The Way I See It: 55 on 29

By Dennis Lane

"Everybody goes to Gino's ... 'cause Gino's is the place to go ..."
That jingle has playing over and over again in my head for the past few weeks. It reawakened in my consciousness after I tried explaining to Denise where G.L. Shacks Grill is located in Catonsville.
"It's right next to McDonalds on Frederick Road."
This was the location of the first fast food restaurant I ever experienced, only back then it wasn't a McDonalds. It was a home grown Baltimore fast food chain called Gino's that was started by former Baltimore Colts Joe Campanella and (the late) Alan Ameche (it was actually founded as Ameche's), and their friend Louis Fischer (with Gino Marchetti coming on board in 1959).
In the pre-iPod period of music culture, the Gino's jingle was played incessantly on the AM radio airwaves and thus became permanently embedded in the grey matter of my brain. Just thinking about Gino's bought the jingle back, front and center. And now I can't shake it.
"Everybody goes to Gino's ... Everybody in the know ..."
From its humble beginnings of few stores scattered around the Baltimore beltway, the chain eventually grew to a few hundred outlets with approximately 20,000 employees before it was acquired by Marriott in 1982. Marriott converted the stores to Roy Rogers's restaurants, and Gino's faded into the annals of fast food history.
All of this meant nothing to Denise. That's really not surprising. It's been 28 years since Gino's dotted the fast food landscape. There was never a Gino's in Columbia or even in Howard County.
It's moments like this that only serve to remind me how old I am (as if I really need any reminding).
Last month, I celebrated my 55th birthday with my friend Jim, who also happens to have a birthday in January. A few years back, we started marking the occasion by getting together for dinner.
Jim and I have known each other since our teenage years in Columbia. We were teenagers in the new town when the new town was still new. Columbia didn't even have a McDonald's until we were in college.
As I headed down Route 29 back toward Ellicott City after our dinner, I thought about how many times over the years I've driven down this stretch of highway since I was a teenager.
I was struck by how little it has changed.
Sure, the trees are a bit larger now. But, for the most part, the stretch of Route 29 between Broken Land Parkway and Route 175 looks much the same as it did 30-some years ago, when Jim and I were in our senior years at Wilde Lake High School.
Not that this is necessarily a bad thing. It's both comfortable and familiar. The older I get, the more I appreciate comfortable and familiar.
On the other hand, it's nowhere near what I thought it would look like in 2010 when we were growing up here. Back in the early '70s, Columbia was a place of infinite promise. It had open space and open space schools. It had clustered mailboxes and clustered churches. It had architectural standards so stringent that McDonalds wasn't allowed to erect its iconic golden arches.
Thirty years later, we still have open space, but open space schools have added walls. Clustered mailboxes have gone mainstream, while churches are now drifting back to standing alone. There are still architectural standards, but with enforcement largely in the hands of a dysfunctional Columbia Association, their effectiveness is unevenly applied.
My mother used to say that she would stay in Columbia as long as The Rouse Company was still headquartered in the town. She believed that if they ever left, the town would lose its edge and, consequently, its value.
It turns out that mom put too much faith in The Rouse Company. Senior management of the company took its eye off the ball in Columbia long before the company sold out to General Growth Properties (GGP) in 2004. Even Columbia's visionary founder, Jim Rouse, shifted his focus from creating new towns to saving old cities, starting with Boston's Faneuil Hall Marketplace in 1971.
Forty-plus years later, Columbia is getting a chance to recapture that creative energy and promise of those heady early days. As I write this column, the Howard County Council is poised to pass two bills that will enable GGP to transform downtown Columbia in a model of new urbanism.
Of course, not everyone is happy about this. It's that familiar and comfortable thing. The vacuum created by the lack of creative energy in Columbia's development during all of those years allowed complacency and comfortable familiarity to take root. People got used to what Columbia was and lost faith in what it might be.
That will change. As the new town center starts taking shape during the next few years and the town once again reclaims the mantle of innovation in community planning, a new energy and vibe fueled by new generations will take hold in Columbia.
And who knows ... in a few years, you could even find yourself sitting in a Gino's restaurant in the new downtown. An effort is under way to revive the burger and chicken chain this year, with the first stores planned for Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Gino Marchetti and Lou Fischer are even serving on the advisory board.
I wonder if they'll bring that jingle back, too.

Dennis Lane blogs about stuff around here at www.wordbones.com.