By Jeremy Cox, Chesapeake Bay Journal
A development partnership backed by an A-list sports celebrity is looking to transform a former amusement park in Maryland into an entertainment and shopping hotbed accompanied by a broad spectrum of housing types.
“Our goal is to deliver several different uses that kind of work together in a generative way to create a real ecosystem,” said Adam Rashid of TPA Group during a community meeting about the project in June.
But what about the natural ecosystem right next door? That’s what some conservationists have been asking since Six Flags announced plans in April to sell its 515-acre property in Prince George’s County for an undisclosed amount.
The amusement park shuttered last November. It had been branded as Six Flags America since 1999 but operated under several other names as an attraction dating back to 1974.
The property shares a long border with the Belt Woods Natural Environment Area, which owes its existence to a years-long environmental battle that sparked national attention. The 624-acre state-owned preserve is home to one of the last stands of old-growth forest in the Atlantic Coastal Plain. Part of the forest has been designated a National Natural Landmark for more than five decades.
The purchase of the Six Flags parcel is a joint venture between TPA, an Atlanta-based private real estate developer, and 35V, an investment firm co-founded by NBA star and Prince George’s native son Kevin Durant. Their plans for the property are still under development, and they have partnered with the county government to seek public input.
The developers have stated no intention publicly of encroaching into Belt Woods. But environmentalists like Janet Gingold say that simply building too close to the natural area could upend its fragile balance.
“There needs to be a substantial buffer between any new development and the old-growth forest area,” said Gingold of the Prince George’s Sierra Club. “I just am very concerned about this attitude of trying to maximize the economic opportunities and the county tax revenues at the expense of other priorities, including our climate goals and the protections of these important natural places nearby.”
Representatives of TPA and 35V couldn’t be reached for comment. But at the town hall in June, hosted by County Executive Aisha Braveboy, TPA’s Rashid told the audience that about 80 acres of the site is off-limits to development due to the presence of “woodlands and wetlands.”
“We can’t truly disturb those,” he said — adding, though, that his firm might be open to developing walking trails within them as a recreational amenity.
Braveboy added, “Having green space is a huge amenity because most places you go don’t have that. You just have sidewalks, asphalt and concrete.”
She emphasized that the county is looking to get a hefty economic return from the property’s redevelopment. National Harbor, a 350-acre resort along the Potomac River in Prince George’s, regularly generates about $80 million in annual revenue for the county, she said. Meanwhile, Six Flags had only brought in up to $3.5 million a year.
Braveboy, a Democrat, attributed the amusement park’s lower proceeds to its practice of closing during cooler months and only operating on about a quarter of the property’s acreage. She will judge the development’s success, she said, by whether it is able to send more tax revenue to the county than the geographically smaller National Harbor.
“We can do a lot with [515 acres],” she said at the town hall. “There can be multiple uses. We have to give our children something positive to do … I think this is an opportunity for us to do that all year round, not just for a season.”
County spokesman Brian Fisher clarified in an interview that Braveboy wants the redevelopment to be “sensitive” to the natural area next door. “We are not going to hurt the Belt Woods nature center in any way,” he said. “Period.”
Belt Woods lies less than 20 miles east of the White House. Surrounded by leafy subdivisions, it very nearly became one itself.
Only through the foresight of its owner, a banker named Seton Belt, did the expanse of tulip trees and white oaks stay untouched as development closed in. When Belt died in 1959, he willed his beloved acreage to the Episcopal Diocese of Washington and his local parish, and he included in the document a ban on large-scale timber harvests.
The new owners, though, got a local judge to overturn the prohibition and in 1981 succeeded in cutting down about 50 acres on the north side of the property. (The National Natural Landmark designation only applied to 45 acres on the south side.)
The state purchased 109 acres of the property in 1984 for preservation, but more than 500 acres remained unprotected. When the church later proposed building 649-housing units there, it triggered a national outcry and widespread media attention. An ensuing fundraising campaign led to a $4.5 million sale of the remaining acreage in 1997, with the state taking ownership of the now-combined public parcels.
The Belt Woods ecosystem is so sensitive that no public visitation is allowed aside from occasional guided hikes and hunting to control the deer population. Maryland has designated most of the property as a wildland, the state equivalent of a federal wilderness area. It is considered important nesting habitat for neotropical songbirds.
So, Pam Cooper, who founded the Western Shore Conservancy in the 1990s to help save Belt Woods, was disappointed when one of the county’s first actions after disclosing the pending sale was to announce a naming contest.
“That’s not what’s important here,” she said. “What’s important is, how do you develop next to one of the most precious ecosystems in the county, in the state, in the country? I think there needs to be a roundtable of experts that can talk about what’s important.”
Gary Allen was the mayor of nearby Bowie in the 1990s when the rest of Belt Woods was preserved, and he helped direct some of the city’s funds toward the purchase. Many of the site’s birds rely on the forested buffer along the Six Flags property, he said. Without it, they would almost certainly leave for greener pastures.
“There’s a capacity,” Allen said. “There’s only going to be so many hooded warblers and so many wood thrushes, and then they’re going to get run off. We are marginal [in size] with the 624 acres that we’ve protected.”
