Towne Centre Laurel: Where should I park on a busy night?

Each Friday and Saturday night, there's a procession of cars driving up and down Towne Centre at Laurel's main drag, each driver looking for a parking space, watching shoppers, waiting to pounce when a spot opens up.

(Have you ever walked back to your car, and looked over your shoulder to see a car creeping slowly behind you? You didn't like that, did you? No one does. Don't be one of those stalkers.)

Near the new Regal movie theater at the end of the avenue opposite Route 1 is a parking garage. Go there, and you'll see this:

Yeah, that's full too. How many parking spaces are there at Towne Centre at Laurel, anyway? The topic came up back in November, when the Laurel Leader posted an article about the new Regal Theater:

The link above goes to the Greenberg Gibbons project website for Towne Centre at Laurel. The number of parking spaces isn't there, so the Greenberg Gibbons site wasn't really applicable to the discussion above, but the site has enough interesting and fun information to keep you busy for minutes and minutes, if you like that sort of thing. As for the parking question, here you go:

Thank you, Towne Centre at Laurel management!

So, 1,570. That sounds like a great deal of parking. Where is it?

Much of it is on the upper deck of the garage, directly above the packed lower level.

Look at that! On the night I took these pictures, there were only five or ten cars up there. (One of them honked as it passed, and its driver glared at me for standing on the ramp, taking pictures.) The rest of it was just wide open, waiting for your vehicle. See?

Some parking garages have lanes that wind around and up to the top, so you can simply roll along until you find a spot. The Towne Centre at Laurel garage is not one of those garages: if you're on the bottom level, you'll have to drive back out of it and around to one of the two ramps to the top level.

There may also be room in the lot shown here, between Party City and the secret government project (involving alien technology).

Here's a map of Towne Centre Laurel. That big arrow at the top is where you should try parking first. The top of the garage, not the bottom. The other arrows point to areas where you may find a spot.

If you have something to say or ask about this post, if you see a typo, or if you just want to tell me I'm a dumb-dumb head, comment below. Do you have other questions about Laurel? Send them to LaurelInquirer@gmail.com.

About the Laurel Inquirer

Perhaps one day the Laurel Inquirer will really and truly be an organization, but for now it is a person, specifically me, Glen.

I drew this before I started my current diet/
exercise/facial-hair-growing regimen and
clothing makeover. I am now stunningly
beautiful, to those who are easily stunned.

About me:

I live in Laurel, and I shall inquire. I'm curious by nature—some would say nosy, both figuratively and literally (the size and unique shape of my nose enables me to hear other bats with it.

I also earned a degree in Journalism and Creative Writing (minor in Communications or Speech or something), back in the Twentieth Century, at Baruch College, part of the City University of New York.

In 2011 I started a blog called "1 Man, 365 Movies!," whose title and exclamation point proved to be overly ambitious. Many readers did not share my interest in the casting, writing, and other behind-the-scenes aspects of film production, and the blog raked in fewer than zero dollars. I grew despondent when my reviews failed to attract many comments or shares, and abandoned the enterprise. I intend to revive it, however, in the near future.

A distant relative.

We're traveling backwards in time now.

During the early Twenty-First Century, I worked in the library of a Baltimore law firm, where I cultivated my talent at finding things out online (secret weapon: Google. Tell no one.).

Near the Turn of the Century: Blockbuster. (This was a chain of stores which rented and sold video recordings stored on physical objects, if you can believe it.)

Before that I was briefly an English teacher at a public high school not far from the aforementioned city of Baltimore.

Way back during the years that started with "19," I was an assembly worker; a bookstore clerk; and the indentured servant of a blacksmith, me meals being twice daily, thank you, Sir, and me living quarters being a nice clean bale of hay in an adjoining barn.

Please do not use the view from my kitchen
window to calculate my exact whereabouts
and stalk me. I know you want to.

About this blog:

As Greenberg Gibbons (finally) built the Towne Centre at Laurel across the street from me last year, I found I had questions. Among these were: When is that going to open? That building over there, what's that going to be? A portal to an alternate universe? No? Are you sure? How many parking spaces are there? (1,570) What's with the Olde Tyme Spelling?

I still have questions, lots of them, about the Towne Centre, about City Hall, about Laurel Volunteer Rescue Squad, about the City of Laurel, about the library, about greater Laurel, and about why you chose to wear the green pants today (no, I am not looking at you with binoculars: no need to check.). Do you, will you, might you have questions of your own about this town you live in or near, or of which you have recently heard? I'm building this blog on the assumption that you do/will/might. If I'm wrong, it will go the way of "1 Man, 365 Movies!," but if I'm right, we'll all have some interesting, nosy fun.

The Towne Centre's inter-dimensional portal. Lots of
parking there.

What have you been wondering? Write your questions in the comments below, or send them to LaurelInquirer@gmail.com !

Good day!

Glen

Mission BBQ (almost certainly) coming to Laurel

It still isn't on the store directory, and it hasn't been easy to get confirmation from those who run the Towne Centre at Laurel website and Facebook page, but there are several reasons to believe the Mission BBQ chain will open a restaurant in Laurel this November.

For one thing, there is an official Towne Centre at Laurel banner saying Mission BBQ will be there.

The Mission BBQ website says they will have a restaurant in Laurel.

The notice in the window that its beer, wine and liquor license request will be on the agenda at an October 28 public hearing

(yes, there it is at the Prince George's County government website)

seems to imply that Laurel will have a Mission BBQ. And yet, online, there has been no official word on it. Could it be that back in June, withholding the announcement was the landlord's way of playing hardball with Mission BBQ?

Could it be they were still doing the same thing two months later?

I suppose it's possible that the final draft of the lease still hasn't been signed a month after that, so it's not yet official, but Mission BBQ seems to be conducting job interviews

right here

so you know what? I think I'll go out on a limb and say that come November, Towne Centre at Laurel will have a Mission BBQ.

Glen