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Much Ado About Liberty
Liberty Road - the Main Street of Eldersburg. Though not so quaint and historic as the Main Street in neighboring Sykesville, the road nonetheless serves as the backbone of a sprawling community. Over the years the road transformed from a single-stop-light byway to the main artery of the bustling suburbia that surrounds it. Eldersburg's humble beginnings centered on the MD 32 and MD 26 intersection - a convergence of roads that brought life to previously quiet land. Now, the future of Eldersburg depends on the same byways that birthed it. But is the burgeoning town growing up too fast for the roads to keep pace? Dust off the history books The genesis of Eldersburg starts as the creations of most towns do, with the relocation and settling of people from nearby cities such as Baltimore. John Elder, a landowner in Maryland, purchased about 600 acres around the intersection of the two roads and laid the town out around the year 1800. According to Towns and Villages of Carroll County, a book published by the Carroll County Chamber of Commerce, the town maintained a quiet demeanor well into the 1900s, when in the 1960s the completion of the Baltimore Beltway lead to a dramatic increase in Eldersburg's population and the beginning of its transformation into from rural countryside to suburbia. But what drew the new blood to the town? The short commute to Maryland's hub, Baltimore, fueled some of the relocation. "It was only a 20 minute trip, and that's what attracted people; that, and clean, open spaces being sold for considerably less than the building lots and houses in Baltimore and Baltimore County," the book explained. By 1975 much of the farmland that previously dominated Eldersburg had been overtaken. Today farmland around Eldersburg is even more scarce, especially around the intersection of Liberty Road and MD 32. Instead it has been replaced with strip malls and gas stations. Eldersburg's evolution was one vastly different from similar Carroll County towns and cities like Hampstead and Westminster. As the book mentioned, "Eldersburg went from farm crossroads to Baltimore suburb in less than a generation." Perhaps ironically, Towns and Villages mentioned that in 1976 a local paper announced, "a handsomely landscaped mall. Carrolltowne Towne Center. will bring the convenience and sophistication of suburban shopping to Southern Carroll County and many parts of Baltimore's far northwest suburbs." One need only looked at the dilapidated structure that stands now in Carrolltown's stead to see how much Eldersburg has changed since its founding. Despite the town's large size, bigger than most population centers in the county with the exception of Westminster, and despite the reference at the beginning of this sentence interspersed throughout this article, Eldersburg is not actually a town. Instead it bears the title of a Census-designated place (CDP), meaning it is an unincorporated population center that lacks local representation such as a town council. The closest it comes is with its Freedom Area Citizens' Council (FACC), run by Ellen Dix. Eldersburg's representation resides at the county seat of power in Westminster, and Carroll officials have in the past called it "the county's town." The baby outgrew its boots Eldersburg is no doubt still expanding - new residential construction off of Ridge Road at the town's eastern limits is proof of this. A major concern among town residents is that the existing infrastructure cannot accommodate new growth. While plans are in the works for improvements to MD 26, lack of State Highway Administration (SHA) funding has stalled the process. However, this funding was available when the plans for the road initially come about, according to Del. Susan Krebs (R - District 9B). These plans were included in the Freedom District Comprehensive Plan, a document published in 2001 that laid out specific changes to be made to the Eldersburg area. Among these changes were improvements to MD 26 and the business district surrounding it, dubbed the Boulevard District. The district extends west to east down MD 26 from Johnsville Rd. to just before the Liberty Reservoir bridge, extending outward to encompass the various commercially zoned areas along Liberty Rd. It follows MD 32 in a south-north fashion for a small distance from around Macbeth Way up to Bennett Rd, encompassing both commercial and industrial development. Ross Dangel, a board member of FACC, said that the Boulevard District was meant to be a "full redevelopment of the Liberty Rd. corridor complete with continuous turning and through lanes, landscaped medians and buffers, esthetic development improvements including bike paths and consolidated intersections to improve safety and traffic flow." The Freedom Plan further called for like signage, building façade treatments and similar architectural styles to be used. In addition to this, sidewalks were high on the planned agenda along with aesthetics. "With continuous sidewalk linking all the shops in the Boulevard District, the result would be an orderly streetscape and safe access for pedestrians and motorists alike," the document explains. "Appropriately placed crosswalks, service roads, controlled curb cuts and medians, visually appealing buildings and streets lined with trees would give the Boulevard District a true boulevard-like appearance." Dangel mention that after a series of public meetings and workshops over several months the SHA displayed mock-up displays of the proposed changes to town residents. It seemed Eldersburg had the golden ticket for a redesign; unfortunately this was not to be the case. Dangel explained that behind-the-scenes mismanaging by the county Board of Commissioners, then comprised of Donald Dell, Robin Frasier and Julia Gouge, lead to the plan meeting an early demise. The end result was the SHA taking the money offered for the Boulevard District improvements and redistributing it for a similar project in Frederick County, according to Susan Krebs. "We had to literally start all over and it took years just to be the project back online," Dangel said. According to the Maryland SHA Web site the revived road improvement project for Liberty Rd. has reached 35 percent completion, but funding for it has been deferred to other projects. As of now the project is on hold with no estimated completion time, but Krebs assured that with most of the planning already done that the project was well on its way. "The question is when do we expect to see construction or expect this to move forward, and that's the million dollar question," Krebs said. Eldersburg's Main Street Like most Main Streets, Liberty Rd. is lined with commercial property, in most cases taking the form of strip shopping centers. A lack of connecting roads makes it so drivers going about town often have to use the main thoroughfare. The mix of local traffic and commuters make Liberty Rd. a busy place, especially during rush hour. This leads to resident concerns not only over the commercial sprawl but also about the safety of MD 26. "When we first moved here there were about 10 cars on Liberty Rd. and now it's like the beltway," said Jeanette Vasbinder, a resident of 19 years. For some the strip malls have a less-than-appealing look. "It looks tacky, clearly, and this is a direct result of weak development standards at our county for decades. They basically rubber-stamped all development for decades without regard to traffic, safety or esthetics," Ross Dangel said. Krebs mentioned that new businesses in Eldersburg had little regard for the overall layout of the area, focusing only on their tract of land and not thinking how it might affect traffic flow in the town as a whole. "A business comes in and they put in their curb cut. there have been dozens and dozens of curb cuts along Liberty Rd. since I lived here in the last 25 years." The Freedom Plan called for a reduction in the number of curb cuts into the highway. It instead recommended businesses put their main entrances on connector roads wherever possible. Others mentioned that they would like to see less development. "I'd like to see them stop all retail development, bigger is not better in my opinion" said Robert Miller, a previous Eldersburg resident of 14 years. He added that he thought developers should not be allowed to sporadically build, but rather would have to tear down a building of equal size before building a new one. Accompanying the disapproval of the commercial development was a disapproval of the layout of Liberty Rd. "Route 26 is a mess by any one of several measures, you pick - safety, traffic, pedestrian access, esthetics, anything you can think of," Dangel said. "I am aware of no intersection that is well suited currently in any regard." Krebs agreed that Liberty was not the best laid out road. "It's been very poorly planned, just haphazardly allowing dozens of new ingresses and egresses, and it's been really challenging for traffic." "Haphazard" is not a word thrown around lightly, yet even the Freedom Comprehensive Plan called the development around MD 26 exactly that. She mentioned one area that was bad for traffic was the intersection of Ridge Rd. and Liberty Rd. "In the evening it's almost impossible. It almost takes three cycles of the light to get through to Oklahoma Rd." Dangel recounted a recent expedition he took as a pedestrian going down Liberty Rd. "I took my life into my hands, as none of Liberty Rd. has sidewalks, neither do any of the areas right near the high school [Liberty High School] or neighborhoods abutting roads that would lead to retail / commercial areas where we could easily walk." Links: Click here for a map of the Boulevard District as planned out in 2001 Track the progress of the MD 26 improvements: The Freedom District Comprehensive Plan. For specifics regarding the Boulevard District, see chapter 5 and appendix A. http://ccgovernment.carr.org/ccg/compplan/freedom/ |
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