By Hugh Garbrick
The College Park City Council has submitted an application for grant money to finish the gravel path on Princeton Avenue where it meets Fraternity Row, replacing it with a sidewalk, a City Council official said.
As it stands, Princeton Avenue is unfinished. As it nears Fraternity Row, the paved road turns to gravel. If College Park receives funding, the road will be fully paved with a new sidewalk. Mario Arnouk, a freshman chemical engineering major, lives on Princeton Avenue and said he walks on the unfinished path every day.
“It would be nice if it was a road or a sidewalk,” Arnouk said. “A lot of times, water puddles up and stuff, so you have to avoid that especially near the entrance to the actual road behind Fraternity Row. It’s not the end of the world. It’s not anything too crazy, but it would be nice to have it changed.”
But the City Council does not know if the project will materialize, and finding out whether it will receive funding from the state could take several months, said Kacy Rohn, College Park’s community development coordinator.
The money comes from Maryland’s Community Development Block Grant (CDBG), which is intended to fund projects that revitalize “low and moderate income” areas in Maryland. The block grant’s funding money is controlled by the Maryland Department of Housing, and receiving funding from CDBG is competitive, according to the Maryland Housing and Community Development website.
The project would coincide with construction for the new Maryland Hillel center on Princeton Ave, which is where the City Council has proposed the CDBG project. Rohn said the city’s planning department is working with Maryland Hillel on the “review process” for the new Hillel building.
Maryland Hillel wants to move to the new location by summer 2020, but doing so will depend on their ability to raise $20 million, Hillel Director Ari Israel said in an email.
Rohn said she thinks the projects would complement one another well if the construction were to coincide.
“I think we have a good project, and I think we made a good case for it that it has a lot of synergy going with the development going on next door at the Hillel,” she said.
City Council also plans to put road bollards between Princeton Ave. and Fraternity Row to block vehicles, ending the connection between Princeton Ave. and Fraternity Row by one continuous road.
“It’s a great idea because people already use it as a pathway anyway,” said Andre Oxford, a senior philosophy major. “If they made it nice and presentable that would be cool.”