Baltimore Messenger
February 9, 2006

Rotunda Stuck In Traffic?
By Brandon Dudley

The impact of three construction projects in and around Medfield – including the planned redevelopment of the Rotunda shopping mall – has residents worried that their existing traffic problems will worsen with an influx of new homes and businesses.

Traffic at the intersection of Falls Road and 41^st Street and traffic cutting through the neighborhood were among the biggest concerns expressed during a Feb. 6 meeting between the Medfield Community Association and Hekemian & Co. Inc., the redeveloper of the Rotunda.

Also represented at the meeting was The Traffic Group, a Baltimore-based traffic engineering firm that is advising Hekemian.

Drivers in the area use the neighborhood streets as shortcuts, instead of the main roads, association president Richard Kaminski said during the meeting at the Applegate United Methodist Church in Medfield.

The Rotunda redevelopment, which Hekemian is renaming the Grand Rotunda, plus smaller developments in the area are expected to add hundreds of residences, retail outlets and offices.

Other projects cited at the meeting included the $58 million community of offices, studios, homes, town houses and condominiums that is being built on the fire-ravaged Clipper Mill site in Woodberry, a 20-town-house development planned in the Redfern neighborhood and a roughly 40-town-house development planned behind the Super Fresh supermarket at Falls Road and 41^st Street.

The $70 million Rotunda project is by far the largest, with about 300 luxury apartments, a parking garage and 200,000 square feet of retail space planned.

Mickey Cornelius, senior vice president of  The Traffic Group, presented initial ideas for how to abate problems at the intersection of Falls Road and 41^st Street – and about traffic-calming devices the neighborhood could use to slow or deter cut-through traffic.

The intersection of Falls Road and 41^st Street was one of 18 the firm studied in the area. The intersection received a failing “F” on a scale of A to F, Cornelius said. He said changes are recommended only to intersections that get failing grades. The other 17 intersections studied got A’s or B’s, he said.

The study looked only at peak traffic hours weekdays, from 7 to 9 a.m. and from 4 to 6 p.m., Cornelius said.

The firm is considering proposing one wide lane going west on 41^st Street that eventually would expand into two lanes, Cornelius said.

Also being considered is the creation of three lanes – a left-turn lane, a right-turn lane and a straight-ahead lane – for eastbound traffic on 41^st.

“These are ideas that we have not discussed with the city,” he said. “Some ideas may be easy to do; some may have complications with other interests.”

Residents expressed concern that delivery trucks wouldn't be able to make the turn into a single lane. That issue will be studied before final recommendations are made, Cornelius said.

Residents also want safer, easier pedestrian crossings, but The Traffic Group won’t study crosswalks until traffic patterns are closer to being finalized, Cornelius said.

He said the intersection will not be drastically affected by the Rotunda project. It is failing with existing traffic, and it still will be failing after the redevelopment of the Rotunda, he said.

The Traffic Group could remove street parking on Falls Road, but the community would not want that, Cornelius said. Lanes on Falls Road could be widened, but not without infringing on private property, he said.

Truck deliveries could be restricted to nonpeak hours to prevent the trucks from getting backed up in the intersection, but it’s unlikely that many truck drivers would cooperate, Cornelius said.

“There’s obviously not a simple fix to the intersection. If there was a simple fix, the city would have done it by now,” he told residents.

Cornelius showed slides of different types of traffic-calming devices, such as speed humps and raised crosswalks, to give the community a sense of what its options are to slow cut-through traffic.

Most studies the firm does regarding traffic calming in neighborhoods don’t result in anything “because the community doesn't know what it wants,” he said.

Residents seemed wary of, but not necessarily against, the proposed development, including the Rotunda project.

“We didn't get to specifics, but that should come later, hopefully,” said Bill Mills of Weldon Avenue.

He predicted that the Rotunda will be “the granddaddy because that will be attracting from the whole area and beyond.”

Mills wasn't sure how that would affect his neighborhood. “It’s difficult to say. I suppose time will tell,” he said.

“It feels as though the Grand Rotunda project can be a positive thing for the community,” Kaminski said.

“But the devil is in the construction details.”

Chris Bell, Hekemian’s vice president of acquisitions and development, cautioned, “We can’t solve everything. Some of these problems have no solution” because traffic is increasing everywhere.