Renovating Merriweather Post Pavilion: The schedule

In this post I look into the current schedule for the proposed Merriweather Post Pavilion renovations. For background information see part 1 and part 2 of my discussion of the renovations themselves and their budgeted costs.

Recall again 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].

Exhibit A of Amendment 2 to Amendment 12 divides the overall set of renovations into five phases (numbered I through V). Exhibit B assigns dates and durations to the activities associated with each phase (here numbered 1 through 5).¹ Because of the way the Howard County planning and zoning process works, Phase 1 will be handled differently than Phases 2 through 5, as discussed below. The various renovation projects are divided between the phases as follows:

Phase 1. This phase contains various projects that are less disruptive and do not affect the main pavilion structure, including utility infrastructure work, the first subproject of concessions/restrooms renovation, and replacement of windows in the administration building. (Note that it’s not clear from Exhibit A exactly which concession facilities and restrooms will be affected by this phase.) Design work for Phase 1 begins this summer, with actual construction scheduled to begin February of 2015 and be completed by the end of June 2015.

Phase 2. This phase contains all of the work on the main pavilion structure, including replacing the seating, raising the main pavilion roof, adding two new roofs to cover the loge areas, and replacing the stagehouse (including widening the proscenium opening). This phase also sees the completion of subproject 1 of box office renovation. (Again it’s not clear from Exhibit A which box office will be renovated or replaced in this phase; however since the South/East box office is apparently in more need of work, it may be done first.) Finally, this phase also includes phase 1 of the site improvements, presumable on the west side of the property (since the second phase is for the east side). Design work for this and subsequent phases is slated to begin spring and summer of 2015 and be complete by the end of 2015. Construction for Phase 2 is scheduled for November 2016 through March 2017, during the off-season at Merriweather.

Phase 3. This phase completes the work on the site improvements, restrooms, concession facilities and box offices. Construction for Phase 3 is scheduled for November 2017 through March 2018.

Phase 4. This phase includes construction of the new dressing rooms and catering areas for performers, as well as a new stage. Since this latter project was not included in the draft 2014 Ziger/Snead report it’s not clear exactly what it entails. This phase also includes some parking-related work, although again it was not included in the draft 2014 report. Construction for Phase 4 is scheduled for November 2018 through March 2019.

Phase 5. This phase includes only two small projects, putting a sprinkler system in the 9:32 Club and creating a new area for trash and recycling. It’s worth noting that even though these are small projects they are both called out specifically in Amendment 2 to Amendment 12, along with raising the main roof and bringing all facilities up to code. It’s possible that this was done in order to ensure that the called-out projects received particular priority and would not be put on the chopping block in the event of funding shortfalls or construction delays. Construction for phase 5 is scheduled for November 2019 through March 2020, with the latter date marking the “substantial completion” of all projects.

Starting construction is dependent on completion of Howard County’s review process for downtown Columbia revitalization [PDF]. This 16-step process requires the creation of a Final Development Plan (FDP) and a Site Development Plan (SDP), along with an Environmental Concept Plan (ECP). Despite its name, the FDP actually comes before the SDP, with the SDP containing much more detail than the FDP.² Both the FDP and the SDP must be approved by the Howard County Planning Board before a building permit can be issued.

In the case of Merriweather renovations, per Exhibit B the planning process for the FDP is scheduled to run roughly from August 2014 through April 2015. Since the first step in the process is to hold a pre-submission community meeting prior to submitting the FDP to the Planning Board for review, the public should get a closer look at the overall renovation plans later this summer. Submission of the subsequent SDP should be about a year later, with the review process scheduled to run from August through December of 2015. Assuming the SDP is approved and the necessary building permit(s) issued, Phase 2 construction (including raising the main pavilion roof) could then begin in November 2016, after completion of the 2016 Merriweather season.

But that raises an interesting question: Phase 1 construction is supposed to start February 2015, before the SDP is even submitted, much less approved. How can that be? The answer, based on Exhibit B, is that there is apparently an existing SDP that can be put through a special “redline” review process, “used when minor modifications or revisions are required for active or inactive commercial site development plans”.³ As Exhibit B notes, beginning Phase 1 construction is dependent on the suggested modifications to the pre-existing SDP being approved; otherwise Phase 1 construction would have to be delayed until the Phase 2 date.

This concludes my review of the proposed Merriweather Post Pavilion renovations. Hopefully I’ll be posting again on this topic later this year when the first pre-submission community meeting is held.

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1. Exhibit B refers to “ewks” and “emons”. I presume these terms refer to “estimated weeks” and “estimated months” respectively.

2. As an example, compare the FDP for the Warfield neighborhood [PDF] (next to the Mall in Columbia) with the SDP for Warfield neighborhood block W-1, parcels D-1 and D-2 [PDF]. The FDP contains descriptions of the blocks within the neighborhood (W-1, W-2, and W-5) and the parcels within the blocks, what types of buildings are planned to be built, number of units and square footage, and so on. The SDP goes beyond that to show the actual buildings planned to be constructed and the fine details of the surrounding roads, sidewalks, utilities, landscaping, and so on.

3. In searching development plans on the Howard County web site I found only one SDP from 1989 (SDP-89-222) that I thought might be relevant; however given the limited information on the site it’s impossible to tell for sure.

Renovating Merriweather Post Pavilion: Projects and costs, part 2

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].

The remaining renovations in Exhibit A fall into the following general categories, in decreasing order by total cost; the budget figures listed do not include soft costs. Note that the exact scope and budget of the individual categories and projects may change based on further design work, and are all subject to Planning Board approval. I have tried to match the items in Exhibit A with the items A through P in the draft 2014 report; however in some cases the correspondence is not exact or or is unclear.

West loge area at Merriweather Post Pavilion. “Concrete seating risers and masts to support West Loge tents. Note bridge over stormwater swale.” Image and original caption from the draft 2014 Ziger/Snead report, page 37 of the PDF.

Construct permanent roofs for the loge areas. This category comprises a single Exhibit A line item (“New Loge Roofs”) budgeted at $1.9 million. The two loge areas (on the two sides of the main pavilion seating area) currently have temporary canvas tent roofs that are supported by steel masts and guy cables; according to the draft 2014 Ziger/Snead report, in addition to being costly and time-consuming to set up the tents and take them down, the cables impede circulation and the masts obstruct views (pages 13-14 of the PDF).

The draft 2014 Ziger/Snead report recommended replacing these temporary tents with permanent roofs that would be visually compatible with the existing main pavilion roof, at an estimated cost of $1.7 million (item E, pages 19, 66, and 71 of the PDF). This estimate also includes putting in a sprinkler system and adding lighting and ceiling fans. Since the budgeted amount of $1.9 million is slightly more than this it’s possible that the plans may include seating on top of these roofs, as proposed by IMP and mentioned above.

Path to Merriweather south entrance from the parking fields, showing relatively steep grade. Image from the draft 2014 Ziger/Snead report, page 27 of the PDF.

General site improvements. This category includes two equal-size Exhibit A budget line items (“Site Improvements—Phase 1” and “Site Improvements—East Side”) totalling $1.2 million. The draft 2014 Ziger/Snead report referenced a number of problems with the overall Merriweather site, many related to site grades and resulting ADA compliance problems. For example, the report noted that the footpath from the south parking areas is “not handicapped accessible, and likely somewhat difficult to negotiate for even certain able bodied individuals” and that “[a]ccess to East Restrooms remains steep and non-ADA compliant” (page 11 and 53 of the PDF).

The draft 2014 Ziger/Snead report recommended re-grading of various portions of the site to reduce slopes and improve access, at an estimate cost of $0.7 million (item D, pages 19, 66, and 71 of the PDF). This amount is significantly less than the budgeted amount. It’s possible that the estimated cost in the draft 2014 report was too low (it was unchanged from the 2004 report) or that some additional work has been added.

Merriweather stage showing proscenium opening and stagehouse behind. Image from the draft 2014 Ziger/Snead report, page 34 of PDF.

Widening the proscenium and replacing the stagehouse. This comprises a single Exhibit A budget line item (“Widen Proscenium and New Stage House”) of almost $0.9 million. According to the draft Ziger/Snead 2014 report the relatively short width (67 feet) of the proscenium opening for the stage causes obstructed sight lines and degraded sound for some seats in the loge area (pages 8 and 13-14 of the PDF). The stagehouse itself (i.e., the structure enclosing the stage) is also relatively small and lacks a grid for attaching stage equipment (page 8 of the PDF).

The draft 2014 Ziger/Snead report recommended both widening the proscenium opening by 15 feet, at an estimated cost of almost $0.4 million (item H, pages 19, 67, and 71 of the PDF), and raising the stagehouse roof 20 feet, adding a grid, and making other improvements, at an estimated cost of almost $1.3 million (item K, page 20, 67-68, and 71 of the PDF). At almost $1.7 million the estimated cost of these two projects is almost twice that budgeted. I therefore presume that the recommendations of the draft 2014 report have been scaled back somewhat.

Electrical transformer in Symphony Woods near Merriweather Post Pavilion.

Upgrade utilities. This comprises one Exhibit A budget line item (“Utility infrastructure Work”) at less than $0.9 million. The draft 2014 Ziger/Snead report noted that “Most of the original underground utilities serving Merriweather are believed to be either reaching an end to their practical life or are in need of modernizing for the sake of efficiency” (page 12 of the PDF). The draft 2014 report recommended replacing the electrical, water, and utilities serving the site, as well as installing new storm water management facilities and site lighting, at a total cost of $2.5 million (item H, pages 18, 65-66, and 71 in the PDF). That figure is significantly higher than the budget line item, so presumably either the plans are scaled back from what was recommended or the work is included under other budget items.

“A total of 31 ADA parking spaces remain outside West Entrance gate.” Image and original caption from the draft 2014 Ziger/Snead report, page 29 of the PDF.

Parking. This project is a single Exhibit A budget line item at almost $0.4 million. It is not clear exactly what this project entails. The draft 2014 Ziger/Snead report did not contain recommendations or estimated costs relating to parking, possibly because the Merriweather property itself contains almost no parking: only performer parking (e.g., for tour buses) is on pavilion property, while ADA parking and administration parking is on Columbia Association property (Symphony Woods), and general event parking is on Howard Hughes property (where the Crescent development will go) (pages 6 and 11 of the PDF).

The draft 2014 Ziger/Snead report recommended doubling the size of the ADA parking lot in order to meet ADA requirements (page 18 of the PDF). This may be what this Exhibit A budget line item is for, or it may be for something else entirely.

Interior of the 932 Club at Merriweather Post Pavilion. “‘932 Club,’ an Assembly Occupancy, requires a seasonal food permit, and sprinklering is now advised.” Image and original caption from the draft 2014 Ziger/Snead report, page 55 of the PDF.

Carry out other smaller renovation projects. This set of projects comprises three Exhibit A budget line items (“Admin Windows”, “Sprinklers in 932 Club”, and “New Trash/Recycling Area”) totalling less than $0.2 million. The historic farmhouse containing the Merriweather administrative offices has single-glazed windows that need to be replaced (draft 2014 Ziger/Snead report, page 15 of the PDF). The 932 Club is a small wood-framed lounge and performance space lacking a sprinkler system (page 16 of the PDF). The property does not currently have a single dedicated trash and recycling area.

The draft 2014 Ziger/Snead report included recommendations for projects to address these three areas, all with estimated costs less than $0.1 million (items J, N, and O respectively, pages 19-20, 67-68, and 71 of the PDF). The amounts for the corresponding budget line items are each slightly higher than the corresponding estimated costs in the draft 2014 report.

The Exhibit A budget also includes $125,000 for two other line items, preparation of the master plan and FDP processing. This expense, which is for the first year, presumably includes any expenses related to getting Howard County Planning Board approval of the Final Development Plan and Site Development Plan for all of the renovations to be carried out.

Finally, there are two recommended projects in the draft 2014 Ziger/Snead report for which it’s unclear whether they are included or not in the Exhibit A budget. These are item L, “Replace Stage Electrical Panels And Distribution” (pages 20, 68, and 71 of the PDF) and item P, “Replace Fire Alarm System For Main Facility And Extend To New Addition” (pages 20, 69, and 71 of the PDF), each with an estimated cost of $0.3 million.

In my next post I’ll discuss the schedule for the renovations.

Renovating Merriweather Post Pavilion: Projects and costs, part 1

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.

In his own blog post last week Tom Coale gave a good summary of how the renovations will be funded, but noted that he didn’t have access to the source documents. As it turns out, 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 legislation by which the Howard County Council approved the fiscal year 2015 operating budget. (Howard County’s fiscal year 2015 begins July 1 of this year.) The proposed renovations are based on (but not identical to) the set of renovations described in the recent Merriweather Post Pavilion Physical Review Update (of which I have only a draft copy [PDF]) from Ziger/Snead (the Baltimore architectural firm hired to advise the citizens advisory panel). That document is in turn an update of the Ziger/Snead report included in the 2005 final report [PDF] of the citizens advisory panel on Merriweather Post Pavilion.

The original 2005 Ziger/Snead report recommended $19.5 million of Merriweather renovations, spread across 16 budget line items and five years.¹ The draft 2014 Ziger/Snead update to the report has a new figure of $24.6 million for renovations, including some new items not in the 2005 report (see “Ballpark Pricing Cost Estimate”, page 71 of the PDF). Both estimates include 30% extra for “soft costs”, presumably including project overhead and other costs not accounted for in the base estimates. Exhibit A to Amendment 2 to Amendment 12 to CB24-2014 includes 19 budget line items for a total of $19.0 million, with only 20% allocated to soft costs.

The most costly renovations in Exhibit A fall into the following general categories, in decreasing order by total cost; the budget figures listed do not include soft costs. Note that the exact scope and budget of the individual categories and projects may change based on further design work, and are all subject to Planning Board approval. I have tried to match the items in Exhibit A with the items A through P in the draft 2014 report; however in some cases the correspondence is not exact or or is unclear.

Interior of east restroom at Merriweather Post Pavilion. “East Restrooms remain cramped and deteriorated.” Image and original caption from the draft 2014 Ziger/Snead report, page 53 of the PDF.

Replace or renovate existing restrooms, concession stands, and box offices. The restroom and concession stand projects comprise three equal-size Exhibit A budget line items across three years (“Restroom/Concession A”, “B”, and “C”), for a total of $3.7 million, while the box office project comprises two equal-size budget line items across two years (“Box Office 1” and “2”), for a total of $0.9 million; the total budget for this category of improvements is $4.6 million.

There are currently five restroom facilities and five permanent (as opposed to seasonal) concession stands at Merriweather; in some cases a restroom and concession stand are co-located in a single building, while others are standalone. According to the draft 2014 Ziger/Snead report only one building (“Stand Two”) contains up-to-date and fully code-compliant restrooms and concession stand (pages 15-16 of the PDF). Merriweather has two box offices (“East”/“South” and “West”); per the report the East/South box office suffers from water infiltration, and neither box office is easily accessible by car (page 15 of the PDF).

The draft 2014 Ziger/Snead report recommended totally replacing three of the restrooms and renovating two others that are located in historic buildings, at an estimated cost of $2.0 million (item B, pages 17, 65, and 71 of the PDF). The same report also proposed replacing and (in some cases) relocating the concession stands and box offices, at an estimated cost of $2.6 million (item H, pages 18, 67, and 71 of the PDF). The total for items B and H was $4.6 million, the same as the total of the corresponding budget line items in Exhibit A. I therefore presume that these renovations will be done pretty much as described in the draft 2014 report.

Merriweather Post Pavilion loge area to the left, original seating area to the right. “Original concrete cheek wall between original and newer Loge seating obstructs ingress/egress.” Image and original caption from the draft 2014 Ziger/Snead report, page 36 of the PDF.

Upgrade seating and raise/renovate the main pavilion roof. This category is budgeted in Exhibit A at either $3.0 million (“Seating & Raise Main Roof”) or $3.2 million, depending on whether the budget line item “Add: new roof” refers to the main roof or not. It combines two related projects: The first project will replace the concrete seating base in the main pavilion area and the two loge areas to each side, and replace all of the 4,650 seats in the three areas. Among other things, this will bring these areas into full ADA compliance (including expanding the number of handicapped accessible seats), improve circulation between the main seating area and the loge areas (by removing low concrete walls currently separating them), and provide permanent seating for the loge areas (replacing the current folding chairs). The cost for this project was estimated as $2.7 million in the draft 2014 report (item F, pages 19, 66, and 71 of the PDF).³

Merriweather Post Pavilion from northeast, showing main roof and seating area and west loge area beyond. Image from the draft 2014 Ziger/Snead report, page 32 of the PDF.

The second project, to raise the main pavilion roof, was not included in the 2005 and 2014 Ziger/Snead reports, but was apparently part of a set of renovations proposed by IMP Productions, the operator for Merriweather Post Pavilion. The 2005 and 2014 reports recommended restoring the main roof, including replacing the roof surface and the vertical boards on the sides of the roof, at an estimated cost of approximately $440,000 (item M, pages 20, 68, and 71 of the PDF of the 2014 draft report). The idea of raising the main roof was suggested by IMP as a way to “improve sightlines from the Lawn and accommodate installation of V.I.P box seating and green roof lawn seating at the level of permanent roofs over the side Loges” (page 5 of the PDF).³ Whether it’s raised or not, the main roof still requires renovation, so this would presumably part of the project in any case.

Merriweather catering area (foreground) and dressing trailers (background). Image from the draft 2014 Ziger/Snead report, page 42 of the PDF.

Replace the existing performer dressing rooms and catering areas. This category comprises one Exhibit A budget line item (“Dressing Room / Catering and New Stage”) budgeted at $2.7 million. Currently performer dressing rooms are housed in various temporary trailers scattered behind the pavilion. Per the draft 2014 Ziger/Snead report these are difficult to maintain (pages 14-15 of the PDF). There are also two catering decks, “essentially screened-in porches” that need to be brought into full compliance with relevant codes (page 15 of the PDF).

The draft 2014 Ziger/Snead report recommended constructing a new two-story 15,000-sf building to house performer dressing rooms, catering areas, and various other backstage functions, at an estimated cost of $4.0 million (item G, pages 19, 66-67, and 71 of the PDF). Since the budgeted amount of $2.7 million is significantly less than this I presume that the plans for this category of renovations have been scaled back from what is described in the draft 2014 report. In this regard note that the line item in Exhibit A also references a “New Stage”, something not included in the corresponding item G in the draft 2014 report, which would further reduce the amount to be spent on backstage improvements.

In the next post I’ll discuss the remaining categories of renovation projects and their costs.

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1. There are actually two separate sets of projects and costs described in the 2005 report. The first set, on pages 11-13 of the Ziger/Snead “Physical Review” (pages 95-97 of the PDF), contains ten projects, designated A through J, totaling $15.4 million. The second set, on page 5 on the “Pro-Forma Operating Budget” (page 166 of the PDF), contains 16 budget line items totaling $19.5 million. The discrepancy is due to two factors: First, the operating budget contains two line items relating to the stagehouse roof, $1,500,000 and $225,000 respectively, that are not discussed in the physical review. Second, the operating budget includes additional amounts in an attempt to account for inflation over the course of the project. The executive summary of the overall report uses the operating budget figure of $19.5 million.

2. The figure of $2.6 million given for item F on page 19 of the PDF of the draft 2014 report is incorrect, since adding it to the costs of the other items on pages 18-20 produces a total that does not match the total on page 21 of the PDF. The figure of $2.7 million on page 71 of the PDF produces the correct total. Also, the description of item F on page 19 of the PDF lists 3,650 new seats to be installed. I presume this is a typo, as page 7 of the PDF of the report references a total of 4,650 seats, approximately 3,150 in the main area and approximately 1,500 in the two loge areas. Similarly, the description of item F on page 66 of the PDF lists 5,000 seats to be installed. Again, I presume this is a typo unless the plan is to remove the current general admission area near the stage (for which seven rows of seats were previously removed) and replace it with standard seating.

3. Since the proposal is to raise the main roof above the level of the side roofs to be constructed over the two loge areas, the tops of the side roofs could be used for additional seating if they were designed to support this. Some of this could be “lawn” seating if the side roofs were to be designed as “green” roofs, while some of it could be in the form of more conventional box seats.

A better plan for Symphony Woods

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.

Previously I rendered my own verdict on Cy Paumier’s plan for Symphony Woods, and relayed the verdicts of the Howard County Design Advisory Panel [PDF] and then the Planning Board [PDF]. Note that the Planning Board actually approved the overall Final Development Plan for the Merriweather-Symphony Woods Neighborhood presented by the Columbia Association, including having the area host a system of walkways and various other proposed features like a café, an outdoor amphitheater, a children’s play area, and (last but not least) a fountain. However they recommended moving to a system of meandering paths rather than formal walkways, and urged closer integration of the park with the Merriweather Post Pavilion property.

After the Planning Board decision CA went into somewhat of a holding pattern with respect to Symphony Woods, with the CA staff suggesting plans be put temporarily on hold, and the CA board considering more formal coordination with Howard Hughes Corporation and Howard County. This period of relative inactivity was broken with the announcement that CA had decided to adopt a new concept plan for Symphony Woods proposed by Michael McCall, like Cy Paumier a Columbia resident and former Rouse associate.

This “Inner Arbor” plan as originally presented was not an exact replacement for the Paumier plan, but was instead a high-level plan for the entire northeast and eastern portion of Symphony Woods; thus it included elements (like a replacement for Toby’s Dinner Theater and a new CA headquarters) that were never part of the Paumier plan. However since then the Inner Arbor plan has evolved into a plan specifically for the northern portion of Symphony Woods, the same area covered by the Paumier plan, and in an important sense it can be thought of simply as a continuation of and improvement on the Paumier plan, addressing that plan’s deficiencies as identified by the Planning Board and Design Advisory Panel.

Diagram of Inner Arbor walkway system showing accessible paths. Click for high-resolution version. Adapted from slide 205 of the presentation to the Design Advisory Panel. Image © 2014 Inner Arbor Trust; used with permission.

The best place to start to appreciate that point is not with the Inner Arbor structures but rather with the walkway system proposed as part of the current Inner Arbor plan as recently presented to the Howard County Design Advisory Panel.¹ Note that the plan fully implements the Planning Board recommendation to use meandering paths. This allows paths to be routed to avoid trees and thereby minimize the number of trees needing removal.

Using meandering paths also means that the paths can follow the “lay of the land” and thus avoid steep slopes and the need for stairs as much as possible. As shown in the image above, most of the walkways (shown in green) are from 1% to 5% grade and are thus fully accessible to people using wheelchairs or who otherwise have difficulty walking. Most of the remaining paths (shown in blue), though having somewhat steeper grades in some places, still fall within the relevant ADA guidelines as applied to park trails. Only a few paths (shown in red) have steeper slopes that might require stairs. (One of the places requiring stairs is the entrance across from the mall access road, as in the Paumier plan, although unlike the Paumier plan this entrance is not the primary focal point of the design.)

The Inner Arbor plan also replaces the relatively awkward north-south alignment of the Paumier paths with a more natural east-west alignment that better conforms to the shape and orientation of the northern part of Symphony Woods. This change in alignment allows for longer paths that provide more opportunities to walk within the park, including the more scenic forest in the eastern and northeastern area of the park, which was to a large degree a “no go” area in the Paumier plan. This is made possible in part by an elevated boardwalk that allows visitors to enter at the northeastern corner of the park, at the intersection of Little Patuxent Parkway and South Entrance Road, near the Central Branch library and on the multi-use pathway to Lake Kittamaqundi. The boardwalk carries them through the northeastern portion of the park above the forest floor, and allows them to reach the Chrysalis amphitheater over a fully-accessible route.

Speaking of the Chrysalis, as noted previously the Final Development Plan based on the Paumier design envisioned various park features in addition to the walkways, including a pavilion and café (combined or separate), a fountain (interactive or otherwise), a children’s play area, public art, and an outdoor “shared use” amphitheater that could be used for both Merriweather events (e.g., as a second stage) or for events in Symphony Woods proper (e.g., Wine in the Woods). The current Inner Arbor plan makes provision one way or the other for all those elements, and (unlike the Paumier plan) includes detailed designs for almost all of them.² Put another way, almost every element in the current Inner Arbor plan is referenced in the Final Development Plan previously approved by the Planning Board.

Inner Arbor park features relative to their locations in the Paumier plan. Click for high-resolution version. Adapted from sheet 3 of FDP-DC-MSW-1, Downtown Columbia Merriweather-Symphony Woods Neighborhood Final Development Plan, and slides 25-33 of the Inner Arbor Trust presentation to the Design Advisory Panel.

The major difference from the Paumier plan is thus not the proposed park features themselves, but rather that the park features were moved to different locations within Symphony Woods, in order to improve integration with Merriweather Post Pavilion and/or to address other issues.

In particular, the Paumier plan proposed a pavilion and café located halfway between the two Merriweather entrances, next to the Merriweather Post Pavilion restrooms. In the Inner Arbor plan the corresponding structure, the Butterfly, is moved next to the Merriweather VIP parking lot, near the east entrance of Merriweather Post Pavilion, so that its shared use with Merriweather does not require opening up a new entrance (as the Paumier plan would have).

In the Paumier plan the children’s play area was proposed to be located in the Butterfly’s location; in the Inner Arbor plan the corresponding feature, the Merriground, is moved into the park proper, in a more natural setting. Finally, in the Paumier plan the proposed shared-use amphitheater was to be located next to the children’s play area, relatively close to Merriweather. In the Inner Arbor plan the corresponding structure, the Chrysalis, is moved to the east. This takes it down a hill somewhat, providing more space for the audience and decreasing possible bleed-over of sights and sounds from the Merriweather Post Pavilion to the Chrysalis and vice versa (e.g., when the Chrysalis is used as a shared stage).

The Paumier plan referenced possible public art in the park. That function is fulfilled in the Inner Arbor plan by the Merriweather Horns sound sculptures. The fountain envisioned in the Paumier plan is not in the Inner Arbor plan proper, because the proposal is to put the fountain not in Symphony Woods itself but rather within the Merriweather Post Pavilion property as part of a strategy to integrate the two areas (as recommended by the Planning Board).

Proposed unfenced boundary area between Merriweather Post Pavilion and Symphony Woods in the Inner Arbor plan, showing possible fountain plaza and cultural venues. Click for high-resolution version. Adapted from slide 201 of the presentation to the Design Advisory Panel. Image © 2014 Inner Arbor Trust; used with permission.

Another part of that integration is a proposal to tear down the current Merriweather fence (at least on the north side) and provide a substitute for it in the form of the Caterpillar, a tubular berm intended to separate the area of Symphony Woods close to Merriweather from the main area of the park. The Caterpillar thus provides access control for Merriweather Post Pavilion itself during Merriweather events, and also bounds a shared space for a possible fountain and other amenities in the area straddling the Merriweather/Symphony Woods boundary, making the fountain and its associated plaza accessible to visitors to Symphony Woods on days when there are no events at Merriweather Post Pavilion.

In conclusion: The Inner Arbor plan is more respectful of the alignment and topography of Symphony Woods than the Paumier plan, provides a better walking experience for visitors, sites the various park amenities more intelligently, integrates Symphony Woods much better with Merriweather Post Pavilion, and (last but certainly not least) requires significantly fewer trees to be removed (particularly when the park amenities are accounted for).

Finally, thanks to the comprehensive and detailed work that has been done by the Inner Arbor team (work that for whatever reason was never done for the Paumier plan), the current Inner Arbor plan is an example of the design excellence that can be produced by talented local firms working in concert with leading designers and architects from around the world, and meets the challenge that Del. Elizabeth Bobo set for those designing the future of Columbia Town Center:

There is great anticipation in the community of bold, creative public spaces …. Where are the grand designs that excite the spirit and capture the soul, becoming material for textbooks to train future architects and planners? Columbia, Mr. Rouse’s “next America” and arguably the most successful new town in the world, is a perfect home for them.

This concludes my series on the Paumier plan and the Inner Arbor plan as compared to it. In future posts I’ll briefly revisit the Inner Arbor plan as presented to the Design Advisory Panel, and comment on some of the changes since my original series of Inner Arbor posts.

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1. For more information see the Design Advisory Panel meeting minutes [PDF] and the Inner Arbor Trust Presentation at that meeting [304MB PDF].

2. To give a rough indication of the relative completeness of the two plans, the presentation to the Design Advisory Panel for the Paumier plan contained 36 slides, while the Inner Arbor presentation to the DAP contained 236.

How not to save Symphony Woods

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.

If that plan is the one pictured on the Slater Associates web site then it did not have the north-south or east-west walkways present in later versions of the plan, and the fountain was proposed to be located next to the pavilion rather than midway between the pavilion and Little Patuxent Parkway. Reducing the number of walkways obviously would require fewer trees to be removed. Also, Paumier’s wording in the announcement implies that the estimate for tree removal includes only walkways and not proposed park features like the pavilion and fountain (much less the children’s play area and amphitheater); adding all those features back in would require more trees to be removed. By comparison the Inner Arbor estimate of 31 trees is for all walkways and all proposed features.¹

Now, back to the other disadvantages of the Paumier plan, disadvantages that exist to one degree or another in all versions of the plan that have been proposed:

First, in its attempt to avoid disturbing the forest area of Symphony Woods the Paumier plan would have limited the ability of people to enjoy walking through that area, which as I previously mentioned is the most scenic part of the northern portion of Symphony Woods. From the viewpoint of a visitor the apparent intent of the Paumier plan would have been to keep you on the main walkways in the lawn area, and to discourage you from venturing into the forest area at all. Some people probably wouldn’t have been able to go into the forest area even if they wanted to, since from the extant plan documents it’s not clear that any paths in the forest would have been accessible to people using wheelchairs or who otherwise had difficulty walking.

Second, the formal geometry of the walkways and the north-south axial alignment of the main walkway (present in the plans from 2011 on) were arbitrary, inconsistent with the character of Symphony Woods, and forced design choices in other areas that made the plan less than optimal. Although it’s certainly true that the Mall in Columbia is north of Symphony Woods, and that Merriweather Post Pavilion is south of this portion of it, there is no real north-south alignment of properties and features. In particular Merriweather Post Pavilion is not just off-access but actually rotated with respect to the mall access road and north-south walkway.

Looking up to Little Patuxent Parkway and the mall access road, near the northern end of the proposed main north-south walkway in the Paumier plan. Click for high-resolution version.

This desire to force a formal walkway geometry onto an irregularly shaped Symphony Woods property had various negative consequences. Since there is a drop going from Little Patuxent Parkway into Symphony Woods across from the mall access road, the main north-south walkway would have had to go down a set of stairs at its northern point, again potentially causing accessibility problems.²

Since Merriweather Post Pavilion itself (i.e., the amphitheater structure) is not located at (or even visible from) the southern end of the proposed north-south walkway, the plan put a small pavilion building there to provide a visual endpoint to the walkway and a destination for visitors. This pavilion would have been at probably the worst possible location in terms of integration with Merriweather, since it would have butted up against the Merriweather fence next to the restrooms and at some distance from the eastern and western entrances to Merriweather. The secondary east-west walkways had a similar problem: They would also have terminated on the south end at the pavilion, well away from the Merriweather entrances, and due to the attempted symmetry with the west walkway the northeast end of the east walkway at Little Patuxent Parkway would have been located in the middle of the block, some distance away from any crosswalks.

Near the south end of the proposed main north-south walkway in the Paumier plan, showing the Merriweather fence and restrooms. Click for high resolution version.

Given the formal and circumscribed walkway geometry the Paumier plan would have offered limited opportunities to take a lengthy walk in Symphony Woods. When I walked in the woods myself it took about 20-30 minutes not counting stops. However in the Paumier plan the walk along the main north-south walkway would take no more than two and a half minutes even walking slowly (based on a timing I did on my own walk); a complete walk into the park on the main walkway and out again on one of the secondary walkways (or in on one secondary walkway and out on the other) would likely have taken well less than ten minutes.

Third, although the Paumier plan put almost all its proposed structures as close as possible to Merriweather Post Pavilion, those structures, and the design in general, were not well integrated into Merriweather. As noted above, the main north-south walkway of the Paumier plan would have terminated at a pavilion structure across the fence from the back of the Merriweather restrooms and some distance away from the main Merriweather entrances, as would have the east and west curved walkways. Although there is some mention in the plan documents of trying to get a gate in the fence at that point, and of needing to cooperate with the Merriweather operators and Howard Hughes (which had taken over from GGP), there was no overall strategy presented for how to integrate the pavilion and other plan features with the Merriweather property. As another example, the children’s play area was proposed to be right next to the Merriweather VIP parking lot—not exactly an ideal choice I would think.

Finally, leaving aside the actual design choices, the Paumier plan seems rather underspecified for a plan that was over three years in the making. For example, the Design Advisory Panel presentation does not show detailed draft designs for the pavilion, the fountain, the children’s play area, or the outdoor amphitheater. (It contains only a “for discussion purposes only” concept drawing of the main walkway, fountain, and pavilion, and a couple of pictures of representative restroom structures from other parks.) Such detailed designs were not part of the submitted final development plan either. Granted, in the context of Howard County planning a “final development plan” is not really final in the sense most people would normally think of, since it must be followed by a more detailed “site development plan”. However I still find it rather surprising that a plan initially conceived in late 2008 was so sketchy and incomplete as late as the middle of 2012, especially given the support provided by CA from 2010 on.³

As I’ve mentioned previously the Paumier plan was revised multiple times over the years to tweak it in various ways. However I don’t think simple tweaks would have been sufficient to solve the problems I mentioned above, since they stem from aspects of the plan that remained consistent, including trying to overlay a north-south alignment on a park that runs east-west, using a formal geometry for walkways, and putting structures in close proximity to the Merriweather Post Pavilion property line without truly integrating them with Merriweather itself. The Paumier plan in its various incarnations would not and could not “save Symphony Woods” except in the very narrow sense of being a better alternative to the GGP plan of 2008. The GGP plan has been consigned to the dustbin of history, and today we can do better than the Paumier plan.

This is not just my opinion as an amateur architecture critic. The Howard County Design Advisory Panel echoed these criticisms in its comments on the 2011 design, for example, questioning the need for a north-south alignment: “Aside from the mall axis extension and a loose connection to Merriweather Post Pavilion (MPP) there seems to be no rationale for the path organization.” As reported in a Baltimore Sun article, members of the panel also thought the plan lacked an overall vision and narrative, and emphasized the need for a park that could set standards of design excellence for the rest of downtown Columbia.

In its decision on the Final Development Plan [PDF] presented in July 2012 by CA, the Howard County Planning Board, while approving the overall concept of a park with walkways and various features, including a shared-use amphitheater and café, focused its attention on the formal walkway geometry and the poor integration with Merriweather Post Pavilion. It recommended that removal of trees be minimized by “aligning paths around healthy trees and minimizing grading”. It also called for “continuing coordination between Columbia Association and Howard Hughes Corporation regarding a shared vision and design for Merriweather-Symphony Woods as a unique cultural and community amenity”, and “development of a coordinated plan for the neighborhood”.

Just as Cy Paumier had come forward in 2008 to offer an alternative to GGP’s plan for Symphony Woods, another local Columbian and former Jim Rouse associate, Michael McCall, subsequently came forward with his own alternative plan, which like the Paumier plan in its time was then adopted by the CA board as its preferred plan moving forward. In my next post I’ll discuss that “Inner Arbor” plan as both a continuation of and improvement on the Paumier plan.

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1. In his rally announcement Paumier also claims that in fact more than 100 trees will have to be removed for the Inner Arbor plan, basing his claim on a 2010 CA study. It’s worth noting that the Baltimore firm Mahan Rykiel Associates served as landscape architect for the Paumier plan and is currently the landscape architect for the Inner Arbor plan. Since Mahan Rykiel prepared the tree removal estimates for both plans, and presumably would have been aware of the 2010 CA study when preparing these estimates, I’m inclined to accept their estimates as accurate absent any compelling evidence to the contrary.

2. On slide 6 of the Design Advisory Panel presentation [PDF] these stairs are identified as “grand stairs to transition down steep grades”. No ramps are shown as alternatives to the stairs; presumably people arriving from the mall who were not able to negotiate the stairs would have had to go down Little Patuxent Parkway a few hundred feet to one of the other entrances.

3. I have no inside knowledge about this, but it’s certainly possible that at least part of the delay was due to micromanagement of the design process (aka “bikeshedding”) by the CA board. If a January 2012 Baltimore Sun article is any indication, the board seemed to spend a lot of time discussing—and disagreeing about—the design details of the proposed fountain. In this case, and perhaps others related to the Paumier plan, coming to consensus and making a final decision appeared to require multiple meetings stretched out over several months.

Looking back at the Paumier plan for Symphony Woods

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.

I previously gave my understanding of how Cy Paumier’s plan for Symphony Woods won the support of the CA board and others whose opinions mattered, in large part because at the time it represented the only real alternative to a proposal from General Growth Properties that was seen as too destructive to the character of the woods. But was it actually a good plan? In this post and the next I leave the politics behind and look at the Paumier plan itself.

A 2009 Baltimore Sun article spoke of Cy Paumier as having “long dreamed of turning Symphony Woods into a sort of American suburban Tivoli Gardens”, the venerable Copenhagen amusement park that (among other things) inspired Walt Disney when creating Disneyland. The real-life Tivoli Gardens is a very intensively developed urban park that crams five roller coasters and over three dozen other rides and attractions into 21 acres, only a slightly larger area than the 16 acres covered by the northern portion of Symphony Woods. Whatever might have been Paumier’s ultimate vision for Symphony Woods (or, for that matter, what it might yet be), his plan as proposed was not nearly so ambitious.

The plan evolved somewhat over the years, including a “concept diagram” in 2008 or 2009, a more complete plan presented to CA in 2009, a plan presented to the Howard County Design Advisory Panel in 2011 [PDF], and the final development plan submitted to the Planning Board in 2012 [PDF].¹ However pretty much all incarnations of the plan reflected a consistent set of design choices:

The northern portion of Symphony Woods would be divided into two distinct areas, one with formal pathways and one without. These correspond roughly to the “lawn” and “forest” areas respectively. (See my previous post for representative pictures.) The 2009 concept diagram (which can be found on slide 3 of the Design Advisory Panel presentation) shows this most clearly, with a large circle drawn in the lawn area, outlined by formal curved pathways around a central “sunlit lawn”, and a somewhat smaller circle drawn in the forest area, with irregular pathways passing through a “woodland garden”. The formal pathways in the lawn were to be paved for general use by everyone (or almost everyone—see below), while the irregular pathways in the forest area were apparently intended to be gravel only.

The formal pathway area would have a north-south axial alignment with the mall access road leading into the Mall in Columbia. In plans from at least 2011 on the main proposed pathway (in one section 40 feet wide, including a central grassy median) would head directly south from Little Patuxent Parkway, aligned with the relatively short mall access road to the north of Little Patuxent Parkway. The pathway then would go straight across the lawn area and end just north of the Merriweather Post Pavilion property line. Two other major pathways would run from that southern terminus to points on Little Patuxent Parkway to the east and west of where the north end of the main path would terminate. These other pathways were to be roughly (but not exactly) symmetrical to each other.

With one exception all park features other than pathways were to be located as close as possible to the Merriweather property line. At various times the proposed features included a pavilion at the southern end of the main north-south path, a café (sometimes envisioned as being part of the pavilion, and sometimes seen as a separate building to its west), a children’s play area right next to the Merriweather VIP parking lot, and a small outdoor amphitheater just east of the children’s play area. A fountain was the only feature not to be located next to Merriweather; it was proposed as being on the main north-south pathway, either just north of the pavilion (in the concept diagram and apparently in the 2009 plan) or in the middle of the lawn area (in later plans).

What about tree removal? After all, minimizing the number of trees removed from Symphony Woods was long touted as an important factor in preferring the Paumier plan to the GGP proposal, and apparently in some people’s minds it was and remains the only factor worth considering. Although the Paumier plan was certainly less disruptive to the woods than the GGP plan (which proposed constructing multiple buildings in the northern part of Symphony Woods), the formal pathway geometry in the Paumier plan unfortunately meant that more trees would need to be removed than with pathways explicitly routed around trees as needed.

The estimates of the number of trees to be removed have varied among different incarnations of the Paumier plan. In the recent announcement of his April 19 rally Cy Paumier claimed that “Only 30 existing trees were to be removed to implement the walkway plan that was approved by the Columbia Association Board in 2009.” Note that the 2009 plan referred to is not the plan that was actually submitted into the Howard County planning process, but an earlier plan that was later revised. Also, based on the wording of Paumier’s statement this figure of 30 trees removed was apparently for walkways only and not for park features.²

In a July 2012 letter to the Baltimore Sun Cy Paumier wrote that “Between 50 and 60 trees will need to be removed to construct the Symphony Woods Park walkways.” This figure is for the design submitted to the Planning Board. At the actual Planning Board hearing three weeks before, Charlie Bailey of Mahan Rykiel Associates (the landscape architects for the plan) testified that “the current design predicts a worst-case scenario of 64 trees to be removed within the 16.1 acre project area.” Note that again these figures do not include any trees removed for construction of the proposed park structures.³

I’ll take a breather now and return tomorrow with my verdict on the Paumier plan.

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1. I’m not aware of any definitive online source for the 2009 plan presented to CA. If anyone can point me to relevant documents I’d be glad to add links to them. (I did find a Slater Associates web page that may preserve an image of this plan.) There apparently also were additional plan versions considered by the CA board, but I can’t find online public documents about them either. Finally, there were plan diagrams included with the presentation to the 2011 pre-submission community meeting prior to the Design Advisory Panel meeting; they were apparently identical to the ones presented at the DAP meeting.

2. I could not find any independent public record of estimates on tree removal for the 2009 plan.

3. By comparison the current Inner Arbor estimate (as contained in the latest “by the numbers” document [174MB PDF]) is for 31 trees to be removed for construction of all walkways and all proposed park structures.

GGP, CA, Cy Paumier, and the battle over Symphony Woods

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.

After reading past new articles and planning documents about the Paumier plan and downtown Columbia redevelopment in general, I’ve concluded that it’s impossible to discuss the plan without considering the context in which it was originally proposed.¹ As I noted in a previous post, Jim Rouse inadvertently planted the seeds of future controversies when the Rouse Company deeded the Symphony Woods property to the Columbia Association while retaining ownership of the Merriweather Post Pavilion property inside Symphony Woods and the Crescent property outside of it. This didn’t cause any problems as long as CA and the Rouse Company were in sync and the Crescent property remained undeveloped. However after Jim Rouse died, the Rouse Company was acquired by General Growth Properties, and GGP subsequently attempted to more intensively develop its downtown Columbia properties, the stage was set for conflict between a more independent CA and a GGP perceived as an outsider to Columbia.

In the spring of 2008 GGP proposed a vision for Columbia Town Center that included as a main feature a “pedestrian-friendly ‘cultural spine’ between The Mall in Columbia and the Merriweather Post Pavilion.” As presented by GGP officials the ‘spine’ would terminate in a renovated Merriweather and a newly-developed Symphony Woods:

Developers would raise the venue’s roof, build a new stage, provide new backstage facilities for artists, extend the covered seating area and upgrade the concession and restroom areas.

The pavilion also would serve as the center of an arts and cultural hub that could eventually include a museum, an enhanced central public library, an international center dedicated to the study of small cities, and a Symphony Woods park redesigned to make it more accessible and useful to residents.

Also mentioned as possibilities were a “a skating rink, … a new home for Toby’s Dinner Theatre, a hotel [on Little Patuxent Parkway] and possible new quarters for the Columbia Association and Columbia Archives.”

This was all well and good, but as it happened the land on which much of this new development was proposed to be constructed was actually owned by CA, not by GGP. Given that relations between the CA board and GGP were already somewhat strained, the reaction from CA board members to GGP’s proposal was pretty much as one would expect: For example, CA board chair Barbara Russell complained that

My fear that GGP would want to put amenities on our land—that’s exactly what they were showing. … I do not think that developing Symphony Woods by gobbling up the land with buildings, parking areas and roads is a good idea.

GGP’s plans also sparked a backlash among some Columbia activists, with Alan Klein sponsoring a meeting to discuss alternative proposals. Klein complained that the GGP plan would “destroy, not restore” Symphony Woods by removing 40 percent of its trees, and noted that children’s parks and a fountain were more appropriate uses for the property. This meeting apparently marked the first public discussion of a new proposal by Cy Paumier and others for Symphony Woods, emphasizing its development as “user-friendly parkland”. As GGP continued to promote building new buildings in the north of Symphony Woods, the Pauimer proposal (originally developed on a pro bono basis) gained favor with the CA board and eventually became the basis of a CA proposal.

As presented by CA, under the new plan

[Symphony Woods] would become a park with a fountain-type water display and a small café surrounded by paved pathways. The woods’ dense canopy would be thinned in certain areas to provide for “pockets” of sunlight, according to planners.

In addition, the park would have a more visible entry plaza off Little Patuxent Parkway, a woodland garden with crushed stone pathways, a children’s play area with sculptures, rest rooms and a 150-space parking lot, …

Once adopted by CA the Paumier plan gained other supporters as well. The Columbia Flier advocated it as a better match for Sympony Woods: “A middle ground between completely passive parkland and a cultural campus makes the most sense for all concerned. Of the two visions offered, the CA plan comes closer to that ideal.” Howard County’s legislative delegation secured a $250,000 Maryland state grant to CA to help implement the plan, with further support promised from an unnamed nonprofit organization.

By this time GGP had conceded defeat and abandoned its own plan for Symphony Woods. However relations remained strained between CA and GGP, and apparently a potent narrative had lodged in some people’s minds: That outsiders were bent on destroying Symphony Woods in the course of pursuing their own designs on it, and only “true” Columbians like Cy Paumier and his associates, Alan Klein and other activists, and others in and out of CA could be relied upon to thwart them. Part of the narrative was an intense focus on the question of exactly how many trees were to be removed from Symphony Woods, so intense that when it was necessary to remove 18 damaged trees CA felt compelled to reassure residents that it was not part of a Symphony Woods redevelopment initiative.²

Thus the Paumier plan became the consensus plan for Symphony Woods, its status as the only proposed alternative to GGP’s widely-disliked plan making its success to a large degree independent of the merits of the design itself. But was it (and is it) actually a good design? I’ll give my thoughts on that question in the next post.

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1. I wasn’t directly involved in events around Columbia Town Center development, so my comments are based on published reports in the Baltimore Sun and Columbia Flier. (I will also note here that the Columbia Flier archive search function for the period in question is completely broken, which is why I’m not linking to more Flier stories.) If you have personal knowledge you’d like to add, or corrections you want to note, please feel free to submit a comment.

2. Both the “outsiders vs. Columbians” narrative and the intense focus on tree removal continue to shape the debate over the future of Symphony Woods, as I’ll discuss in future posts.

A walk in Symphony Woods

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.

Leaving aside stops to take pictures and some doubling back, the walk took me about 20 to 30 minutes, starting at the east side of Symphony Woods near the Central Branch of the Howard County Library System, going across the northeast portion of the woods near the intersection of South Entrance Road with Little Patuxent Parkway, through the northern portion of the woods bordering Little Patuxent Parkway, over to Merriweather Post Pavilion and back, and then returning. This was the first time I had walked through the woods when I wasn’t attending some event, and I had a chance to reflect on the nature of the area.

View through Symphony Woods looking southwest to Merriweather Post Pavilion, showing mixed forest and lawn landscapes. Click for high-resolution version.

My first thought was that Symphony Woods is really two woods in one. As noted above, I entered the woods near the library. It’s not a particularly convenient way to enter the woods (among other things it requires jumping across a small stream) but it has the advantage of being quite scenic—more like a forest than the parts of the woods most visitors see. The topography is relatively rough, with a small stream valley, and the ground more like what you expect in a forest, including leaves and downed limbs and even (in one case) an entire fallen tree. However at the same time it’s obvious that Symphony Woods is not an isolated woodland: You can easily look up and see office buildings across Little Patuxent Parkway, and there’s a low but consistent hum of traffic.

Symphony Woods looking south from near Little Patuxent Parkway to Merriweather Post Pavilion, showing the grassy lawn in this area. Click for high-resolution version.

As I moved across the park the landscape became less forest-like and more lawn-like. In the northern portion of the woods, between Little Patuxent Parkway and Merriweather Post Pavilion, the woods loses its forest character entirely and resembles nothing so much as a big suburban lawn with a number of trees on it. The area is relatively flat and devoid of pretty much anything other than tree trunks and grass; it looks a bit beaten down, which I guess is to be expected given the number of people who walk across it.

I stopped at the northwest corner of Symphony Woods, at the entrance drive to Merriweather Post Pavilion. Although there is more wooded land to the west bordering Little Patuxent Parkway and extending to the corner of Broken Land Parkway, it is not part of Symphony Woods itself, i.e., the Columbia Association property. Instead it is Howard Hughes property that is proposed to be developed as general office space as part of the Crescent project. Crescent Area 4 begins just west of the Merriweather entrance drive; Area 1 is beyond that, bordering Broken Land Parkway.

Crescent Area 4 as viewed from the northwest corner of Symphony Woods, looking across the Merriweather Post Pavilion entrance drive toward Little Patuxent Parkway. Click for high-resolution version.

I then doubled back toward Merriweather Post Pavilion, walking all the way up to the fence that marks the boundary line between Symphony Woods proper and the Merriweather Post Pavilion property (currently owned by the Howard Hughes Corporation). What I found interesting about this portion of the walk is that the portion of Symphony Woods immediately bordering the fence doesn’t actually feel like Symphony Woods itself, but rather like an extension of the Merriweather Post Pavilion property. The fence is quite off-putting, and I felt somewhat nervous as I approached it, as if armed guards were about to come out and shoo me away. (A posted sign stating “This area under video surveillance” didn’t help my mood.)

The Merriweather Post Pavilion fence and outbuildings, as viewed from Symphony Woods looking south. Click for high-resolution version.

However no one made an appearance, and not just at the Merriweather fence. The park was utterly empty throughout my entire walk, with not a soul to be seen. Symphony Woods in a sense has a split personality: occasionally overrun with people attending events, and completely devoid of visitors during the rest of the year. This seems a great shame given the natural beauty of the woods, especially in the forested area of the park. How could Symphony Woods be an area that everyone can (and does) enjoy on an ongoing basis? I’ll write more about that in my next post.

Five thoughts on Symphony 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.

Sacred lands and the facts don’t always get along. Recently the Inner Arbor Trust released a document (“Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods: By the Numbers” [PDF]) that attempts to correct misconceptions about the Inner Arbor plan. It’s a good document (though at almost 180MB it takes a while to download), and if and when I have time I’ll blog more about it in detail. However I suspect it’s also probably a wasted effort as far as many people are concerned: When people come to think of land as sacred they often stop thinking about the reality of the land as opposed to its sanctity, and the facts are then often ignored, overlooked, or distorted.

For example, in my last post I wrote about a controversy in New York City relating to 9/11; you have probably heard it referred to as “the mosque at Ground Zero”, but in fact it was neither: not an actual mosque but an Islamic community center with a prayer space (albeit a fairly large one), and not at Ground Zero but rather two blocks away. But the emotion around the 9/11 attacks was (and is) so intense that the juxtaposition of “mosque” and “Ground Zero” was much more memorable than the actual reality, and once that juxtaposition lodged in people’s minds it was difficult to impossible to get it out.¹

Those who preach a land’s sanctity aren’t always saints. Going back to the example above, did people just happen to innocently get the facts wrong and decide a mosque was going to be built right where the twin towers stood? Well, no, not exactly. There were plenty of people who worked to actively spread this idea because they themselves stood to benefit if others believed it were true: news channels trying to increase their ratings, politicians trying to attract votes, advocacy groups trying to raise money, and so on.

A map of the trees to be removed as part of the Inner Arbor plan. Click for high-resolution version. Adapted from “Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods: By the Numbers”, © 2014 Inner Arbor Trust; used with permission.

There’s no reason why Columbia should be exempt from this phenomenon, and based on reports from others some reasons to think that Columbia and CA have their own versions of it. (For example, consider the case of the elderly CA voter who was convinced Julia McCready was running for the CA board in order to run old people out of Columbia.) I would not be surprised to hear that some Columbians are now firmly of the opinion that the Inner Arbor plan will result in wholesale cutting of trees in Symphony Woods, because someone else saw fit to put that idea in their heads. (In actual fact the Inner Arbor plan as proposed will result in many fewer trees being removed than in the previous Columbia Association plan, also known as the Cy Paumier plan after its lead designer.²)

This is all Jim Rouse’s fault, really. Recently Robert Tennenbaum, the former chief architect and planner for Columbia, quoted Jim Rouse’s words about Symphony Woods from the 1964 presentation “Columbia: A New Town for Howard County”: “Today a magnificent stand of trees, this 40 acre woods will be permanently preserved and cultivated as a quiet, convenient and strikingly beautiful asset of the town.” All well and good; however I think it’s also useful to consider what Jim Rouse did and not just what he said.

First, as I’ve previously mentioned, Jim Rouse saw fit to put a large outdoor amphitheater smack in the middle of the “magnificent stand of trees” in question. Second, Jim Rouse also saw fit for the Rouse Co. to retain ownership of the Crescent property surrounding Symphony Woods, as opposed to deeding it to CA or to the county. Did he do this because he planned for that property to be “permanently preserved and cultivated as a quiet, convenient and strikingly beautiful asset of the town”? Given that Rouse was a canny and successful businessman, I presume instead that he did it because the Crescent was a potentially-valuable piece of centrally-located property that the Rouse Co. or its successors could at some point profitably develop for high-density office, retail, or residential use.

So if you’re concerned that “Symphony Woods” (i.e., including the wooded area next to US 29 and Broken Land Parkway) will soon start looking much smaller, and that Symphony Woods itself (i.e., the CA property) is going to be across the street from 20-story condo towers, be aware that this is not because evil outsiders invaded Columbia and betrayed Jim Rouse’s vision, it’s because Rouse himself took the actions that made these developments possible, and perhaps inevitable. (However, in Rouse’s defense there are in fact areas in the Crescent that will remain undeveloped, for example between Area 1 and Area 2 and between Area 2 and Area 3. So more woods will remain than one might think, and it’s possible that given appropriate easements and paths that they could be used as an extension of Symphony Woods itself.)

Cy Paumier plan for Symphony Woods showing park features proposed to be constructed. Click for high-resolution version. Image adapted from FDP-DC-MSW-1, Downtown Columbia Merriweather-Symphony Woods Neighborhood Final Development Plan.

There is no “let’s not build stuff” plan for Symphony Woods. Many people think of the choice for Symphony Woods as between a new plan involving radical changes and a prior plan preserving Symphony Woods pretty much as is. This is in fact not the case: The previous CA plan by Cy Paumier envisioned as many new park features in Symphony Woods as the Inner Arbor plan, just in different places. To be specific, as presented to the Howard County Planning Board [PDF] the plan “proposed future parkland improvements, including a network of pathways, a fountain, a shared use pavilion, a shared use amphitheater, a shared use cafe, play activity area, woodland garden area, [and] parking within a 16.1 acre project area ….”

Almost all of these features have direct counterparts in the Inner Arbor plan: The shared use amphitheater became the Chrysalis, the shared use café and pavilion were combined to become the Butterfly, and the play activity area became the Merriground. The Inner Arbor plan has no fountain in Symphony Woods proper, but the Inner Arbor Trust has proposed locating one in a plaza next to Merriweather Post Pavilion. The Paumier plan had no equivalent to the Caterpillar, presumably because unlike the Inner Arbor plan the Paumier plan assumed that Symphony Woods would be closed to the general public during most Merriweather events. (A primary purpose of the Caterpillar is to control Merriweather access closer to the pavilion itself, rather than at the park boundaries.) There also was no direct equivalent to the Merriweather Horns in the Paumier plan, although the plan did state that “[The] entire park is a potential site for future public art.”

Being “Disneyesque” is not necessarily a bad thing. One of the persistent charges against the Inner Arbor plan is that it is “Disneyesque” and turns Symphony Woods into an “amusement park” with “attractions” (in scare quotes) unsuitable for the wooded setting. This seems an odd accusation for several reasons. First, as noted above the Paumier plan had pretty much the same set of “attractions” as the Inner Arbor plan. Second, given that Jim Rouse was apparently quite the admirer of Walt Disney—he said in 1963 that “the greatest piece of urban design in the United States today is Disneyland”—I suspect he would have thought the term “Disneyesque” to be more a compliment than an insult.

In fact, I’d go so far as to say that preserving Symphony Woods for future generations to enjoy will require more than a bit of the same sort of design thinking that went into Walt Disney’s theme parks. In particular, once the Crescent property is developed the remaining area of Symphony Woods is going to seem relatively small: the Inner Arbor plan preserves almost 80% of Symphony Woods as a natural wooded area, but that’s still only 14 acres or so—about the size of a small subdivision in western Howard County (land of 3-acre lots). A prime task is then to make Symphony Woods seem bigger to visitors than it actually is—the same problem faced by theme parks like Disneyland, and one that their creators did a good job of addressing through artful design.

Walkable paths and roads in the Inner Arbor plan. Adapted from “Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods: By the Numbers”, © 2014 Inner Arbor Trust; used with permission.

The Paumier plan with its straight paths does a poor job of this in my opinion; in particular the main path through the park makes it glaringly obvious how short the distance is from Little Patuxent Parkway to Merriweather Post Pavilion. The Inner Arbor plan instead has lots of “meandering paths” (as called for by the Howard County Planning Board after the Design Advisory Panel found fault with the Paumier plan), together with access roadways forming about two miles of walking surfaces within the confines of the park, and featuring over two thousand places to sit along the way. But I suspect people will probably prefer to walk than to sit, since as with the best theme parks walking will continually bring new sights to visitors’ attentions, between the natural beauty of the woods and the various attractive park features.

That concludes my thoughts on Symphony Woods, at least for now. I hope to come back later with more thoughts on the Crescent development.

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1. I’m as culpable as anyone else when it comes to not letting facts get in the way of my emotions and convictions. A few blog posts back I wrote that some people seemed to oppose the Inner Arbor plan because “Jim Rouse (or one of his disciples) didn’t propose [it]”. Soon afterward Michael McCall wrote me and politely pointed out that he had worked for Jim Rouse for many years; in other words, one of Jim Rouse’s disciples was in fact behind the Inner Arbor plan. I actually knew McCall had worked for Rouse, but I was so invested in the narrative of forward thinking vs. “What would Jim Rouse do?” nostalgia that my mind conveniently forgot this particular fact.

2. The Inner Arbor “by the numbers” document lists the total number of trees to be cut as 31, at least half of which are not considered to be in good condition; see the full document for a complete list of exactly which trees are proposed to be removed, their species, and conditions. Contrasting this to the original plan, Cy Paumier wrote in July 2012, “Between 50 and 60 trees will need to be removed to construct the Symphony Woods Park walkways.” According to testimony at the Howard County Planning Board hearing on the plan, also in July 2012, up to 64 trees could be removed, or a bit more than twice the number proposed to be removed for the Inner Arbor plan. Note that unlike the Inner Arbor plan these figures do not appear to account for any trees to be removed for the shared-use pavilion, shared-use amphitheater, play area, and other park elements proposed in the CA documents submitted to Howard County.

No fooling, Columbia’s becoming a city

Rendering of proposed Crescent development in downtown Columbia. View is of Area 3 looking east, with the proposed swim center to the right. Click for high-resolution version. Image © 2014 Howard Hughes Corporation; used with permission.

Columbia is well on its way to becoming a real city with a real downtown. (This is not an April Fools’ joke.)

Last night I attended the pre-submission meeting at which Howard Hughes Corporation presented its plans for the Crescent area next to Symphony Woods and Merriweather Post Pavilion. (I arrived a few minutes late, missing the introduction of the presenters and the opening remarks.) For now I’ll leave a more complete description of the meeting to the professionals (see Luke Lavoie’s story today in the Baltimore Sun) and will just give some initial somewhat disconnected impressions.

The attendance seemed a bit less than that for the pre-submission meeting for the Inner Arbor plan. (Luke Lavoie concurs, citing 75 people attending the Crescent meeting and about 100 at the Inner Arbor meeting.) I find that a bit strange in at least one sense. In the case of the Inner Arbor plan people got exercised over what I consider relatively minor things, like identifying the exact number of trees to be removed from Symphony Woods, and presumably showed up at the meeting in force to make sure those concerns got on the record. To me this is a case of not seeing the forest for the you-know-whats, given that the Crescent development will change Columbia in ways far more radical than anything that might happen in Symphony Woods. In the immortal words of Vice President Biden, this is a big [expletive] deal.

Without really trying to I ended up sitting next to Jane Dembner of CA; the same thing happened to me at the Design Advisory Panel review of the Inner Arbor plan, and (if I remember right) at the Inner Arbor pre-submission meeting as well. I keep running into the same people at these events; I get the feeling that there’s a core group of perhaps a few hundred people at most who have influence over, strong opinions about, or (in my case) an abiding interest in what happens in Columbia and Howard County—call them the Howard County 0.1%.

The presentation itself was divided into two parts: One section on the site plan, roads and pathways, public amenities, design guidelines, sustainability, and related matters, presented by two Howard Hughes employees whose full names I didn’t catch, and a second section providing more detail on the actual buildings, presented by Howard Hughes SVP John DeWolf. This second part was apparently an adaptation of a pitch DeWolf does for investors and potential tenants, so it included a lot of high-level marketing stuff about the appeal of Columbia and Howard County, the desirability of a vibrant downtown Columbia, and the ability of Howard Hughes to execute on that vision. Due to time constraints DeWolf had to march through this second presentation in about 30 minutes, including interspersed questions and answers; this was unfortunate since this section contained some of the most interesting material from my point of view.

DeWolf was clearly enthusiastic about the project (as he himself said, the man likes to build stuff). He went out of his way to emphasize the importance of Merriweather Post Pavilion to the Crescent project, particularly as a way to “make Columbia cool” and attract a younger demographic. Whether the hip twenty-something with a lip ring depicted on one of his slides will actually want to live in Columbia (as opposed to just attending a Merriweather event) is an open question, but full marks to DeWolf for trying. DeWolf didn’t mention anything specific about Merriweather renovation or plans for Merriweather parking, but did make a brief aside about his tiff with Ken Ulman. He didn’t mention anything about the Inner Arbor plan. In general DeWolf is an entertaining presenter, though having done lots of sales presentations myself I think I can tell what’s unforced enthusiasm and what’s a bit feigned for the benefit of prospects. (For example, does DeWolf really think the lengthy multi-step Howard County approval process is a great thing for developers, as he seemed to imply?)

As Luke Lavoie’s story indicates, the possibility of 20-story-high buildings in downtown Columbia was a major theme and concern at the meeting. It reminded me of the controversy several years ago over the proposed 22-story WCI Plaza tower near the Columbia lakefront. For various reasons that plan eventually died an ignominious death, but by all indications thus far the Crescent proposal should escape that fate, 20-story buildings and all. For what it’s worth, I think 20-story buildings in the context of the Crescent development are appropriate to the setting. They don’t stick out as stand-alone structures, but appear to exist in the context of nearby buildings of somewhat smaller size. I don’t mind the contrast with the adjacent Symphony Woods either; it actually reminds me of the buildings next to New York’s Central Park, a juxtaposition I find striking and attractive. There’s an open question as to whether and how much those buildings will shadow Symphony Woods at various times of the day and year; I hope to see something about that in future presentations from Howard Hughes.

Speaking of “massing” (to use the technical term for defining the overall shapes and sizes of buildings), I think the Crescent plan actually works pretty well in relation to its site. One person commenting at the meeting was concerned about the implications of the Crescent area being relatively isolated, in the sense that it was hemmed in by Symphony Woods and Merriweather to the north and by existing roads and development to the east, south, and west—not to mention the areas within the Crescent development itself that are unsuitable for building and will remain in a relatively natural state. Far from being a bad thing, I think this might actually work to the benefit of the development. Among other things, the compact and constrained site forces a higher density of development and helps prevents the sort of “micro-sprawl” I’ve noticed in places like Tysons Corner and Reston Town Center, where large urban-scale buildings and their associated “structured parking” sit next to low-density suburban-style strip shopping centers with large open-air parking lots.

The compact site and relatively high density will of course lead to increased traffic, which was another major concern expressed, along with concerns about the implications of that increased traffic for pedestrian access to and within the Crescent area. I suspect that true mass transit (e.g., heavy or light rail) will be a long time coming to downtown Columbia, if it ever does, so I don’t expect any relief on that front. Nevertheless I’m reasonably optimistic about the traffic situation, based in large part on the advances occurring in automobile automation that will likely be widely adopted within the longer-scale time frame of this development. Even if we never get to fully-autonomous “self-driving” cars, I think increased intelligence in automobiles will go a long way to making cars more safely co-exist with pedestrians, as well as potentially speeding up traffic by allowing cars to intelligently cooperate with each other to improve traffic flow and reduce congestion caused by stops and starts due to humans’ poor reaction times.

Other thoughts: I was surprised by the interest shown in a proposed swim center (or natatorium, if you want to get fancy). I wasn’t paying much attention to the discussions over the future of CA’s swimming pools, so missed the fact that there is a fair size group of people actively lobbying for a high-end professional-quality swim center that could host local and regional swimming competitions—something Howard County currently lacks. It sounds like a worthy facility, and one which could attract lots of visitors to the proposed hotel and restaurants in the downtown area. There was also mention of locating a new library downtown, but not much discussion of that. For the record, I think the Crescent area would be a better location for a new Central Branch than near the location of the present facility. I for one am looking forward to the possibility of a large multi-purpose central library of some architectural distinction.

Finally, as implied above I didn’t really get a good feeling for how parking at Merriweather will be addressed as the various phases of construction proceed. However I did glimpse some slides that may shed some light on that question, and if I can find out more I’ll post again.