“We have circulated a petition with over 900 signatures and a Facebook page titled “No to Bowie Marketplace Apartments” which now has over 1300 members”
Good evening planning board. My name is Tameeka Washington and I live at 12502 Scarlet Lane.
Thank you for letting me share the community’s concerns about the proposed apartment building to be constructed behind the Market Place Shopping Center.
PETITION AND FACEBOOK PAGE - As you may know we have been circulating a petition and we now have more than 700 signatures from residents in Section A to Section Y; though the vast majority of the signatures are from the S Section as you may have guessed.
Another resident started a Facebook page titled “No to the Bowie Marketplace Apartments”, which now has almost 1300 members.
I’m sure you’ve seen the signs around Bowie that say no the to the Bowie Marketplace Apartments. So it’s clear that we as a community do not want this apartment building. •
I want to discuss two issues this evening:
1. Not enough parking (almost 200 spaces short): • In a letter to the city the developer says the parking issue won’t be a concern because most Bowie residents will either walk to the shopping center or take public transportation leaving spaces for the apartment dwellers to park in the shopping center parking lot. Of course that’s not true. Most Bowie residents are driving to the shopping center, and with Harris Teeter being open 24 hours, that means the spaces that they think will be available for apartment dwellers to use at the shopping center won’t be available after all. In the letter it also says that there are no neighborhoods close enough for the apartment dwellers to use as overflow parking. Also not true. The apartment building is in the middle of a neighborhood, which will then essentially become overflow parking. I don’t know what will happen when we have snowstorms and no one is allowed to park on the street •
In response to this lack of parking, the developers have proposed making the parking spaces smaller. Smaller parking spaces in a neighborhood filled with families that drive minivans and small business owners that drive SUVs and pickup trucks just doesn’t work. It will make the parking lot more difficult to maneuver in; and statistics show it will result in more accidents. A 2015 study showed because bigger cars were trying to fit into smaller spaces; the number of cars being damaged in parking lots went up 32 percent. And even after making the parking spaces smaller, they still won’t have enough parking. This is simply unacceptable.
1. There is also the perception that the parcel is zoned for mixed use so a residential component is inevitable. This is simply not true. That parcel is still zoned for commercial use. The County Council passed a bill last year circumnavigating the normal process (CB60-2015) that allows this commercially zoned property to be used as mixed use. However, the rezoning has not taken place and will not take place for several more years. I’m saying this because I don’t want the city council or the Bowie residents to feel like we MUST put some residential component back there because that’s simply not the case. With that being said, we will say that we are not opposed to any residential component back there. We are just against any medium density or high density units. We spoke to the developer about instead putting in low density units such as town homes. The town homes would bring additional income to the developer and homeowners into the community vice renters, which fits more within the character of Bowie. It should be no more than 10-12 town homes, with a maximum of two stories, and 100 feet from the back of the property lines on Scarlet Lane. The developer rejected this reasonable compromise because his only concern is his bottom line and not the impact this will have on our beloved neighborhood. The residents of Bowie do not support the proposed 285 unit apartment building. We ask that that you reject this proposal.