Imagine a riverfront community rich in pre-Revolutionary history, located in one of the most prosperous counties in the United States. A place with easy access to major highways and an airport, with a mix of housing. Residents can stroll into preserved parkland or a gleaming new library. They are protected by modern fire stations, and a plan to revitalize a main thoroughfare is slowly plowing forward.
You don’t need to imagine. The description applies to Elkridge, in eastern Howard County.
Yet in the eyes of many residents and leaders, the whole of Elkridge seems to many to be less than the sum of its parts. Elkridge activists describe a sense of being perpetually slighted by what they say is a lack of public and private investment or attention to their true needs.
Year after year, state and local politicians work to balance the needs of Elkridge with those in the rest of the county and state, but unhappiness persists. Above all, Elkridge – when it looks to the west toward Ellicott City and Columbia — may be grappling with a perception of being undervalued.
Community advocates like Drew Roth, who is active in local affairs, say that their review of county budgets show that Elkridge receives only a fraction of the public spending allocated for other areas.
“We don’t get any significant investment from the school system, state or county compared to other regions, and it’s been that way for years,” said Roth. “People think that’s normal, and that’s just the way it is. We pay our fair share of taxes for the county, and never get a fair share of the money coming back.”
But some money does come in. A newly expanded Elkridge Branch of the Howard County library system, along with a new 50+ center, opened in 2018, and features a unique DIY collection of tools for home projects.
A new 14,800-square-foot fire station opened in 2022, reducing response times along Route 1. Howard County has distributed nearly $2 million in grants to commercial property owners for commercial and industrial property owners on that road.
All that is great, many residents say. But Elkridge needs its own new schools, and a new high school and a community center. And it’s not pedestrian friendly. If it weren’t for their constant advocacy, some residents say, they’d be overlooked.
“I live in Elkridge. It seems that we do get some funding, but the projects aren’t elevating Elkridge out of the industrial/blue collar setting which depresses property values and quality of life,” said Kimberly Jones, a longtime resident and a realtor in Howard County. “It also limits the appeal of Elkridge to potential residents. For example, new housing along Route 1 consists of dense apartment communities. We have a pretty new library, but it doesn’t contain many actual books. Why can’t we get rid of the no-tell motels? Stop speeders on Montgomery Road where people take walks? Just a few thoughts.”
“It’s generally known that Elkridge, the Route 1 corridor, and that part of the county has not always received the same kind of money that some of the other areas have,” said state Del. Terri Hill, who represents the area. She later explained her view further. “Can’t it be true that Elkridge has not got the financial attention that the people there would like, and it also be true that other parts of the community are having the same complaints?” she asked.
“Sometimes we just need a bigger pie, it’s not that one part of the community isn’t getting something because somebody’s pie slice is too large,” Hill said. “My position is that Elkridge could benefit from more investment, but that’s not shaming or blaming other communities.”
In his October State of the County address, Howard County Executive Calvin Ball outlined a variety of promises for Elkridge, but they represented steps both forward and back.
Ball promised funding to begin planning an Elkridge community center, broadband funding for mobile home parks on Route 1, and better neighborhood connections for Troy Park, a major regional park where he also said an indoor track facility would be built.
But Ball also revealed in the speech that a new high school in the Elkridge area would be further delayed. Laws governing federal and state open space and park purchases meant that land at Troy Park could not be made available for the school. Ball said he would commit $15 million toward a land purchase elsewhere, but county officials have long looked for schools-facility land in Elkridge with little success.
“We still need a high school for Elkridge,” said resident Robert Judge. “The middle and elementary schools are overcrowded. Elkridge was supposed to get a community center twenty years ago.”
At its core, Elkridge is the oldest community in what is now Howard County. It started on the banks of the Patapsco River as a deep-water port providing trade transport for tobacco and mill products. The Thomas Viaduct, an engineering feat that allowed the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad to build to the west, is within Elkridge, as are major portions of Patapsco State Park.
Many Elkridge residents or those passing through may not know that history. They see Route 1, a largely unattractive commercial strip heavy with storage facilities, motels and industrial parks. To the west, suburban subdivisions are indistinguishable from those in Ellicott City. Interstate 95 divides areas of the community.
State Del. Jessica Feldmark, who also represents the area, said she was relieved that portions of Troy Park didn’t need to be taken for Elkridge educational purposes. She doesn’t think that Elkridge should have to sacrifice recreational opportunities to sustain its education needs.
Roth now hopes industrial land across the street from their community’s library will be used as the new high school site. It’s part of the newly designated Elkridge South Civic District, which passed as an amendment to the “HoCo by Design” general plan in October.
The county amendment to the plan, introduced by Councilmember Liz Walsh, was “wildly popular” among residents, he said. A previous plan had the area being used as a mixed-use site.
Feldmark points to projects improving safety for walkers and bikers on Route 1 as another hopeful sign that Elkridge is moving in the right direction. A county report in 2018 found that, at that time, there had already been at least 54 recorded pedestrian or bicycle accidents on the highway there.
“You see people crossing Route 1 as pedestrians,” she said. “We don’t have good crosswalk access. When people need to get around, if they don’t have a car, and there’s no bus service, then you’re going to walk even in dangerous conditions, if that’s what they have to do to get to work or get their groceries. It’s a necessity. We need to make it safe for them to do that.”
In general, because Howard County is relatively prosperous, and all funding decisions are made countywide, Elkridge can never be totally ignored, officials said. “We all benefit when our county is prosperous and successful,” said Hill, the state delegate. “We don’t want to leave anybody behind.”
Roth hopes though that Howard County will reach into its purse a little more for the area he calls home.
“In Elkridge we have been fighting this forever,” he said. “We’re half the population of Columbia. Why don’t we get half the investment that Columbia gets?”
Baltimore Fishbowl Executive Editor David Nitkin contributed to this story.
“..there had already been at least 54 recorded pedestrian or bicycle accidents on the highway there.” Please stop calling them “accidents.” “Accidents” implies they could not have been prevented and also that nothing can be done. Howard county is not investing adequately in vulnerable road user safety and is working against people who try to push for safer roads (against its own policy) and thus people are dying.
I note they mention all the money spent on Rt 1, like the 1.3 Million spent on the Kit Kat Rd crossing where nobody lives. Yet they keep putting off spending the $300k on a sidewalk that would allow the thousands of families to safely walk to CVS and grocery store. Instead children and families have to walk along a busy Rt 108, a road where the traffic has greatly increased due to development approved by the country. So yes, Eldridge is getting criminally ignored by the country.