City Council removes Amber Ridge public hearing and vote from agenda

By Mike Rauck

Amber Ridge Illustrative Plan

The Bowie City Council was scheduled to host a public hearing and a vote on plans for the Amber Ridge development project during Monday night's council meeting, but councilmembers voted to remove the item from the agenda at the beginning of the meeting.  The lack of a vote means that the Prince George’s County Planning Board will not have a Bowie City Council recommendation when it considers the project during its meeting today (Thursday), although Frank Stevens from the city’s Planning  & Community Development Department stated that he plans on addressing the Planning Board on behalf of the city.

Amber Ridge is a proposed housing development for 200 townhouse and 20,000 square feet of retail space on Route 301 South near the intersection with Mitchellville Road, and the Bowie City Council was scheduled to make a recommendation on both a preliminary plan of subdivision and a detailed site plan.

Two residents who signed up to speak during the Amber Ridge public hearing Monday night were permitted to address the council during the citizen participation portion of the meeting.

Bowie Mayor Tim Adams explained to residents Monday night that the city doesn’t make the final decisions on development projects, and the city needs to continue to fight to get zoning authority.  He also shared with residents that it’s important for the council to not take any actions that might jeopardize the city’s ability to get zoning authority.  With regard to the lack of action on Amber Ridge, Adams stated, “It was the best way for us at this time to address the issue.”

In a phone call with Bowie Living, District 3 Councilman Adrian Baofo stated that the decision to cancel the Amber Ridge hearing and vote is not indicative of how the council will treat future development project recommendations.  The council is concerned that its recommendations won’t be taken seriously if the development plans before the council are always rejected, according to Baofo, so the council is currently working on a new approach.  Boafo indicated that a closer working relationship with the county Planning Board is likely part of that plan.

Based on a memorandum of understanding between the City of Bowie and the Maryland-National Capital Parks and Planning Commission, the city has the right to review, comment, and make recommendations on all major development applications in the city or within one mile of the city limits.  That includes reviews of conceptual site plans, preliminary plans of subdivision, and detailed site plans.

The city has adopted development review guidelines and policies for reviewing major development applications.  The guidelines call for a stakeholders meeting to be held for an application, a review of the application by city planning staff, a public hearing and recommendation by the resident-lead Bowie Advisory Planning Board, and finally a public hearing and recommendation by the Bowie City Council.  Council approved recommendations become part of the record when the county reviews a development application, and it’s common for city staff to address the county Planning Board, District Council, and County Council in support of Bowie City Council recommendations.

Commercial buildings for sale on Old Annapolis Road in Bowie

By Mike Rauck

Hardy's BBQ - one of the current tenants

A group of three commercial buildings on Old Annapolis Road owned by the Melvin family (owners of the former Melvin Motors) are for sale with a $1.5 million asking price. The sale is being brokered by NAI Michael.

Some of you might recall former businesses located in these buildings including 7-11, Grand Illusion video arcade, Best Pie, Acme Stove Company, and a hobby shop featuring an outdoor track for remote controlled cars. Used bookstore Déjà vu Books once hosted story time for kids here in the 1990s.

What businesses do you remember being at this location?

Hardy’s BBQ and New Life Ministries are among the current tenants.

Click here for more information.

Additional traffic signal coming to Church Road

By Mike Rauck

Intersection of Church Road and Fairview Vista Drive

The Bowie City Council allocated $250,000 this week to pay half the cost of a new traffic signal to be installed at the intersection of Church Road and Fairview Vista Drive.  The county will fund the other half.

It's not yet known when the traffic signal will be installed.

The Prince George’s County Department of Permitting, Inspections and Enforcement (DPIE) wouldn’t grant some permits for the construction of the new Bowie Ice Arena without funding for the traffic signal.

According to a memo to the Bowie City Council from City Manager Al Lott, DPIE waived requirements for other road improvements associated with the project in exchange for the traffic signal.

Area residents voiced concerns in recent months about the speed and volume of traffic on Church Road in the wake of the death of fourteen-year-old Kamal Nashid. Nashid was struck and killed by a car last June while crossing Church Road at Fairview Vista Drive – the location of the future traffic signal.

Legislation is currently being considered in the 2020 Maryland General Assembly Session that would allow a speed monitoring system to operate along a 2.5 mile stretch of Church Road between Old Stage Road and Dunwood Valley Drive.  That stretch of Church Road includes the intersection with Fairview Vista Drive.

Jamaican restaurant now open in Collington Plaza

By Mike Rauck

Getti’s Island Spyce Restaurant opened this week in Collington Plaza, 3548 Crain Highway in Bowie. The restaurant serves Jamaican style food, including Jerk Chicken and Bull Bay Style King Fish, as well as organic juices that are made on site.

Caribbean recipes can vary from island to island, and the staff is quick to point out that the food served by Getti's is authentic Jamaican. To emphasize that point, the interior of the restaurant is decorated with colors of the Jamaican flag, including a large Jamaican flag painted on the wall behind the bar.

Getti’s will eventually offer alcohol once a liquor license is obtained.

About eight small tables are available for dining in, but Getti’s is primarily a takeout restaurant.

Click here to go to the restaurant’s Facebook page.

Alcohol will be served at the bar once Getti's obtains a liquor license.

Not many places to sit. Getti's is primarily a takeout restaurant.

Jerk Chicken lunch special with served with Getti's fruit punch

Organic juices made on site

Menu (front)

Menu (back)

Swimming opportunities for students and local community coming to the newly renovated Bowie State aquatic center

By Mike Rauck

An open house was held Saturday at the newly renovated Bowie State University Aquatic Center to give students, alumni, and members of the local community a chance to tour the facility and ask questions about upcoming swim programs.   The pool has been shuttered for most of the last twenty-two years.  Swim programs are expected to start in March.

“I’m very excited for our campus and for our students and our alumni and friends of the university to have access to our pool once again,” Bowie State University President Dr. Aminta Breaux shared Saturday from a pool-side podium.  “We are continuing to change and evolve to meet the needs of our students.”

Among the intended uses for the university’s eight-lane lap pool are recreational swimming opportunities for students and alumni, swim lessons, water aerobics, rehabilitation for student athletes, and swim certification programs for the school’s ROTC students.

Bowie State currently rents pool time from the Sport Fit health club for its ROTC program.

According to Vice President of Intercollegiate Athletics and Recreation Clyde Doughty, Jr., the pool will also be available to organizations and nearby residents who aren’t affiliated with the university to help offset costs and to showcase the campus and facilities to the public.  Doughty expects swim teams to rent lanes and host swim meets, and an annual membership program will be available to individuals for recreation and lap swimming.

Details about the membership program are still being planned, but the school expects a yearly charge of around $175.

A scuba training group and a swim team have already inquired about renting pool time.

BSU President Dr. Aminta Breaux

Long before the Sports & Learning Complex in Landover and the Fairland Aquatic Center in Laurel opened, the Bowie State University Aquatic Center was an important resource for the local swim community.  The Bowie High School Swim Team hosted meets at the university, and the Prince George’s County high school championship meet was held at the pool each year.  The BSU pool was also home to the Bowie Bulldogs, a local club team that was not affiliated with the university or Bowie High School.

To implement the new swim program, Bowie State hired local pool management veteran Mark Wascavage to be the school’s new Aquatics Coordinator.  Wascavage recently retired from Prince George’s County Public Schools after teaching at Duval High School for forty-five years, and he has more than forty years of experience managing pools, including more than twenty years managing the Belair Bath & Tennis pool in Bowie.

Wascavage graduated from Bowie State University with a master’s degree.

Doughty is working on plans to bring club sports and other recreation opportunities to BSU students, including club swimming.  Reponses to a recent student survey indicate a high interest in soccer and lacrosse.
“We also need facilities to accommodate and support those interests,” Dr. Breaux stated, and she mentioned recent lobbying efforts to acquire land to support the club sports initiatives.

Dr. Aminta Breaux. writes, "We are Bowie Bold!"

Dr. Breaux addressed lawmakers in Annapolis in January about the need for land that was once part of the former Bowie Race Course.  Although the racetrack property isn’t adjacent to the university, it’s only one mile away.

City of Bowie officials are lobbying to have the racetrack property gifted to the city for open space and recreational purposes.

According to Dr. Breaux, the aquatic center renovation is a milestone that fits neatly into the theme and title of the school’s current strategic plan, Racing to Excellence.  She also touted the nearly complete 400-space parking lot with a new solar canopy as well as plans for a new residence hall and entrepreneurship center that is expected to open by July 2022.

At the conclusion of a question and answer session at Saturday’s open house, Dr. Breaux enthusiastically wrote on the aquatic center chalkboard, “We are Bowie Bold!”

Mike Rauck of Bowie Living endorses Len Lucchi for Mayor

By Mike Rauck

I’ll be enthusiastically voting for Len Lucchi for mayor on Tuesday, November 5th.

I first met Len fourteen years ago when he founded and chaired the Citizens for Bowie Police – a grassroots organization that helped educate residents and lobby councilmembers about a referendum to bring a police force to Bowie.  The organization prevailed, and Len went on to serve as the first chair of the Bowie Public Safety Committee where he participated in the creation of the Bowie Police Department.

Len later went on to serve on the city’s BGE task force which resulted in the implementation of the Bowie Electric Reliability Plan (BERAP).  Power outages in Bowie’s Levitt neighborhoods were reduced as a result of those efforts.

Len also served as the city's lobbyist in Upper Marlboro and Annapolis to bring county and state funding to Bowie projects.  Some of his successes include acquiring funds to support the senior center, parks, schools, the Bowie Center for the Performing Arts, and the police department’s state-of-the-art call center.

Some of the issues that Bowie residents have identified this election cycle as top priorities are addressing school overcrowding, getting a new high school in Bowie, land use authority for Bowie, addressing traffic congestion and road improvements on Route 197, Route 214, Route 301, and Church Road.  Resolutions to all of those issues require county and state help. We need Len’s experience at the city, county, and state level to help us navigate those waters.

I know Len to be a man of high integrity who values community and family.  He's been a fixture in Bowie since he moved into his Somerset section home as a young boy in 1962, and he's committed to keeping Bowie a great place to live.

Len has held leadership positions in various organizations, including the Greater Bowie Chamber of Commerce, the Maryland Chamber of Commerce, the Prince George's County Chamber of Commerce, and the Maryland Government Relations Association.  I'm looking forward to having him put those leadership skills to good use as the next mayor.

See below for my analysis of the mayoral race and the other candidates.


Mayoral Race

Bowie is about to get a new mayor for the first time in more than twenty years after Mayor G. Fred Robinson decided not to seek reelection.  The election for a new mayor and the six council seats will take place tomorrow, Tuesday, November 5th from 7am to 8pm.

Five candidates are vying for the mayor’s seat, making it likely that the new mayor will be elected by a plurality rather than a majority of voters.

Three candidates are considered to be stronger than the others, and it’s conceivable that the next mayor could win with as little as 34% of the vote.  If turnout is similar to the 2015 election, the next mayor of this city of nearly 60,000 residents could be elected with as few as 2,300 votes.

All of the candidates seem to have similar policy positions.

• Address overcrowding in the schools
• New high school for Bowie
• Improvements to county and state roads to deal with traffic congestion.
• Support arts and entertainment district in Old Town Bowie
• Adequately fund and support the Bowie Police Department.
• Be fiscally responsible and preserve Bowie’s triple-A bond rating
• No overdevelopment
• Bowie to have greater say in land use decisions
• No support for high density development on the Freeway Airport property

With similar policy positions among most of the candidates, the challenge for voters is to determine who has what it takes to serve as the chairperson for the Bowie City Council, and to  work with staff and the other councilmembers to address Bowie's challenges.



Keith Jackson

Keith Jackson is running for mayor for the second time.  The 25-year-old candidate is operating a barebones campaign, and his monthly campaign finance reports indicate that he’s raised no money through mid-October.

Jackson participated in several of the candidate forums, and his answers to questions show that he lacks a basic understanding of the issues affecting Bowie.


Emerson DeWitt Ruth

Emerson DeWitt Ruth (he goes by DeWitt) is a likable and energetic veteran and former Los Angeles police officer who was previously elected to two different school boards in California.

Ruth unsuccessfully ran for the District 5 seat on the Prince George’s Board of Education in 2006, shortly after moving to Maryland from the west coast.

Ruth’s involvement in city affairs is mixed.  He has served on the city’s Board of Personnel Appeals for fourteen years, but voting records show that Ruth hasn’t bothered to vote in the last two city elections.

It was a strategic error for Ruth to wait until September to start his campaign.  He doesn’t have the same name recognition as other candidates, and Ruth should have given himself more time to play catch-up by knocking on doors and attending community events throughout the spring and summer.  He didn’t.

I think it’s unlikely that Ruth will win the election, but his hard work over the last several weeks could yield him several hundred votes.  That could be enough to affect the outcome if the vote totals for the top three contenders are close.


Tim Adams

Tim Adams is a 25-year Bowie resident and an accomplished business executive.  He’s the founder and owner of SA-TECH, a government contracting company that primarily serves U.S. military customers.

Despite his business successes and stints on the boards of several non-profits, Adams has had little involvement in local Bowie matters.  He did serve as chair for the Bowie State Foundation (an endowment for the university), and he received an honorary doctorate degree from the school two years ago.  However, Adams has never served on a city committee, and he hasn’t even bothered to vote in the last several city elections.

Adams offers no major policy differences from the other candidates, but his campaign has changed the fundraising dynamic of the race, forcing the other candidates to raise more money to compete.

Tim Adams made his first run for political office in 2018 by launching a primary challenge against incumbent Doug Peters for the Maryland District 23 Senate seat.  Adams spent a whopping $475,000 of his own money on his failed bid for the Senate seat – a prelude for his mayoral run.

As of October 15th, Adams contributed $46,000 of his own money to his campaign, and he loaned the campaign another $10,000 (loans to campaign are sometimes paid back in part or in full).  To put those contributions in perspective, the combined expenses of all mayoral candidates in the 2015 race was $44,000, which is less than what Adams spent himself for just a portion of the 2019 race.

Business executives have had mixed success making the transition to public office.  With Adams lack of participation in city affairs and his lack of familiarity with city government and land use issues, that transition would come with challenges.


Dennis Brady

After spending 22 years on the Bowie City Council, Brady has a group of loyal supporters. In some ways he's like an incumbent, and the other candidates have had the burden of earning name recognition with the voters.

Brady is campaigning with the tag line, "Experience Matters!"  Primarily he's referring to experience on the council, although he also served on the Maryland Municipal League, the Prince George's County Municipal Association, and the Metropolitan Washington Council of Government Board of Directors.

Brady hasn't been on the council since 2015 when he lost the race for mayor to G. Fred Robinson, but he kept himself busy by organizing a grassroots group, Citizens against the Super Conducting Magnetic Levitation Train (Maglev), to lobby against the construction of a Maglev rail line through Bowie.

Closing out 2018 and looking ahead to 2019

By Mike Rauck

New Year’s Eve is the day that I usually publish the annual “Bowie Living Most Popular Facebook Posts of the Year” article.  The shooting at the Capital Gazette office in Annapolis and the death of my friend John McNamara defined 2018 more than anything, and the term “popular posts” isn’t appropriate this year.  Along with many tributes to John and his colleagues, the Bowie City Council dedicated a plaque in John's memory in the council chambers at City Hall in October.

In city politics, Dufour Woolfley was elected in a special election to fill the District 2 seat on the Bowie City Council that was left vacant after Councilmember Diane Polangin was recalled in late 2017.  Councilmember Courtney Glass resigned her District 3 seat in November.  The council will be appointing someone to temporarily fill the District 3 seat, and a regular election for all council seats will take place next November.

At the county level, Angela Alsobrooks became the first woman to be elected county executive in Prince George's County, and Todd Turner, Bowie's representative on the county council, was reelected and became the chair of the council.

Maryland Senator Doug Peters retained his seat, as did Maryland House of Delegates members Geraldine Valentino-Smith and Marvin Holmes.  Ron Watson was elected to one of the 23B delegate seats formerly occupied by Joe Vallario.

Development continues to be a hot topic in the city.  Plans for the Aspen luxury apartments at Melford and a small retail space were approved, and plans for the Karrington (South Lake) development continue to move forward.  A proposed Maglev line that would cut through the Old Bowie section of the city were removed in favor of alternate routes, and Walmart canceled plans to build a Supercenter on Route 301 across from Collington Plaza.  Plans for the proposed Pecan Ridge development were discussed but not finalized, and the 80 houses will never be built if neighbors have their say.

Look for progress to be made on the new ice arena in 2019 as well as discussions about additional indoor basketball courts in the city.

The county presented proposed changes to Race Track Road with area residents, and options for the future of Governors Bridge were presented at an open meeting in October.

A reconstructed Tulip Grove Elementary School opened in September, although area schools continue to have heating, cooling, and other maintenance issues.  Voters approved a state-wide referendum in November that will force state casino revenue to be funneled to schools, and the Commission on Innovation and Excellence in Education (the Kirwan Commission) started to put a price tag on a proposal to make Maryland schools more competitive.

The following were opened or completed in 2018.

• Hardy’s BBQ
• Dunkin’ Donuts / Baskin Robbins opens in Hilltop Plaza
• Courtyard Marriott at Melford
• Timothy Dean Restaurant
• Rock & Toss Crab House
• Ruby’s Southern Kitchen
• Lidl
• Sky Zone in Pointer Ridge Plaza
• Zip’s Dry Cleaning at Freestate Shopping Center
• Salvera Modern Maryland Cannabis Dispensary
• Burlington Coat Factory
• Bowie Heritage Trail – Phase 1

The following closed or are in the process of closing.

• Ruby Tuesday’s
• Diplomat Cleaners
• Little Caesars
• Sears
• Bowie Town Center Food Court

Look for the following changes in 2019 and beyond.

• An expanded Aldi in Hilltop Plaza
• A new Mezeh Mediterranean Grill in the Bowie Town Center
• A "family-friendly entertainment destination" in the former Bowie Town Center Food Court
• Bowie Heritage Trail - future phases (pending funding)