Hyattsville City Council Approves Support of Route 1 Market Study

The Hyattsville City Council voted unanimously Monday night to make an agreement to support a from College Park through Hyattsville.

Mayor Marc Tartaro said a memorandum of understanding with the Hyattsville Community Development Corporation—which is spearheading the study—states that Hyattsville’s financial contribution to the study would be no more than $5,000.

University Park is on board, Tartaro said, adding that College Park also is likely to agree to the plan.

However, University Park officials stated Monday night that they will support the study only if at least three entities—including themselves—agree to pay for it,

Tartaro also said he has reached out to Riverdale Park, but has received no response yet.

According to Mark Ferguson, treaurer of the Hyattsville CDC’s board of directors, his group is looking for the Prince George’s County Redevelopment Authority and possibly County Executive Rushern Baker’s office to support the study financially.

“We are looking to ask questions that other studies haven’t done,” he told the City Council. “We’re looking at the whole corridor.”

His group wants the people making decisions about the and the proposed East Campus project in College Park to act on facts.

“Certainly if there is another market demand to support big development … then presumably it’s a good thing for the county,” Ferguson said.

“We’re concerned about new development coming in that there isn’t enough support for it that they sit empty. Or that the [developments] in Hyattsville that … we’ve been trying to fill for years sit empty.”

Ferguson said he doesn’t believe the proposed Cafritz development on Route One is a definite just yet.

“I don’t believe that is a done deal,” he said. “I know that all opinions are not in yet.

Cafritz developers are The rest of that will be 90,000 new square feet of just general retail, Ferguson said.

“That’s several times the size of the project,” he said. “We want everybody to be successful and you can’t be successful if you try to open stores that there aren’t enough people that walk through the doors of them.”

, a mixed use development on East West Highway and is home to many vacant storefronts, should be considered in this study since it is in the trade field, Ferguson said.

“We’re not proposing to do anything revolutionary here,” he said. “We’re trying to get data that the [county park and planning commission] should’ve already gotten anyhow.”

Tartaro agreed.

“In an ideal world I think the county should’ve done this,” he said, adding the importance of considering Transit District Overlay Zones and transit business zones.

“That didn’t happen,” he said. “If we get either three or four of the communities to sign on this will be the first time we’ve done something like this where each of the communities have worked together for the economic good.

“It will benefit [all of us] down the road,” he said.

Editor's Note: This story has been corrected. Mark Ferguson is the treasurer of the Hyattsville CDC. The original article attributed to him the wrong title. We regret the error.