Demolition - The Cracked Claw

MaxVO2 said:

****Yea it would. First or mebbe second wedding. At some point, just do the justice of the peace thing, stay single, or buy a bunch of cats..

One of my co-workers has been married 4 times and she is only like 40 or so. Her last wedding was at the Justice of the Peace. Yes, she is pretty hot, and no I won't post pics of anything other than the conga line of cats she needs to consider buying at this point.. She's already dating some new dude so mebbe #5 wedding will be coming up...

I've ridden by that building and it IS a nice looking place, btw.

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DanGuy48 said:

I wondered about the structural integrity of the place. There are what appear to be steel shoring I-Beams on one wall visible from the street. Probably most of the wood structure is severely compromised.

I think the top of one is barely visible above the shrubs on the right side in the photo I posted. It’s surprising to me so many people have taken on that building only to then give it up. One would think they would have made themselves aware of the extent of the problems before getting into it.

edit: here’s a better view from Google Earth
View attachment 393030

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tallen702 said:

A Dairy Queen is going into the space that the Peter Pan Inn building occupied.

I saw the notice on Nextdoor about two months ago where some Karen who moved to Urbana in one of the newer homes was biatching about it being "another chain" and how it would hurt the "historic character" of the community. Yeah right..... Your f**cking cheaply-built house or townhome on a postage stamp lot, along with the thousands of others as far as the eye can see, hurt the character of Urbana far more lady.....

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tallen702 said:

A Dairy Queen is going into the space that the Peter Pan Inn building occupied.

I saw the notice on Nextdoor about two months ago where some Karen who moved to Urbana in one of the newer homes was biatching about it being "another chain" and how it would hurt the "historic character" of the community. Yeah right..... Your f**cking cheaply-built house or townhome on a postage stamp lot, along with the thousands of others as far as the eye can see, hurt the character of Urbana far more lady.....

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DanGuy48 said:

I wondered about the structural integrity of the place. There are what appear to be steel shoring I-Beams on one wall visible from the street. Probably most of the wood structure is severely compromised.

I think the top of one is barely visible above the shrubs on the right side in the photo I posted. It’s surprising to me so many people have taken on that building only to then give it up. One would think they would have made themselves aware of the extent of the problems before getting into it.

edit: here’s a better view from Google Earth
View attachment 393030

Click to expand...

fabsroman said:

Nobody understands this. They move into a cookie cutter development with water and sewer and then they want to keep the rest of the area quaint. I remember when there was absolutely nothing in Urbana. Road 355 all the way from Rockville to Frederick back in the 80s and once we got out of Gaithersburg it was nothing but nature.

Same thing is going to happen here in Mount Airy, Eldersburg, and Westminster. Hoping that being right in the middle of it will buy me 15 years before it becomes completely unbearable. They are talking about building a 600 unit community in Mount Airy right now, and the people living in communities in Mount Airy are opposed to it because it is going to bring more traffic, more children into the schools, etc. and the area is going to lose its small town feel.

I remember driving up 27 in the late 80s and passing through Damascus on my way to the Howard County Fairgrounds for a computer show. I remember thinking, "there is nothing here". Think there was the fire station and a 7-11, and that was about it. 35 years later, forget it.

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tallen702 said:

Even 10 years ago when we bought our 1964-built brick rancher in the Hyattstown area, most of the 355 corridor through Urbana was old buildings and homes. The new development was to the east on Worthington Blvd, but 355 was a straight shot on through. Now? Sheesh. Traffic coming and going with more and more stoplights thrown into the mix. And that straight shot on 355? Nope, they make you go right down Worthington Blvd and hit all the traffic circles and lights they've thrown up to create an artificial Main Street with nothing on it but nail salons, insurance agencies, karate studios, and the Giant supermarket.

Damascus has a ton of new townhomes going in surrounding one of the least-funded elementary schools in the county. Damascus Elementary is going to get hammered with new students in the coming years and they have neither the space nor the funding to handle that influx.

I keep eyeing the house for sale next to Pushrod's place in Glady, WV. The price just dropped to the point that we could probably buy it free and clear with the money we'd get selling our 2500sqft rancher on 3/4ac in MoCo. Just finding a job I'd tolerate that would let me sock money away for retirement is the only thing preventing me from pulling the trigger.

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fabsroman said:

Find the job and then move. When I first started dating my wife, my sister who was working for Arthur Andersen at the time, said to me, "Find where you want to live, then find a job." So, find that job within acceptable commuting distance of WV and move. Right now, Carroll County is about the only acceptable location for me. 35 minutes to my parents and brothers, and about an hour to my sisters in Chevy Chase and Annapolis.

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tallen702 said:

Even 10 years ago when we bought our 1964-built brick rancher in the Hyattstown area, most of the 355 corridor through Urbana was old buildings and homes. The new development was to the east on Worthington Blvd, but 355 was a straight shot on through. Now? Sheesh. Traffic coming and going with more and more stoplights thrown into the mix. And that straight shot on 355? Nope, they make you go right down Worthington Blvd and hit all the traffic circles and lights they've thrown up to create an artificial Main Street with nothing on it but nail salons, insurance agencies, karate studios, and the Giant supermarket.

Damascus has a ton of new townhomes going in surrounding one of the least-funded elementary schools in the county. Damascus Elementary is going to get hammered with new students in the coming years and they have neither the space nor the funding to handle that influx.

I keep eyeing the house for sale next to Pushrod's place in Glady, WV. The price just dropped to the point that we could probably buy it free and clear with the money we'd get selling our 2500sqft rancher on 3/4ac in MoCo. Just finding a job I'd tolerate that would let me sock money away for retirement is the only thing preventing me from pulling the trigger.

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DaemonAssassin said:

I've noticed the same thing with the Urbana and Oakdale school districts in FredCo.

Oakdale Elementary School and Oakdale Middle School were built 20 years ago, while Oakdale High School was built after that, IIRC. But the "town center" concept building of houses, townhouses, condos, franchise places, doctors offices, and possibly a grocery store have turned that small stretch of MD 144 into a town of its own.

As it stands, right now, OES is over capacity even with portable classrooms, OMS is going to be over capacity by at least 150-200 students (projected for next school year), and OHS is over capacity right now by 200+ students. OMS removed the portable classrooms for a new wing expansion during the summer of 2021, and the new wing of OMS opened in August 2021. IIRC, OHS doesn't have any portable classrooms on their campus.

I remember when Urbana was a small town, but when I was in high school, the farm land around UHS was sold off to developers, and they started going full tilt on MD 80 with the building of homes. I remember returning to Urbana after not being in that area for more than 10 years and saying to my girlfriend at the time that we were driving through a farmers field. I don't know what happened to that small town and it is saddening seeing how the county decided to take developer money abs not bother lifting a finger to do anything else.

What really burns me up is the absolute lunacy of when "towns" are built around schools like that, the developments displace students in that district that don't live in those developments. So a student that lives 1-3 miles away from any of the Oakdale schools is redistricted out to the TJ or Linganore districts, yet now they are 6+ miles from the schools they would have to go to in the new district. From a fiscal standpoint of just the fuel for busses it makes me wonder why they don't just expand the size of the existing schools.

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tallen702 said:

We have friends that bought a newer house in Linganore (Pinehurst). One of the big suckers on a postage-stamp lot on the top of the ridge. As we were headed out to their house this past Saturday, we saw the signs across from the elementary school and near the mailboxes for their neighborhood saying that 600+ new homes were going to be developed in those areas.
Developers should be forced to build the infrastructure first, then get to building the development. Want to put 600 new town homes on this farmland? Okay, you have to pay an offset to save farmland in another part of the county, build the school, fire department, and police station first, THEN you can build the homes.
It'd make sure that development didn't go unchecked, but then the local pols wouldn't be able to line their pockets with campaign donations and other kickbacks.

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fabsroman said:

Nobody understands this. They move into a cookie cutter development with water and sewer and then they want to keep the rest of the area quaint. I remember when there was absolutely nothing in Urbana. Road 355 all the way from Rockville to Frederick back in the 80s and once we got out of Gaithersburg it was nothing but nature.

Same thing is going to happen here in Mount Airy, Eldersburg, and Westminster. Hoping that being right in the middle of it will buy me 15 years before it becomes completely unbearable. They are talking about building a 600 unit community in Mount Airy right now, and the people living in communities in Mount Airy are opposed to it because it is going to bring more traffic, more children into the schools, etc. and the area is going to lose its small town feel.

I remember driving up 27 in the late 80s and passing through Damascus on my way to the Howard County Fairgrounds for a computer show. I remember thinking, "there is nothing here". Think there was the fire station and a 7-11, and that was about it. 35 years later, forget it.

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DaemonAssassin said:

Across from Deer Crossing Elementary?

The pols need a reality check in a very severe way with all this expansion.

The developers need to do more than just schools and other basic infrastructure, they need to be in the hook for upgrading the roads, stoplights, access to the highways, etc... Let them for that massive bill and see how fast all this lunacy stops. In addition, they should be paying for the expansion wings on the schools in that district, so that current students aren't displaced or redistricted out to a different school district.

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DanGuy48 said:

When my wife first moved into Maryland with her parents, they were searching for a house. The agent showed them one in Bethesda and my wife said she remembers her mother getting sort of pissed and saying that she wasn’t “going to live out here in the sticks”. I think this is a big part of what we call progress.

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