This site formerly housed the Little Tavern, which has now been destroyed.
As construction workers demolish the Little Tavern on Route 1, College Park officials are looking toward long-term plans of integrating the property into a project replacing College Park City Hall.
READ MORE: College Park officials demolish Little Tavern
“The bulldozing of this tavern has to do with the future vision we have for this block,” District 2 Councilman P.J. Brennan wrote in an email. “It will be a great place to sit and enjoy lunch from one of the local business establishments or relax with friends on Sundays during the Downtown College Park Farmers Market.”
Plans for the property, part of overall efforts to give Route 1 a facelift, went into motion last year when the City Council voted to rebuild at the hall’s current site across the street from Ledo’s and behind Smoothie King.
While the city has yet to draw up plans for the new building, officials have a general idea of what they want it to look like, said Terry Schum, the city’s planning director.
City staff presented this concept to the mayor and City Council in August, Schum said. A single building would house 30,000 square feet of city offices and 45,000 square feet of university offices. While the two will be separate, they will share a lobby, central atrium, circulation system, public plaza and retail space.
The development would occupy the store frontage between Lehigh and Knox roads now housing Smoothie King, Subway and the tavern property, among other businesses.
“[The design concept] assumes that the neighboring properties that front Route 1 now are gone,” Schum said. “From the Little Tavern over to Smoothie King, all of those have to have been acquired and demolished.”
Shanghai Café manager Betty Jiang said the city has yet to contact the business about acquiring it — and the restaurant has five years left on its lease.
“Someone told me years before that the city hall wanted to build a new building here — take down all the buildings,” Jiang said. “But I haven’t heard anything since then.”
As the city moves forward to create the new space, obstacles remain, including challenges that come with collaborating with the university, Brennan wrote.
“There are a number of complex issues that need to be resolved for a joint-use development between the City and UMD: we are working on assembling the parcels of land, we need to secure financing, we need to go through a Detailed Site Plan process,” Brennan wrote. “There’s a lot to do and a number of strong leaders at the table to lead this project forward.”
