This past year, I’ve been thinking about ideas that can help Laurel become an even better place to live, work, and play. I’ve also been actively asking residents in conversations around town. It’s been great to have these conversations and gather these ideas together, and below is an initial list 6 ‘Big Ideas’ for Laurel:

  1. Develop the Laurel Train Station into a slick, mixed-use anchor of Main Street. If you’ve seen the Muirkirk Station or Annapolis Junction Station, you can get an idea of what’s possible. It could contain apartment/condos (including affordable units), small retail, create a natural flow into Main Street (helping spur additional energy & development), all while preserving and evoking the historic feel that highlights one of the oldest (if not the oldest) continually operating train stop of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. To my mind, this draws interest, enhances Laurel’s profile, embraces our history, and creates momentum for its future.

  2. Create a ‘walk-jog-bike’ protected path/ circuit between Laurel Lakes and Riverfront Park. These two nature features of our town can be elevated and highlighted in a way that makes our town special, attracts visitors, supports healthy living, creates corridors between the commerce centers of Laurel Centre Mall and Main Street, and builds community.

  3. Have small shops/ foods along the edges of Gude Park. A resident suggested this idea stemming from a park in Gaithersburg that she likes to visit with her son, and you’ll find a couple spots like this in Columbia too. One way this could take shape is as wide terraced levels featuring a curved strolling path that wanders through some neat landscape features, and bordered by a stretch of tiny shops/ food on one side. Residents can come, enjoy the view, stroll along, have a picnic, grab a snack, peruse some local goods while kids play in the grass/ playground, etc. I really like the vision she cast.

  4. Re-develop the stretch of Route 1 with the median to achieve a live/ work/ play environment. This could include some modern professional office buildings that feed into plazas dotted with greenery around which there are some food/ retail spots, perhaps even attractive pedestrian bridge over to the existing mall area. You can see hints of this down in the redeveloped parts of Hyattsville and the new development at Baltimore Peninsula, and it can create a cycle where business - feeds food/ retail - enables housing - connected by walkability - and creating a strong sense of space.

  5. See the undeveloped backside of Main Street turn into a neat few square blocks of mixed-use space with apartments/ condos up top and micro-stores featuring local goods down below. I’ve seen a similar concept on King and Queen Streets in Toronto where there are small storefronts so they are affordable by local business owners doing specialty things. Combining this with what old town in Lewes, Delaware looks like where there a few square blocks of historic-looking structures creating a great ‘browse-around, buy-some-things’ experience for an afternoon, evening, or weekend expereience.

  6. Rebuild the bridge from Riverfront Park near the pool over to High Ridge Park on the other side of the river. Another resident approached me with this idea, reminding me of the bridge that used to be there and sharing how it would provide a valuable expansion of the greenspace by linking it into High Ridge Park, which itself links further north into the Columbia trails. Thinking one step further, they shared there had even been an idea to extend the Riverfront Park pathway under the Route 1 bridge into the green space on the other side in Anne Arundel County, with a real potential to create a neat network of walkways like those you find behind the Fairland Recreation complex.

There’s additional ones as well, but hopefully the above helps to illustrate that once we get the creative juices flowing, there are really some great opportunities to see Laurel thrive in the decades ahead! 🙂

Do you have a ‘big idea’ rumbling around in your head too? Please shoot me a note as I’m continuing to gather them all into a list that will help inform future conversations!