The new Trader Joe’s location in College Park will open on Thursday, Oct. 27.

In an email sent to the Hyattsville Wire, a spokeswoman for the popular grocery chain said that its new location at 4429 Calvert Rd. in the Aster mixed-use development will hold a ceremonial ribbon cutting at 8 a.m. next Thursday.

The 11,000-square-foot store, first reported by the Hyattsville Wire last year, will be the tenth Trader Joe’s in Maryland and the first in Prince George’s County.

In signs of how heavily it will market to college students, the interior of the store features murals of buildings on the University of Maryland campus and the college football stadium as well as the nearby College Park airport.

The store has already hired more than 100 staffers and store manager Joseph Martorellais is continuing to hire, with positions posted online here.

Grocery stores have become popular anchor tenants in developments such as Aster College Park because they draw customers throughout the week and are an added amenity for potential residents of the 393 apartments on site.

Trader Joe’s joins a competitive local grocery scene on the Route 1 corridor, with nearby Whole Foods in Riverdale Park and a Lidl in College Park, among others.

It will be open daily from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.

A two-level parking garage is accessible next to the store entrance on Calvert Road. Trader Joe’s customers can validate their parking in the store for 90 minutes of free parking. There are also three free street parking spots in front of the store.

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Another new, large-scale mural has added to the artsy vibe on Mount Rainier’s Otis Street.

Located on the home of the Otis Street Arts Project at 3706 Otis St., the mural shows a woman’s face complemented by parallel lines.

The mural, which is being painted by Jeff Huntington, a Filipino-American painter from Annapolis who goes by Jahru, is debuting at the Otis Street Arts Project’s ARTgineering V 2.0, a science-oriented art exhibit that opened last weekend.

Huntington’s work has appeared throughout the U.S. and in Panama, Brazil, Colombia, France, Philippines and India, with his most recent mural of the Iowa state bird in a redeveloping neighborhood in Cedar Rapids.

He is the co-founder of Future History Now, a nonprofit arts outreach program for teens.

The mural is steps away from another new public art display by Spanish artist Iker Muro which is located on a nearby building off Wells Avenue.

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An artist from Barcelona created one of the newest murals along the Route 1 corridor.

The Spanish artist Iker Muro painted the colorful geometric painting on the side of a building off Wells Avenue in Mount Rainier near the Washington Glass School and the Otis Street Arts Project, joining several other large-scale murals nearby.

Originally an illustrator and graphic designer, Muro has become known for splashy paintings in abandoned spaces that illustrate his belief that “color makes people happy.” He’s also painted murals in places as different as Taiwan and Boston.

He told the Hyattsville Wire that he used roller house paint and spray paint to make the untitled mural over the course of three days in late September.

“Everything around me inspires,” he said.

Muro also recently painted a mural on the side of a building at 101 Harry Thomas Way NE, just off the Metropolitan Branch Trail in D.C.’s Eckington neighborhood. It was part of the D.C. Walls Festival, which brings muralists from around the world together each year to make art and attend lectures.

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Inside a secret garden-esque nature park in Mount Rainier, you’ll find lots of hidden treasures for young kids who love to explore the outdoors.

Located at 4211 31st St., the 31st Street Neighborhood Mini-Park includes a rain garden, a “food forest” with paw paw trees and other natural features like tree stumps for jumping and climbing on, brush piles, a walking trail, and even a lean to where kids can play.

The park is designed to be interactive, so kids can do things like use a watering can next to a rain barrel or move a group of old stumps into a circle for a picnic.

Colorful cartoony signs explain the role that different plants in the park play in feeding local bees and birds, such as the nourishment that zebra swallowtail butterflies get from paw paws.

The park draws on similar open-ended plans promoted by the “adventure park” movement that came about after World War II, as children in bombed-out cities in Europe were found playing in undirected ways in empty lots.

It’s also in line with other “food forest” parks that have sprung up along the Route 1 corridor in Hyattsville and College Park.

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The Hyattsville Cyclocross bike race, which helps raise money for local Special Olympics athletes, held its annual event on Sunday, Oct. 9, at Driskell Park.

Started in 2009 by co-owner of Hyattsville’s Arrow Bicycle, Chris Militello, and sponsored by its racing team, Route 1 Velo, the cyclocross bike race typically attracts hundreds of cyclists from around the East Coast and is a highly competitive event that combines elements of road, gravel and mountain biking.

Thanks to the city of Hyattsville, which helps support the event, proceeds from the bike race, including registration fees and revenue generated from selling beer on site, go towards the Prince George’s County Special Olympics. Over the years, the annual Hyattsville Cyclocross race has raised more than $85,000 for the county’s Special Olympics program.

One of the best parts of the Hyattsville cyclocross race, according to Millitello, is watching the barriers near the basketball court at Driskell Park where more experienced riders ride right over while others carry their bikes across while beer is handed out from local Streetcar 82 with Maryland Meadworks also on site.

Militello first began working with Special Olympics athletes from the area after he was recruited by former Hyattsville police chief Doug Holland, who asked him to help teach his daughter how to ride and enlist other intellectually disabled athletes in the area to join along. He now helps lead the Prince George’s County Special Olympics cycling team.

In years past, thanks to the work of Militello and co-owner of Arrow Bicycle Chris Davidson, along with Route 1 Velo, bicycle helmets were purchased and given to every Special Olympics athlete in the state of Maryland.

Militello said anyone interested in becoming a member of the Prince George’s County Special Olympics and participating its cycling team should reach out to him directly at Arrow Bicycle.

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J. Harris Rogers isn’t a household name, but he nearly was. For a brief period in the late 19th century, the Bladensburg inventor was a top rival to Alexander Graham Bell in the race to turn the telephone into a money-making business.

The son of an Episcopal preacher from Tennessee, Rogers became interested in the question of how to send audio over a wire while studying at Princeton.

After graduation, he was appointed chief electrician of the U.S. Capitol building and continued his experiments on the side, filing several patents related to telephony.

Sensing an opportunity, his father, James Webb Rogers, bought a large house on a hill overlooking Bladensburg that he called the Parthenon to be used as a laboratory for his son’s experiments and started a business called the Pan-Electric Telephone Company.

The elder Rogers was a divisive figure, “variously described as a crank, an eccentric, a visionary, and a man of culture,” according to one historian. After his first attempt using money from Wall Street failed, he turned to his political contacts.

Tennessee Senator Isham Harris, a longtime friend of Rogers, was first to sign on. Various other political figures, including a former Confederate general, two former House members and members of President Grover Cleveland’s Cabinet soon joined in.

Rogers tried to recruit other members of Congress, too, even going so far as to send them letters and poems and show up at their offices.

The company, meantime, began organizing local phone companies using equipment built with designs from J. Harris Rogers’ patents, which in theory meant they weren’t running afoul of Bell’s wide-ranging patents for the phone. An electrician for Bell even said at one point that the Pan-Electric phone was a better design.

But Bell sued in Pennsylvania and won, and the threat of more lawsuits kept Pan-Electric from expanding into other states. Rogers convinced the Cleveland administration to launch its own lawsuit against Bell’s patents, which quickly became politicized.

The legal effort failed when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Bell, and Rogers’ erratic political influence operation gave an unseemly air to the challenge, which was described by Cleveland’s opponents as a scandal.

Pan-Electric was dissolved in 1886, and “Ma Bell” went on to become the dominant telephone monopoly.

But during its long legal and political fight, Rogers and his son brought to light good evidence that Alexander Graham Bell’s patents were overly broad and his design derivative of other people’s inventions.

Their arguments that Bell was an unfair monopoly, meantime, eventually won out nearly a century later when a federal judge ordered the Bell system be broken up.

J. Harris Rogers’ went on to invent hundreds of other machines including one used for underwater communication by the Navy.

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The newest piece of public art on the Route 1 corridor celebrates the late artist David Driskell.

In anticipation of an official renaming ceremony, in recent weeks volunteers have been painting the mural directly onto the asphalt road leading into Driskell Park, which was renamed for the late Hyattsville resident last year.

The multi-colored mural was designed by the nonprofit Neighborhood Design Center, drawing on inspiration from Driskell’s own work. The colorful signs installed earlier at the park entrance were also inspired by a Driskell painting of pine trees.

The renaming ceremony, originally scheduled for last weekend, was postponed to the afternoon of Saturday, Oct. 8.

Beginning at 2 p.m., the park will host family art activities such as glass bottle trees, tying ribbons on a wishing tree, weaving a community tapestry, a community chalkboard and other kids’ art activities.

The city renamed the former Magruder Park in 2021 due to racist restrictions placed on the land when it was donated to the city. The new name honors Driskell, an artist who lived nearby who died of the coronavirus in 2020.

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