Category: Hollywood Page 1 of 2

I’m a student of science and technology, but I also love history. History helps us travel into the past and see how things all started when we weren’t there.

Since I made College Park my hometown, I’ve had many opportunities meeting with many of my neighbors, who set their foot in our beloved town many years ago, some even years before I was born. During our many conversations over the years with these neighbors, they told me many stories about how our two neighborhoods, Hollywood and Daniels Park used to look like. They told me how they raised their families, and how much our neighborhoods have changed since they bought their first homes in early 1950’s. These are the neighbors who built our communities. We definitely owe them a debt of gratitude for all they have done for us.

Over the years, I saw many of these longtime neighbors leaving our town. Sadly, some moved to senior housing, some to assisted living outside of College Park and some even died. What I found scary is that when they left, they also took a treasure of history and stories with them. Though a good amount of work has been done to preserve the history of other parts of the city, very little to none has been done to collect the histories of our neighborhoods in north College Park.

Two years ago, I asked my colleagues on the City Council to set aside a small fund so that Council members can use that fund to do small projects related to the neighborhoods they serve. Using this fund, we’re were lucky to recruit a University of Maryland Anthropology student, Moriah James as a Council intern to collect the history of our two neighborhoods – Hollywood and Daniels Park. Over her summer break, Moriah spent many hours in interviewing many of our long term residents and doing research to collect histories of these neighborhoods. I’m extremely grateful to many neighbors for giving their time, some even giving precious artifacts, such as old photos and maps.

Tomorrow, Moriah will be presenting her work at the regular Council meeting.

Please read here her report here.  The History and Heritage of Daniels Park and Hollywood on the Hill

I’m sure many of you will enjoy the stories in Moriah’s report and find them fascinating. Some parts of history in the report go back a long before we had trolley train going along Rhode Island Avenue, when Edgewood Rd was a dirt road, and children used to play on what we now call I-495 beltway.

I know the report may not be complete. But let’s take this just a start. We plan to build a wiki website where we can add more content and make the history of neighborhoods more complete.

Thanks to everyone who joined us this morning at the Hollywood commercial district beautification project. We worked together to face lift one corner of our commercial district – the area where the dry cleaner is located. Check it out when you drive around the corner. It should look a lot better than what it looked last week. The team planted flower plants in the island and also in five big planters. We pruned trees, mowed grass, painted retaining wall, guardrails and dumpster. We also did quite a bit of cleanup.

Thanks also to all our sponsors – MoM’s for breakfast, Public Works for compost, property owner for the plants and paints and Greenscape Horticultural for free service and equipment. Thanks to Mayor Pro-Tem Mitchell and Council member Wojahn for their time as well.

A very good job done by everyone. Please stay tuned. We plan to do a few more beautification projects in the coming months.
Here are a few pictures showing the changes the team made at today (before on the left and after on the right).,

It’s been a while residents in north College Park have been discussing the issue of pedestrian safety at the Rhode Island Avenue (between Edgewood and MD 193).

The NCPCA also discussed this issue in the past several times.

The City and the County will soon have another opportunity to discuss this matter further. Based on my research, I’ve compiled a list of possible ways to make safe crosswalks that may be suitable for Rhode Island. Please see these options below and let me know your thoughts on them.

1.      Raised, textured crosswalk.

2.      Brick crosswalk.

3. HAWK signal When not activated, the signal is blanked out. The HAWK signal is activated by a pedestrian push button or passive pedestrian sensor. The overhead signal begins flashing yellow and then solid yellow, advising drivers to prepare to stop. The signal then displays a solid red and shows the pedestrian a “Walk” indication. Finally, an alternating flashing red signal indicates that motorists may proceed when safe, after coming to a full stop. The pedestrian is shown a flashing “Don’t Walk” with a countdown indicating the time left to cross

4. In-Street Signs

In-street crosswalk signs can be installed at un-signalized pedestrian crossings to make the crosswalk more visible and increase driver yielding. They are placed at the crosswalk on a median, but should not obstruct the pedestrian path of travel.

5. Flashing yellow beacon: Cheaper than hawk lights but somewhat debatable. The County put in a pedestrian activity flashing yellow beacon at the Trolley Trail where it crosses Paint Branch Parkway. That introduced a relatively unfamiliar traffic feature which made pedestrians feel a false sense of security. That was because motorists view a yellow light as a signal to yield not stop. At least 3 people were hit.