Your suggestions, please, for Reisterstown's Main Street
Ideas could be incorporated into revitalization plan
By Bryna Zumer
bzumer@patuxent.com
Posted 4/08/09
Ladies and gentlemen of Reisterstown’s Main Street area, get your thinking caps on.
The county is now taking suggestions from community members on what they would like to see for the commercial heart of historic Reisterstown.
Those ideas will eventually be used to create a revitalization plan for Main Street. After community leaders raised the issue several years ago, the County Council approved a resolution in December 2008 to put the process in motion.
“We are still in the information-gathering stage of the resolution. We haven’t even decided on a plan boundary yet,” said Jessie Bialek, the county’s community planner for the area, at the April 6 meeting of the Reisterstown-Owings Mills-Glyndon Coordinating Council, or ROG.
Bialek and Pierce McGill, of the economic development office, passed out questionnaires at the meeting and said a meeting with area business owners is set for April 14 at Franklin Middle School.
In addition to providing input, community stakeholders must also form an advisory group or steering committee to decide whether they want to follow the traditional process for making a community plan, which involves about two years of community meetings, or do a charrette, which is an intense design process lasting about five to seven days that results in a preliminary plan.
The county does not expect to start working with the steering committee until at least the end of the summer, depending on availability of county staff, Bialek said. If residents choose to hold a charrette, that event would probably happen next spring, she said.
She and McGill said everything related to commercial issues on Main Street is on the table.
Many ROG members expressed frustration with the prevalence of electronic signs in the area. After learning they would probably be unable to use the revitalization plan to remove existing signs, ROG voted to request that the County Council pass a moratorium on new electronic signs in the area until the community plan is approved.
Residents also discussed what boundaries should constitute Main Street and asked whether overhead utility lines could be buried. McGill answered that burying utility lines would be cost-prohibitive, at $1 million per block.
George Harman, ROG president, said more parking should be considered to keep businesses viable and suggested the area south to Franklin Boulevard be considered for the plan.
“I don’t want the county to lock us into Main Street just yet because we did talk at the previous meeting about that eyesore known as Reisterstown Shopping Center,” he said. “We have some big visions here and we hope the county is open to these big visions.”
McGill and Bialek encouraged residents to focus on practical goals as well as making more “pie-in-the-sky” visions.
“I would like to see kind of implementable, short-term items so we can get some momentum,” McGill said.
Suggestions, as well as requests for more information, can be sent to Reisterstown@baltimorecountymd.gov or to Jessie Bialek at Office of Planning, 105 W. Chesapeake Ave., Suite 101, Towson, MD 21204.
The county is now taking suggestions from community members on what they would like to see for the commercial heart of historic Reisterstown.
Those ideas will eventually be used to create a revitalization plan for Main Street. After community leaders raised the issue several years ago, the County Council approved a resolution in December 2008 to put the process in motion.
“We are still in the information-gathering stage of the resolution. We haven’t even decided on a plan boundary yet,” said Jessie Bialek, the county’s community planner for the area, at the April 6 meeting of the Reisterstown-Owings Mills-Glyndon Coordinating Council, or ROG.
Bialek and Pierce McGill, of the economic development office, passed out questionnaires at the meeting and said a meeting with area business owners is set for April 14 at Franklin Middle School.
In addition to providing input, community stakeholders must also form an advisory group or steering committee to decide whether they want to follow the traditional process for making a community plan, which involves about two years of community meetings, or do a charrette, which is an intense design process lasting about five to seven days that results in a preliminary plan.
The county does not expect to start working with the steering committee until at least the end of the summer, depending on availability of county staff, Bialek said. If residents choose to hold a charrette, that event would probably happen next spring, she said.
She and McGill said everything related to commercial issues on Main Street is on the table.
Many ROG members expressed frustration with the prevalence of electronic signs in the area. After learning they would probably be unable to use the revitalization plan to remove existing signs, ROG voted to request that the County Council pass a moratorium on new electronic signs in the area until the community plan is approved.
Residents also discussed what boundaries should constitute Main Street and asked whether overhead utility lines could be buried. McGill answered that burying utility lines would be cost-prohibitive, at $1 million per block.
George Harman, ROG president, said more parking should be considered to keep businesses viable and suggested the area south to Franklin Boulevard be considered for the plan.
“I don’t want the county to lock us into Main Street just yet because we did talk at the previous meeting about that eyesore known as Reisterstown Shopping Center,” he said. “We have some big visions here and we hope the county is open to these big visions.”
McGill and Bialek encouraged residents to focus on practical goals as well as making more “pie-in-the-sky” visions.
“I would like to see kind of implementable, short-term items so we can get some momentum,” McGill said.
Suggestions, as well as requests for more information, can be sent to Reisterstown@baltimorecountymd.gov or to Jessie Bialek at Office of Planning, 105 W. Chesapeake Ave., Suite 101, Towson, MD 21204.
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