Business & Tech

UMD, Cafritz Developers Near Property Sale Agreement

The Board of Regents has agreed to sell property to the developers, but the details have not been decided.

The proposed Whole Foods development in Riverdale Park crossed another hurdle this week, bringing Cafritz developers one step closer to breaking ground on the project.

According to Riverdale Park Mayor Vernon Archer, the UMD Board of Regents agreed to sell Calvert Tract, LLC the property required to build a bridge over the CSX train tracks.

Archer said he received an email from Carlo Colella, UMD’s vice president of administration and finance, informing him of the board’s decision to approve and move forward the sale of the property to developers.

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Archer was pleased with the decision, which he said came as no surprise.

“We were as far as we could go without the regents approval,” Archer said. “We are now in a better position to get back to the drawing board and get the bridge moving forward.”

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While this does represent a step forward for developers, there is still much to be decided. Although UMD has agreed to sell the property in principal, an exact sale price and the boundaries of the property have not yet been determined, Archer said.

The original price agreed upon was based on an old property assessment. A new assessment will need to be done before a price is negotiated.

“The price they were asking seemed to be based on old data, so an actual price has not been agreed upon,” Archer said.

The boundaries will also be somewhat dependent on the configuration of the bridge’s landing. Initially, a “T” crossing was suggested at Rivertech Court and Lafayette, but a “Y” configuration and a traffic circle are also being considered.

Archer was unaware of a specific time frame when the sale of the property would be completed, but that the board of regent’s decision to sell was a good and important step, though many steps remain the process. 

The board of regents' decision comes just one week after the University Park Town Council voted to appeal the Prince George’s County Planning Board’s approval of the Cafrtiz development Detailed Site Plan.

The planning board unanimously approved the Cafritz development DSP just after midnight on May 31, opening a 30-day period where the decision could be appealed. 

The DSP includes 126 townhomes, 855 multi-family units and just over 187,000 square feet of commercial space. The commercial space is slated to include the first Whole Foods grocery store in Prince George's County.

University Park’s decision to appeal the DSP also came as no surprise to Archer, and he was not overly concerned with the appeal’s effect on the project.

“I certainly expected it to be appealed by any number of sources and don’t expect it will have any long term impact," Archer said, "but it is certainly their right to do it."



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