This afternoon St. John Properties held a luncheon for commercial real estate brokers at their new development in Maple Lawn. In addition to crab cakes, the developer served up some good news on the economic development front.
First up at the podium was Stewart Greenebaum, the founding partner of Greenebaum & Rose and the master developer of Maple Lawn. Stewart reminded everyone that only six years ago Maple Lawn was just cornfields. Today the new community is rocking along with a new Harris Teeter, a new retail building under construction, a new 30,000 square foot conference center for the Baltimore Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church, and now the first of five buildings in the Maple Lawn Corporate Center being developed by St. John Properties. Stewart also said that there are currently 121 homes under construction all of which are under contract.
Rick Williamson, a Senior Vice President with SJP, also announced that one of the five buildings in the project has just been pre leased to Kaiser Permanente.
Ken Ulman was also in attendance. He spoke about a recent trip he made to Austin, Texas with Ed St. John that was sponsored by the Greater Baltimore Alliance. The objective was to recruit Austin companies in the cyber security business to expand to Howard County.
Good call.
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6 comments:
I've only been to Maple Lawn a couple of times, but I am not wildly impressed. The place looks great, but there is never anyone there walking around. It looks so hip and new urbanist, yet no one is there doing any hip new urbanist things. I was there the weekend before last when the weather was nice and the only people I saw walking around were walking from the parking lot into Looney's. The main reason I went there was to try Sidamo since I've been hearing good things about it, but they close at 6PM (WTF?). And the wine shop does not carry Maryland wines (harsh!).
I'm not sure if my generalizations are too hasty or maybe the economy is hard on it, but Maple Lawn is more like Maple Yawn.
and let's face it...the shops are on the fantastically expensive-side (Simply Divine).
Looney's Pub looks fun, but perhaps they should have saved some of the cornfields.
Progress does not always = more development.
Maple Lawn is sort of Bizarro Columbia. Where Columbia is mixed and diverse, Maple Lawn is gated and exclusive. Where Columbia has open space, Maple Lawn has "residents only" playgrounds. I'm not sure we should be encouraging walled, gated, exclusive "bedroom communities" for paranoid cyberyuppies.
I have to agree. When I drove around Maple Lawn it reminded me of a movie set. All facade and no real life.
Maple Lawn is one of those developments that shouldn't have been built... trying to create demand where none really existed.
For a so called "pedestrian friendly" community, the sidewalks are way too skinny, and they are not on both sides of the road. Another big gripe is that there are no bike lanes! I wonder how many people actually walk or bike from their houses to the downtown area?
I just hope to see a Pilates or Yoga place open up in one of the new Maple Lawn offices spaces. I can never fight my way up Rte 29 during rush hour to patronize the ones up in Columbia before 7pm.
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