On Tuesday, April 8, representatives from the City of Greenbelt and the AMAR Group LLC ‒ a Washington, D.C., based architecture, management and research firm ‒ held the first of four community outreach meetings to discuss different community concepts for the Greenbelt Armory site with about 20 residents and councilmembers.
As attendees arrived, they were greeted by AMAR Group staff and handed an agenda, a paper survey, three yellow stickers, three blue stickers and sticky notes. Attendees were instructed to peruse four concepts for the Armory site including commercial use, municipal use and a fire station, and design principles including sustainability and renewables, Art Deco style and a nature-driven approach to the space, among others. Residents were asked to put yellow stickers on the designs they liked and blue on the ones they disliked.
The concept with the greatest number of blue stickers was the commercial design. Some in attendance felt the addition of commercial property would increase traffic, which would be a negative consequence of commercial design. In an online survey posted to the city’s website on March 27, over 40 percent of respondents categorized the armory as a “busy site,” which appeared as a concern in the survey. For those at the meeting, the natural design was the most liked of all the concepts and the fire station was a distant second. The municipal design received a mixed review.
The vote by residents at the event provided a juxtaposition to the survey responses. With a sample of 101 responses recorded before the event, the online survey showed that residents actually preferred the site be used as a municipal building.
“It’s kind of interesting because it doesn’t necessarily jive with the surveys,” said Taylor Imes-Thomas from the AMAR Group.
Residents attending the meeting were quick to suggest that the survey wasn’t a significant representation of the community as a whole since the sample size was only 101 people. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Greenbelt’s 2023 population was estimated as 24,360. There is not a more current estimate.
Agreement
“[The attendees] were very clear to say that not enough of a sample has been taken yet to get a good read on what the takeaways are at this point,” said Imes-Thomas. “I will personally say that the majority of the people are in agreement with preserving a large portion of the wooded section at the site and with providing pedestrian linkages to connect the site with a neighborhood.”
Imes-Thomas was referring to the back two-thirds or more of the property that is covered by vegetation and trees. Throughout the meeting residents voiced their desire to keep that portion of the property intact. There was an idea that the area could be curated to have walking and biking trails, which over 50 percent of survey respondents supported.
More Meetings
Greenbelt residents will have two more chances in the next two weeks to voice opinions about the concept for the site. The AMAR Group and the City will hold two more meetings on Tuesdays April 22 and 29. The next meeting is called the charette phase. Residents that attend will be able to share ideas with the site drawing team and add their input while AMAR team members sketch site concepts. Imes-Thomas said attendees will also be allowed to sketch their own ideas for the site. The final meeting on April 29 will focus on finding a consensus among the different concepts presented. The hope is to have three concepts to present to the city council before the end of 2025, said City Manager Josué Salmerón.
“[The event] just reaffirms the kind of process we designed, having multiple meetings with stakeholders, to go over the surveys, collect feedback as we go along, and then at the end try to have consensus on the proposal that’s going to come from the citizens,” said Salmerón. A light dinner of sandwiches, sides and dips is being offered at each event because the meetings begin at 7 p.m.
An Expensive Overhaul
No matter the concept residents decide upon, the site will need a lengthy and expensive renovation and rehabilitation. The building was assessed to have high levels of asbestos, lead paint and substantial water damage and will require new electrical wiring (see the December 11, 2024 issue of the News Review). Imes-Thomas estimated the price to get the site to compliance would be about $13 million.
“And so whatever council chooses to do, I think [they’ve] got to be very intentional because it’s going to cost us a lot of money,” Salmerón said. “As you can see just to remediate it would be $13 million, at least a million to demo[lish] it, and depending on what concept is picked it’s going to take a lot of money to build. So I think we need to be very intentional about it and it can be very transformative for the community.”
Short-term Use
In the meantime the city is hoping to use the site as much as possible to deter graffiti artists ‒ which Salmerón referred to as “aspiring artists” getting a laugh from attendees ‒ and other unwanted visitors from entering the site. Salmerón said some people suggested allowing commercial vehicles to pay to use the parking lot and others in the meeting suggested a food truck event. Greenbelt’s Compost Crew suggested to council that the armory site could be used as a part of the city’s composting initiative in the interim, allowing the Compost Crew to use the property to do “off-site processing.” The extra space would increase composting capacity to 600 residents, said Salmerón.
Ryan Colasanti is a student at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism interning with the Greenbelt News Review.
