When last we wrote, the question of what the Columbia Association is led us to what it was supposed to be.
Interestingly, unlike Columbia itself, the association created to promote the social welfare of Columbia did not seem be to imbued with the same core set of values in its founding.
Which is to say, CA was not necessarily created to be the “keeper of the vision” or the institution tasked with tending the “garden for growing people,” and without that charge among its first principles, what is it?
Indeed, with hindsight, it seems that CA was largely created out of expedience. Jim Rouse knew the Howard County Commissioners of the time would have no interest in funding recreational and community facilities in this new city he was building. He also knew that his company and its financial backers alone could not fund everything promised in the grand Columbia vision.
Enter CA. By placing a lien on every property owned by the Rouse Company as part of the Columbia project, CA would collect annual assessments to fund its operations and the costs of construction of the facilities envisioned in Rouse’s plan. As the community grew, so would CA’s finances, allowing early debts to be repaid in time.
CA was, therefore, a financing vehicle to support Columbia’s growth, a point made clear by the fact that CA was fully controlled by Rouse for its first decade-plus of existence.
This framework led to the first big effort at reforming CA, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
In the early days of Columbia, CA lost money every year and took on lots of debt to build facilities for the community, which was very small at the time and which could not fully support the costs of CA’s operations and construction.
The oil crisis and economic slowdown of the early 1970s slowed the pace of construction in Columbia and caused all sorts of financial trouble for CA and Rouse. They both weathered the storm, but CA’s debt ballooned and residents of the young community grew increasingly concerned about CA’s debt load, which was compounded by annual operational losses. This set up the first real political fight about CA.
CA’s foundational documents include no reference to Columbia’s values of inclusivity, optimism, sustainability, or more. Instead, they speak of the Columbia Parks and Recreation Association existing to engage in any manner of development, construction, or operations that the Rouse Company choose, so long as it conformed with a broad definition of supporting community welfare. Indeed, among other things, the original CPRA deed allows for the entity to construct an airport and pretty much anything else deemed “necessary and desirable” by its Board.
So, if CA was supposed to build and operate facilities, who was nurturing the social well-being of the community?
A story I’ve heard is that Jim Rouse established the Columbia Foundation (now the Community Foundation of Howard County [CFHoCo]) early on as an entity to promote community philanthropy and support social services.
CA, therefore, handled recreation and amenities and the community foundation would weave together the fabric of social services necessary to support a racially and economically diverse community.
While CFHoCo has grown to become a sizeable and effective community foundation, engaging thousands of residents in philanthropy and supporting many worthy organizations and initiatives over the last 50 years, it is dwarfed by the CA in terms of size, financial resources, and reach.
And so now in 2020, as the foundational values that form the essence of this “garden for growing people” demand our attention and effort, who is the true steward of those values? Who is tending the garden, tilling the soil, ensuring that Columbia’s fundamental purpose for being—to be a city that nurtures love—is being met?
CA proclaims itself to be the keeper of that vision, but that vision is being strained in many ways and what is CA doing to ensure it holds strong?
Columbia’s schools have grown increasingly segregated in recent years, which is in direct conflict with the Rouse’s founding vision. What has CA done to address this alarming trend?
Many of Columbia’s neighborhoods are struggling with disinvestment and negative, often racist perceptions. What has CA done to affirmatively reject stereotypes and reinvigorate these neighborhoods?
Where was CA in the planning for Columbia’s Downtown? Rather than approach a conversation about Columbia’s future with openness and optimism, CA’s directors in the mid-200s at removed the organization from the planning conversation, largely in an effort to stall or stop any development, and in so doing lost leverage and a critical opportunity to help shape a master plan that would guide development of Columbia’s urban core. That plan was passed ten years ago and the Columbia Association is mentioned less than a handful of times in it, leaving the organization with almost role or influence in the future of Downtown Columbia.
Or, going back longer, where was CA when River Hill was built without apartments? When Dobbin Road and Snowden River Parkway became retail centers, robbing village centers of tenants and business?
You could ask many more questions like these and still arrive at the same conclusion, one which seems a hallmark of Columbia. The truth is that CA picks and chooses when it engages in the work of nurturing Columbia and when it engages in the work of supporting itself for its own sake because it wasn’t created with a clear focus—the values of Columbia were not baked into the organization’s DNA, and so it’s been shaped by interests and forces with other aims.
For more on how CA has been shaped over the years, we need to examine the cultural and political dynamics surrounding CA governance and politics.
