Howard County officials are launching a discussion on the future of Columbia's Long Reach Village Center with four public meetings scheduled for this spring and summer.
The forums represent the first step in what will likely be more than a year-long process to craft and execute an urban renewal plan for the 40-year-old village center, which has struggled with high retail vacancy rates, trash and crime, and was declared a blight zone by the County Council a year ago.
"We want to hear from residents directly affected by what's available in their village center," Howard County Executive Allan Kittleman said in a statement.
The meetings are scheduled for April 30, May 28, June 11 and Sept. 17, and will all be held at Stonehouse in the village center from 7 to 9 p.m.
Residents unable to attend one of the meetings can submit comments online at howardcountymd.gov/LongReach.
According to Mark Thompson, the county's director of downtown redevelopment and the man leading the Long Reach revitalization process, officials hope public input will shape the plan they ultimately submit to the council, which must approve the village center's next steps.
"We're having this community engagement process so we can understand what the residents and businesses in Long Reach really see as the future of the village center," Thompson said. "This is sort of building up the information to go into that [urban renewal] plan."
Officials don't have any preconceived notions heading into the forums, according to county Communications Director Deidre McCabe.
"We could have four meetings and get 400 different ideas," she said.
The Long Reach revitalization process has been in motion for more than a year already. Last March, the council passed legislation labeling the center a blight zone, which opened the door for the county to purchase most of the property from majority owner Long Reach Village Associates LLC for $5 million in October.
Former County Executive Ken Ulman's vision was to make the center into an arts district, relocating the Howard County Arts Council's Ellicott City headquarters to Long Reach so it could pair up with the Columbia Arts Center, a Columbia Association organization already housed in the village.
Long Reach's Celebration Church, which has been looking for space to expand, hoped to become the village center's anchor by moving into the 55,000-square-foot former Safeway building, but plans changed after Celebration's leadership balked at the county's quote of $1 million for non-exclusive parking rights, a figure Pastor Robbie Davis said "came as a shock."
The county purchased the grocery store site, which has been vacant since July 2013, for an additional $2.5 million in February.
Thompson said the county is open to a variety of possibilities for the center, within some parameters.
"There do have to be uses that are consistent with the village center vision - it's really the mix of those uses," he said.
In his state of the county speech earlier this year, Kittleman said he objected to using county funds to flip private property, but he committed to "craft redevelopment plans that put greater emphasis on what the community wants" in Long Reach.
Possibilities for the center will be tempered by market realities, Thompson added. To that end, the county plans to invite speakers with knowledge of the retail market to speak at the beginning of the meetings. Tom Moriarity, of Retail & Development Strategies LLC, will discuss recent studies at the April 30 forum, according to a press release.
Each meeting will also include opportunities for comments and questions from the community, the release said.
County Councilman Calvin Ball, a Democrat whose district includes Long Reach, said he's "greatly looking forward to community engagement so that we can craft a shared vision of moving our village center forward."
In an urban renewal plan, Ball said he'd "like to see something that fully reflects what we as a community think a village center generally, and particularly Long Reach, can be going into the future."
After the public input process is complete, the county will create an urban renewal plan for the center, which might include information about desired densities, types and locations of uses, according to Thompson. He estimated it will likely take until winter 2016 for the plan to be approved by the County Council.
Once the plan is approved, the county can post a request for proposals from the private sector.