Riverdale Park Closes In on Final Cafritz Position

The town council of Riverdale Park has their own vision for the development, and it includes and a traffic calming circle in the eastern side of the property.

At last night's worksession, town planner Paul Mortensen, presented the council with a map of the Cafrtiz property development that reflected the conditions and recommendations that the body has been honing for the past several weeks.

In the town's vision for the property, there would only be about 110 parking spaces to the west of the Whole Foods building to serve as "teaser" parking. This is a marked reduction from the minimum 175 spaces forsuch parking represented in the Cafritz developers' plan.

The remainder of the parking for the grocery store would be to the east of the building, and could either be another surface lot that would provide an additional 95 spaces or a parking structure that could provide three times that many.

In the council's plan, the Whole Foods building was shifted about 130 feet to the west to accommodate for these changes.

Riverdale Park's vision also incorporates a traffic circle on the east side of the property that would serve to calm traffic in the heavily residential portion of the development. The circle would connect to , easing and calming traffic in and out of the development.

The town council plans to number the buildings on the map created by Mortensen and include a table that indicates the uses (commercial, residential, office, etc.) for each building. They will present the map and accompanying table to neighboring municipalities, and the materials will be included with Riverdale Park's recommendations to the Prince George's County Planning Board later this month.

The council will meet again on Monday, Dec. 5 for their regular legislative session, where they will vote on their final recommendations on the Cafriz property rezoning.