The Walk Stops Here

I live in the village of Owen Brown and I often bike through Dobbin and the surrounding villages. Wait, lets back track, which is hard because there aren't many paths in Dobbin to begin with.

On days when I know I'm in class, I try to plan a few posts ahead of time to keep you interested. Over the weekend, while biking to photograph the closing of Z-Pizza, I thought of writing about the lack of connecting sidewalks in the Dobbin area.

Turns out Wordbones beat me to it. He's written about the lack of sidewalks in the Snowden area but I consider the areas linked. While interviewing Larry Carson of the Baltimore Sun Monday, he also mentioned the issue.

I'll give you an example. Lets say you live on Downdale Place in Owen Brown. A sidewalk runs along the edge of Oakland Mills road. Its a nice day out and you feel like walking to Dobbin Donuts & Deli for lunch. As soon as you get to the brick church you notice there's no sidewalk on the other side of the road!

This is a common occurrence in the Dobbin/Snowden area. Across Dobbin road from the Blockbuster video, there is a path that runs behind Dobbin and Owen Brown and into Oakland Mills. Once you walk up the hill from that path you'll have difficulty getting to the other side.

The point I'm trying to make is that there are no sidewalks or crosswalks in places where there ought to be sidewalks. Columbia was supposedly designed to let residents walk to schools and village centers, why not restaurants and retail? There are sidewalks in some places and those simply stop as if to say "go back and get in your car and drive the rest of the way!"

Residents who live off of Carved Stone should be able to cross the street and walk to the strip mall for pho, but they can't because the sidewalk doesn't connect to the retail outlets. Instead they are required to either walk through a camoflauged cut or get in their car and drive.

The pedestrian and bicycling situation in the Snowden/Dobbin area is really f--ked up and needs to be fixed!

idX Brings Business To Columbia

Earlier Wednesday, Wordbones reported on the idX move in Snowden from Odenton. After reading this, I got on the horn to Frank Grelle, the general manager of idX's Baltimore division to get the scoop.

idX manufactures shelves, tables and other store fixtures for Kohl's, JC Penney's, Marshalls and other retailers as well as financial institutions. Based in St. Louis, Mo, idX has offices in Louisville, Seattle, Toronto and Shanghai. The company bought out Russell Williams Ltd in 2005 which was originally based in Columbia but moved to Odenton.

idX in Odenton currently operates out of two buildings catty corner to each other. Grelle describes the move into the Snowden building as more efficient for the operation.

"As we continue to grow, I really needed to be in one building so that I don't have to move finished from the manufacturing building, onto a trailer, move them 50 yards and unload them into a warehouse."

idX is moving it's operation to 8901 Snowden River parkway because the new location has many more dock doors than their Odenton location. The additional space of the Snowden location will also allow Grelle to house all of his production lines under one roof and make the distribution process easier.

“We might ship to 15 Kohl's stores in a matter of three days, so when you've got limited dock doors, you can't stage in advance because you can't block a dock door. In the new building we can say this is store A, this is store B, this is store C, this is store D and we can stage the product that goes on to the truck that's going to that store in advance.”

So will the move into Columbia bolster the local economy and create more jobs? Grelle says yes, but not right away.

“The move probably by itself probably isn't going to create more jobs, you know, other than the jobs created due to tenant improvements to this facility, but by gaining these efficiencies in planning for the future, that's going to help us gain more business which will in turn create jobs.”

Grelle says the company hopes to complete the move into Columbia by July of this year.

Building Relationships

Today I wrote my midterm essay for my independent study. This is class I'm writing this blog for by the way. The essay and the fact that I wrote it aren't relevant to this blog except for the fact that I mentioned Wordbones in it. The essay details how the link helps me build relationships through my blog based on the book What Would Google Do by Jeff Jarvis. Hopefully, Dr. Spaulding won't be the only person to read it.

How Can The Link Change Everything & Build Relationships?

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