A nearly vacant building complex flanked by two huge asphalt parking lots to the north and south are what currently make up Lutherville Station, off Ridgely Road in Timonium, Maryland. On a late-summer morning, the place looks desolate, even with the recent addition of a church that’s moved into one of its main buildings.

“The site is a tear-down,” says Mark Renbaum, the lead developer of an ongoing effort to revitalize Lutherville Station. He has plans to transform it into a mixed-use site with residential units, retail space, office space, a dog park, an event lawn, and other amenities. Through Lutherville Station LLC, he has submitted an application to have his vision for Lutherville Station gain designation as a Transit Oriented Development (TOD).

What’s there now

East of Lutherville Station, also along Ridgely Road, is the Yorkridge Shopping Center, featuring a Kohl’s department store, a Michael’s arts and crafts store, a Mom’s Organic Market grocery, and other establishments. The Baltimore Light Rail runs just west of Lutherville Station, connecting Baltimore County to Baltimore City and continuing on to the BWI airport. The hope is that these nearby amenities and Lutherville Station — once redeveloped — would benefit one another.

Ridgely Road dead-ends at the Lutherville Light Rail stop. The thinking is that the Light Rail, plus the new residential units Renbaum wants to build, would bring new business to the shopping center, which Renbaum manages. The TOD application predicts more than $9 million in annual revenue, including more than $3 million for Baltimore County, if the project goes forward. 

“[It’s] a once in a generation opportunity for Baltimore County,” Renbaum said in a press release, calling the Lutherville Station site “the most obvious TOD site” in Baltimore County. 

A spokesman for County Executive Johnny Olszewski downplayed the submission, saying that the TOD application was “nothing new” and was essentially an update of a previous application. In September 2022 a proposal was submitted to make Lutherville Station a TOD. That proposal listed the owner of Lutherville Station as Schwaber LS, LLC. Mark Renbaum is the CEO of Schwaber Holdings. 

Community opposition

The project has met considerable opposition from the Lutherville community, many of whose residents are upset with the proposed density of housing on the site, fearing that new housing would worsen traffic congestion and overcrowd area schools. Most of the black and white NO APARTMENTS NO COMPROMISE signs have been taken down, however. A few black and yellow signs calling for NO HIGH DENSITY DEVELOPMENT have taken their place.

Lutherville Station LLC’s recent application to become a Transit Oriented Development isn’t likely to put an end to the controversy surrounding the project. The TOD application calls for 560 residential units, an increase of more than 100 over a previous proposal. Renbaum says the increase was made possible by the passage of House Bill 538, which he says would allow for as many as 1,300 residential units on the site. Renbaum says he would comply with existing regulations for making a designated number of the new residences affordable. The others would be available at market rate.

The increase in the number of proposed residential units is likely to become a point of contention. Eric Rockel, vice president of the Greater Timonium Community Council, was taken by surprise by the change, and wonders whether it will undermine “any trust [Renbaum has] built up in the community.” Rockel stressed that he was speaking for himself, as the Greater Timonium Community Council has not yet taken up the issue. The TOD application was submitted on Aug. 13.

Gov. Wes Moore signed HB 538, which is scheduled to become law on Jan. 1, 2025.

In a prepared statement released by his office, Baltimore County Councilman Wade Kach, in whose district Lutherville Station lies, said the TOD application “flies in the face” of efforts to resolve the issue in ways that take into consideration the area’s uniqueness. “In my opinion,” said Kach, the TOD application is a sign that “the developer has not acted in good faith.”

Next steps

The TOD application first goes to Baltimore County. If it’s approved, it then goes to the state for TOD designation. The Maryland Department of Transportation has authority for final approval.

Renbaum says being approved as a TOD would be but “the first of many steps” required for the Lutherville Station project to come to fruition. He seems prepared for a long battle to get longer, yet tired of having to continually fight it. “We’re ready to start the process,” he says, and adds that it’s time for all the groups with a stake in Lutherville Station to come together. 

For decades, the Edenwald retirement community has towered over the Goucher College campus, on land purchased from the college many years ago. Edenwald residents have enjoyed their proximity to the campus loop and to the trails that wind through the college’s acres of woods. Now plans are underway to expand this arrangement by creating what’s known as a University Retirement Community, or URC.

The partnership between Goucher and Edenwald would involve opportunities for Edenwald residents to take classes and participate in travel programs, in addition to other benefits. Love & Company, a Frederick, MD-based senior living marketing firm, has been assisting with the project.

While the concept of URCs is not new, interest is growing. URCs have been established at Notre Dame, Stanford, the University of Texas at Austin, Arizona State, and other places. The URC connecting Goucher and Edenwald, however, will be the first in Maryland, according to Mark Beggs, president and CEO of Edenwald. 

Why create a URC?

Demand for senior living options is fueling the project. “The way people are aging is changing,” says Beggs. “The expectations that people have are different than they were when life-plan communities first evolved. They don’t want to be cared for — they want to be engaged in the world around them. They want to be relevant.” 

The project would also provide financial benefits to Goucher. Edenwald plans to lease land from the college to build three new residential towers of up to 12 stories in height, a total of 127 apartments. Edenwald residents looking to audit classes at Goucher would most likely pay tuition – at a rate still to be determined. The college has for years explored ways to improve its financial profile, including a controversial 2018 decision to drop a number of majors and add others thought to be more in sync with market demands.

“When you start to realize what’s occurring demographically across the country,” Beggs says, “with an aging population and a shrinking [traditional-age] student population, Goucher understands that bringing in an older student is one of their strategies towards success.”

Beggs anticipates no problem filling the 127 units in the planned new towers, and he is confident that the arrangement with Goucher will increase Edenwald’s attractiveness. Beggs points out that more than 10 percent of Edenwald residents attended Goucher, and the retirement community’s  partnership with Goucher figures to draw even more.

Planning session held

Earlier this year, a brochure was sent to some community members inviting them to a planning session at Goucher where they could “share [their] ideas about developing senior living residences.” Recipients who planned to attend were asked to fill out a 13-question survey. About half of the survey questions sought input on how attractive recipients found retirement communities (including Edenwald) and the URC concept, and about half sought to gather demographic information, including recipients’ estimated annual income and household net worth.

The planning session, held June 19 at Goucher, was well attended. Beggs reports that around 200 people showed up, and several put down a $1,000 “priority deposit” that gives them first choice of apartment options in the new towers.

“The entire Goucher campus is excited and engaged in the process,” Beggs said in an email. 

But Beggs’s enthusiasm belies the fact that the response from Goucher has been almost non-existent. Two faculty members said to be deeply involved with the project have either referred inquiries elsewhere or have not responded to repeated requests for comment. A request for comment sent to the student newspaper has gone unanswered. The most prominent mention of the planned URC on the college’s website is more than two years old. Multiple attempts to contact Goucher president Kent Devereaux have been unsuccessful. Goucher’s official response has been to defer any questions until the fall, when there will be “much more to announce and discuss.” 

The college said in an email that any request for information is “premature for us at this time.” 

Goucher and Edenwald have signed a letter of intent to pursue the partnership. Mark Beggs says he has initial approval to expand Edenwald from the Maryland Department of Aging, and is moving through the process of getting community-development plan approval from Baltimore County, to ensure that the expansion meets existing codes and to give the community an opportunity to comment. He hopes to break ground on the new towers in late 2025. Before then — possibly as soon as the end of 2024 — he expects to have many of the programmatic elements of the URC partnership in place. “We’re starting our priority deposit so people [will] be first on the list to get an apartment when we make them available,” he says. “We will be considered a university-based retirement community probably before the end of the calendar year.” 

The project has been keeping Beggs busy — and is advancing.

“It’s  been exciting to work on it,” he says. “Just to make something like this happen in the Baltimore market I think is really a great opportunity for me professionally and I think it’s going to be a great opportunity for those who are aging in the local community.”

There was a lot of talk about the chairs.

Specifically, the talk was about how the chairs in the middle room of the Baltimore County Board of Elections training facility in Owings Mills roll around a lot. I suppose you can lock the wheels, but nobody did as we gathered for election worker training.

This is precisely the kind of conversation a group of 20 or so people who have never met one another have when they get together for the first time. The rolling chairs were less a problem for me than an object of curiosity. It might be more of a problem, I think, for the several of us who arrived with the help of canes or walkers. The ease with which the chairs roll makes them easy to miss when you sit down, though nobody does. We just roll around a lot.

There’s another group of about 20 people in each of the rooms on either side of us, one where veteran Election Judges are getting a refresher course in how to use the electronic pollbooks, which log voters in to the voting system and generate Voter Authority Cards, and the other where people are learning the intricacies of the Ballot Marking Device, an electronic alternative to the low-tech fill-in-the-bubble-with-a-pen paper ballot.

According to the 300-page Election Judge Manual all of us prospective Election Judges have been given, we are to, on the one hand, let voters choose whichever method of voting they prefer, but on the other, make sure that at least 10 voters use the electronic method by 1:00 p.m. on primary day. This proves harder to do when an electronic machine breaks down. More on that later.

This makes 60 of us total in the training, and we are just one group of many in Baltimore County being trained. We’re not volunteers. In Maryland, Election Judges get paid $250 to work an election, and $50 for the training.

Working an election means working a long day — Election Judges are expected to arrive at 5:45 in the morning and stay until things are cleaned up after the polls close at 8:00 that evening. Several people I spoke to wondered why the day isn’t broken up, with people assigned to shorter shifts. Some thought this would make it easier to recruit poll workers, while others thought it would make it harder to fully staff an election.

A national perspective

A 2016 report found that on the general election day that year there were more than 106,000 polling places in the U.S. Nearly a quarter of poll workers were age 71 or older, the study found, and another 34 percent were between 61 and 70. Many were likely retired, though many in our training group looked young enough that they were not.

Almost two-thirds of the people responsible for staffing these polling places said they had some problems doing so.

I’m not sure how I became a poll worker. The person who first called me about being one thanked me for signing up. I don’t remember signing up, though I probably did, and when she called I couldn’t think of a good reason why I couldn’t be a poll worker. So I said yes. I am one of those rare people who doesn’t exactly like being called for jury duty, either, but doesn’t try to get out of it.

I fit the demographic, sort of. I still work, though I am mostly retired from making real money. I am not among the oldest cohort of poll workers, though I fall in that 61-to-70 age group.

I asked the Election Program Assistant who first contacted me if it was okay if I wrote about the experience of being a poll worker. Each time, she forwarded my query to her supervisor. I never got a response. My self-imposed restrictions, therefore, are to write exclusively about the process of being a poll worker. I will advocate for no particular candidate or party, nor will I mention anyone’s name. I should add that all of my fellow poll workers with whom I discussed my plan to write about being a poll worker thought it was a good idea.

My 360-degree turnaround

I have come around a full 360 degrees on how I feel about this process. When most people say that, what they mean is that they came around 180 degrees, to the opposite conclusion they went in with. I really mean 360 degrees. I went into it thinking it would be a great lesson in civic responsibility. I went through a time — post-training, pre-election — where I thought it would be a disaster. I came out of it thinking, once again, how it was a great lesson in civic responsibility.

Why did I think it would be a disaster? The training, even at three hours, felt rushed, and for me at least left something to be desired. The person demonstrating how to use the electronic marking devices, for example, repeatedly emphasized that we were not to touch voters’ ballots, then proceeded to do just that with the hypothetical ballot he used to demonstrate. This left me confused. When we were trained on the pollbooks, we managed to register just three hypothetical voters during our hour of training, and were told by our instructor what a great job we had done. Just three? Really? We would process nearly 500 people in the 12 hours of the actual primary election in May, or about 40 an hour. The November election figures to be even busier.

The manual we were each given has 14 chapters, plus appendices and a glossary, and clocks in at nearly 300 pages. I doubt that many trainees ever bothered reading the whole thing, let alone committing it to memory. On primary day, however, the manual was consulted frequently.

A few minutes before our training session was supposed to end (we went from 9:00 am to noon), one person asked if we would get out on time. Others seemed concerned about this as well. I had lost track of time, and didn’t feel the time crunch as acutely as some. Nor did I feel ready for election day.

Election Day

On primary election day, May 14, I displayed a remarkable ability to break machines, or at least to work at machines that broke on their own while I was in charge of them. I started out helping voters who chose to vote using the Ballot Marking Device. We had two, and one stopped cooperating. No one was sure why, and after a reboot (necessitating the use of a password that one of our two Chief Election Judges managed to remember, though I did not), the machine started again, until it stopped, necessitating another reboot.

At one point a coworker, a veteran of many elections, suggested I work at other stations so I could learn about them. (He may have just been trying to get rid of me.) Anyway, around 1:00 p.m. I left the electronic voting machine and took a seat at the pollbook table, where I would log voters in and issue them their Voter Authority Cards. After a brief tutorial — courtesy of another veteran poll worker — I managed to check people in without difficulty, though I dreaded getting a problem person, who was unaffiliated with either of the two major political parties, or who didn’t show up in our system, or who the pollbook said had already voted, and who would be sent to the “provisional” ballot table, which meant that maybe his or her ballot would be counted, or maybe not. (More than once, we had to explain what provisional meant.)

The pollbook at which I sat crashed, or I broke it, or something. In any event, it stopped working, no matter how many times I poked it with my plastic stylus. It had to be shut down, given a rest, and then restarted. This happened twice. As far as I know, mine was the only pollbook to behave this way.

I watched across the room and experienced smug satisfaction when I saw two election workers struggling with one of the Ballot Marking Devices I had abandoned. Apparently the problem was that someone had shoved a pen cap in where the paper ballot is supposed to go. No one knew why anyone would think to do this, though theories abounded. Once the pen cap was dislodged, the injured machine completed the day without incident.

At one point someone at the pollbook station started circulating a document that said that 45 percent of poll workers felt unsafe doing their job. I asked around, and found no one in our group who felt unsafe, though I had earlier talked to a veteran poll worker who said that in the past he had encountered voters who were certain he was rigging things, or otherwise expressed doubts about the integrity of the process.

During the primary, we poll workers celebrated when appropriate, like when a first-time voter checked in and was subjected (with his or her permission) to a round of applause, given an American flag, and festooned with bling. The voters were cordial, and many expressed what seemed like heartfelt appreciation for our efforts. Our most gregarious poll worker gave out “I Voted” stickers and made all voters feel like a million bucks as they left.

We eventually decided that the document found at our station was too political or too biased, and had no business being near us. We threw it away.

Pros and cons

So, what do I think of the process? On the negative side, poll workers in Baltimore County work a too-long day of at least 14 hours. The pay isn’t great — about $18.00 an hour, plus a little less than that for the training. And it’s a one-time or two-time gig, though the manual says our “term of office” is “approximately two years and ends thirteen weeks before the 2026 Gubernatorial Primary Election.” I found the training to leave something to be desired. The manual is too long to synthesize. There were all those rolling chairs.

And the pros? There were many. There’s nothing like actually being on the job. I learned more from actually doing things than I ever learned from the training, and even the training was done by well-meaning people for well-meaning people, so in that sense, it had much to recommend. More important than what I learned, I developed an affinity for my coworkers. We bonded, I think, or at least started to. We wore different hats and were a different bleary-eyed bunch when we finished than we were when we arrived that morning, bleary-eyed from waking up too early. Plus, how often do you get to spend the day around civic-minded people who take seriously their obligation to fulfill a civic need?

Were mistakes made? Probably. We are human, after all, and humans make mistakes. Was there fraud? Absolutely not. Fraud implies intent, and if there was any intent in our group, it was to fix problems, not cause them. We tried our best to fix broken machines and to iron out any discrepancies. I recall that as our total number of voters grew, some in our group obsessed over a difference of a fraction of a percent in our count.

By 8:30 pm, we had largely cleaned up and almost everybody was gone. The speed with which my coworkers had left had me reconsidering my thoughts about how well we’d bonded, but then, we’d been there since before 6:00 that morning, so maybe I should cut them some slack for bolting without even exchanging email addresses. Besides, we can do that in November.

St. Thomas Lane, a modest, two-lane road that runs for about a mile from Reisterstown Road to Garrison Forest Road in Owings Mills, has become the focus of debate.

As new development springs up along Reisterstown Road, plans are under consideration to create a service road that would cross Reisterstown Road. The proposal would change some traffic patterns in a busy commercial area, and is is being called for by the Baltimore County Department of Permits, Approvals and Inspections.

The new roadway would make it possible for drivers to directly cross Reisterstown Road at Painters Mill Road, and go from there onto St. Thomas Lane — rather than turning right on Reisterstown Road and making a U-turn.

But the region’s community associations, the County Councilman responsible for the district, and many of those who live in the area say the new passageway would lead to too much cut-through traffic leading into residential areas. A drive along St. Thomas Lane from Reisterstown Road begins where a Popeye’s Louisiana Kitchen sits across from a Krispy Kreme donut establishment, passes new construction, existing apartments and then homes set back from the road and stops at Garrison Forest Road — where the county grows more rural near Garrison Forest school, the Caves Valley country club and the Irvine Nature Center.

The director of the Baltimore County permits department, C. Pete Gutwald, has written a letter to District 3 Councilman Izzy Patoka justifying the need for the service road. Gutwald says in the letter that the service road will “improve traffic circulation along Reisterstown Road.”

Thomas Finnerty, who heads the board of the Greater Greenspring Association. is opposed to the service road, and says most of the community is as well. So too is the Valleys Planning Council, another group that looks at development in this part of Baltimore County. The Valleys Planning Council has drafted a petition to collect signatures of those who are opposed to the planned service road. About 60 people have signed it so far, according to Kathleen Pontone, vice president of the planning council board.

Patoka, who is currently chair of the council, says he is opposed to the service road because it would disrupt existing traffic patterns, inconvenience communities, and reduce parking for new adjacent businesses. Patoka says he has shared his concerns with Gutwald and the county permits department. Those concerns prompted Gutwald’s letter.

The relationship to Foundry Row

The service road project has its roots in construction decisions dating to 2016. That year marked the opening of Foundry Row, a shopping center on the southwest side of Reisterstown Road about three miles outside the Baltimore Beltway. Foundry Row is now home to a Wegmans grocery store, a Chick-fil-A, and more.

When Foundry Row was built, a concrete median strip was installed on Reisterstown Road, making it impossible for drivers to head south from Painters Mill Road onto Reisterstown Road and make a left turn on St. Thomas Lane. Drivers wishing to use St. Thomas Lane—it’s busy for such a small road, serving as an access road to Garrison Forest School, to Caves Road, and to other parts of the Greenspring valley—would have to turn right on Reisterstown Road, drive a quarter mile or so, then make a U-turn to come back to St. Thomas Lane.

Gutwald’s letter to Councilman Patoka references the benefits of eliminating the need for U-turns.

According to Finnerty, the median strip arrangement has proved to be enough of a deterrent to keep traffic manageable on St. Thomas Lane. He says that Foundry Row, which the Greater Greenspring Association supported, for the most part works. “It’s a really positive thing for the community,” he says. “It’s not like we always fight development.”

However, he says, the service road would create “access right onto St. Thomas Lane, which would basically circumvent the whole idea of putting in that median in the middle of the road there.”

Finnerty says he’s talked to neighbors, the representatives for the property owners, and representatives for the new businesses, and nobody wants the new road.

Who would pay for it?

The question of who would pay for and maintain the service road remains unanswered. The neighborhood refers to it as a private service road, which suggests that costs would be borne by some combination of the community and developers. Gutwald deferred requests for information about the service road to the county communications office, and that office has not said who will be financially responsible.

Finnerty thinks the burden of paying for and maintaining the service road would fall to the developers. But he isn’t certain.

A hearing has been set for April 26 at 10:00 am to discuss the project.

Lutherville Station, a now-abandoned shopping center in Baltimore County, has become ground zero for a prickly debate about who gets to say what kind of development happens in a community.

Adjacent to a light rail stop, and formerly the home of a Caldor’s, a Borders, a warehouse store for Best Buy, and other now-defunct establishments, Lutherville Station sits mostly vacant. But a developer wants to change that.

Mark Renbaum, principal of MLR Partners, has proposed converting the site into a mixed-use development, with new retail, office space, and, most controversially, up to 450 rental apartments. But signs have cropped up in the neighborhood saying “NO APARTMENTS NO COMPROMISE,” reflecting how the housing has attracted most of the community’s opposition. Attempts to reach Renbaum have been unsuccessful.

Earlier this month, after the Lutherville community raised concerns about the impact the project would have on their neighborhood, a Baltimore County bill which would have rezoned the site in a way that enabled the project to go forward without either community input or County Council approval, was withdrawn. That bill (Council Bill 3-24), “did not have community sentiment factored in,” says Izzy Patoka, the chair of the County Council who represents District 2.

In its place a new bill – Bill 9-24 – has been introduced. Bill 9-24 gives County Council members authority to create mixed-use overlay districts in locations where adequate infrastructure is in place.

Patoka is a co-sponsor of the compromise bill. The closest contact residents have to the county government, he notes, is through their County Council representatives. And “council members,” Patoka says, “have significant awareness of community sentiment based on the level of outreach that we all do.”

The location of affordable housing

One of the purposes of bill 9-24 is to “incentivize the creation of attainable, accessible, and affordable housing units.”

The issue of where to locate affordable housing is one that communities across the nation are grappling with. The New York Times recently reported on how the affluent community of Florence, South Carolina, fought the proposed addition of 60 affordable housing units. The Times story cited other cases in other states where residents sought to stop the addition of affordable apartments — decisions that many say have a disproportionate impact on Black families.

Communities in Baltimore County have a long history of opposing new and multi-unit housing, and some media accounts have suggested that efforts to stop the Lutherville Station development are racially motivated.

County Councilman Wade Kach, in whose District 3 Lutherville Station sits, dismisses that notion. “The main reasons for opposition have nothing to do with racial issues,” he says. “It’s not a factor in this at all.”

Eric Rockel, vice president of the Greater Timonium Community Council, points to other potential negative consequences of the project, including traffic congestion (particularly at the intersection of York Road and Ridgely Road) and school overcrowding.

Rockel says the new bill allowing overlay districts is likely to be an improvement, but he has been withholding judgment for closer examination. He notes he has identified for the county locations he feels are more appropriate to add new apartments, though he acknowledges that none of these are near existing hubs of public transportation. The Lutherville light rail stop sits adjacent to Lutherville Station.

Councilman Kach, who was opposed to the withdrawn bill, says he is inclined to support Bill 9-24, which, because it allows for input from a council member, is more in line with his thinking. Kach adds that he is not necessarily opposed to apartments, but would prefer those aimed at those age 55 or older, especially if they served older people who currently live in the community. Such a focus, he says, would ease both traffic congestion and school overcrowding.

The office of Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski, who generally supports the idea of creating new mixed-use developments, released this statement:

“To realize our fullest potential, Baltimore County must do more to reimagine and revitalize today’s aging infrastructure into the thriving community hubs of tomorrow. By supporting opportunities for mixed-use developments across Baltimore County, we can drive a new generation of smart growth that protects our environment, create new housing opportunities and build stronger communities for years to come.”

The compromise local legislation authorizing the overlay zoning is expected to be voted on by the Baltimore County Council in the spring.

I may have been the only person to ride a bike to the public hearing on the new Baltimore County Bicycle and Pedestrian master plan.

I rode down Allegheny Avenue, which is a major Towson artery, then turned right on Washington Avenue, which runs adjacent to the old courthouse, before arriving at 105 West Chesapeake Avenue, where the hearing was to be held.

I was a little early, so I killed time at the Towson library and at a coffee shop on West Chesapeake. The whole way there—a modest distance of about a mile, but on at least two major Towson roadways—I saw no bike lanes. I locked my bike on Chesapeake at one of the two designated bike stands that I saw that exist for that purpose. I saw one other cyclist.

On my way to the library, a young man on an e-bike sped north on York Road, riding on the sidewalk, which, while certainly safer—York Road was characteristically heavy with traffic—may or may not actually be legal.

The hearing was to discuss the county’s first-ever bicycle and pedestrian master plan, released in early November as a 90-page (plus appendices) document with maps detailing what exists and what’s proposed and text detailing what may happen. The plan dovetails with previous Eastern and Western Baltimore County bike and pedestrian plans and will exist as an amendment to an overarching Baltimore County master plan.

It calls for 119 miles of shared-use paths (paved or unpaved, shared by bicyclists and pedestrians), 70 miles of on-road bikeways (the kind with graphics on the road to indicate where bikes go), 33 miles of Complete Streets (with safe and clearly delineated spaces for pedestrians, cyclists, cars, mass transit, and other amenities), and 256 miles of what are called “long term projects.”

“We are committed to sustainable and active transportation planning in Baltimore County, which will ensure our infrastructure meets the diverse needs of our residents and create more vibrant and accessible communities,” Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski said in a press release announcing the plan.

People Want to Feel Safe

“A significant amount of residents do not feel safe walking and biking in Baltimore County,” the plan states, underscoring a major reason for its existence. “Fear of injury by motor vehicle, lack of sidewalk, bike, or trail infrastructure, and far distances were some of the barriers identified that prevent users from walking or biking.”

Crash data included in the plan find that even though bicyclists and pedestrians make up only a small percentage of total crashes, the risk of a crash being fatal is greater. Pedestrians, for example, are involved in just 2 percent of all crashes, but 32 percent of crashes that result in a fatality. Bicyclists account for 0.5 percent of all crashes, but 5 percent of all fatal crashes.

Exercise and relaxation were identified as the main reason why people walk and bike in the county, though Jessie Bialek, the Bicycle and Pedestrian Planner for Baltimore County, expects that to change as the plan is implemented and more people “who might be the casual biker will turn into the biker that uses their bike as one of their primary modes of transportation.”

Public involvement was key to developing the plan. Public opinions were sought via pop-up events, virtual meetings, an interactive website, and an online survey.

Towson, the county seat of Baltimore County, currently ranks 1,127 of 1,733 cities, or in the 35^th percentile, in the People for Bikes index of cities that are the best places to bike. (Towson, with a population just under 60,000, is the only city in Baltimore County that People for Bikes rates.) Towson is considered a medium-sized city, a category in which Davis, California, was rated number one. Implementation of the plan figures to boost the bike-friendliness of Towson and other parts of Baltimore County.

A Comprehensive Plan and a Limited Budget

This is a comprehensive plan, covering new trails, on-road bikeways, Complete Streets, and other improvements across three priority tiers. But implementation of the recommendations, as the plan states, will depend on available funds.

The county currently spends about $700,000 a year on bike and pedestrian projects. A table in the plan indicates that implementation of just the highest priority recommendations would take at least 22 years to complete at current funding levels, and possibly as many as 38 years, while addressing just 13 miles’ worth of the recommendations.

A more optimistic six-year funding window calls for minimum spending of nearly $2.6 million a year, or almost four times the current annual level, to fund the top recommendations. Bialek says she has about $2.3 million to spend on bicycle and pedestrian projects in the current fiscal year, and is optimistic about implementing the highest priority needs. “That’s not a huge lift for us,” she says. “So that’s very doable.”

Baltimore County is joining other jurisdictions in the region with comprehensive bicycle plans. Baltimore City released its own plan in 2015, and has built dozens of miles of bike lanes — some of which have drawn the ire of motorists and neighborhood residents. Media reports indicate that the city has nonetheless been falling short on what it promised.

Bialek says her office now has a quarterly meeting with the Baltimore County Police Department to discuss enforcement and related issues. “This is something that the county has just started up to see how we can be on the same page with these issues,” she says.

The planning board will vote on whether to adopt the Baltimore County Bicycle and Pedestrian master plan at its January 2024 meeting. If the planning board adopts the plan, it will then go to the Baltimore County Council for final approval.

After soliciting feedback for more than a year, Baltimore County has finalized work on a new master plan that lays out a vision for Oregon Ridge Park.

The plan’s purpose is to provide “recommendations for park improvements and upgrades over the next twenty years, building on what works in the park and what is needed, in the form of a strategic vision and framework to guide redevelopment.”

Oregon Ridge Park is Baltimore County’s largest park and the “crown jewel” of the county’s park system, says Bob Smith, the county’s director of recreation and parks. The plan was facilitated by the landscape architecture firm Lardner/Klein, and is spearheaded by Baltimore County’s capital improvements team, led by Drew Emmer, the county’s capital planning chief, and assisted by David O’Dell, a landscape architect for the county.

The park is in Baltimore County District 3, represented by Councilman Wade Kach.

“It’s important to have a vision as to what we want to do with the park [and] to have all this input from people,” Kach says. “[The county] will have a guide.”

Public input has been critical in shaping the plan. The feedback process was extensive, going back to February 2022 and including multiple in-person meetings, online sessions, and Spanish-language outreach. All were well attended, says Smith, the rec and parks director, even though the start of the public-input period overlapped with the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, Smith points out, the Baltimore County park system saw a dramatic increase in usage—an increase of as much as 200 percent—during the pandemic.

“We thought it was important to take an in-depth look at the park and ways we could improve it,” Smith says. He says the plan aims to protect the park’s natural resources, restore areas that might have been “over-loved,” generally enhance the experience of visitors, and educate the public about what’s in the park and why it matters.

How the plan is structured

The plan divides the park into three zones: a Terrace Core, encompassing the parts of the park closest to Shawan and Beaver Dam roads and including the Nature Center, Quarry Lake, and the Lodge; a Conservation Core, home to the bulk of the park’s trail system; and the Transition Core, between the two.

The plan also divides the work into three phases. Phase One focuses primarily on upgrades to and maintenance of the trail network, and also includes design work for new construction slated to occur in Phase Two. Phase Two focuses on rebuilding the Terrace Core, including construction of a new Nature Center above the beach at Quarry Lake. Phase Three shifts the focus north of Shawan Road to improvement of the fields along Cuba Road.

Oregon Ridge Park functions as two parks: one to the west encompassing the Nature Center and trail system, and the other to the east, involving goings-on in and around the park lodge, including Fourth of July fireworks and concerts by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Although usage patterns show a fairly even split between the two, most of the feedback planners received focused on the trail system. As a result, the bulk of the plan, in its initial phase at least, will aim to improve that trail system, with special attention to stream crossings that can get washed out after a heavy rainfall. 

Implementing the plan

The park’s planning document mentions at least five previous plans, one of which, in the 1970s, led to the construction of what is now the Nature Center. The current 20-year plan will span multiple administrations, and though $9 million currently exists to fund implementation, the budget environment going forward has not yet been set.

Kach, for one, doubts that implementation will take as long as 20 years, and he expects additional funds to materialize. “We’re going to see sums of money appropriated to carry out [all] phases,” he says.

This is Smith’s first time wrestling with such a beast.

“It’s a huge plan,” Smith says. “I’m not going to worry about fifteen or eighteen years from right now until we start getting work done on the most important things first.”

Besides, Smith says, implementing the plan will be an ongoing process fueled by ongoing public input. “The master plan is a guide. We’re going to continue to work with the community as we evolve.”

What do we know about Oregon Ridge?

Members of the Shawnee Nation once lived there, according to county documents, before a man named Thomas Todd settled on the land in the early 18^th century. In the 19^th century, what we know today as Oregon Ridge Park was home to iron ore and marble quarries.

Other documents say the park was once owned by former Maryland treasurer John Merryman. (Merryman himself, the focus of a pivotal habeas corpus case, was once charged with treason and imprisoned at Maryland’s Fort McHenry, though that’s a different story.)

We know that in the 1960s, Oregon Ridge had a ski slope, complete with tow rope, until the warming of Maryland winters brought an end to the Park’s ski heritage. We know that one of the quarries – now called Quarry Lake – became filled with water and for a time was a popular swimming hole. Swimming is no longer allowed there.

When most people think about Oregon Ridge, they think about one of two distinct areas. One is the Oregon Ridge Lodge, which was originally a ski lodge, and today hosts weddings, parties, corporate meetings, and other events. Surrounding the lodge are pavilions, a concert shell (the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra has performed 4^th of July concerts there), and sports fields.

The other area is the Oregon Ridge Nature Center, which features live turtles, fish, and snakes; a popular and active hive of bees; and a menagerie of taxidermied creatures who loom above visitors as they walk around inside. Beyond the nature center and just south of Quarry Lake spread Oregon Ridge’s miles of trails, which wind up and down hillsides, over creeks, across the former ski slope (some of what was once part of the ski-rope tow remains visible) and through majestic stands of forest.

Visitor data compiled as part of the planning process indicate that about the same number of visitors frequent the two main areas – the lodge/event center and the nature center and adjacent trails.

Oregon Ridge Park is in the midst of a master planning process, a draft version of which was released in April. Facilitated by the landscape architecture firm Lardner/Klein, one of eight organizations that are part of a planning team, the draft lays out near-term (Years 1-6: trails, restrooms, parking, etc.) and long-term (Years 16-20: focusing on the fields along Cuba Road) improvements, and asks again for public input.

Public input has been welcomed for at least a year through a “robust public engagement process” that dates back to the winter of 2022.

There was at least one blip in the process. In April 2022, the county seemed to be entertaining a proposal from the commercial outdoor adventure experience company Go Ape to create a zipline and woods adventure program at Oregon Ridge. According to the Go Ape website, the programs would have cost from $19.95 (axe throwing; the “Forest Escape”) to $64.95 (the “Treetop Adventure,” featuring “super long ziplines and heart-stopping Tarzan swings”). It is difficult to tell if the Go Ape proposal was an official part of the Master Plan process. The point may be moot, as the Go Ape plan was dropped.

In fact, it is difficult to get much information at all about the Oregon Ridge Master Plan. At least a dozen requests for information over the past couple of months – to Oregon Ridge, to Baltimore County, to the offices of elected officials in whose jurisdiction Oregon Ridge falls, to Lardner/Klein – have resulted in a raft of referrals, but no concrete response on the current state of the plan.

According to the most recent public draft, the Oregon Ridge Park Master Plan (ORPMP) “proposes a choreographed sequence of improvements for this 1,100 acre treasure.” The plan divides the Park into three areas: the Terrace Core, encompassing the most visited areas of the Park, which includes the Nature Center, Quarry Lake, the Lodge and event space, and the playing fields north of Shawan Road; the Conservation Core, which includes most of the existing trail network; and the Between Cores, an area that includes the former ski hill and the southern shore of Quarry Lake.

The Oregon Ridge plan, which is designed to be consistent with Baltimore County’s own master plan, outlines twenty years’ worth of enhancements, beginning with the trail network and going on to include, among other things, the relocation of the Nature Center and improvements to the Lodge and event space. More information about these proposed enhancements can be found in the draft planning document.

A public meeting to solicit further input was held in May 2023. As for a timeline for implementation of the Master Plan for Oregon Ridge Park, that remains anyone’s guess. The draft ORPMP notes that this is not the first time Oregon Ridge has undertaken planning. It mentions five prior planning studies, noting that the Nature Center resulted from one of these studies, various undefined enhancements resulted from others, and in some cases “nothing came of the plan recommendations.”

Editor’s note: This article won second place (Division C) in the Growth & Land Use Reporting category of the Maryland, Delaware, and D.C. Press Association’s 2023 Contest. Read our other award-winning pieces here.

The Catskills town of Hobart Village in New York has fewer than 400 residents, but at least eight independent bookstores along its main street. Charlottesville, Virginia, population 45,400, is home to at least 10 bookstores. There are at least 10 bookstores as well in Saratoga Springs, New York (pop. 28,600).

There are towns with multiple bookstores in Scotland, South Korea, Switzerland, Norway, and all over the world.

Yet if you exclude campus bookstores or shops that mostly deal in college textbooks, Towson, with a population of more than 50,000 and home to two colleges (Goucher and Towson), has zero.

A Towson Yelp search for “bookstores near me” yields, in its top five, The Ivy Bookshop (Baltimore City), the Bird in Hand Café & Bookstore (Baltimore City), Barnes & Noble (Pikesville), The Book Escape (Baltimore City), and Greedy Reads (Baltimore City). None, in other words, in Towson.

“It’s a little crazy,” says Jay Hilgartner, a former community relations manager at the Towson Barnes & Noble bookstore who worked for the company for a dozen years.

It wasn’t always this way. Not that long ago Towson readers could buy books at Greetings & Readings, or Ukazoo Books, or even at large chain bookstores like Barnes & Noble and Borders. But Greetings & Readings closed its Towson store before relocating to Hunt Valley, and in 2019 closed that store as well. The former location of Ukazoo Books off Dulaney Valley Road is now a bike shop, and Ukazoo’s Loch Raven Boulevard location closed a couple of years ago. The Borders Bookstore chain went bankrupt more than a decade ago. Barnes & Noble is still around, but the chain closed its Towson store in 2017.

So what happened?

The easy answer is that Amazon happened. Amazon, founded in 1995, recognized the market for online book purchases and captured that space. As Amazon grew, the number of independent booksellers plunged. In 2007, Amazon introduced the Kindle electronic reader, to give readers of online books an Amazon-endorsed device on which to read them. Amazon came to dominate the e-book market. Is it fair to blame Amazon?

“It’s not that simple,” says Leo Gordy, assistant manager of the Barnes & Noble in Bowie. “Each individual company has their own story.”

For the now-out-of-business Borders, says Gordy, who once worked for the company, the end came after it gave away too much business knowledge to Amazon. The Towson branch of Barnes & Noble closed when a leasing issue caused it to vacate its location in the center of Towson. Barnes & Noble has not died, however, and many of its stores continue to operate. After he was brought in to preside over the closing of the Towson Barnes & Noble store, Gordy moved on to manage the Barnes & Noble in Pikesville, Maryland, which was recently featured in an NPR story about how the company has rebounded from “the brink of extinction.”

And nationally at least, independent booksellers have made a remarkable comeback. The American Booksellers Association reported that there were nearly 2,500 bookstores in 2018, after a low of 1,651 in 2009.

“I think what we’ve understood,” Mitchell Kaplan, founder of South Florida-based Books & Books, told Publishers Weekly in 2022, “with all the shocks to the literary system, that it has never been stronger. Books are not going away. People wanting stories is not going away.” 

“Certainly Towson has a lot of the factors that might make it a desirable place for a bookstore,” says Emma Snyder, who owns Baltimore’s Ivy Bookshop and Bird in Hand Café & Books. “It’s dense, well educated. There’s precedent of demand. Is there somebody in Towson who would like to own an indie bookstore? And then do they have the wherewithal, and do they have the inclination? It is a lot of work. There’s just such a constellation of factors and variables.”

It helps, says Pam Price, former co-owner of The Book Shop, in Beverly Farms, Mass., to have a famous author affiliated with your bookstore. The writer John Updike had a house in Beverly Farms, and was a generous regular at The Book Shop. Ernest Hemingway’s legacy in Key West, Florida, has been a boon to that town’s many bookstores. It hasn’t hurt bookstores in Oxford, Mississippi, that the town is known for being the home of William Faulkner. Yet famous author or no famous author, Price, whose husband grew up in Towson, is a staunch advocate of bookstores as places to buy books, and is dismayed by the dearth of Towson bookshops. “There’s something about seeing books in person,” she says.

So, back to the question posed at the outset: Why no bookstores in Towson? The best answer might be that at present, no potential bookshop owner feels that Towson has the combination of community demographics and affordable space to make a bookstore viable. Or, following Snyder’s line of thinking, no potential owner has the inclination to start one. It could be that the answer is simply timing — there have been bookstores in the past, and there will be bookstores at some point in the future, but there aren’t any now.

Towson finds itself with no bookstores at the same time the world is coming out of an era-defining pandemic, which may have made it less than the best time to launch a bookstore.

Gordy even says a move back to Towson for the chain is not out of the question for Barnes & Noble. “It’s just a matter of making sure they find the right spot,” he says.

For now, lovers of books and those who want to support local businesses in Towson will have to wait.