Northwood-Four Corners
From District 4 -- Montgomery County, Maryland
A Brief Background on Our Community:
- Our precinct (013-011) contains 2668 voters. Voter turnout in the last Presidential primary was about 47%.
- NFCCA represents approximately 1,500 households in the area bounded by Colesville Road, University Boulevard, Caddington Avenue, and the Northwest Branch.
- We are a very diverse community; even more diverse than the County at large. In fact, our elementary school, Forest Knolls, is a "majority minority" school with a student body of 69% minority. We are also diverse by age,occupation, and length of residence.
Community Issues
Issues in our community include lack of electrical power reliability, poorly managed mass transit resources, and inept park management and planning. Many of the park issues center around North Four Corners Park.
Our Vision - North Four Corners Park is a small park in densely developed southern Montgomery County. For 6 years, the Northwood Four Corners community has united to fight for the preservation of Rachel Carson Meadow in North Four Corners Park as a family-friendly, nature-centered amenity. Our goal is a flexible, multi-use park with active and passive amenities for all ages, developed in a way which showcases and enhances the site's natural resources.
Our neighborhood shares a vision of an environmentally-themed park with meadows, forested areas, plantings, educational signage, and a few features (nature trail, playground, games tables, and art) made from reclaimed and recycled materials.
(Please see some images from our 2009 Rachel Carson Meadow Festival!)
Our plan would complement the park's existing active recreation features (tennis, youth soccer, softball, and basketball) and would cost very little to implement.
Most importantly, our plan would preserve this park's role as a green oasis where residents of highly urbanized, heavily minority neighborhoods in the Down County regularly socialize. There are very few such convenient and easily accessible amenities in this region.
In effect, it is our village green of our community's life. That is why we have dubbed it Rachel Carson Meadow.
CIP # 078706 - Park and Planning's North Four Corners Park project calls for leveling Rachel Carson Meadow (including the 177 year old walnut tree) to build a large soccer field with a five foot high retaining wall and 50 car parking lot. The project would cost $5-6 million dollars and construction would not take place until 2015.
Last year, the County Council voted to put the North Four Corners Park Soccer Field project back in the Parks FY09-14 CIP budget saying that it would set a dangerous precedent to listen to affected communities.
The Win-Win Solution - Working with local soccer enthusiasts, we have developed a five point plan for increasing the number of playable soccer fields in the Silver Spring - Takoma Park area.
We have also located a number of alternative (cheaper) sites that should be considered if additional fields are truly needed. Finally, we have garnered broad-based support for preserving Rachel Carson Meadow. Supporters include other District Four communities, environmental groups, the Montgomery County Civic Federation, and concerned individuals from around the Chesapeake Bay Region.
