General Audience

College Park residents and students at the city’s University of Maryland gathered Saturday to brainstorm a more pedestrian-friendly U.S. Route 1 – with music-filled gazebos, tree lined-sidewalks and a grocery store.

The Think-A-Thon meeting at the College Park Community Center yielded outlines, sketches, lists and a lot of notes as about 60 people — among them university staff and elected officials — sat down to find creative solutions to the challenges of Route 1.

In their discussions, attendees tried to address challenges such as too much traffic and a lack of independently-owned businesses, and tried to reimagine Route 1 as a space with more aesthetically-pleasing architecture, spaces for people to linger, art and music.

The event, organized by the Center for Synergy at the university’s college of Arts & Humanities, is modeled on previous Think-A-Thons held in Baltimore.

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by Jordan Branch, The Writer's Bloc

University and College Park community members will participate in an open discussion this Saturday titled Think-A-Thon, an event to promote infusion of the arts and culture into the planning process for revitalizing Baltimore Avenue.

The venue is a “think and do type of event,” using the arts and culture to look for solutions to Route 1 obstacles, said Nicky Everette, the marketing and communications director for the College of Arts and Humanities.

The discussion is hosted by the College of Arts and Humanities’ Center for Synergy at this university and will be held from 2 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. at the College Park Community Center and Youth Soccer Complex.

For the past two years Think-A-Thons have occurred in Baltimore City to discuss the city’s challenges.

However, this year Sheri Parks, research, interdisciplinary, scholarship and programming associate dean for the College of Arts and Humanities, said it was time to start a discussion in College Park about the future of Baltimore Avenue’s development.

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