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Five years ago, Brian Sclar wanted nothing more than to keep his longtime family business, Reliable Recycling, on East Street.

Today, he's made peace with the fact that the City of Frederick's east side, with all its planned changes, has no place for his business in the future.

Across town, the 38-year-old Fredericktowne Mall is facing a similar dilemma, but the problem isn't location, it's age.

Huge indoor malls have been out of favor with shoppers and retailers for the last decade. Store owners are returning to the town-center style of malls where the storefronts face the outside, similar to outlet malls in Gettysburg, Leesburg and Hagerstown.

The future of the west end of town depends on revamping the outdated corridor, including the mall. On the east side, the challenge is to retain a sense of the history, but rid the area of some of the industries themselves to remake it into something worthy of a gateway into the city.

The east and west sides of Frederick city are in the sights of city planners, community members and property owners as districts that need reworking to make them vibrant and appealing.

Though the goals are the same, revitalizing Frederick's east and west each present unique challenges.

Industriousness of Frederick's east side

The east side of Frederick was historically the industrial district, and East Street is today home to Dairy Maid Milk, McCutcheon's Apple Products and Sclar's recycling center, auto repair shops and a few strip malls.

In the waning days of Mayor Jennifer Dougherty's administration in 2005, a comprehensive rezoning plan, however, was going to set the stage for a "mixed development" facelift on that part of town to coincide with its upcoming prominence as the new gateway to downtown via the Interstate 70 East Street connector.

Retail, office space, the Board of Education administration building and a new visitor's center are in various stages of completion on the north end of the street.

"Five years ago, I felt differently. I thought, this is the industrial side of town, my grandfather bought this land" in 1948, said Sclar. "There's a huge substation right next to me and I am not going anywhere."

But Sclar had a change of heart when he heard some of the ideas being kicked around about development on the east side, particularly the idea of creating sustainable, green building, including housing and commercial.

The concept of redevelopment of the industrial district was expanded upon by independent planner Alan Feinberg, and fleshed out by a group of volunteers headed by Ron Young, former Frederick mayor and current Maryland Senate District 3 candidate.

Now that group, East Frederick Rising, includes Sclar.

"They want to bring people into downtown and make it so they can live here and work nearby and walk to any of their basic needs, and to bring mass transit to the area," he said. "I just started to see a very unique opportunity, something that will be very different and very efficient, but that won't lose the historic flavor," he said.

Though Sclar anticipates that in time the east side will lose some of its historic grittiness, he thinks it will be "really neat in the next 20 to 25 years."

He's no longer tied to his current location because he knows that the new and improved east side won't succeed with a "scrap yard" in its midst.

Now moving from vision to paper, the redevelopment of 1,800 acres comprising the east side, including many undeveloped parcels backing up to the Frederick Municipal Airport, and the Great Frederick Fair grounds, will be complete in early summer, Young said.

Young plans to step down as chair to focus on his campaign for state senate.

He believes that providing incentives and alternate locations for some industries along East Street is the best way to work with business owners. Others, such as Dairy Maid, can be worked into the plans, he said. Property values are expected to increase, which may be one incentive for property owners to give the plan a chance.

"The first plan is a description of what we want, what it will look like, and how it will function," Young said. Once the plan's ready, the city will incorporate the venture into its small area plan program, but the project will still be fueled, in large part, by community participants, including area property and business owners.

Dave Agar, a planning consultant with Townscape Design in Columbia, has devoted a lot of time to the project as a member of the community and urban design subcommittee.

East Frederick Rising wants to incorporate community feedback into a plan that acts as a "bridge" between the city's comprehensive plan and the small area plan.

His firm specializes in reworking existing neighborhoods into vibrant, modernized versions of urban neighborhoods of old, before the mass exodus to the suburbs. That translates into narrower streets that are easier for pedestrians and bikers to navigate, and a healthy mix of housing, office and retail that will keep the area busy at all hours, and more mass transit possibilities to cut back on the swaths of paved parking lots that dominate.

"It's not a matter of just laying out colored land uses, but thinking about how people live and laying out a series of neighborhoods," Agar said.

With credentials from The Green Building Certification Institute in Washington, D.C., Krista McGowan, a land-use attorney with Miles and Stockbridge, is in a prime position to assist transforming the east side into a sustainable community. One of the prime benefits of applying green techniques is not taxing the infrastructure, but green building is more than that.

"Another part of sustainability is providing housing and jobs in proximity to each other," she said. "We want the east side to be compatible with downtown, but not mirror it."

McGowan has handled plenty of land development projects, but at this stage in her career, she said, she finds redeveloping neighborhoods more satisfying and necessary. The basic infrastructure's already in place and she believes redevelopment and reuses are good the city and good for the environment.

Polishing the Golden Mile

A more modern version of Frederick stretches along U.S. Route 40, or the Golden Mile. Once a highway to points west with little to offer but a few restaurants and motels, the Golden Mile's current incarnation as the busiest commercial district in the city began in earnest in the early 1970s, with the construction of the Fredericktowne Mall.

Residential and more commercial development followed. Today, traffic congestion and the safety of traveling, whether by car, foot or bike, is a subject of discussion among City of Frederick planners and those who make their homes and businesses there.

A survey was sent to property and business owners, as well as residents to gather feedback about changes needed to polish the Golden Mile's tarnished image.

Most of the suggestions center on traffic issues. But there's just as many who want to restore the fading glory of the Fredericktowne Mall, and find alternate routes to the shopping centers lining the six-lane road.

Attempts to improve the lure of the Golden Mile were initiated by former Dougherty and the economic development office in 2003 by giving tax credit incentives to businesses to spruce up their buildings. A few have taken advantage, including Wolf's Furniture and The Home Depot.

But revitalizing an area already rich with retail, restaurants and housing, is a challenge, according to city planners. And a far different task from the work to be done on the east side, where so much of the acreage is undeveloped or underdeveloped.

"On the east side, there's a lot more flexibility to dream," said Richard Griffin, director of economic development for the city. "We can be more creative."

Still, innovation has to be part of the solution to the problems on Route 40 in creating a more urban and mixed-use environment, he said. The Golden Mile is identified as a small area planning project by the city's planning commission, but planner Tim Davis said the Golden Mile, the city's largest arterial designed to carry large numbers of vehicles, is anything but a "small project."

Its issues can be categorized and worked on, according to Joe Adkins, the city's director of planning. Safety, economic development, social issues and alternate land uses are all part of the package, he said.

But the cornerstone for change on the Golden Mile lies in connecting the shopping centers on the north side, city planner Tim Davis said. Davis is tasked with assessing the transportation systems and defining small, medium and large projects for implementation. He hopes to finish by August.

"Having links between shopping centers on the north side of [Route] 40 is critical. None of those are linked, have to come out of the shopping center, drive on [Route] 40 to get back in another," Davis said. "And from a transit perspective, it slows the buses down, makes the buses create more recongestion and even if you wanted to move masses of people, you can't move them efficiently."

Other minor changes, with minimal costs, can improve the flow of traffic, both pedestrian and vehicular.

One such change is fencing around median strips that pose a danger to pedestrians to get them to cross at the signaled crossings. To make it even more appealing, state highway officials will create medians that are more comfortable for pedestrians, a rest stop for crossers.

The other major element along the Golden Mile that's been targeted for change is the Fredericktowne Mall, now held together mainly by its anchor stores, Boscov's and Home Depot, and buoyed by traffic to the Bon Ton department store.

Five years ago plans were on paper to gut the mall and rebuild it into a two-story modernized version of itself, with more nationally known retail stores. The downturn in the economy stalled the plan.

Today, its owners, the Frederick Towne Mall Association, have a new professional development management firm, DLC Management from New York, to see its vision materialize.

Frederick attorney Dave Severn represents the company and is assisting in the redevelopment. "It couldn't be a tougher time to try and do it, but they are very committed and want to get something happening there," Severn said.

By summer, a new plan will be unveiled. This time, with actual tenants on board and that should make all the difference, Severn added.

A lull in building is the perfect time to put plans in place for the future, planner Adkins said. So while the economy's still in recovery mode, the idea is to pave the way for changes that initially will not cost a lot of money.

Leveraging public and private investment is key, according to planning commissioner member Josh Bokee.

He views the changes planned for the Golden Mile as paralleling those put forward by Frederick County Commissioner Kai Hagen (D) for the Md. Route 355/85 corridor.

By working cooperatively, he believes that both the city and the county can take advantage of state and federal grant opportunities.

E-mail Katherine Heerbrandt at kheerbrandt@gazette.net.