With a crucial meeting of the Prince George's County Planning Board just 17 days away, the University Park Town Council is set to convene Monday evening to hone the town's position on the proposed Cafritz development.

Scheduled for 7:30 p.m. at University Park Elementary, the special session "will consider the new proposals on the CSX bridge put forth by Cafritz as well as other related matters and will review a rough draft of the town's cover letter to the planning board."

Public comment will be accepted.

Among other issues, the council must decide whether to recommend rezoning the property to Mixed Use Infill (MUI) or Riverdale Park’s Mixed Use Town Center (MUTC) — or even to keep it under its current R-55 designation — and what conditions to attach in each case.

Members are also weighing how to approach a possible traffic study on the project's impact. 

Mayor John Tabori emphasized the importance of such an analysis at last Monday's council meeting, citing estimates pegging the new volume from the proposed development at about 22,000 to 23,000 cars a day.

"The importance of that [CSX] bridge is, I think, much higher than any of us thought," Tabori said, underlining its potential to draw traffic away from University Park's eastern border.

Tabori said the town should finalize its recommendations in a timely fashion to make sure their full weight is felt by the planning board.

"We have to make a decision. We have to be very clear about that decision in time to have it included in the packet and to make sure it is absorbed by the planning board members," he said. 

"I've never been overly impressed about the extent to which planning board members read the materials if they show up at the last minute," Tabori added. 

Riverdale Park, meanwhile, is also set to hold a worksession Monday at 8 p.m. At last week's meeting, the town council moved closer to finalizing its own Cafritz recommendations to the planning board.