Marriott stumbles
We left off last time breathlessly waiting for Marriott’s centerpiece park to open in Maryland. After the announcement in 1972, enthusiasm grew from the governor on down to Omar J. Jones, county executive. Ice cream parlor owner Jerry Doniger said the park “could bring all kinds of people to see the area and see if they like it. And then maybe they’ll stay.” Albert Wood, county administrator, was practical about the whole thing, “Live and let live; at least we won’t have to go to Florida for this sort of thing.”
There were others, though. Faith Speigle was concerned for her privacy and quiet lifestyle, “We live in the country for obvious reasons. We have five acres, with horses and other animals.” Thomas Elisheas predicted massive traffic jams, “They don’t have the roads. When Laurel Raceway opened it took 20 minutes just to get through town.”
The CCC (Concerned County Citizens) lined up to do battle with the more creatively named CHAMPS (Countians Happy About Marriott’s Park). Why did the CCC label the project “a grotesquerie—a devastating inconsistency with the county’s general plan for the seventies”? The usual stuff—concerns over traffic and noise, population increase and congestion, water and sewer, rising property valuations and taxes, and the inevitable, irreversible changes to their way of life. These are legitimate issues—for every positive aspect of such a project there’s at least one drawback. Marriott would not be the first or last company to face such opposition. Just ask Kings Entertainment/Taft when they were headed to Chicago, or Disney when they dreamed of the same general location outside DC a couple decades later. In the end it’s not really the best plan for any particular area that wins out, but rather what forces happen to exist that can push the thing in their desired direction. Disney ran headlong into very wealthy landowners who wanted no part in a commercialization of American history, especially on the very land where a major chunk of it took place.
At any rate, Marriott kept at it, but in late summer of ’72 the Howard County planning board finally slammed the door shut in a 13-page report, declaring the project “completely inconsistent” with the county’s general plan and a “serious threat” to the county’s “physical and environmental amenities.” And that was that, at least in Howard. Marriott executives closed their briefcases and picked their next location—513 acres near Manassas Battlefield.
