By Amanda Kolson Hurley

In an era when city living is virtually synonymous with cool, Columbia, Md., emanates suburban uncool. Located off U.S. Route 29 between Washington and Baltimore, Columbia is not a tight grid on the map, but a plate of spaghetti — a tangle of crooked parkways and cul-de-sacs. Cities reach for the sky, but Columbia hugs the ground, with shopping centers and man-made lakes passing for landmarks. In cities, 20-somethings get together at cafes for brunch; in Columbia, 40-somethings catch up while watching their kids at the pool or playground. Columbia’s version of a city hall is a nondescript building in an office park. The most colorful thing about the place is its twee street names, chosen from literature: Rivendell Lane, Marble Faun Lane, Rocksparkle Row.

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By Mike Giuliano
Columbia Pro Cantare’s concert on Sunday, May 14, at 8 p.m., falls on Mother’s Day, but that special occasion is actually coincidental for a concert program called “Anniversary Celebrations!”

“It’s the 50th birthday for Columbia, our 40th anniversary and the 20th anniversary of the Jim Rouse Theatre,” said Columbia Pro Cantare’s founding director, Frances Motyca Dawson, about three major anniversaries happening in 2017.

Dawson added that she is especially pleased that the on-stage mistress of ceremonies introducing the compositions on this festive program will be Liz Bobo, a former Howard County executive and former member of the Maryland House of Delegates.

Most of the music on the program has specific links to the events being commemorated.
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By Janene Holzberg

With six months’ worth of 50th birthday festivities already underway in Columbia, one coming event stands out for its goal of zeroing in on what the future may hold for the planned city.

“Founder’s Day: A Celebration of the Vision, Leadership and Legacy of James Rouse” will be held May 9 with a dual mission of honoring the vision of Columbia’s late founder at the half-century mark and defining ways to catapult that vision forward.

“Jim established the foundation for a better city, but the success of Columbia is up to the people living and working in Columbia today,” said Barbara Kellner, who is director of the Columbia Archives and is organizing the free event.

Founder’s Day “gives everyone a chance to explore the possibilities with other community leaders,” Kellner said.

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When James Rouse founded Columbia in June 1967, arts and education were inclusive components for the healthy, growing community, according to Pam Land, Howard County public school’s lead theater arts teacher.
To remember a man who supported the dreams of future artists, Land said more than 700 students representing Howard County’s 12 high schools will share Rouse’s influence on their passions during a Columbia 50th birthday tribute on Sunday, April 23 from 4 to 6:30 p.m. at Merriweather Post Pavilion.

Students representing each high school will give a five-minute artistic performance based on quotes from Rouse gathered within the last 50 years and selected by their respective teachers. Singers, dancers, instrumentalists and visual artists will use their talents to tell the tale of Rouse and Columbia as part of the city’s ongoing birthday celebration, which spans six months.

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By Len Lazarick

As the election returns came in the night of Nov. 5, 1974, Howard County’s old guard was riding high. It looked like their campaign to “Beat the BLOC VOTE” from Columbia had worked. Republicans would get their first county executive, and car dealer Charlie Miller, who had approved the plans to build Columbia as an elected county commissioner, would get to stay on the County Council.

But as the results from Columbia precincts poured in later, elation turned to shock. The new town had voted overwhelmingly for the liberal slate of Democratic candidates, nine to one. People who had lived in Howard County for just a few years beat the old timers.

Three of the five new County Council members actually lived in Columbia, and one, Dick Anderson, was even a former general manager of Howard Research and Development Corp., the Rouse Co. division building the planned community. A fourth, Lloyd Knowles, had moved near Columbia because of the new town, and the new county executive, County Council Member Ed Cochran, a mild-mannered research chemist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab where Knowles also worked, was seen as liberal, too. Only Cochran was born or raised in Maryland.

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You know the phrase “50 is the new 30?” Apparently, that applies to cities and towns, too.

Columbia, Md., turns 50 next year, and it’s never looked better. One of the most successful planned communities in the country, Columbia is a magnet in the Baltimore–Washington corridor, attracting families in search of good schools and businesses hungry for educated employees.

A planned community—where covenants limit everything from new construction to the color you can paint your home—isn’t for everyone (though there are three of them in our Best Places top 10).

But Columbia is clearly thriving. It ranks in the top 5% of the 823 places on this year’s list for job growth and economic opportunity. The schools are among the state’s best. And in this pricey corner of the country, Columbia’s median home price is just over $300,000, 11% less than in Gaithersburg, one county over. “I sometimes tell people this is a little bit like the Land of Oz,” says Gary Ahrens, a retired high school teacher and counselor who sells real estate for Keller Williams.

The prices may be right, but Columbia also owes its success to an idea—or maybe it’s an ideal. Founded in the late ’60s, the town made the concept of community building part of the master plan. Each of the 10 bucolically named villages (Wilde Lake, Oakland Mills) includes a mix of residences— apartments, townhomes, and single-family houses—to promote socioeconomic diversity. Individual homes don’t have mailboxes; they’re collected in groups on each cul-de-sac or block to encourage neighborly mixing. Some people worship at a church or synagogue, but others prefer an “interfaith center,” where the faiths rotate through a communal space.

By Len Lazarick

It was an odd celebration, even for the honorees. In hindsight, the way Ryland Homes commemorated its long, 35-year partnership with the Rouse Co. in 2001 was ironic for both companies.

In the Ten Oaks ballroom in Clarksville — at the far western edge of the Rouse Co.’s “new town” — the homebuilder that got its start in Columbia and built thousands of its first homes was saluting its patron and the provider of its home sites. Rouse, the new town developer that the 1960s media idolized, had propelled the small, home construction startup to become one of the largest homebuilders in America.

The baseball caps handed out that day said “Ryland Celebrates Rouse,” and on the back there was the cryptic embroidery “5K/$125M.” It meant 5,000 homes, a quarter of Columbia’s single family and townhouses, and $125 million in land sales.

MORE at MarylandReporter.com