Councils Set to Huddle Monday on Cafritz Project

With Thursday's pivotal hearing before the Prince George's County Planning Board looming, Riverdale Park and University Park officials are in a sprint to finalize their positions on the redevelopment of the Cafritz property.

Both councils and mayors will take up the issue as they meet Monday evening, less than 72 hours before the PGCPB is scheduled to weigh evidence on the rezoning phase of the project.

Under , the developer's 37-acre parcel on the north end of Riverdale Park would be redesignated from residential (R-55) to Mixed-Use Town Center (MUTC), easing the way for the construction of more than 900 units of housing, a 35,000-sqft. Whole Foods, a 120-room hotel, and additional office and retail space.

Along with College Park, the two towns have spent months drafting conditions required for their support of the project, including transportation, financial, and environmental stipulations. Several points—chiefly the funding and timetable for a road crossing of the CSX tracks—have sharply divided the towns and the developer, forcing drawn-out negotiations. 

But according to Riverdale Park Mayor Vernon Archer, there may be eleventh-hour progress on that stickiest of sticking points.

"The critical change from where we were in the middle of December is we seem to have an agreement to get a crossing (presumably a bridge) of the CSX tracks early in the project," Archer wrote Sunday evening in a message to the RP TownTalk listserv.

"I say we seem to have, in that as of this very moment our town attorney is still working with the applicant to finalize language, and we will not have a finalized version before tomorrow at the earliest," he added. "Thus, it is down to the wire."

The University Park council will meet 6:30 p.m. Monday at UPES, with Cafritz discussions beginning at 7:30 p.m. The Riverdale Park council will kick off its special session at 8 p.m. at Town Hall.

The RP council has blocked out an additional special session for Tuesday at 8 p.m., as it's "unlikely that everything will be in order for a final vote on Monday," according to Archer.