Investing Inside the Beltway: Making More of Marlboro Pike
Editor’s Note
At GCHIC, we often talk about the need to Invest Inside the Beltway—to recognize the enormous untapped value in Prince George’s County communities that already sit close to Washington, established infrastructure, regional transit, and major employment centers, but have not received the sustained public and private investment needed to realize their potential.
Marlboro Pike is a good example. The corridor is different from the Capitol Heights–Addison Road Metro (CHARM) Regional Activity Center, which GCHIC envisions as Greater Capitol Heights’s future downtown. CHARM is anchored by two Metrorail stations and has the potential to support substantially denser, walkable, mixed-use transit-oriented development.
Still, Marlboro Pike presents another unique opportunity: a long-established commercial and residential corridor that could support smaller-scale mixed-use development, neighborhood-serving businesses and services, infill housing, improved public spaces, and stronger commercial nodes.
Its robust bus service and proximity to Metrorail provide another foundation to build upon, including opportunities to strengthen connections to the Capitol Heights and Addison Road–Seat Pleasant stations.
In the commentary below, a version of which appeared originally on Greater Greater Washington, GCHIC Board Member Abraham Diallo argues that strategically located civic institutions can help turn public infrastructure investment into broader economic opportunity.
Prince George’s County’s multi-million-dollar Marlboro Pike project is a major investment in one of the county’s historically underserved corridors. As work proceeds to make the corridor safer, Prince George’s County should take advantage of the momentum and explore whether it can also move public facilities to sites along the roadway to serve as civic anchors.
Marlboro Pike is a major east-west corridor running through established communities inside the Capital Beltway, connecting DC at Southern Avenue to the Beltway and the broader regional transportation network. Civic anchors, such as government offices, schools, libraries, hospitals, and other public institutions, have significant economic development potential.
In particular, these institutions can generate steady activity (from employees, visitors, and other constituents), which signals long-term public commitment to a place. That, in turn, attracts complementary private investment, which can diversify tax revenue sources.
Civic Anchors Can Multiply Public Investment
Today, many county facilities just like the executive office building [in Largo] can be found in isolated, auto-oriented areas that are difficult to access without a car and disconnected from the communities that rely on them most.
All citizens, regardless of wealth or location, should have fair access to public services, even before we weigh the economic benefits of expanding access. The economic potential, though, is significant, and Prince George’s County has already seen it in action.
The state of Maryland’s decision to relocate its Department of Housing and Community Development headquarters to New Carrollton in 2011 helped anchor a cascading 2.3-million-square-foot mixed-use, transit-oriented development in partnership with various local, state, and federal partners. The project is projected to unlock millions of dollars annually in local, state, and federal tax revenues that will help to meet various public objectives.
The lesson for Marlboro Pike is not that it should become New Carrollton. The corridor possesses different physical characteristics, market conditions, and community needs. Rather, New Carrollton demonstrates how public investments become more valuable when they are intentionally layered instead of pursued in isolation. With finite resources, the County has even greater reason to strategically and sustainably steward its investments to maximize long-term public value.
Building on the Momentum
No single investment will transform Marlboro Pike on its own. But thoughtfully layering complementary public investments can improve the likelihood that today’s infrastructure spending produces lasting public returns tomorrow.
By pairing major infrastructure and safety improvements with civic anchors and a shared vision for economic opportunity and placemaking, Prince George’s County could create the conditions necessary for commercial activity and neighborhood-serving amenities to occur organically. That would not only improve how people move through Marlboro Pike, but also how they can live, work, invest, and build their futures in the county.
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