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Located just outside the eastern boundary of the District of Columbia, Greater Cheverly encompasses a 3.4 square mile area, with the Town of Cheverly at its core surrounded by smaller residential communities. Despite its strategic location and assets, the area faces significant challenges. A large number of regional highways provide great vehicular connectivity, but also create barriers to walking, biking and using transit. Industrial uses are a great economic engine, but their poor physical quality and maintenance make the area appear depressed. Low density residential neighborhoods provide a good quality of life, but limit the amenities the area can attract. The Anacostia River and Beaverdam Creek are unique natural features, but also cause flooding. The soon-to-relocate Prince George’s Medical Center also lies within the area and presents a transformative opportunity to attract new development and spur redevelopment.
M-NCPPC engaged Torti Gallas to lead a multi-disciplinary team of planners, architects, multimodal transportation specialists, civil and environmental engineers to craft a holistic framework for the Greater Cheverly Sector Plan. Torti Gallas crafted a unique vision that takes the ideas, policies, and recommendations from individual components of separate past plans, and the new opportunities presented by this expanded planning area, weaving them together into a comprehensive framework where each component can work together to leverage a greater value for the whole. The vision was developed through a comprehensive public process which engaged a broad range of stakeholders, creating broad consensus.
Targeted short term recommendations make walking and biking a priority on key streets leading to transit and other destinations. Industrial areas are transformed using public art and small public spaces as a catalyst. Flooding is addressed through new stormwater management practices and strategic maintenance of existing infrastructure. The hospital site is envisioned as a high density, mixed use precinct that blends adaptive reuse and new construction, built around a network of open spaces that connect to the Greater Cheverly system of parks.
