Howard County unveiled a preferred master plan Tuesday for the redevelopment of Columbia Gateway into an innovation district.

The final draft won’t be ready until this spring.

Columbia Gateway has been at the center of the county government’s redevelopment conversations, with the county failing to win a national bidding competition in 2017 to bring Amazon’s second headquarters to the business park. Tucked between Route 175 and Interstate 95, the 1,000-acre business park faces low occupancy rates and poor access for pedestrians or cyclists.

The county’s Department of Planning and Zoning has been working with consultants Hok, Stiletto and Partners for Economic Solutions and an advisory group to tackle those challenges.

The groups considered public feedback and presented three options during a September meeting. They combined the best of the three options for the preferred plan, which was presented at a public meeting Tuesday night at Recreation & Parks headquarters in Columbia and virtually on Wednesday.

The redevelopment of Gateway aligns with the county’s 10-year General Plan, HoCo By Design, which “envisions Gateway transforming into a major hub for employment, entertainment, and innovation,” according to the county’s website, while also providing open space, access to transit and opportunities for housing and jobs.

At the center of the design for a reimagined Gateway is “Woonerf,” a shared street that focuses on pedestrians to encourage walking and cycling throughout the district. The network of streets in the district will also be planned with Complete Streets in mind, said Harold De la Rosa, senior landscape designer at HOK. Complete Streets is a national approach encouraging multiple modes of transportation while emphasizing safety for all road users.

Along the “Woonerf,” there are three “nodes,” or strategic locations for more intense development. The nodes will be areas with retail, meeting spaces or other open spaces that serve as a central location similar to a town square, Suzette Goldstein, director of planning for HOK, said.

The master plan works to connect local trails and pathways such as the abandoned CSX rail line to bring community access to these public spaces. The plan also proposes a new access point to Route 175 and a connection to mass transit, which will help with sustainability goals.

“We’d like to be able to provide opportunities to connect Gateway to the broader community; it right now is very much an island,” Goldstein said. “So, we’re going to find some ways to get us there without having to jump in a car.”

Including housing at Gateway helps to bring people in at all times, rather than individuals coming and going solely for their workday, Goldstein said. To be consistent with the county’s General Plan, Gateway’s redevelopment would include diverse housing options for affordable and multigenerational housing while looking at other incentives for low-income housing, according to De la Rosa.

With the various building types and shared spaces proposed at Gateway, the area will be broken into nine subareas with a mix of uses encouraged in each. The county doesn’t have a zoning district to accommodate all of the different land uses, open spaces and goals for affordable housing, so a new one must be created, according to De la Rosa.

Zoning isn’t the only challenge facing the county in trying to execute the 30-year master plan. Options for alternative school buildings would likely need to be considered as well as options for financing the plan, such as different tax models, grants and subsidies or public-private partnerships. “It’s all going to be a challenge, right? We’ve got 140 or so different parcels, all owned by different property owners,” said Mary Kendall, deputy director of Howard County Department of Planning & Zoning.

“We do have certain property owners that may own the majority of the of the parcels, that’s great. But so much of this redevelopment strategy will take off right as the individual property owners are ready to redevelop their sites.”

Breaking the plan down into implementation steps for the next five years makes the undertaking more manageable, Kendall said. Those steps include programming for the innovation district, developing a new zoning district, a plan to finance the infrastructure, assessing transportation access sites along Route 175 and establishing an entity to oversee the plan.

Sites will need to be assessed for public infrastructure such as schools, libraries and police or fire stations.

Members of the public can submit feedback on the preferred plan through an online form until Feb. 2. A public draft of a final plan will be released and then the plan will be refined again for planning board review before heading to the county council for approval in the spring.

Have a news tip? Contact Kiersten Hacker at khacker@baltsun.com or @KierstenHacker on X.