Maryland spent $10M on a shuttered civic plaza in Largo. Now the treasurer wants answers.

Prince George’s County officials are drawing more questions after shuttering a brand-new civic area outside their administrative building in Largo, a project built with $10 million in state funds.

Construction of the plaza was completed in December. But officials under County Executive Aisha Braveboy, a Democrat, fenced off the area at the Wayne K. Curry Administration Building soon after. Driven by community input, the project design team morphed a bunch of parking spaces into a community space with playground equipment, a dog park, a “free speech” dais and pavement painted with the county crest’s colors.

Braveboy’s administration has cited concerns about the safety of the project, which was pitched by her predecessor as a new civic space to help usher in further improvements in Largo.

State officials and project team members have disputed the concerns asserted by Braveboy’s office, saying the space was designed to the highest standards.

On Wednesday, Maryland Treasurer Dereck Davis weighed in. The Democrat, who lives in Prince George’s County, said he’s heard from residents about the plaza. The project was one of the first in a $400 million slate of state-funded improvements in the county under an initiative called the Blue Line Corridor.

“I’m assuming a lot of thought went into this plaza. ... Now we’re just going to fence it off?” Davis said at a meeting of the state Board of Public Works in Annapolis. The three-member board is the final sign-off on spending for major state projects, including the Blue Line Corridor.

Davis asked whether the state could ask Prince George’s County for the money back.

“We’re now at a point where it’s been shut down and discarded and there’s nothing to show for that investment, except for maybe some fencing,” he said.

In response to the Braveboy administration’s concerns about the plaza, the Maryland Stadium Authority, which was heavily involved in project financing and planning, last month described the statements from her administration as “inaccurate.”

“The Maryland Stadium Authority is proud of its reputation of delivering projects on-time, on-budget, and in a manner that upholds the highest standards — including safety,” Gary McGuigan, the executive vice president of the authority’s capital projects development group, said in a statement. “This project, which was designed and constructed in close partnership and collaboration with county officials, is in full compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.”

At the public works board hearing on Wednesday, McGuigan, who attended via video call, told Davis that there’s no mechanism to claw the money back from the county.

“Somebody needs to explain what happened to our money,” Davis said.

The treasurer emphasized that government officials need to be thoughtful in spending taxpayer dollars, even if they don’t personally like details of projects approved by their predecessors.

Davis did not mention any county officials by name, but the plaza project was designed under former County Executive Angela Alsobrooks, now a U.S. senator, who worked with then-Gov. Larry Hogan and state lawmakers to secure the Blue Line Corridor funding.

“We have a responsibility to be as diligent and as faithful over those dollars as we possibly can,” Davis said. “We’ve all had predecessors, may not always agree with what they did, but they were duly elected like we were. We have to live with some of those decisions, even if they aren’t our own.”

Davis noted that $10 million is just a small part of the overall $400 million investment in the Blue Line Corridor, and the state needs to ensure that all the money is spent carefully.

“Not to be messy, as the kids would say, but these are real dollars,” he said.

Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat and fellow Board of Public Works member, said “obviously” he will be following up on the matter.

“These are taxpayer dollars, so we have high expectations about how the capital will be used,” he said.

Braveboy’s office has not responded to repeated requests for comment.

Graham Coreil-Allen, an artist and member of the design team, said the civic space was envisioned as the “heart” of the plan, and part of a larger effort to create a downtown feel in Largo.

“What makes a downtown is a grand, inclusive multiuse civic space. That’s what this plaza was designed to be,” he said.

The stadium authority first issued a request for proposals for the space in 2023, and the design team kicked off a series of public workshops the following year. Those meetings aimed to gather ideas for how the public wanted to use the space, as well as consider elements to “help stimulate future development and accommodate the needs of future residents,” Coreil-Allen said.

At the third such meeting, the public met the final design with excitement and approval, according to multiple members of the project team. The construction team wrapped up the bulk of the work around the start of the year and the space was handed over to the county, though some outstanding work, such as a new mural, still remained.

Shortly after the construction fence came down, another one went up — keeping residents out.

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