Marriott at Metro by Sarah Nemeth
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n eight-floor, 93,000-square-foot. Marriott Courtyard hotel planned for the corner area of Belcrest Road and East West Highway will have 162 rooms, meeting rooms, and a restaurant inside. The hotel is being proposed by Taylor Development and will meet all the minimum constraints set forth in the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission’s Transit District Overlay Zone, said Taylor representative Ed Gibbs at a Sept. 2 meeting of the Hyattsville Planning Committee. Gibbs said the hotel will add “synergy” to the existing retail and residential components of the land, which is situated just east of the Prince George’s Plaza Metro station and garage. “[The] architects have been studious to maintain the same building materials … as used in the residential component,” he said. The building will be made of brick, metal and EIFS – which is also called synthetic stucco – in similar colors to the Mosaic at Metro buildings, Gibbs said. An existing gas station also at the corner of Belcrest and East West will not be part of the project, he said. However, there will be a landscaped buffer between the gas station and the hotel, said Tom Galle, of Marriott International Inc. According to Galle, Courtyard hotels are, “a businessman’s hotel without the hustle and bustle,” and are “geared toward a transient business traveler.” There are Courtyards on Embassy Row in Washington, D.C. and in Tysons, Va. along
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Vol. 5 No. 9
Hyattsville’s Community Newspaper
September 2008
At park, it’s all fun & games
by Olivia Overman and Sarah Nemeth
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ocated just outside Washington, D.C. in the City of Hyattsville, the 32-acre Magruder Park offers opportunities to work, play and socialize throughout the year. The fields are rich with foliage, including forested areas with native plant life, some evergreens and magnolia trees spattered throughout the entrance. A paved path lined
with baby trees wraps around soccer fields and offers a place for bicyclists, dog walkers and stroller pushers to enjoy a morning routine or a relaxing meander at twilight. A small wooden plank bridge called Margo’s Bridge, is named for Hamilton Street resident Margot Nassau, a dog walker who had an unfortunate experience with the small bridge.
Legend has it that Nassau was walking her dog and her mom’s dog in the park, when the canine couple pulled so hard at their leashes that Nassau fell and broke her wrist near the bridge. It was subsequently named after her said a friend, Sarah Eisen. Owned partly by the city and partly by the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, the park was donated to the city by Hyattsville resident William Pinkney Magruder in 1927. Parts of it have gone through the hands of several owners including Hillary T. Willis and his family. The original deeds from Pinkney and Willis state that the parkland is to be used for Caucasians only, according to documents provided by the city administration. Today, although the deed has not been reworded, the park is patronized by people of all color, including many Hispanic soccer teams. “The City of Hyattsville is a wel-
coming, diverse community for individuals and families of all colors, creeds and configurations,” Mayor William Gardiner said. “We still must examine how our programs and events can be more inclusive and welcoming, but we have come a long way since Magruder Park was donated with the restricted deed.” Park events are organized through permits issued by the Hyattsville Department of Recreation and the Arts, allowing people and residents to take advantage of this natural gem near the nation’s Capitol. The park is the home field for the Hyattsville/Mount Rainier/Brentwood Boys and Girls Club, which uses the fields for baseball, soccer and football. “The park currently has three baseball fields, one soccer field as well as one football field,” said Mark Tartaro, president of the HMB group. The soccer field is slated to
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Finding a place by Sarah Nemeth
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Hyattsville Life & Times PO Box 132 Hyattsville, MD 20781 PRSRT STD U.S. POSTAGE PAID Permit # 43 Easton, MD 21601
he City of Hyattsville has, on occasion, taken great pains to extend its boundaries. But for the past decade has been diligently reminding media outlets that certain areas do not fall within the incorporated area’s borders. It has become fashionable for news venues like Fox 5, NPR, the Gazette and WAMU to refer to areas like Chillum, Langley Park, Avondale and parts of Landover as “Hyattsville.”Those areas are either unincorporated portions of Prince George’s County, and have specific names of their own, said Matthew McKnight, a Hyattsville resident who has studied the city’s demographics. “The biggest problem is that it just generally creates an inaccurate, usually negative perception of the town,” McKnight said. “Crime rates in Hyattsville are much lower than crime rates in the area people are calling, ‘Hyattsville.’ Poor perceptions of a neighborhood can cause our real estate market to be less than what it could be, our insurance rates to be higher than they should be … and may even have ramifications for government funding of projects in the town. If people see Hyattsville as a ‘risk,’ why are they going to invest in it?”
In May 2006, ABC ran an episode of it’s now defunct series, “Commander in Chief ” which depicted Hyattsville as a seedy area with a large amount of homicides. Mayor William Gardiner and County Executive Jack B. Johnson complained to the network and received a formal apology from ABC for the incorrect portrayal of the city. Over the past 10 years there have been 18 murders in Hyattsville, and 4 in 2008 so far, said Hyattsville Police Chief Douglas Holland. This year has had the most murders of any over the past decade. Only two zip codes include the City of Hyattsville, Gardiner said. A portion of the University Hills subdivision has a 20783 zip code, according to maps. “The Post Office uses ‘Hyattsville’ to describe about five zip codes areas … The land area is enormous compared to the city’s area, and the population of the zip code area was about 150,000 according to the 2000 Census,” he said. “The city receives many calls for service, including police calls, from county residents living outside the City of Hyattsville but in an area sometimes referred to as ‘Hyattsville’ – or des-
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Included: The September 10, 2008 Issue of The Hyattsville Reporter—See Center Section