The Plans Don't Exist

Month after month I hear there's going to be a meeting where Kimco will announce its plans for Wilde Lake Village Center. The residents who attend those meetings time and time again find out they're just "listening sessions" to seek "Community Input" well in case you haven't figured it out there are no plans and there never have been any.
Kimco and the County are creating a smokescreen to make it look like progress is being made when in fact, it's going backwards. The New Zoning Amendment for redeveloping Village Centers passed by the County simply prolonghs the process by having meeting after meeting review board after review board before anything is passed. That hasn't even started yet because Kimco has yet to come forth any development plans. It's also holding me back, if there aren't any plans, I can't write about how flawed they are.Many of the residents who attend these meetings have lived in Wilde Lake since the late 1960s and they're aging hippies. They want to see preservation of everything that hearkens back to the Wilde Lake they moved to 40 years ago. By not redeveloping the Village Center earlier like other Centers have done, that created the problem Wilde Lake faces today. Congratulations, old hippies you're part of the problem, not the solution.
I, unlike Kimco or the County have come up with plenty of solutions, some of which I had back logged long before Giant Closed. The ideas for new stores that residents have suggested aren't bad but they won't come to the Center as is and if they did take the gamble, they wouldn't last. None of those stores are anchors therefore they don't draw a large enough percentage of the market to the Center. Village Centers have always been Grocery anchored. The only thing that will bring Wilde Lake back to life is another Grocery Store.
15 years ago Harpers Choice Village Center was all but abandoned, then Safeway built a store there and the merchants and shoppers came back in droves.Now if Oakland Mills can attract a Grocery Store why can't Wilde Lake? Oakland Mills Village Center has the worst location of any Retail Center I've ever seen, yet when they lose a Grocer, they can get another one. Heck, Kimco bought Oakland Mills after the Metro closed and while Kimco owned it, they attracted the current Food Lion before selling it to Cedar Shopping Centers. Back then, the red tape didn't exist for Village Center redevelopment.
Now people talk about blending in Wilde Lake with Town Center. The only time Town Center should be mentioned is in a pitch meeting to a potential Grocer citing the 5,000 new homes projected to be built there and how they would use Wilde Lake to go Grocery Shopping if you opened a store there. I don't hold onto vestiges of yesteryear and hope they will one day become viable again, I think what's viable now and what will remain viable and that is a new bigger Grocery Store. Like I've said many times, there are plenty of reputable Grocery Stores that don't have a niche in West Columbia or Columbia at all that love to stake their claim. Well, Grocers the place you can expand your market base into Columbia is Wilde Lake.
While Kimco and the County have scratching their heads and buying more times I have published both a short term and a long term solution for Wilde Lake.
It might not ultimately keep the current "Village Green" but it can be relocated and thus preserved in a viable manner. I will make no apologies for any of the statements I've made on this post. Here are my two solutions
http://columbiafuture.blogspot.com/2009/06/walgreens-to-rescue.html Short Term
http://columbiafuture.blogspot.com/2009/06/how-to-best-redevelop-wilde-lake.html Long Term