A Mixed-Use Renaissance
Welcome back to the future at Patuxent Park in Lexington Park, Maryland.
Again, just as in the earliest American towns, both homeowners and business owners are looking at mixed-use opportunities and investments. Slow as it seems, the reemerging Lexington Park is popping up house-by-house within this unique and historic enclave.
Along the commercialized perimeter doctors and dentists once set up their practices, the upper floors their homes. Today gallery owners, bookstores, services from insurance to law to geo-technical engineering seek venues to set up business in just the same way.
Patuxent Park was built by entrepreneurs and Navy personnel. They constructed the roads, sanitary systems and the houses themselves upon what was then acres of farmland.
After nearly half a century of land-use laws seeking to separate where we live and where we work, land and energy costs are driving communities back to mixed-used zoning.
A small renaissance of renewal is taking hold in Patuxent Park, partially spurred by public investment in an overhaul of the sanitary systems followed by road upgrades. The pattern is being seen across the United States and in some European communities as well.
The resurrection of mixed-use properties is built upon everything from rising energy costs to infrastructure sustainability to expanding markets for shared live-work space. That “Market,” according to CooltownStudios, is now “yuppies, singles, dinks, and an important growing market: empty-nesters and ‘e-tirees’.”
Mixed-use properties are providing excellent capital investments and operational cost savings by combining a home and office mortgage or lease or letting one use (for example apartment rental) support the overhead of the other (business space).
Mixed-use can also garner assistance from programs designed to encourage entrepreneurship, revitalization and veteran housing and employment.
Communities from California to Maine have successfully retrofitted mixed-use zoning into urban centers and mid-sized towns. Communities have created artist colonies, revitalized urban spaces and revived historic centers blending work and living spaces in creative ways. In Maryland programs that support art as a revitalization tool encourage lofts above galleries. Near Reno, Nevada a new community seeks business owners to move into a blended community of apartments, offices and retail.
And, in Lexington Park, Maryland, it is happening in Patuxent Park.
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