Michael McCall says that his epiphany on Symphony Woods
occurred as he was leaving a concert at Merriweather one night last summer,
“For about fifteen seconds I got disoriented” in the dark woods.
“What a wonderful thing that that you can be right next to
all this development yet feel like you’ve escaped”
That set Michael on a path that radically changed the future
direction of Columbia ’s
central park.
"The worse thing I think you do is to start drawing straight lines through the woods."
Michael is the president of Strategic Leisure, a Columbia company that has
designed the Inner Arbor Plan. He and his wife Barbara are also longtime Columbia residents though
he readily admits he knew very little about local politics before deciding to
get involved with Symphony Woods. It was his old boss from Enterprise , George Barker, who introduced him
to Ken Ulman.
This rest is history.
And speaking of Ken, our county exec was recently honored by
Government Technology Magazine for his One Maryland Broadband Initiative. We
talked about that in our local news recap along with the new storm water
management fees, Wilde
Lake Village
Center
You can listen to 85th episode of “and then there’s
that…” here.
