HoCo Losing Corporate HQ

On Tuesday shareholders of Columbia based Arbitron voted overwhelming in favor of being acquired by New York based Nielsen, combining the dominant radio rating service with the dominant television rating service. If the deal passes muster with the antitrust cops, the television guys will win and HoCo will lose a major corporate headquarters. According to this story by Gary Haber in the Baltimore Business Journal the radio ratings company “is one of the largest employers in Howard County. It employs about 860 people in the Baltimore area, out of a U.S. workforce of about 1,000.”

The ratings business is struggling to keep up with tech savvy consumers. In an article entitled “The Nielsen Family is Dead” in Wired, Tom Vanderbilt writes that “Nielsen and others have been scrambling to generate a new kind of TV rating, one that takes into account all of the activity that occurs on screens other than a television.”

“Since the 1970s, television has been ruled by the Nielsen Family—25,000 households whose TV habits collectively provide a statistical snapshot of a nation’s viewing behavior. Over the years, the Nielsen rating has been tweaked, but it still serves one fundamental purpose: to gauge how many people are watching a given show on a conventional television set. But that’s not how we watch any more. Hulu, Netflix, Apple TV, Amazon Prime, Roku, iTunes, smartphone, tablet—none of these platforms or devices are reflected in the Nielsen rating. (In February Nielsen announced that this fall it would finally begin including Internet streaming to TV sets in its ratings.)”

Arbitron has been trying to keep up as well. In 2005 they began rolling out the Portable People Meter which was meant to phase out its dependence on diaries. Four years later they encountered some unanticipated regulatory blow back.

Change may be constant but it can also be unpredictable.

Spring Celebration 2013

This Saturday the Ellicott City Business Association will host their 2^nd Annual Spring Celebration in the historic district. Live entertainment, craft beers and Earth Day activities will be spread up and down Main Street from noon to 7 PM.

If Foot’s Forecast is right, the weather should be perfect. “Morning clouds will break to a fantastic afternoon! Skies will gradually become sunnier, with highs reaching generally the lower 60s.”

Perfect weather for festing!

On a Clear Day You Can See Best Buy

Some people can spend their entire working life in the same office with the same morning commute and the same view. Not me. Since beginning my professional career I've occupied sixteen different offices in five states. Three of those offices were windowless. I liked them the least.

My sixteenth move has landed me in the Gateway Corporate Community in Columbia. Corporate community is an apt label for the 600 acre business park that contains almost seven million square feet of commercial space but no residences.

It wasn't my first choice. If I had my way we would have located our new office in downtown Columbia. That said, I have to admit that I’m warming to life in this corporate community. I have a second floor view overlooking thickly wooded open space. In the distance I can just barely make out the Best Buy sign at Gateway Exchange. In matter of weeks, as the trees leaf out, I probably won’t even see that. In my former office my view was of another building.

Gateway is also Columbia’s largest disenfranchised community. Even though it is larger than any of the ten Columbia villages and its building owners pay the same CPRA lien as village residents, it has no representative on the governing body of the Columbia Association.

It’s our own HoCo loco version of taxation without representation.

Spring Stuff

The only thing I dislike about spring is that many of the acts of natures great color show end too soon. A week or sometimes just days can dramatically change the scene from brilliant color to something greenish. Catching the really big shows like the cherry blossoms in the Tidal Basin is often a matter of luck and timing.

Columbia looks good. There are flowering trees all over the town and some like the bradford pear have already done their spring thing. Others like the kwanzan cherry are just getting amped up. 

 Life is returning to the lakefront too. Earlier today I walked by Clyde’s. The new façade is up and new employees are being trained. Paul Kraft, the general manager, told me that they hope to reopen by next Monday. He let me peek in the door and, from what little I could see, I was impressed. New ceiling, new lighting, new back bar, new carpet, you get the picture. It’s familiar yet different. “That’s what $5 million will get you,” he quipped.

I understand it also paid for a kicking new kitchen and bathrooms.

There will be announcement soon about who will takeover the former Red Pearl space. I've sworn not to reveal what I know even though it’s killing me. I’ll just say that I’m excited.

You can find more pictures here that I snapped around town while goofing off a little this afternoon.

Busboys and Poets

A couple of months ago I discovered Busboys and Poets for the first time. I was in Hyattsville on a work assignment and came across their newest location in the Gateway Arts District. I had heard the name before but I’d never been in so I decided to check it out.

 My first reaction was that Busboys and Poets would rock in Columbia. That was only further reinforced when I read how they describe themselves on their website.

“Busboys and Poets is a community where racial and cultural connections are consciously uplifted...a place to take a deliberate pause and feed your mind, body and soul...a space for art, culture and politics to intentionally collide...we believe that by creating such a space we can inspire social change and begin to transform our community and the world.”

Am I crazy or does this sound like it came right out the Jim Rouse playbook?

I decided to see if I could make a Columbia location happen so I sent an email to Andy Shallal, the impresario behind Busboys and Poets. I refer to Andy as the impresario because, as Judith Rosen writes in Publishers Weekly, “I’m not really a restaurateur,” says Shallal, who opened his first restaurant in 1987. “I’m an activist with food. We all eat. There’s a commonality.” 

He responded to my email in relatively short order, thanking me for the “vote of confidence” in his venture. Regarding downtown Columbia he wrote that he’d “keep this in mind.”

Now the real work begins. 

The More Things Change…

While cleaning out my desk for our move last week I found a copy of The Sun from June 9, 2002. Presumably I saved this particular paper because it featured an in-depth report on Columbia on the occasion of the towns 35^th birthday.

As I reread the piece to decide whether it was worthy of continued retention, I chuckled when I came across the following paragraphs.

Lately, some loco activists have begun carping about the need to do more for low income housing in downtown Columbia, besides the Columbia Downtown Housing Corporation which was established as a part of the redevelopment legislation. The trust receives its funding to provide affordable housing from a fee assessed on every new housing unit created in downtown. It was seeded with a million dollar check from Howard Hughes.

Eleven years ago nothing like this existed or was proposed.

Is it enough?

Of course not. Providing low income housing in an area of relatively high housing values will always be a challenge, just as it was back in 1967.  Instead of demanding more subsidized housing in one place from one developer though, perhaps the better strategy would be to create a countywide housing trust that assesses a fee on all new residential units in HoCo.

How Animals Eat Their Food

Peanut told me this short clip garnered over 20 million hits in five days on YouTube.

Its classic slapstick stuff and I got a good laugh out of it. Perhaps that reveals something about my intellectual depth.

Anyway…as I've mentioned before, Peanut watches YouTube way more than what I’d call conventional television.

But what is conventional television anymore?

In the most recent issue of Wired, Willa Paskin  points out that streaming video has not only enabled us to watch our favorite shows on any computer with a WiFi connection, it has also changed the very nature of how we watch TV. We are now able to "binge watch” our favorite shows.

“Whatever our televisual drug of choice—Battle­star Galactica, The Wire, Homeland— we've all put off errands and bedtime to watch just one more, a thrilling, draining, dream-­influencing immersion experience that has become the standard way to consume certain TV programs. We've all had the hit of pleasure after an installment ends on some particularly insane cliff-hanger and we remember that we can watch the next episode right now. It’s a relatively recent addition to the pantheon of slightly illicit yet mostly harmless adult pleasures, residing next to eating ice cream for dinner, drinking a beer with lunch, and having sex with someone you probably shouldn't.”

Guilty. Just last Friday we binge watched two episodes of Homeland after we got home from dinner.

Awesome Guests

Jean Parker has served as General Manager of Merriweather Post Pavilion for almost thirty years. She’s held the same job even as the operators changed from Nederlander to SFX to Clear Channel and now I.M.P. She started working at the outdoor theater part time while still a high school student at Mt. Hebron. After graduating from the University of Maryland with a degree in computer science, she did a one year stint with Arthur Andersen before returning to Symphony Woods. This is the third time Jean has been on our show.

And speaking of Symphony Woods, Jean told us she “loves the Inner Arbor plan.”

“CA is doing lots of great things…it’s all good.”

The future looks bright for Merriweather too, particularly now that the Maryland General Assembly has codified the permitted noise levels within a quarter mile of the facility.

 And speaking of the future, we also invited Ian Kennedy to join us to discuss the upcoming elections for the Columbia Council. Ian launched the Let’s Make Columbia Awesome website to support those candidates who support visionary initiatives like the Inner Arbor Plan.

Ian also has a Merriweather history. He and his friend Justin Carlson launched the Save Merriweather effort back in 2003 when the future of Merriweather was in doubt.

Ian made a pitch for Regina Clay in Wilde Lake, Mike Cornell in River Hill, Julia McCready in Oakland Mills and Ed Coleman in Long Reach, pointing out that these people are more interested in “pushing Columbia forward rather than holding it back.”

In other words, these are the candidates that can make Columbia awesome. “They’re all awesome,” he suggested.

You can listen to the 87^th episode of “and then there’s that…” here.

Lt. Governor Watson?

Maryland Juice, a widely read Maryland political blog, has suggested that Courtney Watson is on Anthony Browns short list for lieutenant governor in his 2014 gubernatorial bid. According to this post by David Moon, Courtney’s name is among eight that have been mentioned “by knowledgeable sources, and at least some of them appear to be going through some level of vetting.”

I should note that Ken Ulmans name is also among the eight mentioned but most political watchers widely dismiss the notion of Ken playing second fiddle to the guv. As Roger Caplan is fond of saying “I don’t see Ken holding a clipboard for anyone.”

Most HoCo loco politico watchers would also dismiss Courtney as a serious prospect for backup quarterback given her expected run for county exec in 2014. Even David seems to acknowledge this pointing out that it is “unclear whether she would be willing to abandon her campaign for an unplanned run for LG.”

Indeed. Still, if you're Courtney it still has to feel good to see your name on the list.

More Food for Turf Valley

When I visited the new Turf Valley Town Square last weekend, I noticed two more restaurants were joining Facci and Petite Cellars in the new shopping center, a sports grill and Xitomate.

 It would be fun if one of these new watering holes dedicated a special drink to Marc Norman, the Turf Valley activist who fought hard to keep this shopping center from being built.

I’m thinking something with sour grapes would be fitting.

What’s in a Name?

There has been a significant realignment of Baltimore commercial real estate firms over the past two weeks, with all the action centered in Columbia. The sixty seven year old former powerhouse of the Baltimore market, Manekin, merged the lions share of its operations with the Baltimore office of Colliers International.  Lest there be any doubt about who was acquiring whom, Tim Hearn, CEO and Principal of Colliers will be moving his office to the Manekin building in Columbia Gateway, while the remaining Manekin businesses will occupy his old space at 7172 Columbia Gateway Drive. At least everybody involved gets to stay in the same neighborhood. Presumably, 8601 Robert Fulton Drive will soon be sporting a new name on the bricks. To the victor go the spoils.

That wasn't the only shift that occurred. After sixteen years my own firm, Ryan Commercial, morphed into Lee & Associates Chesapeake Region, along with a few brokers from the Columbia office of KLNB. The new firm is headed up by Allan Riorda (KLNB) and began operations with Matt Ryan (Ryan), Kate Jordan (KLNB), Tom Whelan (Ryan), Bill Harrison (Ryan), Marley Welsh (Cushman Wakefield) and yours truly. Like one big happy local commercial real estate family, the new Lee office is also in Columbia Gateway at 6990 Columbia Gateway Drive.

Unfortunately this means I have to move. Our current offices are on Dobbin Road in the Columbia Business Center. We've been there for about five years. I like where we are. I can be in Wegmans in ten minutes. Sigh. Columbia Gateway is a retail desert compared to Dobbin Road.

Actually, we are in the process of moving. The physical move happens Friday. Right now all of us are going through old files and loading up the recycling bins. As much as I dislike this process it can be very cathartic.

It's kind of like spring cleaning. 

Fire Drill

When I stopped in the Old Mill Bakery and Café for coffee this morning they were debating whether to call 911. From their parking lot you could see the black smoke rising from the hill above Ellicott City.

“It’s just a fire department exercise,” I informed them.

“It would have been nice if someone had told us,” one of the clerks replied.

Actually I thought Howard County had done a pretty decent job getting the word out, at least in my neighborhood. Even before I drove past the action on Weavers Court I knew what was going on. Earlier in the week I received alerts from both my community email list and from Notify Me Howard.

“That figures,” she said, “we’re in Baltimore County and they don’t tell us anything.”

Such is life in a bordertown.

Later in the day I drove past the controlled burn again but this time the fires were out and the trainees were busy rolling up hoses and packing up their gear.

Andrew Metcalf with Patch reported from the scene.

Russian Bike with German Bones

The fun vehicles came out of their winter hibernation today as spring made its belated debut. I had been wondering if I’d see something to put in The Garage, when this unusual motorcycle and sidecar appeared in our office parking lot. Fortunately, I was also able to meet and speak with the owner.

Jim Macdonald, who lives in Frederick, owns this 2012 Ural and drove it to Columbia today.  The Irbit Motor Works builds the Ural in Russia and is one of the only manufacturers of motorcycles with sidecars in the world. According to this story by Andrew E. Kramer in The New York Times, the retro looking bike is “a heavy, 40-horsepower motorcycle whose two cylinders jut sideways from the frame. It is modeled after a late-1930s BMW sidecar bike called the R71, which Nazi Germany provided to the Soviet Union after the countries signed a nonaggression pact in 1939. When the Nazis broke this pact and invaded, the Russians used the bike to fight them.”

It’s also proven to be quite popular with older cyclists.

“Irbit found salvation in an unlikely niche market: older American riders seeking utility, not thrills or spills. Suddenly the sidecar, a seemingly anachronistic product evoking a World War II newsreel, had a new life among the late middle-aged.”

Jim admitted that his Ural is a fair weather toy. That’s why it was out being played with today.

Secret Garden

We've driven by it numerous times but never stopped. That in and of itself is not so unusual, it’s an old graveyard after all and neither of us knows anyone interred there. I suppose it was a combination of curiosity, a warm Saturday, and the profusion of daffodils that spurred Mama Wordbones to suggest we take a closer look at Whipps Garden Cemetery on St. Johns Lane in Ellicott City.

I’m glad we did. True to its name, Whipps is as much a garden as it is a 180 year old cemetery. Carefully overseen by the Friends of The Whipps Cemetery and Memorial Gardens and community volunteers, the one acre “heritage-garden park” is both historic and botanic. It features a native plants “typical of those grown in Maryland gardens of the 1800’s.”

You can find more pictures of Whipps Garden Cemetery here.

Black Mulch

Home Depot had a big sale on mulch this weekend and we took advantage of the opportunity to load up. We weren't the only ones. In the Ellicott City store on Saturday the staff in the garden center struggled to keep up with the demand, particularly for the black stuff.

I watched a steady stream of customers empty out a pallet load of the stuff within fifteen minutes. During that time the brown and red mulch bags were hardly touched.

Brown mulch is out. In HoCo, black mulch is suburban yard chic. 

Beer Madness

In yet another play on the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament  The Washington Post has been running its 7^th annual Beer Madness, a blind tasting of 32 regional craft brews to determine a loco king of beers. A panel of nine has been “sipping, spitting and scribbling their way through 32 brews from the Chesapeake region.”

This is the first year the competition has focused solely on Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia.

“In previous years we've gone mass-market, global (in honor of the Olympics) and all-American. In this, the seventh annual Beer Madness, we decided to celebrate the local renaissance and showcase the best this region has to offer. All 32 entries come from breweries in the Chesapeake Bay area. We included some local brewpubs whose distribution doesn't stretch outside their front door, and a few small newcomers, such as Wild Wolf Brewing in Nellysford, Va., and Union Craft Brewing in Baltimore, that are just poking their noses into Washington and suburbs. But you can find all of these beers, on tap or in bottles or cans, within the confines of the Beltway.”

We are truly experiencing a beer renaissance in this country. In 1980 there were fewer than ninety breweries in the US. Today there are over 2,400, the highest number ever.

It’s beginning to get a little overwhelming. Earlier this week, To2C reader and occasional contributor Andy Liberman sent me a note about a new wine bar coming to Turf Valley. He wrote that it was purportedly backed by the folks at Perfect Pour in the Gateway Exchange shopping center. It had been some time since I was last in Perfect Pour so I decided to drop in and see what I could find out. While I didn't discover anything new about the Turf Valley venture, I was bowled over by the craft beer selection in the store. They have one of the most extensive offerings of craft beer in HoCo. There’s a pretty good chance that you will find most, if not all the 32 beers in the WAPO Beer Madness tournament in the store.

Andy later informed me that the name of the Turf Valley place is Petite Cellars. Yesterday I dropped by the new shopping center and saw that work was well underway. He also thinks the new place will be similar to Liquid Assets in Ocean City.

Not Yet

“How were the cherry blossoms?”

“We didn't go to the Tidal Basin.”

“You were on the Mall weren't you?”

“Yeah, but I don’t recall seeing any cherry blossoms.”

“Then they weren't blooming.”

Mama Wordbones was right as usual, particularly when it comes to the ways of nature. I went back and checked my camera. I had taken the typical tourist pictures. Standing in the middle of America’s front lawn I took one shot towards the capital and one towards the monument. Bing. Bang. Boom.

If you look closely you can see the beginnings of color. I wasn't looking closely. It was cold.

Peanut and I took a day trip to the National Museum of American History , my choice not hers. Someone is not doing well in US History and I was hoping for some sort of inspiration. I don’t think it took. Hard to tell though, teenagers are notoriously hard to read.

On the ride home I heard on the radio that peak bud time has now moved back to this Saturday, two days above the average.

We're planning on going back on Sunday, with the bikes. It would be nice if we didn't have to wear ski hats and gloves.

“The Natives Are Massing”

The photo above came from Interested Party, a To2C netizen and regular commenter. The note accompanying the attachment was brief and succinct. “Spotted in a Columbia Village. What does it mean?”

At a minimum it means someone has thumbed their nose at their village architectural covenants. Yard art has long been considered bad form in Columbia.

Whether or not it means anything at all besides a spring prank, for some odd reason it made me think of the recent postings in the Howard County Citizens Association listserv. I regularly surf through their discussions, just to keep an eye on them. I don’t really consider the HCCA to be a political threat but HCCA members can usually be counted on to be against anything that involves a developer. Being in the development business I like to keep tabs on what they are up to.

Right now there is a big discussion going on about affordable housing and school board member Ann DeLacy is all over that topic like goose poop on a lakeside pathway. She thinks that subsidized housing should be more equally spread around the county citing a concern about “the lack of affordable housing in places like Maple Lawn, Dorsey Search and River Hill.”  

  “Are the elected officials here in Howard County simply not interested in the allocation of fair housing in all areas of the County? “

Sounds like ADL may be trying to broaden her political base on the left side of town. Naturally she links socio-economic diversity with education. It’s why our schools are so bad I suppose.

My favorite housing hypocrite is Alan Klein. You may recall that AK was kicked to the curb by his full spectrum housing colleagues when the deal was cut on the Downtown Columbia Housing Trust. Not matter what's negotiated, with AK it’s never enough. This from a guy who lives in one of the only Columbia neighborhoods that doesn't have any multifamily housing let alone anything that could even remotely be considered affordable. He likes affordable housing in your backyard, just not his.

You gotta keep an eye on these folks, especially when they are massing…

Good Neighbors

I am unaccustomed to running into my neighbors at HoCo politico events. It just doesn't happen. Over the six years we've lived in our current neighborhood, it’s only happened three times. The third time occurred last week at Courtney Watson's event in Columbia when I ran into my next door neighbors, the good ones.

Seven years ago, as our side by side homes were being built, I first met Hatem. Later we would become introduced to his wife and two children. Maha now brings her homemade baklava to our 3^rd of July parties. When they traveled back to visit family in Egypt, we kept an eye on their house.

At the party, Hatem told me that he was on the board of the Howard County Muslim Council and explained some of the work that the council is doing in the community. He made a point to mention that Courtney regularly attends their functions and has been supportive of their efforts.

I loved this moment. I often lament about the sad state of loco civic engagement and awareness. When I suddenly discovered that, right next door, another neighbor was quietly doing his part to make HoCo a better place to live, it made me happy.

In contrast, on the other side of my house is a family that has also moved in at the same time. They have two daughters and after seven years I don’t even know their names.

We spoke a little about the plans for a Muslim school and worship center in western HoCo. I told Hatem that a friend of mine is on the executive board of Residents for the Responsible Development of Woodmont, which “opposes the project currently proposed by Dar-Us-Salaam of College Park because it’s size and intensity are far in excess of what RRDW believes is reasonable for the Rural Conservation district and the rural west of Howard County”

I sincerely hope that the Dar-Us-Salaam community and the greater Cooksville community can reach some sort of mutual accommodation on this. There are good people on both sides of this zoning debate so there is good reason to be hopeful.

In This Months Business Monthly

The Columbia Council is the red headed step child of loco politics. Even though the elected council members serve as the board of directors of a corporation with an annual operating budget of $60 million and 1,300 employees, very few people pay much attention to its governance.

The system itself is at least partially to blame. Election rules and procedures are inconsistent among the 10 Columbia villages and not all who pay the CA lien are even eligible to vote, including the majority of the commercial property owners.

Voter apathy is also to blame. Even seemingly contentious citywide issues such as the future of Symphony Woods park barely register a blip on most Columbia residents radar. On the other hand, try and take away a neighborhood tot lot or swimming pool and suddenly people start to pay attention, though by that time it may already be too late.

It’s not too late now. If you live in Columbia please get informed and vote on April 20^th or, at the very least, get your hands on an absentee ballot. If you know someone who lives in Columbia, particularly the villages of River Hill, Oakland Mills, Wilde Lake and Long Reach, please encourage them to pay attention and participate. 

A healthy and forward looking Columbia is in the best interests of everyone who lives in HoCo.

You can find this month’s column here.