Howardcounty

Last night I went to Columbia Association headquarters for the CA board meeting that had been scheduled on very short notice to discuss the Inner Arbor plan. Due to family commitments I had to leave before the main part of the meeting, but I was able to be there long enough to participate in the “resident speak-out” and say my piece: Good evening. My name is Frank Hecker. I’m currently a resident of Ellicott City, and I’ve been a member of various Columbia Association programs. I’ve also blogged extensively about the Inner Arbor plan, and I’m a strong supporter of it. However I’m not here tonight to talk about my thoughts on the Inner Arbor plan; you can go to frankhecker.com if you want to read those. Instead I want to talk about other peoples’ opinions of the plan. ...

I continue my look into why the Merriweather Post Pavilion renovations are necessary, exactly what is proposed to be done, and how much each set of projects will cost. I conclude with the remaining categories of projects, which consume the other half of the total renovation budget. Recall from my last post that the costs and dates for the renovations are laid out in Exhibits A and B of Amendment 2 to Amendment 12 [PDF] to Council Bill 24-2014. The proposed renovations are based on (but not identical to) the set of renovations described in the recent draft 2014 Ziger/Snead Merriweather Post Pavilion Physical Review Update [PDF], which updated the Ziger/Snead report included in the 2005 final report of the citizens advisory panel on Merriweather Post Pavilion [PDF]. ...

By now everyone knows that Merriweather Post Pavilion will be renovated and Howard County is helping to pay for it. In this post I dive a bit more into why the renovations are necessary, exactly what is proposed to be done, and how much each set of projects will cost. I start with the three largest categories of projects, which together will cost over $10 million, or over half the total renovation budget. ...

The Inner Arbor Trust tent at Wine in the Woods 2014. Click for high-resolution version. Yesterday I had the pleasure of talking about the Inner Arbor plan to visitors to the Inner Arbor Trust tent at Wine in the Woods. (Full disclosure: I paid my own way into Wine in the Woods, but I did drink three bottles of the free water the Inner Arbor staff were handing out to all comers, to help combat my hay fever cough.) It was a fun afternoon, and prompted a few thoughts: ...

Some people are now promoting the Paumier plan as a way to “save Symphony Woods.” But two years ago people concerned about preserving Symphony Woods were signing a petition against the Paumier plan and calling instead for “a unique park with meandering pathways that connect amenities and honor the natural woods.” They couldn’t know it then, but those petitioners were asking for the kind of Symphony Woods park that will be provided by the current Inner Arbor plan. ...

After discussing the characteristics of the previous Cy Paumier plan for Symphony Woods it’s time for my verdict. Spoiler alert: It’s not favorable—not a horrible plan, but one whose key design choices left it flawed in several ways. Since I finished up with tree removal in my last post, I’ll start with it here. As I noted previously, the number of trees requiring removal is dependent on the exact version of the Paumier plan being discussed, and was inflated by the choice of formal rather than meandering walkways in the design. In his rally announcement to “save Symphony Woods” Paumier quoted a figure of 30 trees requiring removal, which is ostensibly one lower than the Inner Arbor estimate (but see below) and substantially lower than the figures of 50 to 60 or more trees presented to the Howard County Planning Board and documented in Paumier’s own 2012 letter to the Baltimore Sun. The key point here is that Paumier has abandoned the 2011 and 2012 versions of the plan that the Columbia Association submitted to the Howard County planning process, and is referencing an older version of the plan from 2009, a version the CA board decided later to revise. ...

Proposed pathways and other features of the 2012 version of the Symphony Woods plan from Cy Paumier and associates. Click for high-resolution version. Adapted from sheet 3 of FDP-DC-MSW-1, Downtown Columbia Merriweather-Symphony Woods Neighborhood Final Development Plan. ...

After walking in Symphony Woods last weekend I wondered again how the woods might best be preserved and enhanced for everyone in Columbia and Howard County to enjoy. This weekend former Columbia planner Cy Paumier will be heading into Symphony Woods himself to promote a plan to “save Symphony Woods”—essentially an attempt to revive support for his own Symphony Woods design, originally proposed in 2008. That design was the Columbia Associations’s preferred proposal for Symphony Woods for quite a while, and plans based on it went partly through the Howard County planning process before receiving criticism from the Howard County Design Advisory Panel and Planning Board and then being rejected by the CA board in favor of the Inner Arbor plan. Since Paumier’s plan has been recently and repeatedly brought up by people opposed to the Inner Arbor plan I thought it was worth a closer look, if only to highlight why (in my opinion) the Inner Arbor plan is superior. ...

View through Symphony Woods looking west to Merriweather Post Pavilion, showing the more forested portion of the area. Click for high-resolution version. Last Saturday morning I took a walk through Symphony Woods. Besides having a nice walk I gained a new appreciation for the Inner Arbor plan, as well as a better understanding of both the apparent goals and the shortcomings of other plans that have been proposed for the woods. ...

When I was writing my post on Symphony Woods and sacred lands I had a number of thoughts that were too long to put in that post and too short to each deserve a post of their own. So here they are, all collected together: “15 Reality Checks on the Plan” from the Inner Arbor Trust. Click for high-resolution version. Adapted from “Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods: By the Numbers,” © 2014 Inner Arbor Trust; used with permission. ...