In just the up coming year, the city of Bowie, Maryland, is set to just take possession of a horse racetrack that was the moment a jewel in the field.
In the next calendar year, the town of Bowie, Maryland, is established to consider ownership of a horse racetrack that was when a jewel in the marketplace.
The observe later grew to become a education center, but now it sits abandoned.
Bowie leaders are trying to determine out what to do with the site it straddles Race Observe Street and backs up to the Patuxent River and the Anne Arundel County line.
The land, which is practically 200 acres, also arrives with a several strings attached.
For 1, the city has to enter into a joint-use arrangement with Bowie Point out College, which both equally sides see as a positive that will bolster ties between the two communities. And, the land has to be utilized for recreation, which can be defined in a great deal of means.
“Where the observe by itself sits, it is just definitely huge-open, flat land and genuinely, the apparent makes use of there would be ball fields and that kind of thing,” said Joe Meinert, the Bowie’s director of Organizing and Sustainability.
“We’re wanting to mature leisure space that our pupils could use for intramural types of activities, to grow the array of sporting alternatives that we could make out there to them,” stated Cassandra Robinson, Bowie State’s director of College Relations. “So room that could allow for new varieties of ball fields that we really do not have on campus presently.”
She also reported that there is fascination in potentially setting up a facility that the school’s ROTC plan and other users of the neighborhood could use, as well.
Land that sits together the Patuxent River, which is shallow and just about marshy in that space, will have to also be used for passive recreation, but even that nevertheless leaves quite a few alternatives.
“Our pure sciences division is performing a ton of function in that location, as effectively as in exploring new agricultural methods,” Robinson stated. “So, place that would make it possible for to increase and have additional prospects for some hands-on assignments that would get our learners out into the ecosystem for genuine encounters.”
Meinert explained there has also been dialogue about setting up trails along the h2o, which includes probably connecting to the Washington, Baltimore and Annapolis Path, which runs close by or even accomplishing anything for horseback riding and holding some link to the background of horses.
The county’s Park and Scheduling Division is looking at approaches to strengthen access to the h2o, and launching spots for kayaks is also becoming reviewed. Even so, it is too early to say if that stretch of river is even conducive to all those sorts of actions.
“It’s a incredibly rare prospect,” Meinert stated.
A workshop was held more than the weekend to solicit more group enter a few of thousand individuals have chimed in with ideas.
Bowie is also taking input on-line by means of Dec. 20. The target is to have a strategy for the residence completely ready for dialogue in July 2023.
“How that receives formed, what that appears like, and some other suggestions that may come to the desk is what we’re definitely fascinated in listening to,” Robinson said.
Bowie Condition University sits just exterior the metropolis boundaries, and for many years, there genuinely wasn’t substantially of a romance concerning the town and the faculty, but that has begun to modify.
“We’re truly enthusiastic about how the partnership and the synergy concerning what the metropolis is thinking about and what we’re pondering about. We consider that they are very very well-aligned,” Robinson mentioned.
“We’re definitely very pleased of remaining equipped to be in a position to collaborate with the city of Bowie on this job. We see it as a excellent chance for equally the metropolis and the college to occur away with new facilities that were being not obtainable to us in the past.”
