Prince George’s County – �鶹��Ƶ

Upper Marlboro Community Center Trail Implementation Plan

Victor Manzanilla — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:39:29 +0000

The Upper Marlboro Community Center offers a wide range of services for the surrounding community, but is currently totally isolated from the multimodal network. No dedicated bike or pedestrian routes connects it to surrounding communities. Despite the lack of pedestrian infrastructure, community members still walk to and from the Community Center, along the edge of the highway. A shared-use sidepath would rectify this mobility and safety issue. The proposed Community Center Trail would run parallel to Route 4 and connect the Community Center to pedestrian facilities along Water Street and in downtown Upper Marlboro. The Town of Upper Marlboro will need to secure the required permits, contract an engineering firm to produce the final design, and provide for ongoing trail maintenance. Permits are required from Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) and the State Highway Administration (SHA). An agreement in the form of a Memorandum of Understanding with the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission (M-NCPPC) is required as well, since they own and operate the Community Center. The trail design should be flexible; the narrow right-of-way may require the trail to be narrower in places than recommended in planning literature. However, the need for a path outweighs the disadvantages of a narrowed trail, and SHA design waivers expressly allow this type of non-standard design. Based on available research, the cost for implementation should be approximately $100,000.00, with an estimated $2,000.00 required annually for maintenance. There are many possible funding sources for implementation and maintenance at the State and federal levels. This Implementation Plan outlines the needs and justifications for the Community Center Trail, details which permits are required and how they can be obtained, estimates the approximate costs of implementation and maintenance, and provides design recommendations.

Selecting A Second Site for Prince George’s County Animal Shelter

Victor Manzanilla — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:39:29 +0000

Our PALS project team worked with Prince Georgeâ€s County Animal Control to identify potential sites for a second animal shelter. After reading a 2016 feasibility study and meeting with Chief Rodney Taylor and other stakeholders, our team developed a hierarchy of site selection criteria. These included zoning, parcel size, transit access, and more. We then utilized GIS mapping and data analysis to draft a short list of approximately 30 possible sites. After this, we went through the options and eliminated any sites with prohibitive topography or accessibility issues. In the end, we were left with four potential sites. We presented these four options to the county on December 14, 2017. At this meeting, we also discussed potential research opportunities for the second semester of this project.

Prince George County Public Schools: Suitland High School & William Wirt Middle School

Victor Manzanilla — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:39:25 +0000

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Transit-Oriented Development and Affordable Housing in Prince George’s County: A Case Study-Based Approach

Victor Manzanilla — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:39:25 +0000

Prince Georgeâ€s County is eager to activate and capitalize on some of its greatest assets, i.e. its Metro stations, by attracting dense transit-oriented development projects to the county. However, this poses a serious risk of displacement to many of the station areasâ€ existing residents and has the potential to limit accessibility for potential future low-to-moderate income households by virtue of prohibitively high housing costs. While Plan 2035 prominently features calls for dense, mixed-income communities around transit, the county currently appears to lack the market, regulatory measures, political interest or funding to ensure that this comes to fruition. Prince Georgeâ€s housing development market, including around its Metro stations, lags behind its neighbors, due at least in part to a perception among developers that the county is comparatively hostile to new development. To rectify this imbalance, county officials wish to improve the countyâ€s reputation as a more development-friendly place to build. Housing market pressures generally do not provide for new affordable housing, thus requiring government intervention and subsidization to ensure their existence as a meaningful share of the housing stock. Market-rate developers often see affordable housing requirements as a procedural burden and a limitation on their profit margins, which conceivably opposes Prince Georgeâ€s Countyâ€s goal to improve the countyâ€s reputation as a good place to build. There is a feeling among many county officials that Prince Georgeâ€s County already has the regionâ€s fair share of affordable housing opportunities, thereby reducing the sense of urgency and political interest in preserving and promoting affordable housing development. Prince Georgeâ€s County officials are particularly eager to cultivate market-rate housing and commercial development to expand the countyâ€s tax base. Given its limited tax base and budget, the county lacks a dedicated revenue source for affordable housing preservation and development. As a result, affordable housing preservation and development initiatives are currently underprioritized and underfunded despite the looming threat of displacement often associated with TODs. Bearing in mind the multifaceted challenges that Prince Georgeâ€s County currently faces in attracting development, let alone addressing the issue of affordable housing around TODs, this study proposes a temporal three-phased metrics-based plan intended to help reconcile these potentially conflicting goals. A variety of affordable housing mechanisms were examined for utilization around Prince Georgeâ€s County as a whole, as well as place-based initiatives that could be applied specifically to the countyâ€s Metro stations. The first phase includes the most developer-friendly and revenue-neutral affordable housing initiatives to mutually address the countyâ€s goals of cultivating a better reputation among developers and promoting housing opportunities for lower income households in dense, transit-accessible areas. Each succeeding phase assumes an improved housing market, thus implying a more development-friendly environment while also providing the county with more funding and greater leverage for increasingly aggressive affordable housing measures. To demonstrate applicability, the phased initiatives were examined in relation to five of the countyâ€s Metro stations that have the greatest potential for growth and investment in the coming decades. Table 1 provides an overview of the three-phased implementation plan as applied to the five Metro stations examined in this study.

Watershed Restoration Prioritization Project

Victor Manzanilla — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:39:25 +0000

The goal is to serve DoEâ€s mission to improve water quality and satisfy the Federal Mandate to meet the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System (MS4) requirement of reducing nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment in Prince Georgeâ€s watersheds by 2025. The requirement is set by the EPA. Currently design teams select projects on a site by site basis, based on information sources such as SharePoint, MS Project, PGAtlas and field study. There is no existing visualization or scoring tool that prioritizes projects based on how much nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment is produced in an area. This projectâ€s objective is to prioritize areas for restoration based on the amount of pollutants a site is producing, thus saving energy, effort, time, and making the process more cost effective.

A Review of Stakeholder Feedback and Indicator Analysis for the Maryland Environmental Justice Screening Tool

Victor Manzanilla — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:39:25 +0000

Background: A wealth of research has shown that communities of color and low-income populations have been disproportionately burdened by environmental hazards and locally unwanted land uses (LULUs) including incinerators, power plants, landfills, and other pollution- intensive facilities. Unfortunately, the State of Maryland has made little progress in constructing tools to assess and address environmental injustice and related health issues. The National Center for Smart Growth has begun developing a new mapping tool for Marylandâ€”Maryland EJSCREENâ€”that highlights the prevalence and frequency of environmental hazards and LULUs and their health risks for nearby populations. Goal: The long-term goal is to use this tool to highlight areas with environmental justice issues and areas that need additional investments. The tool should be used in permitting, regulatory, zoning, and development decisions. Objectives: This projectâ€s objectives are to collect information on environmental, social, economic, exposure, and health indicators that should be included in the Maryland EJSCREEN tool; obtain feedback from stakeholder groups on indicators that should be included in the tool and prioritized; and demonstrate the utility of the EJSCREEN tool. Approach: In collaboration with the Partnership in Action Learning in Sustainability (PALS), we performed a literature review of economic, social, environmental, exposure, and health indicators identified as important by several Prince Georgeâ€s County community members and stakeholders in a series of demonstration workshops. Stakeholders included residents from the Port Towns, Environmental Action Council members, the Environmental Justice legislative team, and the Commission on Environmental Justice and Sustainable Communities. Flashcards, posters, and surveys were distributed to community members and stakeholders to gather valued feedback about necessary indicators that were acceptable to be highlighted in Maryland EJSCREEN. Results: We found that the demonstration workshops were effective in soliciting feedback from residents, advocates, health practitioners, policymakers, and other stakeholder groups. Importance to Public Health: This tool can be used by local residents to advocate for new policies, better enforcement, and public health improvements. It can also be used by government officials to build healthier, greener, more equitable, and more sustainable communities.

All Dogs Go to Prince George’s County: Finding a Home for a Second Animal Services Facility

Victor Manzanilla — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:39:23 +0000

As a continuation of the Fall 2017 PALS project, Spring 2018 semester students from the community planning and engineering programs used advanced computer mapping tools (geographic information system, or GIS) to provide Prince Georgeâ€s County with potential sites to build a second animal shelter. The team attempted to find land that the county already owned, but none of the parcels met the requirements. The team found a solution to this problem by including distressed shopping centers in the site analysis. From these forty shopping centers, eleven were chosen for their location within the countyâ€s Growth Policy Center. We used ArcGIS Online to understand how many potential adopters could reach these facilities within fifteen and thirty minutes. We then chose the five shopping centers closest to the most people and households. We present these to Prince Georgeâ€s County as potential candidate sites. The link for the county to access the ArcGIS Online website to view the maps and site locations is: http://uofmd.maps.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=ea8cc7f3ca154064939db517e24b4606.

Prince George’s County Food Scraps Composting Pilot Program

Victor Manzanilla — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:39:23 +0000

This projectâ€s goal was to construct innovative ways to promote composting through the Prince Georgeâ€s County Composting Pilot Program, working with the Countyâ€s project manager Denice Curry. Throughout this semester, we split the investigations into four different Design Projects. In these Design Projects, we cultivated our interviewing skills, learning how to note details and analyze body language and expressions, and used these skills to help us design prototypes that might motivate various groups of people to compost. This course not only involved learning about composting and sustainability, but also about ourselves; the lessons learned can continue to be cultivated throughout our lives and help us in future endeavors.

Capital Overlook Apartments

Victor Manzanilla — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:39:23 +0000

Considering the economics, demographics and the background of the site, the vision for its development is an affordable residential project. The area surrounding the site is home to a older housing stock, with little to no new development in the immediate area. The economic makeup of the area is largely low-income and working-class citizens, many of whom likely need a better housing option. Due to the siteâ€s location just outside of Washington D.C, the site could include a mixed-income housing development, and possibly offer both for-rent and for-sale products. Mixed-income projects are becoming more popular in the region; similar projects have been planned for other sites in the area such as Barry Farm in Southeast DC. The Barry Farm redevelopment project will demolish 432 deteriorating low-income apartments and build over 1,400 mixed-income residences, 50,000 square feet of retail and commercial space, and 80,000 square feet of green space.

Bulldog Development: 5345 Sheriff Road Feasibility Study

Victor Manzanilla — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 03:39:23 +0000

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