Eric Hartley: Whats so bad about Boomtown?
To some, it’s an eyesore, full of seedy bars, cheap restaurants, nail salons, dry cleaners and, of course, the de rigueur adult video store. This week, I met a woman named Donna, who had just picked up her dry cleaning at a shop there. “I think it would be nice if they just leveled everything and just made a nice shopping complex where we would have drive-in parking, some newer buildings,” said Donna, who wouldn’t give me her last name because of her military job. David Tibbetts, the president of the Greater Odenton Improvement Association, said recently, “Personally, I’d like to see it bulldozed.” Donna mused: “You know how people are getting angry in D.C. where they’re taking over these sour areas and building nice condos? They need to do something like that here.” “Something like that” leads into a larger issue than this parochial west county neighborhood debate. For decades, the county has mostly failed to encourage development in designated “town centers” in Odenton, Glen Burnie a
