SGS Law’s role in the Bluestem project will be to assist in the management of legal questions and issues that may arise as a result of the development. SGS Law is committed to a strong partnership with, and vigorous defense of, the Bluestem development, which they believe will have a great and positive impact on the Bare Hills community, particularly in helping improve the quality and safety of Lake Roland and the surrounding watershed.

SGS Law is honored to be involved in the Bluestem project and looks forward to assisting the development team in a legal capacity to ensure that the development is able to serve as a retail and residential hub for the Bare Hills community that also improves accessibility and sustainability for Lake Roland Park. To learn more about Bluestem’s commitment to maintaining the local community and environment, click here. To learn more about Bluestem’s focus on local development, click here.

Bozzuto’s role in the Bluestem project will involve owning and managing the apartment property on the development. In managing the Bluestem apartment property, Bozzuto seeks to foster and grow the Bare Hills community and help bring increased vibrancy and opportunity to the area.  

Bozzuto is honored to be involved in the Bluestem project and looks forward to creating an extraordinary neighborhood with the help of the community and partners. To learn more about Bluestem’s commitment to keeping the area community focused, click here. To learn more about Bluestem’s focus on local development, click here.

To be a good steward is to be a careful and responsible manager of something within your care. When land is purchased for the purpose of development, the purchaser becomes the steward of the land, and becomes legally obligated to develop the land in a way that meets regulatory standards. But, more importantly, any good steward will feel duty-bound to go beyond their mere legal obligations and create a development that will provide great opportunities and benefits for the community at large. While the reality is that development projects are not always designed and created with these goals in mind, the Bluestem team has sought to make a commitment to good stewardship in the development of their mixed-use project.

How Has the Bluestem Team Committed to Being Good Stewards?

The Bluestem team has committed to good stewardship in several ways: through environmental friendliness, a community focus, local development and an innovative design. An explanation of how they have achieved these goals can be found below.  

Environmentally Friendly

The foremost consideration of the Bluestem development was its proximity to Lake Roland park. Lake Roland park offers unique landscapes, including the rare serpentine barren, and also provides an abundance of recreational opportunities. As such, one of the major goals for the Bluestem team was to create a development that would exist in harmony with the park and increase accessibility to the resources and amenities found within the park.

This was completed in a variety of ways. Landscape architects who have worked on Lake Roland park projects previously, such as Human & Rohde, were employed to make thoughtful choices regarding placement of plantings and structures in order to preserve the environmental integrity of the park and the development land itself. Additionally, the Bluestem team collaborated with the Lake Roland Nature Council to better understand the difficulties the park was facing and how Bluestem could help to rectify some of these issues. By creating Bluestem’s vision of a multi-use village, a hazardous mulch tumbler and several outdated structures will be demolished, thereby increasing the water purity and clarity of Lake Roland. The Bluestem development team has worked in tandem with Baltimore County officials to determine a plan of action that will ensure local sewer lines will not be overtaxed by the new development. They will also create stormwater management and waste management systems that meet the rigorous standards of commercial construction. To learn more about Bluestem’s commitment to environmentally friendly design, click here.  

Community Focused

The Bluestem development team understood that there would naturally be concerns from the community about any new development that was created within Bare Hills, and as such the team sought to forge positive connections with the community to understand their concerns and provide viable solutions. The Bluestem design plans ultimately underwent four phases, each adding new improvements and adjustments to better meet the community’s needs. These included changes to maintain the natural topography of the land, incorporate native plantings in the landscape architecture, reduce the height of the residential building, adjust the density of the building layout, create an access point to the “Orange” trail within Lake Roland Park and more. The Bluestem team also responded to a need within the community for more pedestrian access to amenities, a variety of boutique-style shopping, new restaurants and additional housing options to accommodate Millennials and Baby Boomers as their living needs change. To learn more about how Bluestem has made the community a priority in their development, click here.   

Locally Developed

The Bluestem development team consists of a variety of specialists, firms and individuals who have not only lived and worked in the communities surrounding Bare Hills, but whose specialty is in developing projects for the unique needs of community members in these areas. The team includes professionals from Bozzuto, Vanguard Retail Property Development, Keystone Realty Company, Alexander Design Studio, Human & Rohde, Plusen Landscape Architects, SGS Law, The Traffic Group, MFI Realty, Morris & Ritchie Associates and more. Bluestem also boasts innumerable local supporters and stakeholders who see the development as an opportunity to enhance the functionality and usability of existing Bare Hills infrastructure. To learn more about how Bluestem has committed to a locally developed project, click here.

Innovatively Designed

The Bluestem development team is keenly aware that the nature of how we live, work and play is changing. Our housing, retail and transportation needs are evolving, as Baby Boomers find themselves with empty nests and a desire to age in place, and Millennials find themselves drawn to areas with lower crime rates and greater educational opportunities for the families they are beginning to raise. As such, the way we create developments must change, and the Bluestem team has committed to a mixed-use space, in the vein of places such as Remington Row and The Rotunda, but that push the bar with a design that is environmentally sensitive and considerate of local needs and aesthetics. It is the hope that this kind of smart, thoughtful planning will not only meet the needs of the community, but also encourage other developers to make similar choices in other regions across the country. To learn more about how Bluestem is innovatively designed, click here.  

The Bluestem development team understands that good stewardship requires responsibility, transparency, commitment to the local community, the ability to find actionable solutions and a desire to serve a purpose larger than simply building a new development. Ultimately, their commitment to environmental friendliness, a community focus, local development and innovative design will help them act and serve as good stewards of the Bluestem development property, thereby inspiring other development firms to commit to similar action and continue creating developments that are based on an intelligent, sustainable and solutions-based design. To learn more about Bluestem’s commitment to environmental preservation, click here.

Plusen’s role in the Bluestem project is to design an aesthetic and functional outdoor experience around the development that also supports the local environment. For example, Plusen spent several hours inspecting Lake Roland and its microclimates and noticed that the Virginia Pine, an invasive species, is present throughout the serpentine barren area and into the Bluestem development. Their team will work with both Bluestem and the Lake Roland Nature Council to ensure that the invasive species on the Bluestem property are removed and replaced with native prairie grass, helping to sustain this unique ecosystem.  

Plusen also found that the area’s stormwater management is outdated and ineffective, allowing water to run untreated back into the lake. The firm advised implementing a runoff strategy that mimics the natural state of a native woodland forest. By adhering to modern codes, the stormwater management system will be more effective and have the ability to withstand 100-year storms.

Plusen will also collaborate with Bozzuto to ensure that lease documents will include educational materials about native and invasive species and which types of plants residents should avoid keeping on their porch or balcony so as not to spread spores of invasive species into the park. Plusen has also collaborated with park officials to discuss the potential of educational signage that would explain the delicate nature of the serpentine barren so park-goers, Bluestem visitors and residents alike can all serve as stewards of the park.

Plusen Landscape Architects is honored to be involved in the Bluestem project and looks forward to restoring the natural landscape while creating a beautiful place to live. To learn more about Bluestem’s commitment to supporting the local environment, click here. To learn more about Bluestem’s focus on local development, click here.

The Bluestem Development Team’s Commitment to Implementing Community Feedback

From the inception of the project, the Bluestem development team has worked closely with a variety of community stakeholders, including the leadership of the Ruxton/Riderwood/Lake Roland Area Improvement Association (RRLRAIA) and the Lake Roland Nature Council, to ensure that community feedback was foremost when creating the design plans for Bluestem. The final development plans also help to further the goals of the RRLRAIA’s Community Plan and the Baltimore County Master Plan for 2020.

The Evolution of Bluestem’s Design: Phase One to Phase Four

Throughout the course of the four years that Bluestem has been in the works, the development plans have changed a total of four times. This has been due to Vanguard’s desire to create a space that exists in harmony with the community’s desires and the area’s pre-existing amenities, including Lake Roland park.

Phase One, which was developed on February 1st, 2016, was originally named “Village of Lake Roland” and consisted of a traditional flattened layout with a residential building in the rear, commercial retail towards the front of the property and a central parking field. Phase Two, developed in August 2016, deviated slightly from the original design, maintaining one of the property’s original structures and introducing a drive-thru user as an end-cap.

Phase Three, developed in February 2017, took a far more innovative approach to the design with the assistance of Alexander Design Studio, who maintained the existing topography of the property and included two drive-thru pad buildings with the original main building still developed to the south end of the project. This plan was submitted as a part of the Planned Unit Development (PUD) application for Baltimore County. A PUD is a mixed-use development that must achieve substantially higher-quality development than a conventional development or provide a public benefit that would otherwise not be obtained.

The final phase, Phase Four, was developed on May 22, 2017 and took into consideration feedback from the PUD Community Input Meeting as well as other community stakeholders. All development was removed from the forest buffer zone and the residential and commercial aspects of the project were combined to create an integrated mixed-use project. The project was renamed “Bluestem” to demonstrate the team’s commitment to developing an environmentally-friendly project in harmony with the park. The layout of the development was also shifted to create a walkable plan with a focal “main street.”  

Misguided Fears: “Looming Tower” Above Lake Roland

In one of the original phases of the development plan, the residential building within the development was designed to be built to eight stories. After listening to community concerns, the Bluestem development team chose to reduce the residential building to five stories, and there are no other buildings slated to be constructed on the property that would exceed this story level. Each of the other buildings on the property are to be constructed to one, two or three stories, respectively. In a further effort to maintain as much green space on the property as possible—in accordance with the wishes of the community—the development team has chosen to develop this parcel of land to a density that is only 20% of what zoning regulations for the property permit. Ultimately, fears of a tower looming over Lake Roland Park are misguided: the Bluestem development team has gone to great lengths to create a design that is sensitive to the needs of the community and to the natural spaces surrounding the property. In fact, the tallest building on the Bluestem site will only be 15 feet taller than the building directly adjacent to the site.

How Else Has Bluestem Committed to a Community-Focused Design?

The Bluestem development team consists of locally-run and operated firms that have a deep understanding of what the communities surrounding Bluestem require—not only because they live and work in these communities, but because they have spent their careers working on projects within these spaces. Bluestem’s commitment to a community-focused development goes far beyond the scope of what is detailed here. To learn more about how Bluestem is responding to the needs of the Bare Hills Community, click here.

Development Facilitated by a Regionally-Knowledgeable and Local Team

The Bluestem development team is comprised of specialists who are based in, and familiar with, Maryland and its unique needs. These include professionals from Bozzuto, Vanguard Retail Property Development, Keystone Realty Company, Alexander Design Studio, Human & Rohde, Plusen Landscape Architects, SGS Law, The Traffic Group, MFI Realty, Morris & Ritchie Associates and more. Many of these specialists have played a key role in projects surrounding the Bare hills community. Human & Rohde was the consultant for many of the amenity improvements to Lake Roland park, including the dog park, the boardwalk and more. Bluestem also boasts innumerable local supporters and stakeholders who see the development as an opportunity to enhance the functionality and usability of existing Bare Hills infrastructure.   

Commitment to Maintaining the Local Community

The Bluestem development has been and continues to be designed with the protection and enhanced changes of Lake Roland park in mind. The development went through multiple iterations, including improvements based on the concerns and feedback from the surrounding community and local experts on land use, environmental protection and real estate development. The incredible dedication to maintaining the natural beauty of the park has been a guiding influence of the Bluestem team’s efforts to protect the natural integrity of Lake Roland’s unique and delicate ecosystems. Vanguard also insisted on preemptive planning to ensure the Bluestem development would enhance safety to local traffic, both automotive and pedestrian. Traffic studies have been conducted to ensure the impact would be beneficial.

Enhancement of Local Amenities

The character of the local community will not only be maintained in the creation of the Bluestem development but enhanced as well. While Lake Roland provides bountiful amenities to park-goers, some features exist which have not been adequately enhanced since the park’s inception in the mid-1900s. As the parcel of land where the development will be built is currently laid out, several access roads to the park and surrounding area exist that are unsafe for community members and park-goers alike. Bluestem seeks to create a new, larger and safer access point that will help remove some of the congestion and danger from these various other access points, making it easier and safer for people to walk and drive throughout the community, whether they are trying to access the park or any of the other amenities the Bare Hills community offers. Safe and environmentally-respectful access points to Lake Roland park will be added with parking in the rear of the development, reducing the strain felt in the current access points to the park. Instead of creating an isolated development, the Bluestem development team seeks to create an amenity that interweaves the local community and the park as well as providing many new refined features for the community.