Project Spotlight: 2009 NDC Prince George's County Project of the Year
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Central Kenilworth Avenue Revitalization Study

Each year the Neighborhood Design Center chooses a project that exemplifies civic engagement, quality of design, and positive impact on the community.  This year we are proud to honor the Central Kenilworth Avenue Revitalization Study in Prince George's County (for additional images of the project click here).


In the 1950s and 60s, Prince George's County experienced a boom of commercial development and strip shopping centers.  Unfortunately, these centers are aging and do not meet the current shopping needs of their surrounding communities, nor do these corridors meet the desire to have walkable communities and increased transit options.  Additionally, many of these commercial corridors cross multi-jurisdictional boundaries, further complicating redevelopment efforts.  As a model of how these aging shopping areas can be redeveloped, NDC's Prince George's County office worked with Templeton Knolls, the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission's Community Planning Division, the Town of Riverdale Park, and the Landscape Architecture Program at the University of Maryland College Park to create a collaborative community planning process for the Central Kenilworth Avenue Area (CKAR) (above).

Planning for the revitalization of the Kenilworth corridor was a challenge because the process involved bringing together multiple jurisdictions and agencies to collaboratively address issues that had been identified by the community.  Six focus groups were convened to address Streetscape, Code Enforcement, Crime, Business and Economic Development, Neighborhood Issues, and problems affecting some of the larger apartment complexes.  Eighty people attended an initial Community Workshop (right), which addressed all the identified issues and brainstormed solutions to them.  The senior class in Landscape Architecture devoted their community Design Studio to the CKAR project.  They conducted two additional community workshops with teenagers and young adults, and used the information gathered in the various workshops to develop a number of design proposals addressing streetscape, transit-oriented development, the redevelopment of two shopping centers, and improved community open space.  A final action plan, which incorporated the various student proposals, was developed and is currently being used by the CKAR Steering Committee to guide redevelopment efforts.

The project was chosen because it showcased NDC's mission of increasing community involvement in revitalization efforts; it exemplified the strengths of our talented volunteers, who worked over an entire year to come up with innovative design solutions to complex problems; and it demonstrated how NDC staff can draw on their relationships with multiple government agencies and community partners to implement an inclusive planning project.

We would like to congratulate the entire CKAR Community on this well-deserved award.  It is rare to find so may individuals in one area so passionate about improving their community and exhibiting an open willingness to work together to make that happen.