The Center of the Park?

Since Lexington Park began, with a single gate, a bundle of smart fly-boys and a little hub of retail with everything their growing families needed, the “downtown” has been at the intersection of Route 235 and Great Mills Road.

To an extent largely obliterated by the franchise-swath rolling up 235, that was pretty much still the heart of the matter in 1995, the last time citizens talked to planners about Lexington Park.

But it isn’t the heart of it today.

That’s what two of five break-out citizen groups said when asked last week. They said the center of Lexington Park had slipped down Great Mills Road to St. Mary’s Square. (My personal choice is just across the street at 84 Lumber. Just saying…)

The consultants presented three visions. All kept the town center pretty close to that original core; two placed it still within the unalterable and indefinable overflight zone that cannot attract private investors. Click here to see the mapped visions. On these maps, that restrictive overflight zone – called the Aircraft Installation Compatible Use Zone (AICIZ) – is denoted by a thin blue line.

All three visions take a stab jostling about FDR Boulevard, in various ways moving its intersection northerly on Route 235 and farther south on Great Mills Road. But no plan sketches in anything much as far down as St. Mary’s Square. That’s roughly the spot, the consultants report, where Great Mills Road switches from primarily commercial to residential. I’d like to second the gentleman who requested, at the end of the June 15th meeting, that before the consultant begins to narrow down a draft from responses to the first three visions that at least some conceptualization of that St. Mary’s Square option be publicly presented as well. (Or even 84 Lumber. That would suit me perfectly fine as well.)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXho1GD3uHM]

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