Home site declared the last in Columbia

“We’re reaching the
point where there’s no more land to develop,” said Maggie Brown,
the Columbia Association’s president, who joined other dignitaries
at 8 a.m. on the last undeveloped home site in River Hill,
Columbia’s last residential village.

They were
there, wielding gold shovels and wilting in their heels and shirt
sleeves, to collectively break ground for what will be the village’s
final single-family residence, slated for completion in September.

“It’s a momentous occasion,” said Sang Oh, the Howard
County executive’s representative. “I came here in 1973, and
people always talked about Columbia eventually being built up.

“I can’t believe we actually got to that date.”

Actually, the finish is at least 17 years behind schedule.

Columbia dwarfs most American real estate
developments in terms of scope and scale. It occupies 10 percent of
Howard’s land area, has taken nearly two generations to complete and, if
incorporated, would be Maryland’s second-largest city.

For the most part, it’s a city that works. There are
concerns about crime and the economic viability of some retail
centers. But Columbia enjoys a reputation of having good schools,
good recreational facilities and a diverse ethnic mix.

All that’s left now is to fill in the holes, which will be
done mostly with commercial development and a handful of multifamily housing units.

Columbia’s first residents
moved into the initial village of Wilde Lake in 1967, when home prices
there averaged in the $25,000 range (today, they sell for $160,000 to
more than $1 million).

Those who came first were
buying into a vision — founder James W. Rouse’s vision — more so than a development.

“In the early
days, the people who came here were really pioneers,” said David E.
Forester, development director for Howard Research and Development,
a division of the Rouse Co., which has overseen the Columbia
project since its inception. “They came for a new social setting.”

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Social and ethnic diversity was the
cornerstone of Rouse’s image of Columbia, which he announced in
1963.

Then known for his shopping malls, Rouse
envisioned it as a bigger project: a self-contained community with all
the necessary recreational and retail amenities and a populace made
up of all sorts of races and income levels living side-by-side.

It was a ’60s vision that many embraced.

But eight presidents later, people are moving to Columbia,
which now has a population of nearly 96,000, for “convenience and
location,” Forester said.

Situated midway between
Baltimore and Washington, Columbia offers commuters a suburban
home base with lots of perks, including 27 swimming pools, more than
3,500 businesses, 4,700 acres of park land and 83 miles of trails.

“I came for the planned community and the things
that come with it, the pools and such,” said Laurie Gift, who will
move into the groundbreaking house with her husband, Dana Gift,
and their three children.

Those who live in the single-
family homes — which account for 40 percent of Columbia’s
38,350 residences — are typically well-to-do, two-wage families,
and they’re not doing much to keep up the economic diversity.

The average home price in Columbia hovers in the
$300,000-plus range. In River Hill, where homes are twice the size of
the first Wilde Lake houses, the average price is $436,000. The Gifts
paid somewhere around there, but they won’t say exactly what because
their deal is not yet final.

This skewing toward
affluence might not be exactly what Rouse had in mind, but Colum
bia has largely stuck to the original plan, said Alton J. Scavo,
general manager of Columbia for the Rouse Co.

“There
are opportunities for folks to grow and prosper here,” he said.

Planners originally thought they’d finish development in 1985.
But economic fluctuations coupled with expanding scope threw the
schedule off, Scavo said.

“How old is a city like
Baltimore, anyway?” said Scavo. “Think about it. That’s the business we’re in, building cities. The question is did it
turn out as expected. And yes, it did.”

Scavo says
there is still “much more to be done” in Columbia.

“We’re not there yet,” he said. “Hopefully, we’ll never be fin
ished.”

Two condominium buildings are under
construction in River Hill, with a townhouse development just
beginning, and the Town Center area has yet to realize its
residential potential — though all housing there will likely
be multifamily.

(Scavo said there are still tiny
pockets of land scattered throughout the city that haven’t been
developed for various reasons, and those could potentially end up
as single-family homes. But as far as the official roster is
concerned, Tuesday’s groundbreaking marked the last of such homes in
the last village.)

Commercial space is the biggest undeveloped area. Several hundred acres are waiting to be
filled with industrial parks and businesses, while only a few acres
remain for housing, said Forester.

Because of the
shrinking demand for new structures, some builders, such as
Allan Waschak of Allan Homes, the Gift family’s builder, have
had to shift their focus.

Until a few years ago,
Waschak drew 100 percent of his business from building in Columbia. He’s had to expand to building custom homes elsewhere in the
county and doing remodeling in Columbia.

“For years,
I thought that when Columbia came to an end, so would I,” said
Waschak, who started his business in Columbia 23 years ago. “But
about six years ago, people started asking us to finish their
basements, and that grew into a home improvement business.”

Waschak has the added cushion of promised building in Em
erson and Fairwood, two other Rouse Co. projects in Maryland that
are just getting under way.

A decade ago, Rouse began
work on Summerlin, a planned community in Nevada outside of Las
Vegas. It spans 25,000 acres and currently has 50,000 residents.
Rouse Company officials say it will eventually be home to 160,000 and
have 30 villages (Columbia has nine, plus the Town Center area, an
unofficial village).

Compared to Columbia, Summerlin still has a long way to go.

But Columbia has
a long run ahead too, Scavo predicted, continuing to shift and
change through revamping and redevelopment.

Tuesday’s groundbreaking was “a landmark,” he said, “one of dozens
yet to come.”