A: World-renowned Planner and Architect Seth Harry, who has also worked extensively in small towns and rural communities in Maryland and throughout the country, has helped guide the planning of The HUB, which will be located near the College of Southern Maryland (CSM) in La Plata.
The HUB is planned as an interconnected network of compact, walkable, transit-supportive, intergenerational neighborhoods with a mix of housing types serving a variety of lifestyle and age-of-life housing needs and preferences. It will be set in the natural landscape in a way that preserves the maximum amount of open space, including wildlife habitat and corridors, and will be built out consistent with the regional building traditions of the area.
This approach will also provide for a range of daily needs, including access to recreation, local parks and schools within a neighborhood context, and local consumer goods and services, within the community as a whole, minimizing impacts on existing road networks.
The neighborhoods themselves will be situated to minimize site disturbances and avoid steep slopes, wherever possible. This will help maintain and preserve the natural-surface hydrologies of the property, and also help to protect the Port Tobacco watershed in terms of storm-water runoff and water quality. Provisions will be made to attract regional-scale business enterprises, including Work From Home (WFH), while supporting and enhancing local business retention and patronage, including provisions for Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). To maximize and capture the net consumer market in the region, The HUB will work to coordinate overall market positioning with the Town of La Plata and its downtown business community.