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.