Victory for the community on the WMATA Albion Road Property

The story about the 6 acres behind the townhomes at Riverdale Park Station has a happy ending!

I found out the land was for sale back in November 2018 and posted about it here:

http://riverdaleparkstation.blogspot.com/2018/11/is-land-behind-woodberry-townhomes-for.html

The entire surrounding community all worked together to get the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission (M-NCPPC) bid done and I posted about it February 2019 here and thought this was the end of the story:

http://riverdaleparkstation.blogspot.com/2019/02/parks-and-recreation-bid-submitted-for.html

Then in April 2019 we found out that WMATA selected a developer bid OVER the M-NCPPC bid, I posted about that here:

http://riverdaleparkstation.blogspot.com/2019/04/wmata-property-at-albion-road-important.html

This was even though rezoning the property was a complete non-starter from all neighboring jurisdictions.

I am happy to say that the entire community pulled together yet again with all of the leaders from various levels of government along with community involvement were able to persuade the WMATA to change their mind and select the parks bid after all.

So much noise was made that even the Diamondback recently picked up the story on 5/19/19:

https://dbknews.com/2019/05/19/college-park-wmata-route-1-land-sale-community-garden/

This afternoon Prince George's County received a letter from Paul Wiedefeld (the CEO of WMATA) stating that in response from "numerous requests from local and state officials" that the WMATA has removed the Albion Road property from the market and is offering the land to the M-NCPPC at their bid price.

WMATA expects that M-NCPPC will be able to close on the sale of the property within the next 90 days and M-NCPPC plans to leave the land as green space.

Special thanks to Dannielle Glaros (PG county District 3 representative), Alan Thompson (Riverdale Park Mayor), Stuart Adams (president of the Calvert Hills Citizens Association), John Rigg (College Park City Councilmember), Patrick Wojahn (College Park Mayor) and Len Carey (University Park Mayor).  Additional thanks to all of the people who joined the Facebook group posted here and everyone in that group who wrote a letter.

Denizens Featured in Eater

Great article with lots of high quality pictures inside of Denizens featured in Eater DC yesterday morning. 

Check it out:

https://dc.eater.com/2019/5/20/18632559/inside-denizens-modern-new-maryland-brewery-and-taproom

Here is just one from their Facebook page which is probably the best shot:

Apartment in Building 5 - Construction starts in June 2019

I have been blogging about the first apartment that is coming for Riverdale Park station for over 2 years now, here is one of my earlier (and the most detailed post) about it from 2017.

http://riverdaleparkstation.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-apartments-of-riverdale-park-station.html

Sometime in late 2017 the developer decided to split construction of the apartment building and the parking garage.   I am unsure why this decision was made.

So the parking garage was built from December 2017 till it was opened to the public back in November of 2018.  For the past 7 months there has been a giant cinder block parking garage that was supposed to be surrounded by a brick apartment building that did not yet exist.

The Washington Business Journal reported today (5/15/19) that the developer finally has the financing in place for the project.

The apartment reportedly will have the exact same specs laid out in my 2017 post with 229 residential units 8,000 square feet of amenity space, 10,000 square feet of retail space. 

Slated completion date is the second quarter of 2020. (the original estimate was 2 years so I think early 2021 for leasing is a better bet) 

Sometime in 2018 they were considering doing away with that retail space and going all residential but it's good for the community that they are sticking the the original plan.

I am glad that they were able to get the financing and that construction will finally be moving forward for this apartment.  I saw some planners on site yesterday mapping things out and was told construction would start in June. 

I believe this along with the Denizens opening next week could help reinvigorate Riverdale Park Station as a whole.

Denizens opening on May 25th

18 days until Denizens opens!

I posted back in March they were expecting a late May open but they did not provide an official opening date to anyone.

Looks like Washington City Paper broke the news at 6:00 AM today on the May 25th opening date.

https://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/food/beer/article/21066921/denizens-riverdale-park-taproom-and-brewery-welcomes-all-beer-drinkers-may-25

The article above has an in-depth write up about the restaurant which was interesting and worth the read... but even more interesting to me was there was a link to a .PDF for the menu, which I posted below

Looks like there will now be three solid burger options in Riverdale Park Station.  (Burtons, Habit and Denizens)