphony Woods to be twenty years from now? What is its strategic purpose? What is the guest experience? What is it that we want, what is it we aspire to?”

Columbia Association board member Suzanne Waller, alluding to the draft Symphony Woods Park vision statement that the board was considering (and would adopt at the next board meeting), responded that “in fact we do have a vision”. McCall replied, “That’s wonderful. However [in] the plans that I could download . . . and an RFP for a fountain, I did not see or hear or read or feel a vision. . . . A fountain is a tactic, and I’m looking for the strategy.”

Although it went mostly unremarked at the time, McCall’s appearance at the Columbia Association Board of Directors meeting that night marked the beginning of a major shift on the part of the CA board, a shift that ultimately resulted in CA’s adoption of the Inner Arbor plan, the creation of the Inner Arbor Trust, and the beginnings of Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods.

How did Michael McCall come to be involved with Symphony Woods? Originally from Rochester, Minnesota, in 1982 McCall moved to Columbia to join the Enterprise Development Company, the for-profit arm of the Enterprise Foundation (now Enterprise Community Partners), a non-profit organization created by Jim Rouse and his wife Patty in 1981 to help develop affordable housing in the US. After working on several Enterprise Development projects, including a “stealth” joint venture with the Walt Disney Company, in 1992 McCall started Strategic Leisure, Inc., a consulting firm working on development projects in the US and overseas.

Although he had lived in Columbia for thirty years, McCall had been relatively uninvolved in Columbia and Columbia Association affairs. As he noted in his Resident Speak Out comments, “I’ve never focused on where I live, because when you’re dealing with the Corps of Engineers in Tennessee [for a project in Pigeon Forge] you just kind of want to relax when you’re home.” Thus the perception of McCall by some that he was an outsider as far as Columbia downtown planning was concerned, not a true heir to the vision that Jim Rouse had for the community.

However a more accurate way to put it is that McCall, with his catchy slogans and talk of the “guest experience,” simply represented another aspect of Jim Rouse’s legacy—not just Rouse the earnest liberal reformer concerned with diversity and social justice, but also Rouse the enthusiastic developer who once claimed that “the greatest piece of urban design in the United States today is Disneyland.”

Prompted by the Design Advisory Panel’s verdict on the existing plan for Symphony Woods, McCall decided to take a look at the problem himself. After two decades of unsuccessful attempts to enhance Symphony Woods and almost a decade of community in-fighting over downtown Columbia development, McCall brought a different but still Rouse-like perspective on the problem, and circumstances were such that others were willing to consider that perspective and enter into conversations with him about the future of Symphony Woods.

The result of those conversations was a concept plan for what McCall called the “Inner Arbor” project—a punning name by which he sought to emphasize that the development of Merriweather-Symphony Woods, together with the simultaneous development of the Crescent property, could have as positive an impact on downtown Columbia as the Inner Harbor festival marketplace and associated developments had on downtown Baltimore.¹ The Inner Arbor plan embodied both a vision and (over time) an increasingly more detailed strategy for enhancing Symphony Woods in the context of the overall Merriweather-Symphony Woods neighorhood.

A vision in words and pictures

Contrasting a vision statement with a mission statement, local blogger James Howard noted, “The mission statement tells what we are doing. The vision statement tells why we are doing it. It [is] finishing the sentence that begins, ‘We imagine a world where . . .’”

The canonical vision for Merriweather-Symphony Woods is from the Downtown Columbia Plan. That vision can be re-expressed in Howard’s phrasing as follows: “We imagine a world where Merriweather-Symphony Woods is a new kind of cultural park, where the landscape becomes a setting for arts, cultural and civic uses.”

This is brief and to the point—something recommended for vision statements—and also reflects the community consensus on the future of the Merriweather-Symphony Woods neighborhood that was forged through the Howard County planning and legislative processes. It is the vision that informed the initial Inner Arbor concept plan presented by Michael McCall, and continues to inform the work of the Inner Arbor Trust to create Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods.

However this vision statement in and of itself is not as emotionally resonant as it might be. It works well in the context of a planning document, but less well as a vision to excite people. In contrast to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s advice on building a ship, it is more about collecting wood and assigning tasks and less about getting people to “long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

The Inner Arbor concept plan remedied this lack not by trying to rewrite the “official” Merriweather-Symphony Woods vision statement, but rather by using images and analogies to supplement it and make it more vivid. In particular, one key question addressed in the concept plan presentation is the following: If you wanted to create a “new kind of cultural park” for “arts, cultural, and civic uses,” and you had 45 acres of land to work with (the combined area of Symphony Woods and Merriweather Post Pavilion), what kind of park could you create?

The answer given by the concept plan presentation was that you could create something like Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen (20 acres), or Millennium Park in Chicago (25 acres)—and the presentation then went on to elaborate on that answer by showing several pictures of what Tivoli Gardens and Millienium Park actually look like to visitors. This made the Merriweather-Symphony Woods vision more visceral and appealing: If the pictures were translated into words then those words might be, “We imagine a world where Merriweather-Symphony Woods is to Columbia what Tivoli Gardens is to Copenhagen, or Millennium Park to Chicago.”

Re-expressing the Merriweather-Symphony Woods vision in these terms has several implications for what the Merriweather-Symphony Woods neighborhood might be, indeed what it must be in order for the vision to be realized:

The world we imagine in the vision for Merriweather-Symphony Woods is one where

. . . Merriweather-Symphony Woods is loved by Columbia and Howard County residents in the same way that Tivoli Gardens and Millennium Park are loved by residents of Copenhagen and Chicago—the sort of place you might go to meet your friends even if you don’t have definite plans, just because it’s a great place to be.

. . . Merriweather-Symphony Woods is known by people well outside the area—the sort of place where if you’re in town and able to go there you take a selfie of yourself and your friends, because you want other people to know you’ve been there.

. . . Merriweather-Symphony Woods has something–whether one thing or a combination of things–that can’t be found anywhere else.

Looking at the Merriweather-Symphony Woods vision statement in this alternative formulation also has implications for the strategy discussed in the next section:

First, realizing the Merriweather-Symphony Woods vision will be a long-term effort. For example, Tivoli Gardens has been the beneficiary of over 170 years of evolution. It shouldn’t take 170 years to fully realize the vision for Merriweather-Symphony Woods, but it certainly will take more than two or three years.

Second, realizing this vision will require an intensive design effort. Some people have looked at Symphony Woods simply as an exercise in preservation—that at the extreme it’s simply a matter of not cutting trees down or otherwise disturbing the woods. But the comparison to Tivoli Gardens and Millennium Park implies that preservation of trees, intelligent restoration of the landscape, and sensitively-designed park structures are all needed—Merriweather-Symphony Woods is too small a site, is in too built-up a setting, and supports too intensive a set of uses for a simple “hands off” strategy to work.

Finally, realizing the Merriweather-Symphony Woods vision requires looking outside Columbia to find the best and most appropriate design talents for the task at hand, wherever in the world they might be found.

Is this a realistic vision? The answer implied by the Inner Arbor concept plan presentation is yes, given a reasonable amount of time, money, and design talent. As Michael McCall noted in his Resident Speak Out comments, the key is to have the right strategy.

A strategy for the whole park

The vision of a “new kind of cultural park” that could be the equivalent of Tivoli Gardens or Millennium Park in a Columbia context is a compelling one. What was needed next was a suitable long-term strategy for making that vision a reality. As Michael McCall wrote in a column for the magazine Entertainment Management, “Strategy, like winning, is not everything; it is the only thing that counts until it is right.”

In the case of Symphony Woods there was a vision, along with proposed tactics (pathways, a fountain, a café), but no clear strategy. As McCall wrote in the same column concerning the “math of success,” “Lacking Strategy + Good Execution = Disappointment.” In the case of Symphony Woods the key to creating a good strategy was to not focus on just the section of Symphony Woods covered by the then-current Columbia Association plan, but rather to go up a level and consider the entire Merriweather-Symphony Woods neighborhood—the “whole park,” as McCall put it in his Resident Speak Out remarks, the “whole thing.”

The strategy embodied in the Inner Arbor concept plan is to treat Merriweather-Symphony Woods as three parks in one, or a “concerto in three parks” in McCall’s phrase:

The northern section of Symphony Woods, the 16-acre area covered by the Columbia Association’s previously-submitted Final Development Plan, is to be the “public park”. This is in line with people’s traditional conception of Symphony Woods: It is the part of Symphony Woods most familiar to Columbia and Howard County residents (including as the site of the Wine in the Woods festival), the part previously threatened by the intensive development contemplated in the original GGP draft downtown plan, and the part that the Columbia Association was already focusing on prior to the creation of the Inner Arbor plan.

The combination of Merriweather Post Pavilion and a relatively open adjacent area in the eastern part of Symphony Woods is to be the “performance park”. This combined area forms a natural east-west axis south of the public park, with the Symphony Woods portion having been previously considered as the site for a new Columbia Association headquarters, and is potentially suitable for other “arts, cultural and civic uses.”

Finally, the southern portion of Symphony Woods, just north of the Crescent property, is to be the “curated park,” with a focus on public art. Due to poor public access that area has been even more neglected and unused than the northern section of Symphony Woods. However with the planned build-out of the Crescent property the southern section of Symphony Woods will assume more importance, and arguably will one day be as prominent a gateway into the Merriweather-Symphony Woods neighborhood as the northern section. It also has a small pond to provide a focal point for the area and a backdrop for art works.

The Inner Arbor concept plan also contains a number of suggested ways to realize the “concerto in three parks” strategy: In the performance park, an “arts village” hosting new indoor theatrical venues to replace the existing Toby’s Dinner Theatre facility. In the curated park, a sculpture garden with “organic art” to complement the natural landscape. In the public park, an “iconic sculpture” and a “treeline” boardwalk to connect to the performance park. And finally, a bridge to tie Merriweather Post Pavilion and the arts village to a parking structure and transit facility suggested for outside of Symphony Woods on the current Toby’s Dinner Theatre site.

A strategy for the public park

The original Inner Arbor concept plan did not suggest any structures for the section of Symphony Woods just north of Merriweather Post Pavilion and just south of Little Patuxent Parkway. That area was already the subject of Columbia Association planning efforts for Symphony Woods Park, and there was already a set of proposed park features submitted as part of the Final Development Plan previously approved by the Howard County Planning Board. However the Planning Board had called for key changes to the FDP, including in particular rerouting paths to avoid trees and pursuing a closer integration of the park with Merriweather Post Pavilion.

The next step in the evolution of the Inner Arbor plan was to focus on that northern section of Symphony Woods, the section containing the public park envisioned in the Inner Arbor concept plan. This made sense for several reasons:

First, this was the aspect of Symphony Woods development that was furthest along. The Howard County planning process for downtown Columbia requires a total of 16 steps: eight steps for a Final Development Plan, and a further eight steps for a Site Development Plan. As noted in the final slides of the public presentations of the Inner Arbor concept plan, development of the northern public park section of Symphony Woods was already at step 9, having completed FDP review, while development of the performance park and curated park in the eastern and southern sections was at step 1.

Thus the Symphony Woods easement agreement between the Columbia Association and the Inner Arbor Trust prioritized development of the public park over development of the performance park and curated park. (See the next article in the series for more information on this agreement.)

Second, given the concurrent planning for the renovation of Merriweather Post Pavilion, developing a plan for integration of the pavilion property with the northern section of Symphony Woods was a high priority.

Finally, development of the performance park and curated park was and is conditional on the pace of development of the Crescent property surrounding Symphony Woods to the south and east: Public use of the performance park and associated arts village envisioned in the Inner Arbor concept plan assumes implementation of new facilities for public parking outside of Symphony Woods, while public use of the curated park assumes conversion of the existing private Symphony Woods Road south of Symphony Woods into a public street. Both of these developments will take some time to come to fruition.

Given these factors, Michael McCall’s chosen next task was to create an improved strategy for the “public park” aspect of the Inner Arbor concept plan, building on the previously-approved Final Development Plan together with the associated recommendations by the Planning Board for meandering paths and integration with Merriweather Post Pavilion.

Achieving better integration with Merriweather Post Pavilion was seemingly the tougher challenge, especially given the traditional practice of enclosing Merriweather Post Pavilion with a fence and entirely closing Symphony Woods during Merriweather events. McCall’s refined strategy for the public park in northern Symphony Woods was built on two principles, “operational elasticity” and “beyond the berm”:²

First, the Merriweather Post Pavilion property would be treated as an extension of the public park, and be opened to visitors year-round during times when the pavilion did not host ticketed events. In return access control for Merriweather Post Pavilion would be provided by a new boundary feature located in Symphony Woods proper, replacing the current fence at the property line on the north side of the pavilion site. The general public would then be allowed access to the portion of Symphony Woods north of this new boundary even during Merriweather Post Pavilion events.

These actions would open up a transition area on the east-west ridge line between the Symphony Woods and Merriweather Post Pavilion properties, a transition area in which a variety of “arts, cultural and civic uses” could be accomodated. In particular, this area could be used for the “Fountain Plaza” envisioned by the downtown Columbia plan, only located on the pavilion site rather than in Symphony Woods.³

In comparison to integration with Merriweather Post Pavilion, incorporating the “meandering paths” recommendation into the strategy seemed relatively straightforward. At the highest level it mainly required abandoning the relatively rigid cruciform arrangements of paths specified in the Final Development Plan and moving to a curved pathway system that respected the existing trees and the topography in which they were situated.

However in practice this aspect of the public park required significant thought as well, in particular to address the “industrial engineering” aspects discussed by Michael McCall in his original Resident Speak Out comments: Would the pathway system adequately handle circulation for the largest events at Merriweather Post Pavilion, as well as events like Wine in the Woods? How would the pathway system function to draw people into the public park? What park features would be most effective in attracting visitors, and how would the pathways most effectively direct people to those features?

Tactics for the public park

As it evolved the Inner Arbor plan for the public park reflected the answers to those questions, answers embodied in the various tactics by which the new park strategy was to be implemented. Michael McCall’s approach was to take the list of previously proposed “tactics,” i.e., the park features outlined in the approved Final Development Plan, and enlist each of them in the service of this new strategy.

As noted above, the fountain called out in the Final Development plan as being located in Symphony Woods was instead proposed to be relocated on the Merriweather Post Pavilion site as part of the transition area between the pavilion site and the Symphony Woods property.

A new feature not specifically called out in the Final Development Plan was the Caterpillar “green berm” stretching east to west just north of Merriweather Post Pavilion. The Caterpillar’s primary function is to provide access control from the northern section of Symphony Woods into the transition area bordering Merriweather Post Pavilion. It serves in place of a traditional fence, like the one presently separating Merriweather Post Pavilion from Symphony Woods, and makes for a much more visually attractive barrier—the “art of bounds,” as McCall put it.

The remaining features were relocated from their position in Symphony Woods as called out in the Final Development Plan to new positions elsewhere in Symphony Woods:

The children’s activity area, now named the Merriground, was originally proposed to be right next to the Merriweather VIP parking lot. It was moved to a more scenic location further north in the woods. The shared use café, the Butterfly in the Inner Arbor plan, was then moved to the activity area’s former location next to the Merriweather VIP parking lot, near the east entrance of Merriweather Post Pavilion, so that its shared use with Merriweather Post Pavilion would be more convenient.

Finally, the proposed shared use amphitheater, what is now to be the Chrysalis, was moved slightly to the east. This took it down a hill somewhat compared to the location in the FDP, providing more space for the audience and more separation from Merriweather Post Pavilion.

The Final Development Plan also referenced public art in the park. That function is fulfilled in the Inner Arbor plan by the Merriweather Horns sound sculptures, which replaced other art features proposed in an earlier iteration of the Inner Arbor plan.

The Inner Arbor plan has thus evolved from the earliest concept plan to the latest site development plan for the northern section. The concept plan of late 2012 and early 2013 provided an overall framework for developing the whole of Symphony Woods as a component of the Merriweather-Symphony Woods neighborhood, the more detailed plan of late 2013 provided a framework for developing the public park component of Merriweather-Symphony Woods, and the revised plan of early 2014 locked down the detailed site design that now drives the development of Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods.

The next article in this series will look at the processes and institutions by which and through which the vision and strategy discussed in this article are being realized in the current construction of the Chrysalis amphitheater.

For further exploration

This article is based on material from a variety of online sources, including the following:

• Newspaper articles from the Baltimore Sun online archives, including in particular the following:
  • “McCall invokes Rouse in design for Symphony Woods Park”
• Newspaper articles from the Columbia Flier online archives
• The Strategic Leisure web site, including in particular the following article:
  • “The Strategic Math of Success” [PDF]
• Various Inner Arbor Trust documents, including the following:
  • Michael McCall’s presentation of the Inner Arbor concept plan to Leadership Howard County [video] (September 20, 2013)
  • Inner Arbor Trust presentation to the Howard County Design Advisory Panel [video] (February 26, 2014)
• Various Howard County planning documents:
  • Downtown Columbia Plan: A General Plan Amendment [PDF] (February 1, 2010)
  • Howard County Design Advisory Panel minutes, July 13, 2011 [PDF]
  • Howard County Planning Board Decision and Order, Case No. PB 394 [PDF] (September 6, 2012)
  • Land Development Review Process for Downtown Columbia Revitalization [PDF] (November 2010)
• Various Columbia Association documents, including in particular the following:
  • FDP-DC-MSW-1, “Downtown Columbia Merriweather-Symphony Woods Neighborhood Final Development Plan” [PDF]
• Jim Rouse comments on Disneyland
• James Howard’s blog post on vision statements
• Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s full quote in English and the original French

For more of my opinions on and explanations of various aspects of the Chrysalis and Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, see the Inner Arbor-related posts in the series “The Inner Arbor plan takes shape” and elsewhere on this blog. (Note that some of these posts contain outdated information relating to park features that were later dropped or revised.)

tl;dr: I recap the history of Symphony Woods and the various attempts over the years to develop it as a park.

This article is one in a series exploring in depth the creation of the Chrysalis amphitheater in Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods in Columbia, Maryland. For the complete list of articles please see the introduction to the series.

Symphony Woods is a tract of (mostly) wooded land in the heart of Columbia, Maryland, and the site of the future Chrysalis amphitheater. The Chrysalis itself is located in the eastern part of Symphony Woods, in a relatively more hilly area than the more lawn-like northern section. (The Chrysalis is located near the bottom of one such hill, with the hillside providing space for the audience at Chrysalis events.)

This article in the “Creating the Chrysalis” series explores the long and tangled history of attempts to create a park in Symphony Woods prior to the adoption in 2013 of the so-called Inner Arbor plan, which aims to create a new park for downtown Columbia, Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods.

This 50-year history can be divided somewhat arbitrarily into three periods:

• 1963–2007. From the creation of Columbia to the transition from the Rouse Company to General Growth Properties as the developer of downtown Columbia, a long era in which Symphony Woods remained undeveloped and (for the most part) out of the spotlight.
• 2008–2009. An intense period of controversy over GGP’s plans for downtown Columbia in general and Symphony Woods in particular (as part of what GGP called the “Merriweather” neighborhood), and the beginnings of the Columbia Association’s own efforts to create a park in Symphony Woods.
• 2010–2012. The beginning of the present era of downtown Columbia development, with the adoption by Howard County of the Downtown Columbia Plan, including designation of the combined “Merriweather-Symphony Woods” neighborhood, the transition from General Growth Properties to the Howard Hughes Corporation, and the continuation of and ultimate hiatus in the Columbia Association’s project to develop a Symphony Woods park.

1963–2007: Symphony Woods

In October 1963 developer Jim Rouse surprised Howard County officials and residents by announcing his intent to build a planned community on almost 14,000 acres of land recently acquired by a joint venture between his company and Connecticut General Life Insurance. Of those almost 14,000 acres, approximately 150 acres, or just over 1% of the total land area, were reserved for the downtown area of what was to become Columbia, Maryland.

Among the promised amenities for the planned community of Columbia was an extensive system of pathways, open space, and parks, including a 40-acre tract of wooded land in Columbia Town Center that evolved into what we know today as Symphony Woods. However the simple story told in the marketing material was complicated by the decisions made by Rouse and his associates.

First, within the woods at the town center Rouse planned an amphitheater proposed as a summer home for the National Symphony and a venue for other cultural events. In hopes of soliciting donations from Washington heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post, when completed in 1967 this amphitheater was christened Merriweather Post Pavilion—although in the end Post did not contribute any funds to construct or maintain it. The surrounding wooded land, now named Symphony Woods and comprising 37 acres, enclosed the 10-acre Merriweather Post Pavilion site on all sides, so that all access to the amphitheater required traversing Symphony Woods.

Second, while deeding Symphony Woods itself to the newly-formed Columbia Association, Rouse retained ownership of the Merriweather Post Pavilion site as well as a crescent-shaped property to the west and south of Symphony Woods, bordered by Broken Land Parkway and US 29. This latter property, in a prime location for intensive office, retail, or residential development, was kept as open space pending the future build-out of downtown Columbia.

These two decisions determined the fate of Symphony Woods for the next several decades. On the northern part of the property (next to Little Patuxent Parkway) the woods were treated as simply an extension of and access point to Merriweather Post Pavilion. This was especially true after a series of gatecrashing incidents at Merriweather rock concerts in the 1970s led to Symphony Woods being closed to non-ticket-holders while events were being held at the pavilion.

Meanwhile the western and southern parts of the wooded area (what we know today as the Crescent property) resembled a public park to some extent but were actually Rouse-owned land, with only private roads across Rouse property providing easy vehicular access to these parts of the woods.

The result was underuse of the general Symphony Woods and Crescent areas outside the context of Merriweather Post Pavilion. A children’s petting zoo operated in those areas during the summer month in the 1970s and early 1980s before closing due to lack of business. The annual Maryland Renaissance Festival was also hosted there during roughly the same time period, before it was moved to a dedicated site in Anne Arundel County.

No new uses emerged to replace them until the early 1990s, around the 25th birthday of Columbia. In 1993 the first Wine in the Woods festival was held, while in 1994 the Symphony of Lights Christmas display was created. The former was held in Symphony Woods itself, while the latter mainly occupied the Crescent property, with only a relatively small portion of the display in Symphony Woods proper.

1993 and 1994 also saw the first attempts to develop Symphony Woods as a true park, as the Columbia Association contracted with Land Design Research (later renamed LDR International), a landscape design firm founded by former Columbia planner Cy Paumier and his associates, to study ways to increase the use of Symphony Woods.

LDR International recommended creation of a pathway around Symphony Woods (i.e., circling the Merriweather Post Pavilion property), with a more formal park entrance and boardwalks over environmentally sensitive areas, a formal garden and separate wildflower plantings, seating for picnickers, and a “sound garden” with hidden speakers or fountains. The Columbia Association chose not to pursue this plan. Five years later in 1999 LDR International again presented a Symphony Woods proposal to CA, and again no action was taken.

However the general idea that more could be done with Symphony Woods persisted. For example, the Howard County General Plan 2000 mentioned it as an “attractive open space resource that could be used more fully” and recommended that Symphony Woods “be augmented for Columbia residents and for all those who come to Downtown Columbia to work, shop or spend leisure time.”

More years passed until 2003, when in April discussion of downtown Columbia development was revived by a Rouse Company request to Howard County to increase limits on residential density to support up to 2,100 new residences in Columbia, including new residential development on the still-unused Crescent property. Later that year Howard County Council member (and future County Executive) Ken Ulman and Columbia Association board¹ member Joshua Feldmark attempted to revive the idea of developing Symphony Woods as a park. Again, nothing substantial resulted.

In 2004, eight years after Jim Rouse’s death, the Rouse Company was purchased by General Growth Properties. As a consequence of the acquisition GGP assumed the Rouse Company’s privileged role with respect to planning and zoning in Columbia: Under the ”New Town” zoning scheme originally created by Howard County, only the Rouse Company, and now GGP, could request zoning changes in Columbia, even in the case of properties like Symphony Woods that were owned by others.

That same year, amidst uncertainty over the future of Merriweather Post Pavilion, a citizens advisory panel produced a report that recommended “positioning Merriweather as a center for the arts, education and culture and making it an important regional and cultural force.” The next year, in 2005, the Columbia Association board considered moving CA headquarters to Symphony Woods, in part as a money-saving measure.

However the most important event in 2005 with respect to Symphony Woods was the beginning of a formal planning process for Columbia Town Center, including two “town hall” meetings sponsored by General Growth Properties in May and June and a “charrette” in October, a week-long series of meetings to solicit public comments on the future of downtown Columbia.

The charrette and related meetings resulted in the Howard County Department of Planning and Zoning publishing in February 2006 a draft Columbia Downtown Master Plan. This plan treated Symphony Woods, Merriweather Post Pavilion, and the adjoining Crescent property as a single neighborhood for planning purposes, and envisioned it as “a cultural, residential, service retail, and office district.”

As for Symphony Woods itself, while envisioning the area as remaining “largely unchanged” the draft master plan noted “opportunities for public amenities such as plazas, pathways, public art, cultural monuments, and a skating rink,” and possibly small buildings “limited to civic or recreational uses”. For various reasons, including a lack of consensus around the details of downtown development, Howard County did not carry this master plan forward past the draft stage.

(In connection with this, during 2006 and 2007 there was also intense controversy over the Plaza Residences, a 22-story luxury condominium tower proposed to be built in downtown Columbia near the lakefront. The controversy was marked by accusations that the Howard County Planning Board had illegally approved the project, as well as more general concerns about high-density development in downtown Columbia. The project was essentially abandoned in 2008 due to the recession and the bankruptcy of its developer, WCI, but litigation relating to the project was not finally resolved until 2011. Although not directly related to Symphony Woods, the Plaza controversy energized anti-development activists and influenced attitudes toward subsequent proposals for downtown Columbia.)

Instead of a master plan the Department of Planning and Zoning sponsored the creation of a more general “framework” document, Downtown Columbia: A Community Vision. Released in draft form in September 2007 and in final form in December 2007, this document stated that “Symphony Woods needs to be preserved and enhanced as the ‘Central Park’ within Downtown” and concluded that “selected new recreational features may need to be added and activities may need to be programmed”. It also recommended “woodland restoration” and the addition of public art.

During this period General Growth Properties held its own private meetings with various civic and business groups to discuss its ideas for downtown development. However the Columbia Association was not among them: After having been criticized in October 2005 for having a private meeting related to the downtown Columbia charrette, the CA board in March 2006 prohibited CA President Maggie Brown and other CA staff members from having private discussions with General Growth Properties and Howard County regarding the development of downtown Columbia.

Columbia Association board members cited a provision of the Maryland Homeowners Association Act that (except for special circumstances, such as discussions of litigation), “all meetings of the homeowners association, including meetings of the board of directors or other governing body of the homeowners association or a committee of the homeowners association, shall be open to all members of the homeowners association or their agents”. The CA board interpreted (or extended) that provision as covering meetings of CA staff with GGP and Howard County in addition to meetings involving the board members themselves. CA board members subsequently reiterated to GGP in October 2007 their decision to discuss matters of mutual interest regarding downtown Columbia only in public meetings.

2008–2009: Merriweather

In April 2008 General Growth Properties presented to the public its own proposed master plan for downtown Columbia. Like the draft Columbia Downtown Master Plan, the GGP draft plan treated Merriweather Post Pavilion and Symphony Woods as a single area for planning purposes (splitting out the Crescent property as a separate neighborhood), and envisioned the combined area, now christened “Merriweather,” as “a new kind of cultural park where the landscape becomes a setting for arts, cultural and civic uses.”

The draft GGP plan proposed more integration between Merriweather Post Pavilion and Symphony Woods, with the Merriweather infrastructure “designed to open outward supporting other planned and programmed events in Symphony Woods,” and recommended that the park “be designed for daily use with flexible spaces to be enjoyed in a variety of ways, including places of retreat and isolation from the urban context.”

More controversially, the plan proposed development of multiple civic and cultural buildings and other facilities within the northern section of Symphony Woods just south of Little Patuxent Parkway, including “a new Columbia Association headquarters, library, museum, galleries, and sculpture garden”. It also proposed a new east-west street crossing Symphony Woods south of Little Patuxent Parkway and north of Merriweather Post Pavilion, and a pedestrian promenade from the Mall in Columbia “[leading] to a new Fountain Plaza which connects directly to Merriweather Post Pavilion.”

A public meeting between General Growth Properties and the Columbia Association had occurred in early April less than three weeks before, after lengthy negotiations between CA and GGP relating to the time, place, and public nature of the meeting. The meeting itself covered only general discussions about matters relating to downtown Columbia and Symphony Woods, and did not address specific features of GGP’s plan. After the first public unveiling of the draft GGP master plan later that month, Columbia Association board members expressed surprise at GGP’s proposals for Symphony Woods and asserted CA’s right to determine how Symphony Woods should be developed.

Beginning in May 2008 and continuing during the summer General Growth Properties held a series of “Vision in Focus” public presentations describing the proposed master plan, as well as a separate “Community Discussions” series to solicit comments on the plan. During the same period the Columbia Association Board of Directors began the process of creating its own alternative proposals for Symphony Woods and downtown Columbia in general.

In June the CA board adopted a 17-point position statement that articulated CA’s position on desired outcomes for downtown development, including that “Symphony Woods will be protected and will serve as Columbia’s Community Park,” and in July it adopted guidelines for CA staff discussions with GGP regarding Symphony Woods, including that there be “provisions for a gathering place for individuals and community events” and “limited new roadways or buildings of a park-related scale.”

However at this time the Columbia Association did not yet have an actual alternative plan for Symphony Woods, although CA board member Cynthia Coyle apparently created an informal concept plan featuring a carousel, a children’s garden and arboretum, and some sort of water feature.² In the fall of 2008 the Columbia Association was again approached by Cy Paumier, John Slater, and their associates, who had previously worked with CA in the 1990s on plans for Symphony Woods. After meeting with representatives of General Growth Properties in October regarding GGP’s downtown Columbia plans, in December the CA board approved having Paumier, Slater, and their associates create a CA-sponsored concept plan for Symphony Woods.

In the meantime the formal Howard County planning process relating to the General Growth Properties plan had begun, with a submission by GGP to the Department of Planning and Zoning in October 2008. In November the DPZ provided a response to that submission in the form of its Technical Staff Report, intended as a set of recommendations to the Howard County Planning Board.

The Department of Planning and Zoning staff report noted that the General Growth Properties plan “[included] significant reduction of parkland in Symphony Woods” and “[did] not provide for sufficient preservation of existing trees”. The report’s list of “Key Recommendations” included a recommendation that “The Plan should provide for an acre-to-acre replacement plan of parkland for each acre of Symphony Woods where new buildings are planned; or, the plan should suggest other locations for proposed arts, cultural and community facilities if the Columbia Association does not authorize such facilities on their land.”

The DPZ staff report also included comments from other Howard County agencies about the General Growth Properties proposal. The Howard County Library System was “excited” about “the concept of a new, state-of the-art Central Library . . . that would serve as both an anchor and a draw to the ‘Cultural Center Avenue’ described in General Growth Properties’ proposed plans for a revitalized Columbia Town Center,” while the Howard County Arts Council noted that the plan’s arts and culture sections were consistent with the arts recommendations in previous Howard County planning documents, including Downtown Columbia: A Community Vision.

However the Howard County Office of Environment Sustainability warned that the General Growth Properties plan “would reduce the natural areas within Symphony Woods and includes building and road construction which would damage or remove prime areas of healthy mature forest,” and went on to note that, “While there are many strong environmental enhancements included in the plan, it also calls for the removal of 48% of the trees in the Merriweather and Crescent areas (588 of 1214 trees).”

Having received the Department of Planning and Zoning report, the Howard County Planning Board held off on making an immediate decision on the General Growth Properties plan, and instead started a series of public work sessions. These sessions, including testimony by interested parties, began on January 8, 2009, with GGP’s response to the DPZ staff report and ran through the winter, spring and summer.

As of April 9, 2009, a total of 25 organizations and over a hundred individuals had provided testimony to the Planning Board. Organizations supporting General Growth Properties’ submission included activist groups such as Bring Back the Vision, Columbia 2.0, and Columbia Tomorrow, as well as more established groups like the Chamber of Commerce, Columbia Center for Theatrical Arts, Columbia Orchestra, and the Business Alliance. The activist groups Alliance for a Better Columbia, the Coalition for Columbia’s Downtown, and the Howard County Citizens Association organizations urged GGP to submit a new plan, as did the League of Women Voters.

The Columbia Association, along with various Columbia village boards, was recorded as being somewhere in the middle, requesting various types of amendments to the plan but not requesting that it be resubmitted. In particular, with respect to Symphony Woods CA expressed concern that “the two large buildings, underground parking, and several roads proposed for Symphony Woods are in direct contradiction to CA’s vision,” that “CA is very concerned about the removal of many trees in Symphony Woods and wants to preserve the integrity of the parkland,” and therefore “CA does not agree with exchanging existing land in the heart of Symphony Woods for other land” (as proposed by GGP).

While the Planning Board was taking public testimony the Columbia Association continued its efforts to produce its own plan for Symphony Woods. On March 26, 2009, the Columbia Association Board of Directors reviewed an initial Symphony Woods concept plan (one of three created by Cy Paumier, John Slater, and associates), approved it, and directed that it be presented to the public. The CA board followed up on August 27 later that year by unanimously approving sending a letter to the Howard County Planning Board notifying it of CA’s intention to present a concept plan for Symphony Woods.

A new wrinkle was added to the controversy of Columbia downtown planning in April 2009 when General Growth Properties declared bankruptcy. GGP’s Columbia operations were not part of the bankruptcy petition, and GGP declared its intent to move forward with its proposed plan. However GGP’s financial problems introduced new uncertainty into the long-term development of Columbia according to the proposed plan.

On September 17, 2009, after several months of public work sessions and testimony, the Howard County Planning Board finally made its formal recommendations to the Howard County Council regarding the Downtown Columbia Plan proposed by General Growth Properties and the associated zoning regulations (ZRA-113).

Concerning Symphony Woods, the Planning Board unanimously recommended “downtown development standards to protect large, mature, specimen trees in Symphony Woods,” that “Symphony Woods be maintained and used as Columbia’s downtown park for passive recreational uses only”,³ and that “there be no buildings on Columbia Association-owned land except for ancillary use facilities, like a small café, to support passive recreational uses”. The board also recommended that “pedestrian connections to the Mall and from Merriweather Post Pavilion be improved to facilitate frequent usage within Symphony Woods” and that “the County Council request a presentation by the Columbia Association regarding its plan for Symphony Woods.”

The day before, on September 16, the Columbia Association presented to the public the concept plan developed by Cy Paumier, John Slater, and associates for development of Symphony Woods (a plan CA originally promised to release in April). Shortly thereafter the Columbia Association Board of Directors voted 7-2 to approve the plan for Symphony Woods as presented by Paumier, Slater, and associates.

What became known as the “Paumier plan” (more formally, the plan for “Symphony Woods Park”) rejected General Growth Properties’ idea of cultural and civic buildings in the northern section of Symphony Woods in favor of “a plaza to include an interactive water feature and a small café with restrooms” as well as “a children’s play area, sculptures, and future park related uses” (the latter being unspecified in the original Paumier plan). Like the GGP plan, the Paumier plan retained the idea of a north-south alignment to “reinforce the visual axis connecting Town Center with the Pavilion”. The pathway system was proposed to be circular, with the “center of the circle, with a modest amount of tree thinning, [being] a special outdoor room for the community to gather.”

2010–2012: Merriweather-Symphony Woods

November 2009 saw the Howard County Council begin its consideration of the proposed downtown plan, as Council Chair Mary Kay Sigaty introduced two proposed pieces of legislation, Council Bill 58 (CB58-2009) to adopt a downtown Columbia plan as an amendment to the Howard County General Plan 2000, and Council Bill 59 (CB59-2009) to implement the necessary changes to Howard County zoning regulations to enforce the plan’s provisions. The Council held public hearings on the bills in November and again in January 2010 before moving to final consideration of the legislation at the beginning of February.

With respect to Symphony Woods the final version of Council Bill 58 made a number of substantive changes from the bill originally introduced (which reflected the General Growth Properties plan). Amendment 7 (together with Amendment 1 to Amendment 7, which made additional technical corrections) retained the language in the GGP plan calling for “a new kind of cultural park where the landscape becomes a setting for arts, cultural and civic uses,” but emphasized the integration of Symphony Woods into this vision by designating the combined Merriweather Post Pavilion and Symphony Woods properties as the “Merriweather-Symphony Woods Neighborhood.”

Amendment 7 also removed the language in the General Growth Properties plan referring to buildings in the northern section of Symphony Woods, and replaced it with language referencing “compatible commercial uses such as a café in the park or museum shop”. Similarly, language referring to “park drives” through Symphony Woods was replaced with language referencing “a new system of paths and infrastructure [that] will support festivals and other events in the park,” with “access through Merriweather-Symphony Woods that connects the civic and cultural uses [that] will be compatible with the topography”. However Amendment 7 retained language from the GGP plan referencing “a new north/south axis from Market Square at The Mall” and “a new Fountain Plaza which connects to Merriweather Post Pavilion.”

CB58-2009 and CB59-2009 were unanimously approved by the Howard County Council on February 1, 2010, with the Columbia Flier singling out Council Chair Mary Kay Sigaty as “largely credited with leading council members through revising the plan”. Both bills were subsequently signed by Howard County Executive Ken Ulman on February 3, and the new plan from CB58-2009 officially published as the document Downtown Columbia Plan: A General Plan Amendment.

Adoption of the Downtown Columbia Plan did not quell opposition however. Opponents of the 5,500-unit allowance for residential units in downtown Columbia started a drive to force a referendum on that part of the plan, while others planned a challenge to Mary Kay Sigaty in the Democratic primary for Howard County Council that year. (Both efforts were ultimately unsuccessful.)

In the meantime the Columbia Association continued to move forward with the Paumier plan for Symphony Woods Park. In April 2010 the CA board directed staff to prepare for a groundbreaking in May, and on May 18 CA leaders thanked local legislators Sen. Edward Kasemeyer and Del. Elizabeth Bobo for their help in securing a $250,000 grant from the state of Maryland, and welcomed the promise of another $250,000 grant from what the Baltimore Sun termed a “mysterious area nonprofit” from outside Howard County that wished to remain anonymous.

However on May 20 Columbia Association President Phil Nelson informed the CA board of a potential roadblock to CA’s development of Symphony Woods, due to new Howard County planning processes imposed by CB58-2009 and CB59-2009, including so-called “CEPPA” requirements (for “Community Enhancements, Programs and Public Amenities”).

While some board members thought the Columbia Association was exempt from such requirements (board member Cynthia Coyle remarked, “The curiosity I have is why would we be held up by a CEPPA”), Nelson recommended on June 29 that “CA work through the development process that the County has imposed in CB58 and CB59“, warning that “by demanding and being granted an exemption from the rules and regulations that the County Council feel are in the best interests of the residents of Columbia and Howard County, CA will be the one that opens the door to the possibilities of bad planning and judgment.”

In July the Columbia Association put out an request for proposals for consultants to work on the design and development of Symphony Woods Park, including creation of the Final Development Plan, Site Development Plan, and related documents needed for the planning process.⁴ By November planning work was well under way, with construction projected to start in late 2011. One complicating factor arose with the planned fountain, namely that the Howard County Bureau of Environmental Health advised that “restrooms must be provided in order to receive Health Department approval for a building permit for an interactive fountain.”

November 2010 also saw a major change in the world of downtown Columbia development as the newly-created Howard Hughes Corporation was spun out of General Growth Properties as a separate company to handle GGP’s planned community portfolio. In addition to ownership of Merriweather Post Pavilion and the Crescent property, Howard Hughes also assumed GGP’s responsibilities for planning in Columbia Town Center.

Planning work continued on Symphony Woods Park. As of December 15 a “Phase 1 & 2 Design Development Plan” being considered by the Columbia Association Planning and Strategy Committee had changed the circular pathway system of the concept plan to an elliptical pathway, with a fountain and accompanying snack shop with restrooms (presumably to satisfy health department requirements) on the southwest side of the ellipse. The snack shop backed up against the Merriweather Post Pavilion fence, with access to the pavilion still through the traditional east and west gates.

As in the concept plan there was a grand staircase down to the pathway system from Little Patuxent Parkway across from the mall access road, in line with the Downtown Columbia Plan language about “a new north/south axis from Market Square at The Mall”. However the staircase design did not include any ramps to address accessibility concerns.

This design was used in the preparation of a draft Final Development Plan prepared for review by the Columbia Association Board of Directors in March 2011 in advance of a future public pre-submission meeting for the project. At about the same time Cy Paumier created and submitted an alternative design drawing for review by the board.

In April the Strategic Implementation Committee of the Columbia Association reviewed a new alternate “Plan B” layout for development of Symphony Woods, presumably based on Cy Paumier’s new design. This new design eliminated the elliptical pathway system of the previous design in favor of a cruciform system in which a north-south pathway ran from the grand staircase at Little Patuxent Parkway (retained from the previous design) south to a point across the Merriweather Post Pavilion fence from the Merriweather restrooms. An east-west path crossed the north-south path at a circular plaza with a fountain at its center. The snack shop was no longer in the design, but a location for a possible future café was noted at the south end of the north-south path next to the Merriweather fence. As in the previous design, the grand staircase at Little Patuxent Parkway lacked an accompanying ramp.

In early May the Strategic Implementation Committee recommended that “the CA Board of Directors approve the Staff to redirect the work of the project team” to produce a Final Development Plan for the new Plan B design, and on June 9 the CA board unanimously adopted the new design. CA subsequently presented this design to the public on June 16 in a so-called “presubmission meeting” prior to submitting the new Final Development Plan to Howard County.

By July 2011 the schedule for the groundbreaking on the Symphony Woods Park project had been pushed back to March 2012. In the next stage in the process the Columbia Association presented the new design to the Howard County Design Advisory Panel on July 13. The 36-page presentation included two plan renderings of the new cruciform pathway system, a drawing of the proposed staircase from Little Patuxent Parkway down to the north-south path, and a concept drawing of the fountain and café marked “for discussion purposes only.”

At the July 13 meeting various Design Advisory Panel members criticized the design as lacking a suitable vision and “strength of design,” and the panel as a whole recommended (among other things) defining a “specific vision for this site” and providing “more clarity to a theme for the neighborhood.”

Taking stock after the presubmission meeting and Design Advisory Panel meeting, Columbia Association staff noted that key issues raised at the presubmission meeting included “accessibility, restrooms, the fountain, circulation inside the park, connectivity to the park, parking, and [the] master plan” and made a number of recommendations, starting with adding a ramp to the staircase into the park.

As for the Design Advisory Panel meeting, CA staff agreed that the DAP motions “[reflected] the feeling . . . that the ‘big picture’ for the park must be more fully developed and shared with the community” and noted that “we have all been focused on getting phase 1 constructed”. The staff concluded that “it would be beneficial to develop a clear and inspirational vision statement that reflects the site attributes, the Board’s desired outcomes and the context in Town Center.”

At the September 8 Columbia Association board meeting the Planning and Strategy committee recommended adopting a new vision statement for Symphony Woods. The 11-paragraph draft statement began, “Symphony Woods Park will be Columbia’s central park one day and will be a place of music, the arts and nature.” The statement went on to note, “The central issue in designing Symphony Woods Park is to create access through the woods in a way that protects the trees and the natural landscape while supporting use of the park by greater numbers of people.”

The CA board subsequently approved a vision statement on October 13 after amending it in various ways.⁵ The vision statement envisioned Symphony Woods as “Columbia’s central park,” “a breathtaking gateway to Merriweather Post Pavilion,” and “a place that celebrates music, arts and nature”. The statement also envisioned Symphony Woods as providing “venues for energetic, creative activities such as community fairs, cultural events, art & craft vendors, local artists and spaces for reflective respite.”

Work on the park project continued, with a contract awarded later that fall for the design of the planned fountain. At a meeting of the Columbia Association Board of Directors on January 26, 2012, various options for the fountain were presented to the board, with the board members offering their respective critiques of the designs.

Meanwhile Columbia Association staff were working with the Howard County Department of Planning and Zoning to progress the Symphony Woods Park project through the county planning process. On March 5, 2012, CA submitted a Final Developmemt Plan for the park to the county, along with other required documents. The first Howard County Planning Board meeting on the FDP and related submissions was scheduled for June 21.

On June 28 the Department of Planning and Zoning issued a Technical Staff Report on the Columbia Association’s Final Development Plan for development of a park in the 16-acre northern section of Symphony Woods, FDP-DC-MSW-1. This FDP included not only the pathway system, fountain, and café previously discussed, but also a “shared use pavilion” and “shared use amphitheater” to be available for both Symphony Woods and Merriweather Post Pavilion events, as well as a “play activity area” and “woodland garden area.”

The pathway system was the north-south/east-west cruciform geometric arrangement from the Plan B design, with other paths leading in curved arcs from Little Patuxent Parkway to the proposed shared use pavilion at the Merriweather fence and then back out to Little Patuxent Parkway. Other than mention of the shared use facilities the FDP as presented showed minimal integration with Merriweather Post Pavilion, with the entrances into the pavilion some distance from the proposed features, and the proposed north-south pathway dead-ending at the Merriweather Post Pavilion fence across from the Merriweather restrooms.

The DPZ Technical Staff Report recommended approval of the Final Development Plan subject to addressing various technical comments. However it also referenced the Design Advisory Panel’s recommendations regarding design guidelines, and added, “Subsequent plans should reflect careful coordination with Merriweather Post Pavilion to maximize the importance of the entire Neighborhood as a cultural and community centerpiece.”

The Planning Board held a public meeting on the Columbia Association’s proposals on July 12, with testimony from both CA representatives and the general public. Concern over the trees in Symphony Woods was a major theme of the testimony, with several people objecting to the removal of mature trees. According to CA testimony the estimated number of trees to be removed was 64 in a “worst-case scenario” involving the proposed pathway configuration; however this did not address trees to be removed within the area of Merriweather Post Pavilion or (apparently) in the Symphony Woods locations where the shared use amphitheater, pavilion, café, play activity area, and other as-yet-undesigned features were to be located.

On July 19, 2012, the Planning Board voted 5-0 to approve the Final Development Plan, but did not release its final “decision and order” until September 6 after a vacation break. That decision reiterated comments made by Planning Board members in the July 19 meeting, and formally recommended that the Columbia Association make certain key changes to its proposals. One of these was to reroute pathways to avoid removal of trees, “consider[ing] existing topography and vegetation, and adjusting paths to meander around healthy trees to increase the number of trees that may remain.”

The other change was to develop a plan for integration of Symphony Woods with Merriweather Post Pavilion, with the Planning Board emphasizing “the need for the development of Symphony Woods Park to coordinate with the redevelopment of Merriweather Post Pavilion,” recommending that the plan “maximize potential interaction with Merriweather Post Pavilion with shared use facilities and cross access between the sites,” and noting that “concepts employed in the park should increase opportunities for year-round use.”

In the meantime a Columbia Association staff report (dated August 17) and an accompanying presentation at the CA board meeting on August 23 discussed how to proceed in the light of the Planning Board decision. The staff report noted, “This point in the process is an opportune time to consider the park plan in light of other recent planning efforts,” citing parallel efforts by the Howard Hughes Corporation to redevelop Merriweather Post Pavilion, including “a dramatically different concept for Merriweather-Symphony Woods that includes many new uses on CA land and on HHC land that will, if implemented, make the neighborhood more like the cultural park envisioned in the Downtown Plan.”

Columbia Association staff presented three possible courses of action: “stay the course” (i.e., continue with the existing design), “pause until plans for Merriweather take shape” (as part of a collaborative effort with Howard Hughes), or “pause but increase programming and enhancements” (i.e., to encourage increased use of Symphony Woods). The staff recommended the third option, including collaboration with Howard Hughes on a Merriweather-Symphony Woods master plan, noting that “it would allow for the best possible chance for a design solution to create an integrated Merriweather-Symphony Woods Park destination.”

On October 11, 2012, the Columbia Association Board of Directors meeting featured a public presentation of such a new design concept for Merriweather and Symphony Woods. That concept included a new vision for what Symphony Woods could be and a new strategy for realizing that vision, as part of what became known as the “Inner Arbor” plan.

The next article in this series will address that vision and strategy, and how they ultimately led to the current design for Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, of which the Chrysalis amphitheater will be the first element.

For further exploration

This article is based on material from a variety of online sources, including the following:

• Newspaper articles from the Baltimore Sun online archives
• Newspaper articles from the Columbia Flier online archives
• The original Columbia “marketing brochure” created by Community Research and Development (later Howard Research and Development) (courtesy of the Columbia Archives):
  • Columbia: A New Town for Howard County (November 11, 1964)
• Various Howard County planning documents:
  • Howard County General Plan 2000
  • The Columbia Downtown Master Plan (Preliminary Draft) (February 27, 2006)
  • Downtown Columbia: A Community Vision (December 2007)
  • Howard County DPZ Technical Staff Report on ZRA 113 (November 13, 2008)
  • “Proposed General Plan Amendment and Zoning Regulation Amendment 113 - Public Comment” (April 9, 2009)
  • Howard County Planning Board recommendation on the General Plan Amendment for Downtown Columbia (September 17, 2009)
  • Downtown Columbia Plan: A General Plan Amendment (February 1, 2010)
  • Howard County Design Advisory Panel minutes, July 13, 2011
  • Howard County DPZ Technical Staff Report, Merriweather-Symphony Woods Neighborhood, Case No. PB 394 (June 28, 2012)
  • Howard County Planning Board Decision and Order, Case No. PB 394 (September 6, 2012)
• Howard County Council legislation relating to the Downtown Columbia Plan
  • CB58-2009, An Act adopting the Downtown Columbia Plan, a General Plan Amendment for the purpose of revitalizing and redeveloping Downtown Columbia; . . . (introduced November 2, 2009; passed with amendments February 1, 2010; signed February 3, 2010)
  • Amendment 7 to CB58-2009 and Amendment 1 to Amendment 7 (February 1, 2010)
• Various General Growth Properties documents from the defunct web site columbiatowncenter.info, now preserved by the Internet Archive:
  • Draft Columbia master plan web site
  • “Making a Special Place” (February 18, 2009 snapshot)
  • “Sustaining the Environment” (February 19, 2009 snapshot)
  • “Balancing and Phasing Growth” (February 19, 2009 snapshot) (see page 53)
  • “Exhibits” (October 7, 2009 snapshot)
• Various Columbia Association documents and other documents relevant to CA’s actions:
  • CA board orientation documents, including “The Evolution of the Columbia Association”
  • CA board agendas, minutes, and related materials, including documents provided to the board for the following board meetings, with items of interest as noted:
    • December 21, 2010 (first design)
    • March 31, 2010 (draft FDP)
    • June 9, 2011 (Plan B design)
    • July 28, 2011 (minutes of the June 16 pre-submission meeting, review of DAP comments)
    • September 22, 2011 (draft vision statement, staff update including tree impact)
    • October 13, 2011 (vision statement)
    • November 22, 2011 (fountain contract awarded, resubmittal of FDP and related documents)
    • December 22, 2011 (progress of FDP, update on fountain design)
    • August 23, 2012 (CA staff report and presentation discussing possible ways to proceed with Symphony Woods development)
    • September 13, 2012 (draft minutes for the August 23 board meeting)
  • CA testimony to the Howard County Planning Board regarding ZRA-113 (February 5, 2009)
  • CA response to DPZ key recommendations (February 5, 2009)
  • CA presentation to the Design Advisory Panel (July 13, 2011)
  • CA vision statement for Symphony Woods Park (reconstructed) (October 13, 2011)
  • Section 11B-111 of the Maryland Homeowners Association Act
• Selected blog posts from the following blogs and bloggers:
  • “Columbia Compass” (Bill Santos)
  • “Howard County Blog” (Evan Coren and Cynthia Coyle)
  • “Tale of Two Cities” (Dennis Lane)
• Selected documents from the following civic groups:
  • Coalition for Columbia’s Downtown
  • Columbia 2.0

For my own opinions on various aspects of the long-running controversies around development of Symphony Woods prior to the creation of the Inner Arbor plan, see the following blog posts:

• “A walk in Symphony Woods”
• “GGP, CA, Cy Paumier, and the battle over Symphony Woods”
• “Looking back at the Paumier plan for Symphony Woods”
• “How not to save Symphony Woods”

For more of my opinions on and explanations of various aspects of the Chrysalis and Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, see the Inner Arbor-related posts in the series “The Inner Arbor plan takes shape” and elsewhere on this blog. (Note that some of these posts contain outdated information relating to park features that were later dropped or revised.)

tl;dr: In this series I explore the conception and construction of the Chrysalis amphitheater and Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods.

April 22, 2017 marked the official opening of the Chrysalis amphitheater, the first element of the Inner Arbor plan to be constructed as part of the planned Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods in Columbia, Maryland. The series “Creating the Chrysalis”

• explains in detail the design and construction of the Chrysalis amphitheater in layperson’s terms;
• highlights the various organizations on the “Chrysalis team” and the parts each of them have played or are playing in its creation.
• describes the place of the Chrysalis amphitheater within the plan for Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods and the overall history of Symphony Woods itself; and
• includes and provides context for more visual material relating to the Chrysalis, including detailed renderings, excerpts from engineering drawings, and photographs of construction and fabrication.

“Creating the Chrysalis” includes the following articles (I’ll update this list with links as I publish new articles):

1. Symphony Woods: The history of Symphony Woods and the various attempts over the years to develop it as a park.
2. Vision and strategy: The initial vision for a new park in Symphony Woods and the strategy to implement that vision, as developed from the initial Inner Arbor concept plan to the current county-approved plan for Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods.
3. Politics and process: The various institutional activities related to implementation of the Inner Arbor plan, with a focus on the Columbia Association, the Inner Arbor Trust, and the Howard County government, including its planning process.
4. Design: The overall form of the Chrysalis and how that design came to be.
5. Theater: The theatrical functions of the Chrysalis, including the stage, sound system, theatrical lighting, and “back of house” functions.
6. Shell structure: The steel framework supporting the Chrysalis skin and the theatrical equipment.
7. Shell skin: The skin forming the external surface of the Chrysalis.
8. Subfloor: The structural concrete foundation/basement or “subfloor” of the Chrysalis, and related construction.
9. Details, details: The final details of the Chrysalis and its surroundings.
10. Attracting the public: How the Chrysalis and other features of Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods will accomodate the general public and attract visitors.
11. What comes next: Future features of Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, including the Butterfly, the Merriground, the Picnic Table, the Caterpillar, and the Merriweather Horns.
12. Timeline: A detailed timeline, with references, of the events and activities from the creation of Symphony Woods up to the public opening of the Chrysalis amphitheater.

This series is based on material published by the Inner Arbor Trust and others, as well as on my previous blog posts about the Inner Arbor plan and its various features. Any opinions expressed are solely mine as an individual and do not necessarily represent the views of the Inner Arbor Trust, its contractors and partners, or any other person or organization.

All material created by me for this series is available for use by others under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Please attribute any reused or adapted material using a notice similar to the following:

This work contains material from “Creating the Chrysalis” by Frank Hecker, originally published at frankhecker.com and released under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

For further exploration

For more of my opinions on and explanations of various aspects of the Chrysalis and Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, see the Inner Arbor-related posts in the series “The Inner Arbor plan takes shape” and elsewhere on this blog. (Note that some of these posts contain outdated information relating to park features that were later dropped or revised.)

tl;dr: Merriweather Post Pavilion gets ready for the 21st century, and the Howard County Design Advisory Panel offers its advice.

I’ve previously written about the planned renovations of Merriweather Post Pavilion in downtown Columbia. Last week that renovation took two more steps forward, with a pre-submission community meeting (held at Merriweather itself) to present the plans to the general public and a meeting of the Howard County Design Advisory Panel to review the current design for the renovated pavilion.

To make a long story short, the Design Advisory Panel gave its overall blessing to the design, though with some advice given along the way. (This seems to be a standard practice of the Panel, at least based on the meetings I’ve attended.) I found the discussion of some aspects of the design to be fascinating. In order to understand why it’s best to take a trip back in time.

Most people familiar with Columbia know that the Merriweather Post Pavilion was designed by Frank Gehry (only a half-truth, as I’ll discuss below). Some of those people also know that Merriweather Post Pavilion was originally intended to be a venue for classical music, not the popular music mecca it later became. However what I didn’t know (until I did some research for this article) is that the present form of Merriweather Post Pavilion is an accident of history.

What became Merriweather Post Pavilion was originally supposed to be designed by an architect from California, Jim Lief.¹ However his design, a 3000-seat “free form tent structure . . . made of nylon material,” was ultimately deemed to be unbuildable, a conclusion that was reached only six months before the pavilion was supposed to be inaugurated with a gala concert to be attended by Vice President Hubert Humphrey and other dignitaries. The Columbia project managers then had to scramble to put together an alternative, and project architects Frank Gehry and N. David O’Malley created a new design that was then constructed on a fast-track schedule.

Due to the time constraints and the relatively small budget of $500,000 (about $3.5 million today), the design of Merriweather Post Pavilion turned out to be relatively straightforward and spartan: a flat pavilion roof (trapezoidal in shape when viewed from above), with the narrow end of the trapezoid also serving as the roof of the stage house, i.e., the portion of the pavilion enclosing the the stage. This latter feature meant that there was not a lot of room above the stage. This was made worse by the fact that the stage house walls were not vertical but rather sloped inward (continuing the trapezoid theme), so that the stage house was narrower near its top than at stage level.

This design was adequate for Merriweather Post Pavilion’s original intended use by a symphony orchestra, which did not have a need for elaborate sets and associated rigging above the performers. However the use of the pavilion for symphony performances lasted only briefly (its intended tenant, the National Symphony Orchestra, having gone bankrupt), and other “high culture” performances such as ballet lasted only slightly longer.

In the 1970s Merriweather Post Pavilion became a venue primarily for popular music acts, and remains so to this day. The focus of the Merriweather renovation is thus on better serving such acts, with their elaborate sets and larger audiences. This includes making the stage house higher, improving sight lines for audiences on the lawn, and providing permanent roofs (instead of seasonal tents) for audiences in the loge areas to the left and right of the main pavilion seating.

The proposed renovations (designed by JP2 Architects) improve sight lines from the lawn by raising the entire pavilion roof about 20 feet higher, as shown in the rendering above. (The lower edge of the current roof is only about 23 feet above the ground at the point where the lawn begins, as seen in the above photo.) The design raises the roof of the stage house even higher, so that it is no longer flush with the main pavilion roof but extends above it. (The permitted height of the stage house is 85 feet, but the current plan has it at just over 74 feet.) However the stage house roof is still low enough relative to the new roof so that it wil not be visible by audiences on the lawn (as shown in the rendering above and the comparison below). Finally, the design makes the stage house walls vertical, and adds two lightweight roofs to the loge areas.

The raising of the roof will also apparently present an opportunity to address some of the perceived issues surrounding sound levels at Merriweather Post Pavilion For example, having a higher roof will enable speakers to be configured so that sound is directed more down toward the audience than out toward the lawn and beyond.

So far, so good. The remaining issue is that although the higher stage house cannot be seen from the lawn, it can be seen to some degree from the sides, and will present a considerably higher façade than it does at present. How should this increased height be addressed from a visual point of view?

In the design presented at the Design Advisory Panel meeting, the “architectural concept for the stage house breaks down its scale by introducing a serrated edging in the top tier of the building where cedar paneling transitions into a cementitious paneling.” The serrated edging was described as echoing the treeline of the surrounding park. The cementitious or cement-like material on the upper part of the stage house exterior walls would then have a lighter color that would blend in with the sky.

This particular feature of the proposed design occasioned the most contentious discussion of the Design Advisory Panel meeting, partly I think because the architectural rendering of the stage house displayed at the meeting made the “cementitious material” look almost blindingly white, in sharp contrast to the cedar paneling below it (which would be the same color as the existing roof). Panel member Mohammad Saleem expressed his concern about the design as presented, and eventually made a motion that the “serrated edge of the stage house be simplified to reduce the height [of the edge] and that the top . . . be some type of gray metal,” and that “instead of [being] serrated, [the edge] be more horizontal and [plain] and simple to fit in the current, natural environment.”

Most of the other members of the panel disagreed with Saleem, apparently because they liked the serrated boundary between the lower and upper halves of the stage house walls and also believed that the wall colors as constructed would be more subtle than on the renderings. In the end Saleem’s motion was voted down by a 4-2 margin.

Though the motion failed, the discussion about the stage house design did highlight an underlying question some might have about the renovation, namely to what extent should the renovated pavilion retain the spare and spartan appearance of the pavilion as originally constructed. For example, in addition to the serrated design proposed for the stage house walls, the design also includes “light hole punch outs . . . introduced throughout the building façade for additional interest”. In other words, instead of being a plain cedar plank surface, the lower parts of the stage house walls would be periodically punctuated by lights of various colors, lending a more festive appearance to the stage house façade.²

Should Merriweather Post Pavilion continue to be as plain and unadorned as it was in the past? There are certainly no plans to do anything with the main pavilion roof, the wooden sides of which would be unchanged from their present appearance. That’s fitting since that roof is iconic, even to the point of being incorporated into the Merriweather Post Pavilion logo.

What about the stage house? Should it be instead clad totally in wood panelling in a natural color, similar to the main roof and echoing other venues in wooded settings, like Filene Center at Wolf Trap? At the Design Advisory Panel meeting Jamie Pett of JP2 Architects noted the desire to break up the stage house mass and not have it appear so monolithic. Some of the Panel members noted that this was in fact an entertainment venue, so some playfullness in the architecture was appropriate. Brad Canfield of I.M.A. echoed this, noting that they had originally considered doing an all-wood façade but had concluded that it reminded them of Wolf Trap, and that they didn’t want it to look like Wolf Trap.

It’s not a slamdunk case, but ultimately I’m going to go with Pett, Canfield, and the majority of Design Advisory Panel members on this one. As much as some people might like Merriweather to be “Wolf Trap in Columbia,” it’s not and never will be. Wolf Trap is a national park, the Filene Center is a much more self-consciously elegant and expensive³ structure than Merriweather Post Pavilion, and the (subsidized) Wolf Trap programming has much more of a high culture flavor than the unbashedly populist offerings at Merriweather. One Panel member said of Merriweather, “it is an entertainment venue, and we’re in the next century,” and Brad Canfield noted the “quirky” sculptures and other art that I.M.A. had placed throughout the grounds in effort to give the venue a more lively feel.

At the time of its creation Merriweather Post Pavilion was not intended as an architectural masterwork for the ages but rather as a quick and cheap solution to a pressing problem. In the current renovation I believe the goal should be to enhance what Merriweather has evolved into, by making the venue more fun, funky, and functional—and to add a fourth “f,” to do so in a relatively frugal manner. I think the proposed design for the new Merriweather could be further refined, but its heart is in the right place.

For further exploration

The chapter “Early Buildings: People and Projects” in the book Creating a New City: Columbia, Maryland contains an in-depth and entertaining discussion of the construction of Merriweather Post Pavilion, by project manager James Wannemacher. My two-part series on the planned Merriweather Post Pavilion renovations (part 1 and part 2) explains why the renovations are necessary and what is planned to be done; a followup post covers the schedule for the renovations. All three posts contain links to Howard County documents relevant to the renovation effort. The Design Advisory Panel meeting summary contains the recommendations by the members at the meeting on September 9, 2015, as well as the text of Mohammad Saleem’s failed motion. The Department of Planning and Zoning Technical Staff Report on FDP-DC-MSW-1A provides additional context on planning regulations affecting the renovation, including the 85-foot height limit for Merriweather Post Pavilion.

tl;dr: As construction of the Chrysalis amphitheater begins, I look again at the structure and its architect.

Tomorrow is the groundbreaking ceremony for the Chrysalis amphitheater, the first element of the Inner Arbor plan to be constructed as part of the planned Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods. In the coming weeks and months I hope to be able to go into more detail about the Chrysalis and its construction, but for now I thought it would be nice to both summarize the current state of the Chrysalis and discuss where it stands in the overall body of work by its designer, Marc Fornes, and his firm THEVERYMANY.

The overall form of the Chrysalis has not changed since the very first post I devoted to it, but the exact way it’s put together has been refined since then. As I noted in my second article on the Chrysalis, its surface is created using a technique employed by Fornes in his other work: a curved surface is generated by computer and then instantiated by riveting together thin plates cut from flat sheets of the chosen material (in this case aluminum). The individual plates are each painted a given color, and the juxtaposition of plates within the overall structure then produces its final appearance. As can be seen in the picture above, the individual plates are relatively small (perhaps a square meter or two in the case of the Chrysalis), so creating the entire Chrysalis surface will require at least a thousand of them (in my estimation).

The Chrysalis is to my knowledge the largest structure Fornes has designed to date, and as such presents challenges beyond his earlier designs. Compare it for example to “Vaulted Willow” (more informally known as the Willow), a public sculpture in Borden Park in Edmonton, Alberta. Vaulted Willow is a relatively small structure at about 20 feet tall (note the person standing under it in the picture). It is not designed to bear any weight other than itself, and thus the surface of riveted plates can be self-supporting with no other associated structural framework required.

If you look closely you can see that the plates in Vaulted Willow are perforated, so people standing inside it get a variegated visual experience looking up at the sky. The “legs” of the structure are concave on the inside, so you can stand in them; from some of the pictures it looks to be a popular place for children to play hide and seek. (Not surprising perhaps—one person wrote that Vaulted Willow “had a dream-like quality to it inside and out, like something from a children’s fairy tale.”)

In contrast the planned “Over Path” public sculpture in San Antonio is a more “spidery” structure; at 20 feet its height is similar to that of Vaulted Willow but it extends over a much larger area. Note the differing construction technique; although Over Path is also constructed out of thin metal panels, rather than simply being overlapped the panels are bent and then joined together so that parts of the panels stick out to create a spine-like form. Some parts of the panels are perforated and some are not, so the overall surface offers a pleasing contrast.¹

A larger Fornes design is a structure (almost a cross between a large sculpture and a small amphitheater) recently constructed for Lycée Christian Bourquin, a new school in Argelès-sur-Mer, France.² I don’t have exact dimensions for it, but it appears to be at least 25 feet high, large enough to support small-scale performances but still light enough to not require a supporting frame. Note that, like Over Path, the surface is constructed using what appears to be a somewhat different technique than the overlapped riveted plates used in Vaulted Willow and the Chrysalis. (See THEVERYMANY’s web site for more pictures showing this.)

The Argelès-sur-Mer structure can be thought of as the little brother of the Chrysalis. The Chrysalis is considerably larger, and as a full performance stage must support lighting rigs and speaker stacks not found in its smaller and lighter sibling. Unlike the Argelès-sur-Mer structure the Chrysalis is also designed to keep rain off the performers or the audience (when seating is provided on the stage itself), so its surface is solid rather than perforated, and hence relatively heavier. The combination of these factors necessitates providing a supporting framework under the outer shell of the Chrysalis, as seen in the above graphic.

Altogether the Chrysalis occupies a special place in Fornes’s body of work, as (to my knowledge) it’s the first time he’s taken his design and manufacturing techniques and applied them to a truly large-scale commission. In so doing I think there are both losses and gains: The sheer size of the Chrysalis means that it does not have the same human scale of pieces like Vaulted Willow, and the need to support theatrical equipment and protect it and the performers from the weather means that it does not have the same degree of lightness and delicacy found in Over Path and the Argelès-sur-Mer structure. However the Chrysalis is still considerably lighter and more graceful in form than typical conventional amphitheaters, and will provide both an attractive and functional performance space for Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods.

I’ve previously mentioned that Marc Fornes is a very promising young architect, and bids fair to become a major one. In the coming years I anticipate he and his firm further refining his innovative techniques and becoming more skilled in applying them to architectural structures well beyond the sculptures, installations, and experimental pieces of his early career. I’m thus sure we will see works from him even better than the Chrysalis, but at the same time we have the satisfaction of having one of his first major structures almost in our very backyards. Please join me and others tomorrow morning at 10 am to help celebrate the beginning of its construction.

After a fair amount of fiddling about I’m renaming my personal blog and moving to a new domain. From now on you can access the blog at https://civilityandtruth.com (note the “https” rather than “http”).

You can read more about the changes in my first post at the new blog. Briefly, I wanted to separate the blog from my personal domain frankhecker.com and have more control over the technology behind the blog, including eliminating the user tracking done by WordPress.com and providing better support for posts that include programming code and mathematical notation.

I have moved all of my old blog posts from frankhecker.com to civilityandtruth.com, although some of the older ones have minor formatting glitches I have yet to correct. For now you can access old posts at the frankhecker.com URLs, but sometime in October (once I finish fixing any formatting problems) I will have all URLs pointing to frankhecker.com posts automatically redirected to the posts on civilityandtruth.com. The bottom line is that if you have linked to any of my old frankhecker.com posts those links should continue to work both now and in the future.

However if you use news reader software (e.g., NetNewsWire) or a news reader service (e.g., Feedly) to read my blog posts then you should reconfigure your software or service to use https://civilityandtruth.com/feed.xml as the feed URL for the blog. I may be able to redirect previous feed URLs, but I cannot guarantee this will work in all cases.

Finally, an important note: The new blog does not support comments (for a number of reasons); instead I’m expecting people to comment on Facebook or Twitter, or just to send me email. If you really don’t like this and would much prefer to comment directly on blog posts, drop me a line (or post a comment below) and I’ll consider changing my decision.

Thanks to all of you who have read my blog over the years; see you at civilityandtruth.com!

Update 2021/06/19: I decided to go back to using my personal domain frankhecker.com as the main domain for my blog. However links to civilityandtruth.com should still work, and will be redirected to frankhecker.com.

It’s been almost four months since I last posted something on my blog. I’m sure at least one or two of my few long-time readers have been wondering if I was ever going to post again. Fear not, the hiatus is officially over!

Most of that time was taken by my generally goofing off (not having any real motivation to write). However a good part of it I spent reworking the blog. Today is the official relaunch.

What’s changed? First is the name. I’ve always felt it was somewhat lame to use my own name as the name for my blog, but I couldn’t think of a good alternative. “Civility and truth” was part of the tagline for my old blog, and I finally decided to promote it to be the actual name of the blog itself. See the “about this blog” page for the story behind the new name.

With the name change comes a change to the URL: The blog is now officially accessible at https://civilityandtruth.com (note the “https” at the front). If you are using a news reader service (e.g., Feedly or NewsBlur) then you should add the Civility and Truth news feed using the URL https://civilityandtruth.com/feed.xml (an Atom format feed, in case you’re curious).

If you have previously linked to my old blog at frankhecker.com, never fear: Sometime in the next month or so I will reconfigure my old blog so that all links to old blog posts get automatically redirected to the corresponding posts at Civility and Truth. At that time I’ll convert the frankhecker.com site to be a simple landing page linking to my various blogs and social media presences.

One major change is in the appearance of the site and the technology behind it. I’ll spare you all the technical details (see the “about this blog” page for that), but the result is that the site should load faster and look nicer on smartphones and tablets, you should never see an advertisement or other intrusive third-party content, and (as much as I can arrange) your browsing activity on the blog will not be tracked and monetized by third parties.¹

A final and potentially controversial change is that I decided to not provide a way to post comments directly to the blog. I thought long and hard about this: I personally like commenting on blogs, but I got very few comments on my own blog, and many of those were spam that I had to delete. Providing my own commenting system on a self-hosted blog would be far from trivial in terms of dealing with spam and other security issues, and I’d rather not use a third-party service like Disqus whose revenue model depends at least in part on user tracking.

For now I’ve decided to direct people to post comments on Facebook or Twitter (where I will post notices of new blog posts) or to email them directly to me. If I get particularly interesting and worthwhile comments through these channels I may update blog posts to summarize and quote from such comments. If you’d really really rather be able to comment directly then please let me know and I will consider adding Disqus commenting with an opt-out for user tracking.

What hasn’t changed? I will continue to focus on issues relevant to Howard County and Maryland, with an emphasis on in-depth analysis and minimal snarkiness and partisanship.² I’ll continue to supplement Howard-centric posts with more general commentary on public affairs, combined with whatever else strikes my fancy.

I’ve learned through bitter experience that I am not a daily blogger, or even necessarily a weekly one. My goal going forward is to post a new item at least once every two weeks, typically on Saturday morning for your weekend reading pleasure. Thanks to all of you who’ve read my blog over the past few years; I hope you enjoy this new incarnation of it!

I’ve previously written about Howard County’s initial foray into publishing government data, the data.howardcountymd.gov web site created by the Howard County GIS division. As announced by the county and reported by Amanda Yeager at the Baltimore Sun, Howard County has launched a new site opendata.howardcountymd.gov to provide access to government data. This new site, also known as the OpenHoward portal,¹ can be considered as a concrete implementation of open data practices mandated by the Howard County Council (see Council Bill 32-2014) and as a down payment on County Executive Allan Kittleman’s campaign promise to create an automated system (“HoCoStat”) to “help government increase responsiveness, improve efficiency and heighten accountability.”

But enough marketing speak, what is this thing really? Briefly, the opendata.howardcountymd.gov site, like the original data.howardcountymd.gov site, is a web site that allows you to view and download various datasets relating to Howard County government activities and Howard County in general. However in other respects the new OpenHoward site goes well beyond what the previous site offers. First, the new site includes many types of data not previously available on the older site, including (to take but two examples) datasets relating to county budgets and police reports.

Second, the new site has a search facility that is extremely handy when trying to find data and datasets of interest. For example, since the renovation of Merriweather Post Pavilion has been in the news I decided to search for “Merriweather”. The search returned (among other things) datasets and records relating to police reports, reports from the Tell HoCo web site and mobile app used to report potholes, broken street lamps, and other problems, and a list of payments the county made relating to Wine in the Woods. I also tried searching for the name of the street I live on, and got a similar mix of results. I predict that this will be a popular use of the site.

Finally, the new site offers an application programming interface (API) by which independent developers can create applications that access the data in real-time. Most people won’t care about this, but (among other things) it offers local Howard County businesses and motivated individuals a way to create their own applications to add value to the underlying county data.

The opendata.howardcountymd.gov site was not built from scratch, but was instead deployed using the online service provided by Socrata, a Seattle-based private company specializing in helping governments to implement open data initiatives. Socrata’s is a “cloud-based” or “software as a service” (SaaS) offering, meaning that Howard County did not purchase software and hardware to run the site, but instead pays a ongoing subscription fee to host its data on Socrata’s servers running Socrata’s software. We’ll see in future exactly how much Howard County is paying Socrata for this service (since presumably it will show up in the “Payments to Vendors” database), but based on an independent analysis of Socrata pricing it’s likely that the cost to the county is on the order of several thousand dollars per month.

That may sound like a lot, but you have to compare it to the fully-burdened cost (i.e., including salaries, heath care, and pensions) of having Howard County employees build the site, or the cost of having a contractor develop a custom site.² Socrata appears to be a market leader in the open data space, is growing rapidly, and has a coherent vision for future product offerings. Socrata also has other customers in Maryland at both the state and local levels, with Socrata powering the Open Data Portal used in the StateStat system, as well as open data portals and related applications for Baltimore City and Montgomery County.³

In general I think going with Socrata was a good decision for the county. The site looks pretty functional from the point of view of both beginners and more advanced users, Socrata appears to have good mechanisms for getting new datasets into their system, and the provision of an API is a plus for advanced usage. Plus Socrata also has a separate Open Performance (GovStat) product that looks as if it would be a good base on which to build the HoCoStat system.

In comparison to the pluses my concerns about OpenHoward thus far are relatively minor. First, the site could use more datasets, and more data in existing datasets. (For example, there’s no police or fire and rescue data for 2015.) However the press release is upfront about this being a “beta” site at present, so presumably more data is on the way. One major potential lack is data on Howard County schools; I presume the Board of Education and Superintendent Foose would need to cooperate to get that done, and it’s an open question as to whether such cooperation will be forthcoming.

Second, I think the conditions for access to the site and its data need to be spelled out a bit more clearly. The original County Council bill CB32-2014 stated that “All accessible data . . . shall be made available without copyright, patent, trademark, or trade secret, or similar regulation other than reasonable privacy, security, and privilege restrictions.” In other words, all data published on the site is presumably in the public domain with no restrictions on its use. However it would be nice if that could be spelled out more explicitly. The terms of use for the API are somewhat unclear as well: There’s a basic level of API access available by default, and more intensive usage is possible by registering and getting an “application token.” These are both provided at no charge, but it’s not clear whether there is some level or type of API access that would incur a charge to the application developer or to application users. Again, this is worth spelling out.

Finally, what will happen to the existing data.howardcountymd.gov site? Will its data be folded into the OpenHoward portal and the original site decommissioned, or will it continue to operate? I confess to a personal interest in this, since I’ve previously published analyses that pull datasets from the older site, and if the old site goes away I’d like the web links I used to be redirected to the new site.

Leaving these relatively minor concerns aside, overall the launch of the OpenHoward portal is a very welcome event, and I’m looking forward to see how it and the larger HoCoStat initiatives evolve. Our thanks should go to all those who made this possible, including to Greg Fox, Jen Terrasa, and the other members of the Howard County Council for pushing Howard County to provide open accessible data, to Allan Kittleman for his work thus far to fulfill his campaign pledges around open access, and, most importantly, to those who did the real work, Chris Merdon’s staff in the Department of Technology and Communication Services.

The Crescent development in downtown Columbia is going to be a (very) big deal.

As reported by Amanda Yeager in the Baltimore Sun, the Howard County Planning Board recently approved FDP-DC-Crescent-1, the final development plan for phase 1 of the Crescent neighborhood of downtown Columbia, a development of the Howard Hughes Corporation. Unfortunately due to family issues I was not able to attend the Planning Board meeting and see for myself the presentations of the plan. However I did find and review copies of the Department of Planning and Zoning staff report [PDF], the final development plan itself [PDF], and the accompanying neighborhood concept plan [PDF]. For anyone interested I here briefly review what’s going on with the development. (For additional background see my post from a year ago, “The Crescent development in downtown Columbia: Areas and phases,” although a lot of the information in that post is now out of date.)

In Howard County planning terminology a “final development plan” is not really the final plan; that role is filled by the “site development plan.” The final development plan contains proposed boundaries for phase 1 of the Crescent development, intended uses for the various parcels and associated square footages and building heights, and other information relevant to the plan. It does not contain detailed plans of the actual buildings to be built. However just the raw numbers themselves are interesting and informative. To quote the Baltimore Sun,

The approved outline proposes 2,300 residences; a 250-room hotel; 1.475 million square feet of office space; 313,000 square feet of retail and 225,000 square feet of civic and cultural uses spread throughout four development areas on the property.

The four development areas are known (rather unimaginatively) as Areas 1, 2, 3, and 4, with locations and proposed uses as follows:

• Area 1 includes Parcels A and B on the map shown, in the northwest corner of the Crescent development near the intersection of Broken Land Parkway and Little Patuxent Parkway. It is intended for office use along with a hotel, with some retail and restaurant space.
• Area 2 includes Parcel C on the map, south of Area 1 on the east side of Broken Land Parkway. It is intended for mixed office and residential uses, with some retail and restaurant space.
• Area 3 includes Parcel D on the map, south of Merriweather Post Pavilion and north of Broken Land Parkway. It is intended as the main “downtown” of the Crescent development, with office and residential uses, a much larger allotment of retail and restaurant space, and cultural and community facilities.
• Area 4 includes Parcel E on the map, east of Area 1 just south of Little Patuxent Parkway. It is intended primarily for office use, with a small amount of retail and restaurant space.

There is also a significant amount of space that will be left undeveloped , including Lots 1, 2, and 3 on the map shown. These will serve as natural open space for the project, and can be considered extensions of the western and southern portions of Symphony Woods.

The table below summarizes all of the uses proposed for Areas 1 through 4, including the associated square footage and related details (from page 1 of FDP-DC-Crescent-1).

The final development plan does not describe the exact nature of the 225,000 SF of “Cultural/Community” space in Area 3. However in the pre-submission meeting Howard Hughes representatives discussed building in Area 3 a new Central Branch library (100,000 SF), a conference center (50,000 SF), an aquatic center (50,000 SF), and an indoor concert hall (25,000 SF).

In the pre-submission meeting Howard Hughes representatives also discussed locating all 2,300 residential units in Area 3 along with the 250-room hotel; no office space was planned for Area 3. The final development plan moves the hotel from Area 3 into Area 1, moves 500 residential units from Area 3 to Area 2, and puts 400,000 SF of office space into Area 3.

One major omission in the final development plan (really, the major omission) is a detailed discussion of parking. The slides presented in the pre-submission meeting contained detailed information on the number of parking spaces to be provided in each area through either surface parking lots or parking garages (which would eventually replace all the surface lots). None of that is in the final development plan. Apparently the exact parking arrangements will be covered in the site development plans to be submitted for each area, including proposals for how to compensate for the loss of the current gravel lots used for events at Merriweather Post Pavilion.

Overall the Crescent development will make a major impact on downtown Columbia and Howard County overall. One good comparison is to look at Reston, Virginia, the other major planned community in the Washington/Baltimore area, and Reston Town Center, which is currently undergoing its final commercial buildout within its 84-acre core. Based on the figures in the Reston Town Center marketing brochure [PDF] published by its developer, here’s how Reston Town Center compares to the planned Crescent neighborhood:

When you factor in the office space just north of Little Patuxent Parkway (including 700,000 SF purchased by Howard Hughes Corporation from GGP) the downtown Columbia area will have roughly equivalent office space to Reston Town Center. When you add in the 1.438 million SF of leasable space at the Mall in Columbia the retail space will be significantly larger than in Reston Town Center. Finally, Reston Town Center has no equivalent to Merriweather Post Pavilion (or, for that matter, to the planned Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods). (However Reston Town Center does now have access to mass transit via the Metro Silver Line, as well as a much more vibrant office market in the surrounding area.)

As I noted in discussing the history of Howard County Council redistricting, on the tenth anniversary of Columbia former county commissioner and council member Charles Miller expressed regret that Columbia had ever been created. Now as Columbia approaches its 50th anniversary, current County Executive Allan Kittleman has promised that he will work to “[attract] large businesses to downtown Columbia so it may truly become the economic engine for our County.” The Crescent development will be the key to making that happen.

harry4columbia - 2015-03-22 19:55

The pre-submission community meeting for Parcel A is scheduled for Thursday, Mar 26, 6:30pm, at Oakland Manor Ballroom (5430 Vantage Point Road). The proposal lists “approx 360,000 sq of office/retail space; 1200 +/- space parking garage,” 301-421-4024 for more information.

hecker - 2015-03-22 20:28

I forgot to include a note about the pre-submission meeting; thanks for mentioning it! 360,000 SF is only a bit over half of the 600,000 SF approved for Area 1, so I presume there will be a second office building proposed later (along with the hotel).

Karen Gray - 2015-04-01 18:35

Thanks once again, Frank, for a great, readable summary.

hecker - 2015-04-01 20:44

You’re quite welcome, glad you found it useful. Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to go to the most recent pre-submission meeting, so I don’t have anything to add beyond the published stories.

tl;dr: The map of Howard County looks very different if you’re looking for votes. Cartograms help you see like a politician.

There are 118 election precincts in Howard County, Maryland, varying both in geographic area and in the number of voters they contain. Precincts in western Howard County tend to be larger, because the population density in western Howard is lower. Precincts in more densely populated areas of the county (including Columbia) tend to be smaller. If we’re interested in how voters behave across the county a conventional map can be misleading because the larger area of western Howard precincts causes us to overrate the importance and impact of those precincts. (This is similar to the US electoral map being visually dominated by large states like Montana, Wyoming, and the Dakotas that have fewer voters than small states like Connecticut and Rhode Island.)

The figure above is actually a map of Howard County electoral precincts, not as they exist in reality but as they might appear if their size were proportional to the number of voters they contain. More specifically, this is a cartogram in which the precinct map is distorted to make precinct areas proportional to the number of registered voters in each precinct as of the 2014 general election.

Let’s look at a real-life example of how cartograms can present a more accurate picture of election results. The next map shows Republican Allan Kittleman’s election-day margin of victory in each precinct in his 2014 race for Howard County Executive against Democrat Courtney Watson. (The margin of victory is expressed as votes per precinct, not as a percentage. Thus a value of 100 means that Kittleman received 100 more votes in a precinct on election day than Watson. The map does not include absentee and early voting results because they are not reported per precinct.)

Each precinct is colored from bright red (large Kittleman margin) to bright blue (large Watson margin) and all shades in between. (Incidentally, this type of colored map is known as a choropleth map.) Since precincts in western Howard County are both large and heavily Republican the conventional map exaggerates the extent of Kittleman’s election-day victory margin over Watson.

To address this perceptual problem we can instead represent the exact same data in the form of a cartogram, as seen in the next map. Here the precincts of western Howard shrink in size to reflect their true contribution to the overall registered voter population. In particular Howard County Council District 5 now appears to be roughly equal in size to the other districts—which makes sense since county council redistricting had as one of its goals making the districts contain roughly equal number of voters. On this map Kittleman’s margin of victory still appears to be significant, but we can better identify precincts (like those in Columbia) in which Watson polled strongly on election day.

Cartograms can be used in place of conventional maps in any context in which each geographic subdivision has associated with it some common variable of interest. For example, suppose we want to look at elementary school overcrowding in Howard County. Looking at a conventional map (like the elementary school attendance area map provided by the Howard County Public School System) we might say, “Gee, there are a lot of elementary schools in eastern Howard. How could they possibly be overcrowded?” It would make much more sense to show school attendance areas as a cartogram in which the size of each attendance area was proportional to the number of students in that area. Each of the attendance areas could then be colored according to the extent of overcrowding at that school.

This sounds like a possible future project for me if and when I have time. Or if anyone out there would like to try this yourself, I’ve provided more detailed information on how to create maps like those shown above. See my three-part series “Creating Howard County Precinct Cartograms Based on 2014 Registered Voters” (part 1, part 2, and part 3) and my second three-part series “Allan Kittleman’s Election-Day Victory Margins in the Howard County 2014 General Election” (part 1, part 2, and part 3).

In the coming days and weeks I’ll be posting some analyses of Howard County election results. Unfortunately the data released by the Howard County Board of Elections and the Maryland State Board of Elections is not always in the most useful form for analysis. In particular I was looking for per-precinct turnout statistics for the 2014 general election in Howard County, along with some way to match up precincts with the county council district of which they’re a part. That data is available in the 2014 general election results per precinct/district published by the Howard County Board of Elections, but unfortunately that document is a PDF document.

PDF files are great for reading by humans, but lousy for reading by machines. They violate guideline 8 in the Open Data Policy Guidelines published by the Sunlight Foundation:

For maximal access, data must be released in formats that lend themselves to easy and efficient reuse via technology. … This means releasing information in open formats (or “open standards”), in machine-readable formats, that are structured (or machine-processable) appropriately. … While formats such as HTML and PDF are easily opened for most computer users, these formats are difficult to convert the information to new uses.

Since the data I wanted wasn’t in a format I could use, I manually extracted the data from the PDF document and converted it into a useful format (Comma Separated Value or CSV format) myself. Then since someone else might find a use for them, I published the files online in a datasets area of my Github hocodata repository. The first two files are as follows:

• hocomd-2014-precinct-council.csv. This dataset maps the 118 Howard County election precincts to the county council districts in which those precincts are included.
• hocomd-2014-general-election-turnout.csv. This dataset contains turnout statistics for each of the 118 Howard County precincts in the 2014 general election, including the number of registered voters and ballots cast in each precinct on election day.

Stay tuned for some interesting ways to use this data.

Walter Carson (wcarson@columbiaunion.net) - 2015-03-01 14:38

Thank you. As always, of interest. How might such data be used to look at the state legislative districts, if at all? Best wishes. WEC Sent from my iPhone

hecker - 2015-03-01 19:50

See my future posts for some ideas on how this data might be used. Probably the first thing I’ll do is look at different county council districts to see if there seems to be any real difference in 2014 general election turnout between the districts. A similar analysis could be done for legislative districts, or at least those portions of the districts within Howard County. (A more complete analysis would need data from Carroll County, Baltimore County, etc.)

I’ve written previously about the cornucopia of interesting data sets that Howard County government has made available at the data.howardcountymd.gov site. I had some spare time over a long weekend and decided to try analyzing some of that data, including making use of the various map files on the site (under the “Spacial Data (GIS)” tab).

The particular data set I decided to start with was for building permits issued for residential and commercial construction—not because I have a burning interest in building permits but because I mentioned this type of data in my last post and thought it would be a relatively easy data set to analyze. The particular question I decided to look at was how many residential building permits were issued in each zip code within Howard County in 2014—basically to get a feel for where the most construction was occurring in the county. (It’s only an approximate measure because some permits cover multiple units.)

To do the analysis I used the skills and the tools I learned in the courses that are part of the Johns Hopkins data science specialization series on Coursera. (See my Coursera-related posts for more on my experiences in these classes.) I won’t go over the process here since I’ve separately published full details on my RPubs page, with the source code available in my hocodata GitHub repository.

I first created a simple table of the top zip codes for residential permits issued. This was sort of boring so I won’t reproduce it here; you can find it in the first example analysis I did. More interesting is the bar chart I created as part of the second example. It’s clear from the chart that there’s wide variation among Howard County zip codes in terms of residential construction. The two Ellicott City zip codes combined (21042 and 21043) accounted for the largest fraction of residential building permits in 2014; in contrast there were almost no permits issued for east Columbia (21045).

However what I really wanted to create was a map showing exactly where permits were being issued across the county. The Howard County GIS division provides on data.howardcountymd.gov a set of map data for zip codes within Howard County. After doing a bit of research and experimentation, in my third example I was able to use this in conjunction with the building permit data to produce a map that is a nice alternative to the bar chart.

I have to stop here and ask the unspoken question: What’s the point of all this? I’d answer as follows:

First, this shows that releasing government data empowers people to do interesting things with it, especially when combined with free software and easily available online information and training. Maybe everybody isn’t interested in building permit data or any other individual government data set, but I suspect that there are a fair amount of people out there who are, including small businesses, nonprofit organizations, or just individual activists and interested citizens.

Second, I did all this in a way that is completely reproducible by anyone else. How often have you seen a graph or map in a newspaper or government report and wondered, where exactly did that data come from? Wonder no longer: In my examples I start with the raw data as released by Howard County and show all my work in analyzing the data and creating the tables, charts, and maps.

Finally, this is all reusable and adaptable. For example, suppose you have a better source of data on construction activity, perhaps one that gives the actual numbers of residential units, commercial square footage, and so on. You can easily plug that modified data into the analysis steps I’ve documented, and create better versions of the charts and maps in my examples.

You can also reuse the overall technical approach for any type of data tied to a geographic area within Howard County. For example, in addition to zip code areas the data.howardcounty.gov site contains map data for Howard County school districts, election precincts, census tracts, and many other subdivisions of the county. If you have data sets that are based on those subdivisions (for example, vote totals or turnout percentages for precincts) then you can adapt the code I wrote (all of which is in the public domain) to create your own maps showing how that data varies across the county.

The bottom line is that the data is out there for the picking, as are the tools to make sense of it. You just need to spend some time learning how to use them or (if you don’t feel up to the task yourself) finding someone who can. Have fun!

During his (ultimately successful) campaign for Howard County Executive, one of Allan Kittleman’s key proposals was to establish HoCoStat, a program to (in Kittleman’s words), “measure . . . response and process times for various government functions” to help “increase responsiveness, improve efficiency and heighten accountability.” Kittleman’s administration is in its early days, and nothing much has been heard yet about how and when HoCoStat might be implemented. (Even the original HoCoStat proposal has disappeared from Kittleman’s web site as it’s being redesigned, although the Internet archive has a copy.)

But don’t despair! While we’re waiting for HoCoStat to make an appearance there’s other Howard County data-related resources we can explore. In particular, the data.howardcountymd.gov site has a good and growing collection of county-related datasets, many of them tied to county maps—no surprise, since the site is maintained by the county’s Geographic Information System (GIS) Division. Part of what makes the site great is that it is not just presenting predefined maps and PDF documents, but also provides the raw data used to create those maps.

For example, suppose you’re interested in building permits issued in Howard County. At the simplest level you can view an interactive map) showing the locations for all such permits; you can click on the icons corresponding to the issued permits and see the exact address, date when the permit was issued, and other information.

But let’s suppose you want to do more in-depth analysis of permits issued: For example, which areas are seeing the most residential or commercial permits issued? Or, what is the trend for permits issued over time? The data.howardcountymd.gov site also lets you download the raw data behind the map in a variety of formats, for example in CSV format for use with Excel spreadsheets or statistical software like R, KML format for use with Google Maps and Google Earth, and several others. Armed with the relevant data files you can create your own maps and do your own analysis, including combining the Howard County data with data from other sources like US Census data.

All in all the site—which is still evolving—is a model for how Howard County government can make useful data available to the Howard County individual and corporate taxpayers who are ultimately paying for county services. It would be great to see this strategy extended to HoCoStat as well. For example, when promoting the HoCoStat proposal Allan Kittleman pointed to (among others) Montgomery County’s CountyStat site as a model to emulate. While CountyStat is very nice, it has the disadvantage that you can’t see the raw data behind the performance indicators.

For example, CountyStat has some summary statistics relating to issuance of building permits: average number of days to issue a residential permit, commercial permits for new construction, or other commercial permits. But there’s a lot more one might want to know: For example, what’s the variability in the time to issue permits? Are there some permits that for whatever reason took a really long time to issue? How does the time to issue permits vary across the county? Are there particular areas that (for whatever reason) are experiencing greater or lesser delays in getting permits issued? Having the raw data behind the indicators would permit (no pun intended) interested parties to answer these questions, from commercial developers doing large-scale projects down to a small contractor building a single home.

As I wrote in my previous post on Howard County government data initiatives, providing unfettered access to raw data (subject to reasonable concerns relating to individual privacy and corporate confidentiality) is key to making government data useful: It allows the private and civic sectors to exercise their own creativity in using that data, rather than trying to have government anticipate every possible use for it, and also lets the private and civic sectors hold government accountable by enabling them to do their own independent analyses of government data. It’s great to see what Howard County government (and the GIS Division in particular) has been and is doing to make useful data generally available. I hope that as the Kittleman administration gets down to work and the HoCoStat program is implemented that that spirit of openness and commitment to serve citizens through government data continues.

Most everybody else on the HoCo blogging scene has done an “end of 2014/beginning of 2015” post, and I’ll be no different. The automatically-generated report on my 2014 blogging is not that informative, so here’s my personal take on what I did in 2014, blogging-related or otherwise, and what I hope to do in 2015:

Last year I didn’t quite manage a post per week, but even that was over-stated since several months went by with only one or two posts, or even none at all. In 2015 job and (especially) family responsibilities will take up the vast majority of my time, and what spare time I have I’ll likely spend on learning statistics and “data science” via the Johns Hopkins University offerings on Coursera. I have a very small core of readers (perhaps a few dozen at most), and I’m afraid you’ll be lucky to get a post a month from me this year. But enough apologies, here are some things I found interesting or noteworthy in 2014, and hope to blog about in 2015:

Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, and downtown Columbia development in general. It seems like I’ve been writing about the Inner Arbor plan for a long long time, but my first post on it was only a little more than a year ago. Needless to say I was very happy that the Howard County Planning Board approved the site development plan for Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, and if I possibly can I’ll continue posting about its progress in 2015, including a look at the construction of the Chrysalis amphitheater and a discussion of some of the other park features I haven’t written much about. I also hope to continue writing about the renovation and other changes at Merriweather Post Pavilion and about the Crescent development.

Politics, local and otherwise. One of the interesting things in my 2014 blog traffic report is that my 2010 post on the Howard County Democratic Central Committee candidates is still one of the most popular things on the site; apparently there’s a significant demand for more information about these elections from people who are committed partisans but not tied tightly enough into the local party structures to know who’s who. Maybe when the next Central Committee elections come around I’ll think about trying to satisfy that demand.

As for my non-blogging political activities, although his candidacy was ultimately unsuccessful I have no regrets at all about supporting Tom Coale’s run for state delegate using both my blog posts and (much more importantly) my checkbook. Now that financing national elections is primarily the province of billionaires I’ve decided to focus my future political contributions almost solely on local and (to a lesser extent) state races. And fortunately it appears that in future Howard County will continue to have a lot of great candidates to donate to.

In non-local politics, over the years I’ve posted a fair amount on libertarianism and libertarian ideas. This is not because I myself am a libertarian, but rather because I consider libertarianism the 21st century equivalent of socialism: an ideology that appeals to intellectuals and populists alike, that (in my opinion) would be unworkable if taken as a whole, but at the same time has some interesting and potentially useful policy ideas considered in isolation. I have more thoughts on this, and if I have time I’ll put (virtual) pen to paper.

Stuff to watch or read. I’ve done a few posts in the past about anime (i.e., Japanese animated films and TV shows), television shows worth watching, as well as people whose blogs or other writings are worth reading. I hope to do a few more of those from time to time in 2015.

That’s it for now. Happy New Year to all my readers! I hope to be writing to you again soon.

I was fortunate enough to be able to attend and testify at the Howard County Planning Board meeting last night at which the Board unanimously approved site development plan SDP-14-073 [PDF] for Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, the project otherwise known as the Inner Arbor plan. Here’s a lightly-edited copy of my testimony:

Good evening. I’m speaking in support of SDP-14-073. I previously submitted written testimony to the Board; tonight I want to comment some more on the plan.

I did not closely follow the Board’s consideration of the final development plan, but since then I’ve read the documents relating to its decision. I believe the Board made the right call in putting conditions on its approval of that plan. It’s just common sense: We need a park design that works with the natural landscape rather than against it, and one that’s well integrated with Merriweather Post Pavilion.

Almost a year ago I attended the pre-submission meeting for the Inner Arbor plan. At that time I saw a plan that retained elements present in the final development plan but also fully addressed the Board’s conditions. It featured an extensive pathway system that followed the lay of the land and minimized tree removal, an imaginative alternative to the existing Merriweather fence, and attractive and well-sited shared-use structures.

That design, with some refinements, is in the site development plan you’re considering tonight. It’s a very attractive design, a design that’s much better than I would have expected given the previous history of proposed projects for Symphony Woods. The design in SDP-14-073 incorporates the elements of the final development plan except for the fountain, which the Inner Arbor Trust now proposes be built on the Merriweather property. I understand the reasons for siting the fountain there as part of the Merriweather/Symphony Woods integration. At the same time I understand why this change might disappoint people for whom constructing a fountain was the primary attraction of the original plan for Symphony Woods.

However I believe that the goal of this multi-year effort is not to put a fountain in Symphony Woods. The fountain is simply one part of an overall effort to provide a “unique cultural and community amenity” for downtown Columbia, to quote from the Board’s previous decision. I believe that SDP-14-073 together with the proposed Merriweather Post Pavilion enhancements will meet that goal. The Board challenged CA to meet the conditions associated with its approval of the final development plan, and create a great park for downtown Columbia. The Inner Arbor Trust has more than met that challenge. I strongly urge the Board to approve SDP-14-073. Thank you.

The Planning Board meeting on November 6 saw proponents of the plan slightly outnumbering opponents;¹ in comparison, last night’s meeting was a landslide, with 16 people in favor and three people speaking in opposition. Of course this won’t put a rest to the controversy. In an earlier post I compared Inner Arbor opponents to “Obamacare” opponents in their exploitation of the issue as a way to stoke outrage among their base. I don’t expect the Planning Board’s decision will change that dynamic at all. As with the Affordable Care Act, I’m sure the opposition will continue to pursue any and all means to sabotage the development of Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, with yet more contrived legal arguments (thanks go to Bill Woodcock for highlighting the latest example), complaints about the process, accusations of defiling Jim Rouse’s legacy, and dire warnings of a “disaster of biblical proportions.” (I’m only half kidding about the last one; one person testifying last night used language that was almost that extreme.)

However the analogy to the Affordable Care Act fails in a major way: We’re not talking here about a complicated government program where it’s almost comically easy to raise fear, uncertainty, and doubt among those who haven’t closely followed the issue. It’s a park, with pictures (lots and lots of pictures [187MB PDF]). It’s pretty easy to understand, and you either like it or you don’t. As it happens, all of the members of the general public I’ve talked to (for example, at Wine in the Woods) have liked it a lot. Now that the plan is approved and construction on phase 1 can start, more people will be able to see for themselves what Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods is all about, and I think we’ll find that that experience is repeated.

Finally, before this next phase of the Inner Arbor project begins and Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods starts to take shape, some (I hope) last comments on what went on before. In my year of blogging about the Inner Arbor plan and the associated controversy I have been variously enlightened, delighted, amused, critical, and indignant. However I have never been shocked until last night, while listening to the testimony of Brad Canfield, director of operations at Merriweather Post Pavilion. Assuming I’m correctly recollecting his remarks, in talking about the integration of Merriweather and Symphony Woods he mentioned that Cy Paumier and the original design team had never taken the time to talk to people at Merriweather, except for one phone call a few months after the Columbia Association had rejected the original park design in favor of the Inner Arbor concept.

I quite honestly find that to be mind-boggling. On the one hand you have Merriweather Post Pavilion, the most well-known and best-loved feature of Columbia to the world at large, and a key element in making Howard County an attractive place for businesses and residents. (I believe it was Dick Story who last night noted that while other jurisdictions promoting economic development have universities to help them stand out from the crowd, Howard County has Merriweather.) On the other hand you have Symphony Woods, a largely under-used property whose main function over the past 40+ years has been to serve as a surrounding environment and gateway to Merriweather. If a design team working on a plan for Symphony Woods seemingly doesn’t show any interest whatsoever in working with the Merriweather Post Pavilion operators to figure out ways they could mutually enhance the combination of properties, that speaks volumes to me about that team’s insularity, misplaced priorities, and inability to create a design worthy of what downtown Columbia could become.

Thank goodness there were other people more in touch with the realities of present-day Columbia and Howard County, people who were willing to go out of their way to imagine a better future for Merriweather Post Pavilion and Symphony Woods, and did the work and took the risks to start us on a path to making that future a reality. Thank you, everyone, I’m excited to see where we go from here.

As previously noted by Bill Woodcock and Julia McCready, tonight (Thursday, November 6 at 7 pm) is the meeting [PDF] of the Howard County Planning Board to consider (among other things) SDP-14-073, the site development plan for Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, otherwise known as the Inner Arbor plan, as submitted by the Inner Arbor Trust. I hope to be able to be at the meeting to express my support of the plan, but just in case I’m not able to do that I also submitted written testimony to the Planning Board earlier today, as follows:

To the members of the Howard County Planning Board:

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on SDP-14-073, the site development plan for Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods. As a longtime independent observer of the work of the Inner Arbor Trust I believe that SDP-14-073 provides a complete and detailed blueprint for a beautiful and functional cultural park. This blueprint more than fulfills the vision and requirements laid out in the Downtown Columbia Plan and the neighborhood design guidelines. In particular SDP-14-073 represents a considerable advance over the final development plan FDP-DC-MSW-1 previously reviewed by the Planning Board. The plan respects the natural landscape of the site and its status as a special place within downtown Columbia, and the various park features display a consistent degree of design excellence, as attested to by the unanimous approval of the Design Advisory Panel and the comments made by its members.

With respect to the conditions put on approval of FDP-DC-MSW-1 by the Planning Board, SDP- 14-073 meets not only the letter of those conditions but their spirit as well. Not only does the plan minimize tree removal through careful siting of the various park features, it provides an extensive system of meandering paths on which visitors can fully enjoy the natural setting of those features. In sum, the plan works with the landscape, not against it.

SDP-14-073 also shows the result of the requested coordination regarding integration of the park and its features with Merriweather Post Pavilion, making the overall Merriweather-Symphony Woods neighborhood the “unique cultural and community amenity” referred to in the previous Planning Board decision. The Chrysalis shared-use amphitheater proposed for Phase 1 will provide a suitable second venue to Merriweather Post Pavilion, the Butterfly guest services building is well-sited to serve visitors to both the pavilion and the Chrysalis (and displays an architectural excellence not found in the existing Merriweather outbuildings), and the Caterpillar “living berm” is an imaginative solution to the problem of controlling access to Merriweather Post Pavilion during events while providing access to the pavilion property during other times.

I’ve previously blogged about the parking situation at Merriweather Post Pavilion. [See here and here.] I agree with the DPZ staff that the parking arrangements proposed with SDP-14-073 are adequate for the various uses detailed. Although some may be concerned about increased traffic and parking needs associated with the development of Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods, those concerns cannot be fully addressed in the context of the park itself, since to a large degree they arise from joint uses with Merriweather Post Pavilion. In that regard I recommend the Planning Board carefully review parking proposals submitted with any development plans for the rest of the Merriweather-Symphony Woods neighborhood and (especially) for the Crescent neighborhood.

In conclusion, I strongly urge the Planning Board to approve SDP-14-073, including both phases 1 and 2 and the subsequent phases 3 through 7, subject to further review as noted. I also urge the Planning Board to adopt the DPZ staff recommendation and allow the access drive from the Merriweather VIP Lot to the Chrysalis amphitheater to extend below the southeastern boundary specified in the final development plan. Among other things, mandating an alternate routing would be inconsistent with the previous Planning Board conditions relating to minimizing tree removal. Finally, I urge the Planning Board to refrain from putting any conditions on the site development plan, now or in the future, where such conditions might compromise the integrity of the park design or otherwise result in the park not fulfilling its promise as a unique and valuable cultural and community amenity for the residents of Columbia and Howard County.

Frank Hecker Ellicott City, Maryland

Dear Tom,

True to your nature, I see you’ve already blogged about the election results yesterday and given us your thoughts on what was a hard-fought but ultimately unsuccessful effort in District 9B. I can’t let your post go without one of my own. I don’t for a moment regret my endorsement of you, and in particular I don’t regret the investment I made in your campaign through my donations. I felt they were an excellent investment in a campaign that by all indications was professionally run, focused on issues that matter to the people of Ellicott City, positive in all its aspects, and (most important) featured a candidate who was tireless in reaching out to his potential constituents, listening to their opinions, and promoting a practical vision for governing.

Please pardon me while I go a bit meta (in my usual way): As you may or may not know, a lot of libertarians and conservatives are enamored of public choice theory and its use of economic theories to explain why politicians behave as they do. Which is fine as far as it goes, but they often go on to use this as a stick with which to beat advocates of government action, claiming that public choice theory conclusively proves that all politicians are motivated only by their own self-interest, and thus can never and will never act so as to promote the public good. This, to be frank, is a crock of crap. It’s simply the flip side of the argument many progressives make, that market failures prove that capitalism doesn’t work as advertised, and ultimately is nothing but selfishness and greed incarnate.

What is true is that both democracy and capitalism work best when practiced by people whose personalities and experiences predispose them to have concerns for others beyond themselves and their “tribes.” Motivated in many ways by self-interest they may be (who would ever run for public office without a fair amount of ambition to provide a spur?), but there are lots of politicians (of all parties) who clearly are moved by a sense of civic duty and genuinely seek to improve the well-being of their constituents (just as there are many businesspeople for whom money is not the be-all and end-all, and who genuinely seek to improve the well-being of their customers). We in Howard County are blessed to have more than our fair share of such politicians, of whom you are one. I appreciate all that you have done for this county thus far, and look forward to seeing the fruits of whatever civic activities you may choose to undertake in the future. Thank you again, and the best of luck in your post-campaign life.

Your supporter and fellow blogger,

Frank

Jessie Newburn - 2014-11-05 16:18

Amen!

Among their other policy proposals, both candidates for Howard County Executive have proposed new initiatives to make data about the workings of county government more available to residents. Allan Kittleman has promoted what he calls “HoCoStat,” a “platform to hold government accountable” that “will link data to long-term impacts” and “measure . . . response and process times for various government functions.” Courtney Watson’s corresponding initiative doesn’t have a catchy name, but her “open government” vision includes a promise to “leverage technology to improve and maintain government transparency, efficiency and communication” by creating “an intuitive and interactive web portal that provides public access to information in usable and searchable formats.”

As someone who’s written my share of data-heavy blog posts you might expect that I’d be wildly cheering these plans on from the sidelines. However as someone who’s also seen my share of technology hype cycles, of which “big data” is only the latest, I also feel compelled to throw a little cold water on at least some aspects of these proposals. To be specific:

Yes, open government, big data, and related topics are hot and sexy. But in the end the goal of Howard County government is to making Howard County a better place to live for its residents. In that respect providing access to government data (and in particular building high-profile web portals, dashboards, and so on, to display that data) is a means, not an end. This applies more generally to accountability, transparency, and all those other nice things candidates are promising and activists are demanding. We shouldn’t confuse process with products: Transparency is nice, but transparency in and of itself is arguably useless.

Second, as James Howard noted in a recent post, Howard County isn’t really big enough for big data. To take but one example, systems like those created in New York City, Baltimore, and so on, are often touted as enabling better law enforcement, for example by identifying detailed geographic patterns in particular types of crimes. But those large cities have lots of crimes, enough that any patterns in the data stand a good chance of being significant. Given the generally small number of crimes in Howard County, it’s quite possible that a lot of the patterns in county crime data simply represent statistical noise and don’t add a lot of information beyond what Howard County police already know based on their lived experience. That’s certainly true for very low-frequency crimes like murder. In 2013 there were only four homicides in Howard County, and I personally knew three of the victims. Is there any significance to that fact? None whatsoever—it’s simply random coincidence at work.

Next, data without context is not that useful, and may be actively harmful. A good example is school test scores. As Julia McCready recently pointed out, it’s unclear that school test scores are actually useful for identifying “good” schools versus “bad” schools. It’s quite possible that test scores for a given school are simply reflecting the characteristics of the students who go to that school, and not whether that school is better than others in educating students. A system that doesn’t provide context for data is a system whose data is likely to be misinterpreted and misused.

Related to the previous point, data without (policy) experimentation is also not all that useful. Data in and of itself isn’t necessarily that informative about what policies should be implemented, because it doesn’t necessarily indicate which underlying factors are driving the results we see, and how we migh achieve better results. Determining that typically requires actually making some policy changes to see what happens, and doing so in a controlled manner that permits some statistically valid conclusions to be drawn. (See for example Jim Manzi’s book Uncontrolled: The Surprising Payoff of Trial-and-Error for Business, Politics, and Society.) But making policy changes is hard enough in the first place; doing randomized controlled trials of different policy options (especially when one option in a proper trial is “do nothing”) is even more difficult. (It’s the same phenomenon as with drug trials: No one wants to be in the group taking the placebo.)

Finally, all the data in the world won’t necessarily change people’s minds about what policies to adopt. People of all political persuasions are quite capable of holding on to their opinions and political positions no matter what the data indicates (and note that I myself can be as susceptible to this as anyone). Smart people in particular (the kind of people who like to visit data portals and are arguing for their creation) are really good at finding reasons to doubt what the data appears to be telling us. So if in the end we switch from arguing about policies to arguing about data and methodologies, have we really achieved anything?

Despite all I’ve written above I’m not a total skeptic about the possibility of Howard County doing more to provide access to government data. I’d just like the county government and in particular the new County Executive to embark on this task with a proper sense of humility. In particular I have the following recommendations:

First, start simple, start small, underpromise and over deliver. Do we really need to spend potentially millions of taxpayer dollars on a high-profile system that’s at a relatively high risk of failing to meet its goals? Why not incrementally extend existing efforts? For example, there’s already a site data.howardcountymd.gov. Does anyone use it? If not, why not? Could this site be relatively inexpensively improved to make it more valuable and attractive to Howard County residents? Could data already provided by other county agencies be consolidated onto this existing site?

Next, for many if not most cases I suggest that the county provide only data, and let the private and nonprofit sector add value to it. A lot of the data generated by Howard County government is of interest to relatively small groups of people. Why bother spending a lot of time and money creating a fancy data portal just for those groups? Just give them the raw data, in as simple a form as possible, for example as so-called “comma-separated values” or CSV-formatted files that can be loaded into any desktop spreadsheet program or open source statistical package. Then let those groups decide how best to analyze the data and prepare it for public dissemination. If the county wants to do more, “teach people to fish”: work with the Howard County Library System, Howard Community College, and local volunteers to organize classes for businesses, nonprofit organizations, and local activists in how to use common “data science” tools and how to build data-driven web sites.

If the county does want to provide its own system, please, please, please don’t do so under an arrangement that gives an outside contractor a measure of control over the data, how it’s distributed, and what can be done with it. If the county releases data then that data should be available to everyone, in a form everyone can use, and for whatever purposes people want to make use of it.

Related to the previous point, treat providing data to the public as a core government function, to be budgeted as such, and not as an adjunct task for which an agency needs to pursue “cost recovery” or even (heaven forbid) tries to make a profit center. It is not the business of government to be “in business,” especially in an era when the marginal cost of disseminating raw data products via the Internet is so low. Budget for collecting the data and preparing it for public release at no charge, not for implementing complicated schemes by which access to data can be controlled and sold.

Government data ultimately belongs to all of us, a public resource for all to use, and government itself is not necessarily best equipped to analyze, present, and build on that data. Let’s have Howard County government data be made available to all in a way that makes the most efficient use of taxpayer dollars and leverages the creative energies of the multitude of organizations and individuals in the private and civic sectors. I think that’s an approach that anyone can get behind, no matter their political affiliation.

Jessie Newburn - 2014-11-04 12:55

Ever and always, brilliant!

Trevor Greene (trevordentist@gmail.com) - 2014-11-04 14:01

I can think of one good reason to put all this data out there. Once all the data is readily available, I’ll be able to read a series of Frank Hecker blog posts analyzing said data.

hecker - 2014-11-06 17:34

Trevor, good to see your comments again. But… I don’t think Howard County government needs to spend millions just to keep me happy and you entertained :-)

Before I publish my main post for today, a brief public service announcement: If you live in District 9B and haven’t yet voted, please consider giving Tom Coale your vote for Delegate. For the most part this is a nonpartisan blog, and I have a pretty strict policy of not endorsing candidates for office, even for nonpartisan positions like those on the Board of Education. The only exception I’ve ever made (and likely ever will make) is for Tom. I think he would make a great representative for the people of Ellicott City; my only regret is that I live across US 40 from District 9B and can’t vote for him. (Although if Tom wins this election and performs at the level I think he’s capable of, I think in future I and a lot of other people will in fact get our chance to elect him to something else.)

I have two points I wanted to make tonight:

First, I have not seen the language of the Inner Arbor Trust easement, and am not qualified to comment on legal issues relating to the easement. However I have read pretty much every public source of information I could find relating to the various proposals for Symphony Woods, and everything I’ve read indicates that the Columbia Association has been accepting of the actions taken by the Inner Arbor Trust since its creation. That includes in particular the Trust’s decision to leverage the work already done by CA as part of the county planning process, and concentrate first on developing the part of Symphony Woods covered by the current Inner Arbor plan—a plan whose elements are those contained in the original CA-submitted Final Development Plan, including an amphitheater, café, play area, and so on. There is nothing in the public record to indicate that the Inner Arbor Trust was ever acting in violation of the easement as far as CA was concerned. If the current CA board is determined to test the issue in court I believe that the private record of dealings between CA and the Inner Arbor Trust will also show this to be the case.

Second, if the CA board is determined to pursue action against the Inner Arbor Trust then it will presumably put at risk the construction of the Chrysalis amphitheater, the first feature of the Inner Arbor plan scheduled to be realized. The Chrysalis is a key element of the plan, and a needed complement to a renovated Merriweather Post Pavilion. It is also a beautiful and innovative structure, designed by an award-winning architect who’s been hailed as “the rising star of the 21st century.” It would be a shame if Columbia were to lose the chance to host the first major work by an architect who may become as prominent in this century as Frank Gehry did in the last. And given that construction of the Chrysalis is being funded by the county, it would more than a shame if the CA board’s actions cause schedule delays and consequent cost overruns for which Howard County taxpayers will be asked to pick up the tab.

I believe the Inner Arbor Trust has produced a superior plan for Symphony Woods, a plan of which CA has previously been supportive. By all indications the Inner Arbor Trust has also been executing on that plan in a competent and timely manner. For the CA board to now reverse CA’s previous support of the Trust would I think do a disservice to the residents of Columbia and the rest of Howard County, who want to see a renewed and vibrant Symphony Woods. If that reversal ultimately leads to expensive and protracted legal proceedings then I think the board would also do a disservice to the Columbia Association itself, and risk damaging CA’s ability to effectively serve the Columbians to whom it is ultimately accountable.

As for what the CA board will end up doing, I have no idea. I look forward to reading reports from those who are able to attend the meeting.

UPDATE: Fixed a couple of grammatical errors.

Julia McCready - 2014-07-10 16:52

Submit this in writing! It is too good to be cribbed by others.

hecker - 2014-07-11 12:19

Thanks for stopping by! Unfortunately I had other commitments that prevented me from being there in person or otherwise submitting stuff before the meeting.

Marc Fornes, the designer of the Chrysalis, the amphitheater planned for Symphony Woods as part of the Inner Arbor plan, and his firm THEVERYMANY are one of two winners of the 2014 WAN 21 for 21 award sponsored by World Architecture News, “an initiative aiming to highlight 21 architects who could be the leading lights of architecture in the 21st century.”

(This actually happened back in the spring, but I was only recently alerted to this when I was checking out who linked to my blog and saw a Rhino News blog post that mentioned the award. I’ve previously written about the Chrysalis, Fornes, and his firm THEVERYMANY as part of my ongoing coverage of the Inner Arbor plan; see in particular my initial post and my follow-up post discussing the structure of the Chrysalis in more detail.)

THEVERYMANY and 2014 co-winner sP+a (Sameep Padora + Associates) were selected from a total of 94 entries submitted, of which 42 were selected for more detailed consideration. The accompanying story notes that “As soon as Marc Fornes’ work was set on the table it was clear that a unanimous agreement [among the judges] was brewing” and quotes one of the architects judging the awards praising Fornes as “an absolute leader” and “the rising star of the 21st century.”

So what’s all the fuss about? The entry submitted by THEVERYMANY highlighted the Chrysalis, and discussed the firm as a “studio committed to the design and construction of prototypical architecture via custom computational methods.” The language of the submission is somewhat dry and abstract, so I’ll try to describe Fornes’s methods more informally:

Traditional architectural practice is based on architects conceiving of a structural form or set of forms in their minds, putting pen to paper to refine the design through drawings, and then using computers primarily as an aid to the rest of the process: creating more detailed drawings to nail down the final look of the structure and make sure everything will fit together as envisioned, doing structural analysis to see if the structure can handle loads, producing good-looking renderings for clients, and so on.

THEVERYMANY turns that process on its head: Don’t use the computer as a simple drawing tool, a substitute for pen and paper. Use it for what it’s truly capable of, including exploring the space of possible three-dimensional structures. More concretely: Start with sophisticated 3D modeling applications (like Rhino, the one Fornes uses). Extend them with powerful programming languages that can be used to drive the 3D modelers (Fornes uses Python as implemented in Rhino). Leverage applications that can take complex 3-dimensional surfaces and join them together into structural elements and then into complete structures (see for example RhinoNest). Add code that can analyze such structures for soundness, and that can produce instructions for computer-controlled machinery to create individual pieces that can then be assembled into the finished structure. Finally (and most importantly), find people like Fornes and his associates who have the knowledge, discipline, and aesthetic sensibility to incorporate these techniques into the heart of their architectural practice.

As the submission entry states, “The desire is not to generate models, nor installations, but rather 1:1 scale structures, prototypical architectures.” Fornes has been developing such prototypes for many years now, and “continually pushes constraints at larger scales.” The result of this work is the Chrysalis amphitheater as you see it here, a beautiful airy structure that looks as if it had emerged naturally from the earth. I hope it won’t be long before we see it in real life as part of Symphony Woods, replacing the temporary stage that’s been used this year during Wine in the Woods and other events. If all goes well it will be in place sometime next year, and Columbia can (as it did with Frank Gehry) once again boast of hosting the early work of an architect who seems destined for great things.

Julia McCready - 2014-06-30 12:26

You and I seem to have the same subject on our minds today!

hecker - 2014-06-30 22:23

Indeed. Looking forward to the completion of your Millennium Park post …

• Howard County
  • County Executive
  • Council District 1
  • Sheriff
  • State’s Attorney
  • Judge of the Orphans’ Court
  • Board of Education
• Maryland State Senate
  • District 9
  • Districts 12 and 13
• Maryland House of Delegates
  • District 9A
  • District 9B
  • District 12
  • District 13

Note that I’ve updated the Board of Education and House of Delegates District 12 posts to add pictures of signs for Allen Dyer and Eric Ebersole respectively.

I already selected winners (or in some cases, multiple winners) for signs in each race. Now it’s time for me to name winners in some special category, as well as an overall winner for all signs I saw.

The first category is for the best slogan. As I’ve mentioned previously, I’m not too hot on including campaign slogans on signs, and certainly there were a number of signs in this election where the slogan wasn’t doing much more than taking up space. However on Frank Mirabile’s sign the slogan “Time to Stand Our Ground” is both memorable and does something useful, namely letting the more partisan voters in a party primary know exactly where the candidate, uh, stands.

After seeing lots of signs I get tired of looking at conventional color schemes, either the American colors red, white, and blue or the Maryland colors red, white, black, and yellow, and I yearn for a change. I thus decided to have a “color my world” category, in which the winner is the large Nick Stewart sign and its orange on blue color scheme.

Some signs I thought were almost but not quite what they could be. In some cases (as, for example, with Ryan Frederic’s sign) I don’t know enough about graphic design to determine how the sign could best be improved. In other cases I thought just a relatively small change would do the trick. Hence we have the “most easily improved” category, with the winner being the small Warren Miller sign once the (in my opinion) superfluous design elements in the upper left and right corners have been removed (as I’ve done here).

Finally, the moment you’ve all been waiting for (or not, as the case may be): My pick for the best Howard County campaign sign of 2014. Those of you who’ve been reading this entire series will not be surprised at my pick, the large Dario Broccolino sign. This sign made me go “wow” the first time I saw it, and I haven’t seen another sign to top it since then.

With that I’m concluding this series, at least for now. I did collect pictures of signs for the gubernatorial race and the race for Attorney General, but I just ran out of energy to post and critique them; maybe later. Also, if I have time and the inclination I’ll post closer to the general election if there are any new signs that didn’t show up in the primary.

Finally, some thanks: First, thanks to all of you who’ve come to this blog to read these posts; I appreciate your attention, and hope your time was worth it. A further thanks to those of you who stopped to comment, who sent me pictures of signs, or who pointed out where I could find them; I love hearing from readers, and thank you for taking the time to contact me. And last but not at all least, thanks to all the candidates who put themselves out in the public eye and ran for election to public office. As I wrote before, you had to endure people commenting on your public appearances, counting up your Twitter and Facebook followers, and making videos about your direct mail pieces. And thanks to me, not even your signs are safe from criticism. Thank you for bearing it all in good grace, and being willing to serve the citizens of Howard County and Maryland.

This is the end of my one-a-day posts; I now return you to your regular (or I should say in my case, irregular) programming. I’m not sure when I’ll post next, or what I’ll post about, but if you’re interested in what more I might have to say please take a moment to click the “Subscribe via email” button or add my RSS feed to your newsreader. Till later!

Walter Carson (wcarson@columbiaunion.net) - 2014-06-25 12:18

Well done! Always enjoy your take on signs and local politics. Best wishes. WEC Sent from my iPhone

Here are the signs, in alphabetical order by candidate, along with my comments, according to the criteria I’ve previously discussed.

I’ve previously written about the problems inherent in using all four colors of the Maryland flag in a single sign. This sign handles those problems as well as they can be handled, mainly by avoiding the red text on yellow background found in signs from Trent Kittleman, Frank Mirabile, and others. Instead this sign carefully restricts itself to the exact color juxtapositions found the Maryland flag: black with yellow, and red with white. More specifically, it restricts itself to what I think are the best color combinations: black text on a yellow background and white text on a red background.

Some other things to note about this sign: The typeface is clean and readable; it’s bold enough to stand out but light enough to allow adequate space between the letters. Using both upper and lower case in “Kittleman” means that the text isn’t quite as wide as it would be if it were in all upper case, and thus it can fit better on the sign. (“Kittleman” has nine letters, just like “Grabowski” and “Markovitz”; compare this sign to the Grabowski and Markovitz signs I discussed in my previous post.) The red banner-like design element in the upper right corner is well-done; note that on the left side of the element the yellow background seems to form an arrowhead pointing to the “Proven Independent Leader” slogan. The slogan itself points diagonally upward to the right to make the sign more dynamic (the same technique used on the Dario Broccolino sign). Finally, note that the horizontal line separating “Kittleman” from “Howard County Executive” is not just red on yellow (a poor combination) but is both red and white in order to maintain the preferred color juxtapositions I mentioned above.

The one thing that bothered me about this sign is that the “Howard County Executive” seems a bit thin. When I was walking around the neighborhood I had some trouble making that text out when viewing the sign from a distance.

The design of the large version of the Allan Kittleman sign is the same as that of the smaller sign, except that “Howard County Executive” is now one line rather than two, is in a slightly bolder typeface, and (at least to my eyes) is more readable.

Like Courtney Watson’s 2010 sign, this sign uses white text on a blue background to good effect: The text is very readable (especially “County Executive”), and there’s a good visual progression from oblique serif type and all caps in “COURTNEY” to the bold san serif typeface of “WATSON” to the sans serif mixed case of “County Executive.”

The one potentially problematic part of this sign is the design element in the upper left corner. Typical non-text elements in signs are either totally non-representational (e.g., lines or borders) or are common symbols that are immediately recognizable (e.g., stars, apples, flag-derived banners). This element is clearly intended to represent something, but it’s not immediately clear what that something is. My personal interpretation is that it’s symbolic of Howard County’s rural heritage: (yellow) sun above (white) road above (green) field; however I’m not sure the average person would see it the same way as I do. Nevertheless the colors are very nice and brighten up what would otherwise be a plain and unadorned sign. (Note also that subtle green line that separates “WATSON” and “County Executive” and echoes the green in the upper left conner.)

Now for the tough part: Which sign to vote for? This contest is certainly not as lopsided as we saw four years ago with Trent Kittleman’s sign vs. Ken Ulman’s sign; these signs are much more closely matched. Both sign designs are professional and effective but neither is perfect, for reasons explained above. On Kittleman’s side I think this the first black/yellow/red/white sign design I actually find attractive; on Watson’s side I really like the sign but consider it just a step down from the 2010 sign. In the end I’m going to take the coward’s way out and call this a toss-up.

This concludes my look at the campaign signs for Howard County local races in 2014. In my next post I’ll wrap things up and name some overall winners in various categories, including my choice for the best Howard County campaign sign of 2014.

Here are the signs, in alphabetical order by candidate, along with my comments, according to the criteria I’ve previously discussed. Note that I could not find any signs for David Blake Melton.

Dave Grabowski, like Lisa Markovitz and Dario Broccolino, has the problem of having a long name that’s difficult to fit on a sign; unlike Renée McGuirk-Spence, hyphenating it is not an option. Unlike the Dario Broccolino sign, which provided more room for the name by displaying it on the diagonal, this Grabowski sign adopts the simple strategy of displaying the name horizontally in a serif typeface that is pretty readable. Overall the sign is clean and well-designed, with no extraneous elements or slogans. The background color isn’t one of my favorites, but that’s just a matter of taste; certainly it provides a good contrast to the text.

I like the color on this sign; it’s a change from the typical colors and is not so pastel that it causes contrast problems. However I think the typeface used for “Markovitz” is just a tad too bold, and that does affect readability a bit. Compare this sign to the Grabowski sign above; both names are the same length but I think you’d better be able to recognize “Grabowski” from a distance. Also, I’m not sure the “Vote ‘14” design element in the upper right corner adds anything.

This is a solid sign: No extraneous clutter, typeface that’s bold but still readable, and a good background color.

This is almost the same design as the small Wendy Royalty sign, but it’s missing the white border found on that sign. To me that’s to its detriment: I think the white border works well to frame the main part of the design. Without the border all that red in the background gets to be a bit much. The design is cropped really tight as well; notice how close the “R” and “y” in “Royalty” are to the edge of the sign.

A nice minimal sign that highlights the candidate’s (full) name and position sought without trying to cram anything else in. The color and typeface look good as well.

This is an interesting sign. Kevin Forrest Schmidt couples this sign with his regular sign, for example putting the “RUN FORREST RUN” sign next to or in front of his other sign. It’s a cute gimmick to lend some personality to the signs, although I’m not sure if it’s worth printing double the number of signs that normally would be required.

Jon Weinstein likes yellow and white text on blue backgrounds; his 2010 campaign signs used the same color scheme. This one is interesting because it’s a variant of the design on his other small sign. I don’t really like the stars intermixed with dots; it seems a bit busy. However I do like the typefaces on this sign.

The different typeface and the switch to mixed upper and lower case on “Weinstein” make this sign a bit more legible. However I think the typeface on this sign is a bit lacking in personality compared to the previous sign.

This sign is just a taller version of the small sign, with “Howard County Council” spread out over three lines to add height. I think that’s a mistake, as it makes the design look too skinny. I think it would have been better to drop the “Howard,” put “County Council” on one line, and reduce the height just a tad.

Which sign should go on to the general election? There are no clunkers in this race, but overall I think I like the small Wendy Royalty sign the best. However the large Wendy Royalty sign serves as a warning that a good design can be significantly compromised by seemingly minor changes (in this case removing the border and cropping more tightly).

In my next post I’ll look at the marquee Howard County race, and the last local race for which I was able to find signs, namely the contest for Howard County Executive.

Here are the signs, in alphabetical order by candidate, along with my comments, according to the criteria I’ve previously discussed. Thanks to Corey Andrews for sending in a picture of his sign. I couldn’t find any signs for Zaneb Beams and Dan Furman. I did see one sign for Allen Dyer, but couldn’t stop to take a picture; by the time I came back later that day the sign was gone.

This is a good minimal sign with a nice clean typeface and a dark blue background to provide excellent contrast and legibility.

The core of this sign is good: Nice typeface, readable, stands out. However the top and bottom of this sign succumb to the syndrome of treating a campaign sign like a direct mail piece.

This is a well-designed sign as far as it goes: The typeface is great, the candidate’s name is prominently featured (even though it takes most of the sign to do so), and the apple design element is really well-done. Unfortunately the pastel color scheme just doesn’t work well in the great outdoors; it gets washed out in bright sunlight and the sign becomes difficult to read.

I don’t understand why this sign uses an American flag; it’s a Board of Education race, not a national election. Other than that the text elements are OK as far as they go—but note that ditching the flag motif would have allowed splitting the candidate’s name onto two lines and making the text significantly larger.

A nice sign. The main typeface used for “BUTLER” stands out well, and the other typeface complements it well. (Note that the typeface used for “Olga” is an oblique version of that used for “Board of Education.” The thin white line above “Board of Education” is a nice touch too; it breaks up what otherwise might be a too-heavy red background.

A good solid sign that’s quite readable. The red, white, and blue color scheme, though quite attractive, doesn’t exactly say “Board of Education” to me.

The background apple makes the “CH” in “FRENCH” almost unreadable on this sign from a distance. Also, why “Return” and not “Re-Elect”? Because it sounds more “nonpartisan”?

As I’ve mentioned previously, apples are a cliché in the context of Board of Education campaign signs. The strategy of this sign is that if you’re going to use a cliché, own the cliché. That together with minimal text and good complementary typefaces makes for a good sign. My only nitpick is with the stars in the upper right, which make that area of the sign look a bit busy.

The sun adds visual interest to this sign, its yellow color complements the green background and text colors, and the childish look of the drawing evokes education without resorting to the usual clichés.

My daughter writes: “An awesome sign. The bow-tie makes it look totes adorbs! Even though they are soooo 2012, it’s still a nice touch.” I write: Why a (trademarked!) bow-tie that’s inspired by the Maryland flag? Apparently because Mike Smith wears one; see for example this Baltimore Sun story. I guess it’s a change from the usual apples, but to be honest I’ve been looking at this sign for over a month now and just now cracked the code on it. (For a while I wasn’t sure it was even supposed to be a bow-tie.) In any case, whether the bow-tie is a good idea or not, including it in the middle of the sign means that the candidate’s name is relegated to a small space at the top of the sign. That’s definitely not a good idea in my book.

This sign goes heavy on the apples, but oddly enough where one might expect to find yet another one, i.e., replacing the “o” in Vaillancourt, instead there’s a large globe and three small children. This is another sign where I had to puzzle out what was going on: The globe isn’t that visible from a distance, so you have to get up close to see what’s going on. Again, this might be OK on a direct mail piece, but with a sign the viewer will likely be driving by at 20 mph or more and there’s not enough time to notice and interpret sign elements that aren’t boldly drawn.

This is a tough race to call an overall sign winner. The Olga Butler sign had no missteps, but it also didn’t have anything in the design that specifically evoked a Board of Education race; ditto for the Allen Dyer sign. The Leslie Kornreich sign did do that effectively, and was definitely the best of the “apple signs”; the Christine O’Connor offered an alternative way to evoke education and childhood that I thought worked well. Finally, the underlying design of the Maureen Evans Arthurs sign was really excellent, and if the colors had been a bit bolder I would have likely named it the winner.

In my next post I’ll look at the signs for candidates in the Howard County Council race in District 1.

UPDATE: Corrected the number of candidates going on to the general election; thanks go to Corey Andrews for the correction.

UPDATE 2: Finally found a sign for Allen Dyer and updated the post to add it.

Urban Bushwoman - 2014-06-23 02:31

I like the Smith sign. :)

hecker - 2014-06-23 03:50

Thanks for stopping by to comment! Once I figured out the bow-tie thing, I think it was a clever gimmick for personal branding. But I still think the name is too small…

Corey Andrews (cacoreya@yahoo.com) - 2014-06-23 16:19

Good post. One thing to note… eight candidates will make it through the primary, not four.

hecker - 2014-06-23 17:25

D’oh! I was confusing the number of open seats with the number of people going on to the general. Thanks for catching this! I’ve updated the post.

Here are the signs, in alphabetical order by candidate, along with my comments, according to the criteria I’ve previously discussed. Note that I couldn’t find any signs for Jody Venkatesan.

Hey, haven’t I seen this sign before? Yes, it’s Team 13 once again, with Guy Guzzone apparently not having any signs just for himself. As I wrote before, this sign is effective but otherwise lacks interest.

Another sign we’ve seen before, as Ed Kasemeyer piggybacks on Terri Hill’s sign design. Again I’ve noted the problems I have with this sign, including the somewhat overly idiosyncratic typeface and the botched banner.

A simple sign that gets straight to the point and drives it home without any missteps along the way: candidate’s last name, position sought, and web site address for those wanting to know more.

The final tally? I’m going to give this one to Jesse Pippy, first for actually having a sign of his own and second for having it be a simple but nice one.

In my next post I’ll come back to Howard County local races and evaluate signs for the Board of Education candidates.

Here are the signs, in alphabetical order by candidate, along with my comments, according to the criteria I’ve previously discussed.

This is a good sign, especially for using only two colors. The “BATES” is large and readable in a clear serif typeface, and the smaller “Gail” in a script typeface adds a nice informal, almost personal, note. The integration of the Maryland flag-inspired banner is also done very well; note that the banner is outlined to prevent confusion between the sign background and the white parts of the banner.

This sign does some things quite well, and one thing not so well. The good news: The sans serif typeface used for “FREDERIC” is bold and readable; it really sells the sign. The serif typeface used for the smaller “RYAN” is also a good choice and complements the main typeface well; having the “R” be slightly larger than the “YAN” is also a nice touch. Finally, the red star to the right of “RYAN” both balances the composition and makes it more dynamic—note that the star is slightly off-center to the right, which adds visual interest. Overall, it’s an uncluttered and powerful design.

Now for the bad news: Printing “STATE SENATOR” and “DISTRICT 9” in red ink on a dark blue background makes them almost unreadable, particular if you’re driving by rather than walking.

The main thing I don’t like about this sign is the “VOTE DANIEL” banner at the top. It looks just a tad odd, and I feel like it’s undersized relative to the rest of the sign. Otherwise the sign is competent and unexceptionable.

The results: This sign contest is a good example of “might have been.” The Ryan Frederic sign design is really strong, but I think it was sabotaged by the color choice on the lower text. I understand the desire to echo the red star at the top of the sign with red at the bottom of the sign and thus tie the thole design together. However ultimately this is a campaign sign, not a print ad or direct mail piece, and I think a campaign sign has to meet more stringent criteria for readability than designs in other media. This stumble on the part of the Ryan Frederic sign opens the way up for the Gail Bates sign to claim victory.

In my next post I’ll evaluate signs for State Senate candidates in District 12 and 13.

Here are the signs, in alphabetical order by candidate , along with my comments, according to the criteria I’ve previously discussed. (I’m doing Team 13 first because “Atterbeary” starts with an “A.” Also, I couldn’t find signs for Eaton and Yates.)

The Team 13 sign seems to be a repeat of its sign from 2010 (from what I can recall). Is it effective? Yes: The sign reinforces that this is a slate, and tells you who’s part of it. Is it attractive? Only if you like bare-vanilla minimalism. I will say though that I think in some ways doing red text on a white background is superior to doing white text on a red background.

Another basic sign that gets the job done but doesn’t hold much interest from a design perspective.

I like the orange background color on this, as well as the white outlining around the black letters in “SIDDIQUI,” which makes the name stand out nicely. This sign also has three more subtle characteristics: First, and most trivial, the orange background and black text with white outline remind one of the Baltimore Orioles (for example, this version of their uniform); if this isn’t simply a coincidence then it’s certainly appropriate for a candidate running in the Baltimore suburbs, especially in a district that also takes in part of Baltimore County.

Second, omitting the first name means that this sign could have been used equally well by either Nayab Siddiqui or Janet Siddiqui, prior to the “great switcheroo” that saw Janet withdraw from the District 13 race at the last minute and be replaced by Nayab. (Of course, if either Janet or Nayab Siddiqui had been accepted into Team 13 then presumably they would have been on the standard Team 13 signs and if they wanted to they could have saved money and not done their own signs.) And in any case it allows Nayab to get the benefit of any positive feelings people have toward Janet.

Finally, if I recall correctly, on every other sign I’ve seen for House of Delegates races the word “Delegate” appears on the bottom of the sign, below the candidate’s name. On Nayab Siddiqui’s sign, and only on his sign, it appears at the top, so that a casual observer would read the sign as “Delegate Siddiqui.” (The word “For” appears at the beginning, but it’s in fairly small letters and is east to miss.) Again, this may be a coincidence, just based on the way the design evolved, but it can also be read as a way to compensate for being left off of Team 13: Encourage less-informed voters to think that you’ve already been elected and are running as an incumbent.

Another basic sign that gets the job done. I don’t like the way the white stripe at the bottom transitions into the Maryland flag-based banner, but that may just be me being picky.

As with District 12 it’s not difficult to pick a winner here. If nothing else Nayab Siddiqui’s sign evinces an attempt to put some thought into the sign’s design above and beyond the minimum required, and it also has fun subliminal cleverness whether intended or not.

In my next post I’ll evaluate signs for Maryland State Senate candidates in District 9.

Here are the signs, in alphabetical order by candidate, along with my comments, according to the criteria I’ve previously discussed. I couldn’t find signs for Jay Fred Cohen, Adam Sachs, or Rick Martel.

The state of Maryland seems strangely balanced on the “Y” in “BAILEY” in this sign. I think it might have been better to reduce the size of the image slightly, or just ditch the map of Maryland entirely and use something else. (The crooked shape of Maryland doesn’t lend itself easily to good sign designs.)

This sign is readable and serviceable, but not more than that. Gordon Bull has the benefit of having a short last name, which means it can be featured prominently, but next to the giant “BULL” the small “GORDON” looks out of place and unbalances the composition.

This sign is very reminiscent of the sign Eric Wargotz used for his 2010 US Senate campaign, even down to the descender of the “g” interrupting the horizontal stripe separating the top and bottom halves of the sign. That’s not a bad thing, as I thought Wargotz’s sign would have been quite nice with some changes. Dongarra’s sign has those changes, most notably simplifying the horizontal stripe and moving the position and web site address to the bottom of the sign, and is all the better for them. (I’m not sure the star to the right of “Rebecca” was really necessary, but it does provide a bit of balance since “Rebecca” is shifted to the left a bit.)

Interestingly enough, this large Rebecca Dongarra sign follows the opposite strategy from Warren Miller’s and Tom Coale’s large signs, by not using the extra space to add the web address. Instead the web address is on the small sign. I think leaving off the web site address increases the impact of what was already a very good sign.

The name is very readable on this sign (a function of the typeface and using mixed upper and lower case), and the red, green, and blue colors work well together. However putting the “Democrat for Delegate - District 12” text in green impairs its readability, and together with the multiple occurrences of “Teacher” makes this sign almost look like one in the Board of Education race. Also, as with the Brian Bailey sign I’m not too big on including a map of Maryland; it makes the sign very crowded.

While this sign gets good marks for readability of Michael Gisriel’s last name, it’s just too busy. In particular it has 14 stars, which is about 12 or 13 stars too many. It also has the same problem as Bob Flanagan’s sign, namely poor readability of black text printed on a red background.

At only 10 stars rather than 14 this large version of Michael Gisriel’s sign is an improvement on the small sign.

The typeface for this sign is somewhat quirky and I think might impede readability a bit. However the more serious problem with this sign is the design element based on the Maryland flag: The left half is OK but in the right half the white background of the banner blends with the white background of the sign, so it no longer looks like a banner.

On this larger version of Terri Hill’s sign (advertising Ed Kasemeyer, who is unopposed in the primary) the text is more readable but the flag-based design element has the exact same problem as on the small sign. If anything the problem is worse because the banner is supposed to transition into the red horizontal strip, and the transition just looks messy.

A good straightforward sign, with good readability for the candidate’s name. I could do without the map of Maryland, which looks out of place, and I’m not sure what the slogan accomplishes other than telling us how to pronounce Joe Hooe’s last name.

The best thing about this sign is the last name: Clarence Lam is blessed with the shortest name of any candidate in this race, or for that matter any other Howard County race, and this sign pounds it into your skull with big bold yellow letters. I don’t really love the purple background color, but in general this is an effective sign.

This large Clarence Lam sign is the exact same design as his small sign, but it suffers in comparison by being so severely cropped on both sides.

From the candidate with the shortest last name we move to the candidate with the longest one. However Renée McGuirk-Spence is blessed with a hyphenated name with two almost equal-length parts, which means it can be neatly split across two lines. The result is a sign with a straightforward design, nothing fancy but it works well enough.

This sign has an unusual and interesting color combination. It’s a little strange though how “NICK” appears to be much more prominent than “STEWART.” The typeface is interesting too, but I think it’s a bit thin, which again impairs readability of the candidate’s last name.

Now for the results: Even though this race has a lot more candidates and thus a lot more signs than the District 9A and 9B races, it’s much easier for me to pick a winner. I think Rebecca Dongarra’s signs are the class of the field in terms of design; although several of the other signs have their good points, nothing else really comes close as far as I’m concerned.

In my next post I’ll evaluate signs for House of Delegates candidates in District 13.

UPDATE: I finally found a sign for Eric Ebersole, and updated the post to add it.

Patricia DiCarlo (patdicarlo13@gmail.com) - 2014-06-21 14:09

Siddiqui’s sign is the only one that gives a party affiliation. Is this legal?

hecker - 2014-06-21 17:50

Thanks for stopping by to comment! To answer your question: There are a number of other candidates other than Nayab Siddiqui who include party affiliation on their signs, including Eric Bouchat in the Maryland House of Delegates race in District 9A, and Brian Bailey in the House of Delegates race in District 12. It’s perfectly legal. (I should also add that putting only the candidate’s last name on a sign is also perfectly legal, as long as the last name matches the last name on the candidate’s filing papers.)

Here are the signs, in alphabetical order by candidate, along with my comments, according to the criteria I’ve previously discussed. Full disclosure: I publicly endorsed Tom Coale in this race almost a year ago (my, how time flies!), but will try not to let that affect my aesthetic judgment.

This sign’s design is uncluttered, I like the typeface, and it’s pretty readable from a distance. The star design fits in well and adds some interest, but the red portion of the design doesn’t show up well against the blue background. This is especially true of the thin red line dividing “TOM COALE” from “FOR DELEGATE,” which is almost invisible even up close. (In fact, I hadn’t noticed the line myself until I was writing this post.)

The large version of the sign, like the large Warren Miller sign, adds the web site address, and the arrangement of “TOM” and ”COALE” is modified to better fit the larger size. (The red elements of the design seem to show up better as well, but that may just be due to the particular lighting conditions in which I took the photograph.)

This simple minimal sign is like the Ward Morrow sign in my last post: There’s nothing wrong with it, and it’s attractive as far as it goes, but it also doesn’t stand out as particularly interesting.

I don’t have a picture that shows Bob Flanagan’s sign from his 2010 county council campaign in its entirety, but I believe this sign is basically the same design, even including the stalks of wheat on the left side. Unfortunately the stalks of wheat are almost invisible as printed in black ink on a red background; ditto for the “Ellicott City” at the bottom. Other than that the typeface is clean and legible; it’s very similar to the typeface on Tom Coale’s signs.

This large version of the Flanagan sign dispenses with the “Ellicott City” at the bottom, which I think is a definite improvement. It still has the black on red wheat stalks and horizontal line, but the larger size makes these elements more visible and lets them contribute more to the overall effect of the design.

My major problem with this sign is the busyness of the added design elements, in particular the star. The shape and positioning of those elements also reminded me somewhat of the star and crescent symbol associated with Islam—an odd association for a Republican candidate. As for the rest of the design, the serif typeface works well and the sign is pretty readable overall.

There are no clunkers in this collection of signs, and no breakout winners either. I think the best of the lot are Tom Coale’s small sign and Bob Flanagan’s large sign; they’re both attractive and show an effort to add some visual interest, and their flaws—such as they are—are not that consequential. However those who prefer a “plain vanilla” sign (one that’s attractive, free of obvious flaws, but somewhat bland) may like Rich Corkran’s sign better.

Finally, although it’s not a sign (and hence is not eligible in this particular “election”) I couldn’t resist highlighting this Tom Coale car magnet. Clearly it’s not a straightforward campaign item, but it promotes the candidate’s theme of being an advocate for Ellicott City: If you put this on your car, you’re advertising not only that you love Ellicott City, but that Tom Coale does too. And its attractiveness (due to an excellent Maryland flag-based design) means that more people will be inclined to put it on their cars and keep it there. I lost one of these in a car wash and was so upset I begged Tom Coale’s field director Kirsten Coombs to give me a replacement.

That’s all for now. In my next post I’ll evaluate signs (a lot of signs) for House of Delegates candidates in District 12.

UPDATE: After I originally posted this I came across the large version of Bob Flanagan’s sign, and in the interest of fairness and completeness I decided to update the post to include it, especially since I consider it one of the best signs in the group.

Here are the signs, in alphabetical order by candidate, along with my comments, according to the criteria I’ve previously discussed.

In my opinion this sign goes overboard in its attempt to let the voters know exactly what kind of candidate Eric Bouchat is (and thus who he’s trying to appeal to). In fact, there’s so much other text that the actual position he’s running for gets relegated to a small space in the upper left. Design-wise the letters in “BOUCHAT” seem too blocky and close together, while the letters in “LIMITED” look to be spaced too widely compared to those in “GOVERNMENT,” presumably in an attempt to balance the two words in terms of length. Finally, the letters in “LIBERTARIAN CONSTITUTIONALIST” are so small I doubt they’d be readable except very close up.

This is the only diamond-shaped sign I’ve seen in the campaign, and there are reasons for why that’s the case: First, the shape doesn’t provide a lot of room for text. The very top and bottom of the sign can be used only for non-text elements (like the Maryland flag-inspired design here); even in areas closer to the center the text has to be relatively small in order to fit. Second, the support for the sign has to run through the middle of the sign, which means that the other side of the sign can’t be used.

This is an unusual red-white-and-blue design. I’ll give it credit for trying to do something out of the ordinary, but I don’t think the red triangle works well; in particular I think it reduces legibility a bit for the “R” and “S” in “CARSON.” I’m curious as to what the sign would look like with just a blue background in the upper half.

Like other GOP candidates Trent Kittleman does a little extra to try to stand out, in this case including a picture of herself. I’m only guessing here, but perhaps this was done both to highlight her role as the only female candidate in the race (from either party) and to help reduce potential confusion between herself and Allan Kittleman.

The sign’s color scheme, based on the four colors of the Maryland flag, is the same as Trent Kittleman’s sign in 2010 when she ran for Howard County Executive; in fact, except for the picture the design itself is almost identical. As I wrote at the time, it’s very tough to make this color scheme look good in a sign, especially if the sign uses red text on a yellow background or vice versa—the two colors are too similar, especially when (as in this sign) the red color ends up looking more orangish.

This is a good sign: The “Lorton” is very visible from a distance, due to the use of mixed upper and lower case (which tends to be more readable than all upper case), the large serif typeface, and the black outline around the letters, which tends to make them stand out from the background. The white on black “STATE DELEGATE” looks good as well, and the design element in the upper righthand corner adds interest and does a good job of balancing the “Kyle.” My only real criticism of the sign is that the red background looks somewhat dull and flat.

Note that unlike all the other Republican candidates’ signs, the Kyle Lorton sign doesn’t attempt to highlight his GOP/conservative/Tea Party bona fides; I think of it more as a “general election sign” (which assumes, of course, that Lorton will make it through the primary).

In this election Warren Miller continues his tradition of having good-looking examples of red-white-and-blue sign designs. In this version the blue is very dark, almost black, and makes an excellent contrast with the bright red of the top part. (At least I think the bottom color is blue; it’s really hard to tell for sure, even in close-up.) The typefaces are quite elegant and legible, with a nice rhythm in the text top to bottom: First “Warren” in mixed case, then “MILLER” in upper case in the same typeface, then “Conservative” in mixed case echoing “Warren,” albeit with a different and italic typeface, and then finally “STATE DELEGATE” in upper case in the main typeface, echoing “Miller.”

The only things I don’t like about this sign are the design elements in the upper corners, which I think add clutter and are not essential. The GOP elephant at the upper left I think is redundant given the highlighting of Miller as a conservative, and the flag at the upper right seems to be there just to balance the elephant in the design. I think the sign would look better and be more legible overall if those two elements were removed.

The most obvious difference in the larger Warren Miller sign is the addition of the “www.miller4delegate.com” web address. However this addition forced more subtle differences: In order to accommodate the address, the height of the bottom part of the sign was increased. The top part of the sign was also increased in height, presumably to keep the two parts in balance. Unfortunately this increase in height had a downside: Since the word “Conservative” is now further above the white border separating the red background from the blue background, and has more of the red background color surrounding it, optically it appears to be a bit smaller than it does in the small sign, even though the size of the text relative to “MILLER” is exactly the same.

I therefore think this sign would look better if the word “Conservative” were made slightly larger (say by 25% or so) and moved slightly lower down, so that it were equidistant between “MILLER” and the white horizontal divider. And as with the smaller sign, I think the design elements in the upper corners are not necessary.

This is an unfortunate example of a sign that is trying to be a campaign manifesto—unfortunate because the type is so small and the text so lengthy that even someone walking by rather than driving is unlikely to be able to easily read it all. Their task isn’t made any easier by the use of orange/red type on a yellow background, as with Trent Kittleman’s sign. Finally, I don’t like the Maryland flag-derived design elements to the left and right of “Maryland State Delegate 9A”; I think they overwhelm the text and make it harder to read.

This larger version of the previous Frank Mirabile sign improves on the previous sign in two ways. First, the “State Delegate 9A” is larger in size and uses a bolder typeface than “Maryland State Delegate 9A” on the previous sign, and matches the size of the flag-derived design elements. I still think those elements could be ditched, but at least the text can hold its own against them. Second, the campaign manifesto has been replaced by the pithier and more effective “Time to Stand Our Ground.” The message is further reinforced by the GOP elephant and “Don’t Tread On Me” snake in the lower right, although as on the Warren Miller signs I think those are superfluous and could have been removed.

This is a good solid sign, in the green and white color scheme used by many Democratic candidates. There’s not a whole lot else for me to say about it—there’s nothing wrong with the sign, and at the same time nothing that truly makes it stand out from the crowd.

s This combined sign for the two Democratic candidates nicely echoes the individual candidates’ signs: The typeface used for the names and the blue background to “Carson” hark back to Wally Carson’s sign, and the typeface used for “Elect” and “State Delegates 9A” and the green background to “Morrow” remind one of Ward Morrow’s sign.

Overall it’s a lively and visually interesting sign. My only gripe is that the word “Elect” seems out of balance with the rest of the sign; maybe it would have been better to leave it off?

I know this is a two-member district, but I find it hard to pick just two winners. My top three picks are the Kyle Lorton sign, the small Warren Miller sign, and the Carson/Morrow sign. I go back and forth on my ranking of the three; however I will say that if the (in my opinion) superfluous design elements were removed from the small Warren Miller sign then it would be my top pick—I just really like the colors and typefaces used in Warren Miller’s signs.

In my next post I’ll evaluate signs for House of Delegates candidates in District 9B.

Walter Carson (wcarson@columbiaunion.net) - 2014-06-15 15:25

Well done! Thank you for sharing your opinion and insights. Best wishes. WEC Sent from my iPhone

hecker - 2014-06-15 16:47

Thanks for stopping by to comment. I did early voting yesterday at the Miller Branch library, and fortunately was able to get pictures of all the signs I was previously missing, including yours and Ward Morrow’s.

So on to the judging, according to the criteria I’ve previously discussed. Here are the signs, in alphabetical order by candidate, along with my comments in my role as amateur design critic.

This sign uses the by-now-familiar black on yellow scheme based on the Maryland flag. It’s an OK sign: It’s fairly legible, the typeface used for the name livens the sign up a bit, the central divider with a star works well, putting “Shari” to the right rather than the center makes the overall composition more interesting, and the “scales of justice” image in the upper left serves to balance out the “Shari.” I take points away for not putting the apostrophe on “Orphans’.”

This is a good example of a effective minimal sign design: Only as much text as needed, a single and simple sans serif typeface (the “for” appears to be simply in an oblique version of the main typeface), no extraneous design elements, and only a single color other than white. I have only one criticism: When viewed from a distance the “D” and “O” in “DODD” look somewhat similar, so that the name looks like “OOOO” or “DDDD.” A different typeface might have helped this, or alternatively using both upper and lower case (“Dodd” vs. “DODD”).

This sign has a nice purple background color (a break from the usual yellow or red), a good balance between the white foreground and purple background, and an interesting serif typeface. As with the Chase sign, I take points away for not spelling “Orphans’” properly.

This sign does a nice job of highlighting the candidate’s last name and the position being sought; it also highlights the fact that she’s an incumbent, which many voters might not know given that this is a relatively obscure courthouse race. I’m less enthusiastic about the burgundy color used for the text, and I’m not a big fan of the script used for “Re-Elect Judge.”

Of these four I like the Dodd and Miller signs the best. The other two are not bad signs, I just don’t think their designs stand out as being particularly attractive. (Note that in the context of a campaign sign “attractive” is not necessarily the same as “effective”; I’m judging signs primarily on aesthetic grounds.)

This concludes my look at signs for the courthouse races, at least for the primary. In my next post I’ll switch to the races for the Maryland state legislature, starting with the signs for candidates for the Maryland House of Delegates, District 9A.

This is the large Broccolino sign; as noted above the small sign is identical to this. I have to admit that when I first saw this I immediately thought, “What a great sign!” My eye was first drawn to the dramatic upward slant of the text in the design. Then I noticed the cleverness of the color scheme: First white on black, then yellow on black, then a dramatic switch to black on white, and then back to yellow on black again, so that no two lines of text are in the same color.

Besides being a good use of three of the four Maryland flag colors, the switching back and forth increases visual interest, and together with the upward slant of the design avoids the problem of visual “flatness” I previously identified in the large John Newnan sign for the Howard County Sheriff race. The white border, although relatively thin, serves to tie together the overall design and keep the black background from being overwhelming; again, compare this to the large John Newnan sign, which also had a black background but no border.

The sans serif typeface looks really good too; it’s an excellent choice for this design. Note also that the typeface is slightly oblique with the vertical strokes of the letters exactly parallel to the sides of the sign, which prevents the letters from looking crooked and adds further energy to the upward slant of the design; it’s little touches like these that turn a good sign into a great sign.

The sign is not perfect: The “State’s Attorney - Proven Leadership” tagline is somewhat small and not that readable at a distance, even in the large sign. Also, the “Democrat” in the lower right, which is also not that readable from a distance, seems to be there mainly to balance the composition.² But overall I can’t fault the design choices.

Rich Gibson’s sign is also a solid professional piece of work. (There are no slackers or amateurs in this race as far as signs are concerned.) The sans serif typeface for “RICH GIBSON” and “HOWARD COUNTY STATE’S ATTORNEY” looks good and is bold while remaining readable. The script typeface used for “Elect” and “for” is a nice contrast with the main font; it’s not as readable, but that’s not important since those words are mainly there to add visual interest. A darker orange is a good choice for the contrasting color; it’s a nice break from yellow (which would be the typical choice) and orange text on blue is significantly more readable than red on blue. The two vertical orange bars on both sides nicely highlight the main body of the sign.

Overall the sign is just a tad cluttered, but every visual element plays a role in the design, even the stylized Howard County map in the upper right corner, which balances the “Elect” in the upper left and the “for” in the lower left. Unlike the Broccolino sign, the Gibson sign features consecutive lines of text in the same color (“RICH” and “GIBSON” in white, and then “HOWARD COUNTY” and “STATE’S ATTORNEY” in orange). However I don’t see that as a problem, since if “HOWARD COUNTY” were omitted the “STATE’S ATTORNEY” line would be out of balance with the two lines of text above it.

My vote: I’ll give the Rich Gibson sign credit for a good performance, one that might have put it on top in another race. However unfortunately for it it’s up against the Dario Broccolino sign, one that I’d easily put in the top three for best Howard County campaign signs of 2014 thus far. I wouldn’t call this a landslide victory, but overall this is a clear win for the Broccolino sign.

This concludes my look at signs for the courthouse races. (I did see one sign for a candidate for Judge of the Orphans’ Court; if I see more signs for that race I’ll do a post then.) In my next post I’ll switch to the races for the Maryland state legislature, starting with the signs for candidates for the Maryland House of Delegates, District 9A.

UPDATE: Added a bit about the small Broccolino sign, and refined my comments on the large sign.

Both Fitzgerald and Newnan have multiple types of signs; I think I got pictures of all of Newnan’s but may have missed one of Fitzgerald’s. Here are the signs, in alphabetical order by candidate and from small to large for each candidate, along with my comments.

This is the basic Fitzgerald sign in its most minimal form. Fitzgerald is using the same black on yellow color scheme (two of the four colors from the Maryland flag) as last election; in fact this sign and others appear to be unchanged from 2010. This is a good sign in my opinion, simple, legible, and uncluttered in its design. The typeface is nothing fancy but works well, and I like the white border.

This sign is a departure from the normal Fitzgerald sign template in its use of a blue and white color scheme and a different typeface. It’s a nice attempt to do something different but I don’t think it really works, mainly because the star intended to be the “O” in “POLICE” doesn’t actually look that much like an “O.” As a result I tend to read the sign as saying “PLICE FOR FITZGERALD.”

This sign is essentially the small sign above blown up to a large size and with a “Police Endorsed” sticker covering the six-pointed sheriff’s star. Possibly because it lacks the white border, this sign seems more “oppressive” than the corresponding small sign, and the blue on white sticker lightens the look of the sign and adds some visual interest.

This sign is also based on the small sign writ large, this time with the “Endorsed by …” tagline at the top right. As with the previous sign, I think the sign is improved by adding an additional element beyond those on the small sign.

Turining to John Newnan, there’s a lot to like about this small sign. The name is nicely legible, and the oblique typeface used for the word “VOTE” adds some dynamism to the sign. A nice subtle touch is the use of a thin red outline around both “VOTE” and the candidate’s name; there’s also a red drop shadow (not an outline) used for the phrase “SHERIFF OF HOWARD COUNTY.” The red makes the words pop out from the black background and further livens up the sign. Together with the black background and the yellow and white type the inclusion of a touch of red also makes this sign a textbook example of how to use all four colors of the Maryland flag in a very effective way.

My one criticism of this sign is that the phrase “SHERIFF OF HOWARD COUNTY” is pretty small, and the tagline below it is smaller still; I doubt either of these is that readable from a car moving fast. I think I understand why the full position was used: Since the word “SHERIFF” is as long as “NEWNAN,” if it were made smaller on the sign then there would be blank space on either side of the word that would make the composition of the sign look a bit unbalanced, unless some design elements were placed at either side of it. However I still think the tagline could have been omitted.

This large sign uses the same basic color scheme of yellow and white type on black background as in the small sign, but lacks the red highlighting (possibly for reasons of cost?). Unfortunately leaving the red out means that the yellow and white type looks somewhat flat and lifeless against the black background. The endorsement line is also rather long and hence less readable, and the use of a seven-pointed rather than six-pointed star is somewhat jarring. (Maybe Newnan avoided using the six-pointed star for some sort of obscure legal reason? But he did use it in the sign below, albeit not conspicuously.)

I’ll be up front here: I am not a big fan of signs that show a picture of the candidate; I think that’s better reserved for a web site or direct mail piece. There’s a lot going on in this sign: the candidate photo, the (barely visible) sheriff’s star next to the candidate, not one but two pointers to online information, the red and white stripes, and yet another slogan. I think it’s all too much of a muchness.

My vote: I really like the design choices on the small Newnan sign. It would probably be my pick if it had been more minimal, e.g., including just “SHERIFF” rather than “SHERIFF OF HOWARD COUNTY,” and omitting the tagline at the bottom. However given those shortcomings, at least in this election I’ll instead vote for the tried-and-true choice, namely the basic Fitzgerald sign in its small version.

Tune in next time, when I’ll look at the signs in the Howard County State’s Attorney race.

Kemp Freund (kemp.freund@verizon.net) - 2014-06-26 22:08

Frank - on Newnan’s signs you commented on the use of the 7 point star. The HCSO actually wears a 7 point star but an inverted version of the one on Newnan’s sign (which is generic clip art). Fitzgerald used a clip art 6 point star on his signs, probably because his printer had that artwork and most people don’t really pay attention to the star in the first place. But if you look at the Sheriff’s marked cars, their patch and the actual badge you will see a gold 7 point star with the Maryland seal in the center. BTW - did you ever see anything from the mystery Republican candidate? I am wondering if he intends to run on name recognition alone and hope that the public thinks that they are voting for the retiring Police Chief.

hecker - 2014-06-26 22:32

Thanks for stopping by to comment, and for the detailed explanation! I never did see any signs for the GOP side of this race. Maybe closer to the general election?

Cherie Beck (cheriebeck@gmail.com) - 2014-07-10 12:40

Just looking around Frank…noticed the comment above. Says it’s by me. What a surprise, since I didn’t write it, Someone must have used my email address as a generic author.

hecker - 2014-07-27 18:32

Cherie: I think I cleaned up the comment in question.

I should say up front that it’s not clear at all that campaign signs are actually effective in persuading to vote for one candidate rather than another. As a 2012 Slate article notes, some research has shown that non-specific campaign signs urging people to vote (though not for a particular candidate) can be effective, but that says nothing about candidate-specific signs. On the other hand, a Vanderbilt University study seems to indicate that signs can be effective in promoting candidates in races in which they are a large number of candidates and voters have little information about them. There are some political consultants who feel strongly that yard signs are a waste of money, and others who are happy to advise you on which types of signs are more effective.

In any case, I think campaign signs lend a festive air to election years, and from a purely aesthetic standpoint offer interesting examples of both good and bad graphic design. As a amateur design critic here’s what I personally look for in a campaign sign:

Legibility. Whatever other attributes a sign has, at a minimum it has to be readable. There’s nothing more frustrating than driving down a road at 30 or 40 miles per hour, seeing a small campaign sign, and not being able to figure out which candidate it’s for.

Information. Assuming that the primary purpose of a sign is to promote name recognition, then obviously it needs to include the candidate’s name (full name or just last name) and the office they’re seeking, Anything else—party affiliation, slogans, icons and images, candidate picture, etc.—is arguably superfluous.

Color. Some people have specific recommendations on sign colors. Others tend toward traditional colors, like the American flag colors red, white, and/or blue, or the Maryland flag colors black, red, white (silver), and yellow (gold). Many signs use other colors to good effect, and they get bonus points from me for doing that. My main comments here are that some color combinations (like red and blue) impair readability, and that using the Maryland flag colors in an effective way can be hard if you use more than two colors at a time.

Typography. Beyond being readable, I like to see sign typefaces that are clean, dynamic, elegant, and work well together (if multiple typefaces are being used) and in the context of the sign.

Other design elements. Some signs have additional graphic elements, for example stars, small flags, etc. I judge these on how well they work in the overall context of the sign: do they enhance the design, or detract from it?

To illustrate the above criteria, here are some examples of signs I liked from the 2010 campaigns (click on the images to see them full-size). Note that I didn’t get pictures of all 2010 signs, so don’t consider this a true “best of 2010” list.

I thought this sign for Bob Ballinger was an excellent sign for a non-partisan Board of Education campaign. It gets the basics right in terms of legibility and conveying the essential information. The green background color and the typeface resemble chalk writing on a blackboard and thus highlight the theme of education in a nice subtle way that avoids the design clichés common in Board of Education signs (for example, apples).

Again, like all my favorite signs this sign for Byron Macfarlane (for Register of Wills) is quite readable and highlights the essential information. The blue background color is pleasing to the eye and not overbearing (as some darker blues can be), while the yellow element in the upper left-hand corner adds visual interest in a nice contrast of colors. The typeface is quite elegant and has an air of formality about it that is appropriate for a courthouse election, especially for a position involving estates and trusts—it’s reminiscent of a typeface that a bank or financial advisor might use.

I thought this sign for Gail Bates and Warren Miller (for the Maryland House of Delegates) did several things well: It did a good job of highlighting the “team” aspect of their campaign. It made excellent use of the traditional red, white, and blue colors, which with its implications of patriotism is a favorite color combination for many Republican candidates. The typeface is bold but still readable. Finally, the design element invoking the Maryland flag nicely filled in the overall design.

This was my overall favorite of the signs I saw in 2010: It was pared down to only the essential candidate information (last name and position sought, with “Howard County” implied rather than explicitly stated on the latter). The colors were nice and complemented each other well. The typeface was somewhat unconventional (i.e., not a over-used serif typeface like Times Roman or sans serif typeface like Helvetica) but was quite legible and conveyed a feeling of dynamism. Finally, the design element of a stalk of wheat enhanced the design and evoked the rural roots of Howard County.

That concludes the preliminaries. In my next post I’ll start looking at the 2014 signs; unlike last time I’ll do this race by race and (where possible and appropriate) pick an overall winner in each.

In my travels around Howard County I’ve been photographing campaign signs when and where I could. However I’m still missing signs for several candidates for local races and would like to include them if possible. Here are the candidates for whom I do not have sign photos ; note that I have not included candidates who are unopposed in the primary election (like Calvin Ball) or even in the general election (like Mary Kay Sigaty):

• Howard County Council, District 1
  • David Melton
• Howard County Council, District 2
  • Reg Avery
  • Calvin Ball
  • Ralph Colavita
• Howard County Council, District 3
  • Jen Terrasa
• Howard County Council, District 4
  • Mary Kay Sigaty
• Howard County Council, District 5
  • Greg Fox
  • Alan Schneider
• Howard County Board of Education
  • Maureen Arthurs (have pictures)
  • Zaneb Beams
  • Allen Dyer
  • Sandra French
  • Dan Furman
  • Christine O’Connor
• Maryland House of Delegates, District 9A
  • Eric Bouchat (have pictures)
  • Trent Kittleman (have a picture)
• Maryland House of Delegates, District 9B
  • Rich Corkran (have pictures)
• Maryland House of Delegates, District 12
  • Brian Bailey (have pictures)
  • Gordon Bull
  • Jay Cohen
  • Eric Ebersole (got pictures)
  • Joe Hooe
  • Renee McGuirk-Spence (have pictures)
  • Rick Martel
  • Adam Sachs
• Maryland House of Delegates, District 13
  • Danny Eaton
  • Jimmy Williams
  • Chris Yates
• Judge of the Orphans’ Court
  • Shari Lynne Chase (have pictures)
  • Anne Dodd (have pictures)
  • Ellen Harrison
  • Nicole Bormel Miller (have pictures)
  • Emma Travis-Howard
  • Leslie Smith Turner (have pictures)
• Sheriff
  • John McMahon

If you happen to see signs for any of these people in your neighborhood and it’s safe for you to stop and take a picture on your smartphone or camera, please feel free to send the picture(s) to me at frank@frankhecker.com; I’ll gladly give you a photo credit if you request it.

UPDATE: I mistakenly had Ellen Flynn Giles as a candidate this year for Board of Education. Thanks to Joan Lancos for setting me straight.

UPDATE 2: I have updated the post to mark cases where I now have pictures of signs. I still do not have signs for the remaining candidates.

Joan Lancos (joanlancos@yahoo.com) - 2014-06-02 12:59

Ellen Giles is not a candidate for BOE at this time. She was re-elected in 2012 to a four year term.

hecker - 2014-06-02 13:08

D’oh! Brain freeze there, I will update the post. Thanks, Joan!