Talking and "laying their cards on the table" is the best way for Wilde Lake Village Board members and residents to work with developers as plans for downtown Columbia take shape, a General Growth executive told them this week.
But as the board and homeowners thanked Gregory F. Hamm, General Growth's regional vice president and general manager of Columbia, for attending their meeting, they didn't mince words when they questioned the village's place in downtown development plans.
"One of the strengths of the villages is that they have lives of their own," said Mary Pivar, a village board member. "The viability of the villages can't possibly be minimized when we talk about downtown. Do you have any stake of any kind as General Growth?"
Village Board Chairman Vincent Marando told Hamm that the village had gone without a grocery store for a year and a half. The Giant store at that location closed in September 2006.
"I'm not sure the health of the Village Center can be held hostage for the next couple years," he said.
Hamm assured the group that he knows what village centers are about because he has worked with them at Reston Town Center in Virginia.
"Whatever we do in Town Center hopefully enhances the village center," Hamm said. "I'm not going to lie to you, it could be a lot easier if we owned the village center. But we don't own it, and we don't control it."
Hamm said he has met once with Kimco Corp., owner of the village center.
"If there are opportunities for us to collaborate, we will," Hamm said. "The biggest challenge of all is dealing with different owners, because you just can't influence them. Different things motivate them."
During the meeting Monday, the Wilde Lake Village Board circulated its recently released position paper on redevelopment, which said that the village center should:
Be a shopping destination - with independently owned specialty retailers, food and service providers - that complements but does not compete with downtown.
Have a strong anchor store or markets (such as a grocery store) where shoppers can purchase high-quality food and household provisions at affordable prices.
Continue to be a vibrant, open, safe center of village life, with facilities for informal and formal gatherings and which is readily accessible by foot, public and private transportation.
Kimco recently suggested adding mixed residential uses as a part of revitalizing and redeveloping.
"Adopting residential uses will require further analysis and planning by landowners or decision makers such as Kimco, GGP, the county and the Columbia Association," according to the position paper. "New residential units in the Village Center should be owner-occupied housing targeted at the upper-middle end of the market to provide balance to Wilde Lake's existing inventory of lower-end housing and to better assure the economic sustainability at Village Center merchants."
Because the village center needs to remain economically vital for decades to come, the village board "strongly opposes locating competing retailers and grocers close to the Village Center," the position paper said.
Hamm also tried to ease concerns about a concentration of low-income and subsidized housing in the village centers that adjoin the town center.
"We're not going to try to solve challenges in Town Center by burdening any place with things that do not fit in with the vision," he said. "It can't be a ghetto of wealthy people in the middle of Columbia. That wouldn't work. But what the solution is, I don't know. Will the villages have a voice? Absolutely."
Forums such as the one Monday night in Wilde Lake are being held at each of Columbia's 10 villages as the beginning of General Growth's meetings to discuss plans for downtown. The company has scheduled events at which residents can ask questions and share ideas with its planning team before the draft plan is unveiled.
General Growth has announced that it will release its draft master plan for Town Center on April 28.
"I don't pretend to know all the things that comprise the history of Columbia, but I do appreciate that there's a great deal of history here, a great deal of commitment among the residents of Wilde Lake," Hamm said. "I'm very humbled by the challenge of bringing a great deal of pieces together and making something that's good even better. If we can agree on the parameters, I think we can take the vision of Columbia forward into something that can lead us for the next 30, 40 or 50 years."
june.arney@baltsun.com