It’s about an eighth of a mile between the new housing in the South Core of the Greenbelt Station development in Greenbelt West and the Metro Station, according to Mayor Emmett Jordan. The new Greenbelt Station residents expected to be able to walk to the station or drive directly there. But that was dependent upon the development of the North Core at the station parking lot and the construction of the connector road, Greenbelt Station Parkway, from its dead end in the South Core to the Beltway. No active proposal is pending to develop the North Core following the federal government’s decision not to relocate the FBI headquarters there.
A temporary solution for connecting the South Core to the station is to build a temporary walk. The Greenbelt City Council became more acutely aware of the difficulties in achieving this solution at its November 5 worksession with a representative of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) and representatives of Woodlawn Development Group, developers of the South Core.
The city was presented with a timeline prepared by the development’s engineers, Dewberry Engineers, which extended through August 2020. Councilmember Judith Davis noted that this timeline was only related to obtaining permits from 15 separate agencies and did not include additional time for construction. With that, the project would likely take well over two years to complete. Although previously known, the second document was a project cost estimate totaling $1,925,000 with many of the costs being rough estimates. Woodlawn Development has made a $517,000 commitment to fund the building of this temporary trail based on an agreement reached at the time of development approval with the city. Council has budgeted another $500,000 for the walk. Councilmember Rodney Roberts expressed concern over the half-million-dollar shortfall for funding the entire project, but no solution to that problem was proposed.
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