Business at the Hickory Ridge Village Center is good, but community members want to keep it that way by using land outside the shopping center to draw people in.

The Hickory Ridge Community Association on Monday released its village center community plan, which, since the association does not own the land, offers advice on what future development should look like.

The plan arises from a 2009 resolution in which the Howard County Council encouraged villages to develop such plans.

The shopping center, which opened in 1992 and is anchored by a Giant Food supermarket, is owned by Kimco Realty Corp., which also owns several other village centers in Columbia. There are many adjacent properties with many owners, including a child care and preschool, a church, health-related and assisted-living facilities, a house, open space and undeveloped land.

The plan redefines the village center with boundaries that include those other properties.

New development on those properties, if done right, could bolster the health of the shops and restaurants, said Joan Lancos, the community association's land-use liaison.

"We want to be proactive and ready for any upgrades to the center, or development on adjacent parcels that could affect the viability of our center," Lancos said. "These parcels are ripe for potential development," she said, "and we need to be prepared, rather than react to 'This is what we want to do.' "

Lancos recalled the backlash last decade over a proposed Walgreens pharmacy near the intersection of Cedar Lane and Freetown Road, a location opponents argued could take business away from the village center.

"We think the commercial core does a nice job just the way it is," Lancos said.

The Hickory Ridge plan is "grounded in facts, rather than wishes," said Steve Sternheimer, a member of the visualization committee who lives in the Hawthorn neighborhood. "What we want to do is help the center, not just to survive, but more importantly to grow, so we're looking at what is likely down the road."

Wanted: medical offices

The plan recommends not bringing any other retail or restaurants outside of the shopping center. Rather, the new development could be residences, health facilities or offices, particularly medical offices.

"There's so many medical-related services in the area already, we thought it'd be natural for medical professionals to locate in offices there," Sternheimer said, noting several facilities and buildings between Howard County General Hospital and the village center.

Such development would bring people who could shop at the village center, perhaps even walking to get there, he said.

The plan also calls for dedicating a three-acre parcel of Columbia Association-owned open space, located between the shopping center and Cedar Lane, for a community use. Hickory Ridge, unlike many other villages, does not have a CA building in its village center; the community office is located in Hawthorn, off Sunny Spring.

"It doesn't have to be a building at this point," Lancos said of the parcel . "But it'd certainly be nice if there were activities that drew people to the center."

Suggestions include a play field, an outdoor exercise facility and a dog park.

According to the plan, the community association will seek to continue developing a working relationship among businesses in the village center to encourage nearby property owners to work with the Hickory Ridge village board on finding the best way to use undeveloped land.

The plan also calls for smaller measures to bring more people to the village center, such as signage that is more visible to drivers and finding ways to get visitors to the county's Robinson Nature Center, located south of the village center on Cedar Lane, to come to the village center.

"We want to have the village as a center, a place where people gather, mingle, buy, converse and socialize," Sternheimer said. "Not a place where you drive up, buy something in a store and drive away."

The plan has been forwarded to the county government for informational purposes.