March 29, 2024

A Short Video Re-cap of Building FDR Boulevard

Posted for Great Mills Trading Post
Leading Edge

It took more than five decades to get the final 1,000 feet of FDR Boulevard extended across Great Mills Road, but it only took Great Mills Trading Post five months to complete the job.

It took longer on the calendar than five months. There was a lot of timing involved for Great Mills Trading Post to orchestrate with the new and upgrading utilities that accompany a new road. Robert Trautman of Great Mills Trading Post describes the process as a something of a complicated dance waiting for each utility to move in and out, timing for the next phase to begin, dodging weather and seasons. The sewer and water connections weren’t finished until the end of the 2013 construction window.

Here are a few outtakes caught throughout the past months:

Planning wise, particularly long were the four decades between publicly recognizing in the 1950s the eventual need for the road and funding it for construction, which took into this millennium.

If the story of the trials and tribulations of the legendary FDR Boulevard of Lexington Park, MD, came to be made into a series of blockbuster movies, the segment Great Mills Training Post finished paving this summer of 2014 would be considered the Daddy of the saga.

The piece of the legend concerning this story is the piece of FDR Boulevard between Great Mills Road and Shangri La Drive in Lexington Park, MD. This piece of the road was first mentioned in the public annals of St. Mary’s County, MD, in the 1950s. Rose Turner, owner of Rose’s Place, a bar featuring topless dancers, sought zoning approval to expand. She was warned that her plans extended into an intended roadbed, but she was not prohibited from expanding.

Ms. Turner took her chances. She expanded and Rose’s Place II remained on Great Mills Road at the top of a T-intersection with what was then the only FDR Boulevard in town. FDR was a short road running from Three Notch Road (now MD Rt. 235) along the back boundary of Millison Plaza. It was then and remains today privately owned and maintained. In a saga, this would be the Grandaddy of FDR Boulevard.

The saga was of no interest to anybody again until the 1990s. This 1,000 feet just completed by Great Mills Trading Post, this Daddy of FDR Boulevard segment, wasn’t any significant part of the saga under discussion in the 1990s until a few years before the new Lexington Park Library opened in 2005. The library’s address is 21677 FDR Boulevard. The library would have been just down the street from Rose’s Place II, except there wasn’t a road. Rose’s Place II remained operating until Ms. Turner’s death in 2009.

Then a lot seemed to happen regarding FDR Boulevard in the 1990s. Suddenly there were Children of FDR Boulevard popping up all over. During the next quarter century a road was mapped to start at MD Rt. 4, it would run south, parallel southbound Rt. 235, and join Grandaddy FDR Boulevard at Millison Plaza.  The concept is that an alternative for local shoppers to access retail along the 235 corridor thus keeping them from adding to the highway traffic. The map of this concept is named FDR Boulevard. Snippets of the mapped road are being built as new commercial projects go up  along the southbound lanes of the 235 corridor. Each of the unconnected pieces are named FDR Boulevard.

None of those snippets are part of this Daddy of FDR Boulevard recently completed. This is about FDR Boulevard in downtown Lexington Park, MD. Long overdue. Ribbon cutting August 13, 2014: 6:30 pm.

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