Fenced-off Largo plaza sparks spending, safety dispute in Prince George's County

A brand-new civic plaza outside the Wayne K. Curry Administration Building in Largo has become a symbol of unfinished government business: the roughly $10 million space is still fenced off months after construction wrapped, and county officials now say it may need to be reworked for safety.

The dispute matters because the plaza was supposed to be a showpiece for Prince George’s County government. At an April 9, 2025 groundbreaking, county leaders presented Civic Plaza as the first of five signature projects in the Blue Line Corridor revitalization strategy and said it would open in December 2025. Instead, residents are looking at a closed-off public space in front of the county’s main government building, named for former County Executive Wayne K. Curry and meant to make county services more accessible from central Largo rather than Upper Marlboro.

The original design called for a playground, mural space, butterfly garden, dog park, event space and a flexible lawn with a stage. Those features were meant to help transform the Largo government center into a more walkable, community-oriented hub. County officials had also tied the wider Blue Line Corridor plan to more than $4 billion in private investment, 273,000 square feet of new retail space, more than 5,200 housing units, at least 21,900 jobs and at least $21.7 million in annual property tax revenue.

Now the immediate question is why a publicly financed plaza remains unusable. Maryland State Treasurer Dereck Davis has raised the issue with Gov. Wes Moore and publicly criticized the project as wasteful. A Maryland Stadium Authority representative has said there is no mechanism to recoup the investment, leaving taxpayers to absorb the cost while county leaders consider whether the plaza must be partially torn down and reimagined.

The financing path makes the controversy broader than a county maintenance problem. In 2022, state lawmakers authorized up to $400 million in bonds for Prince George’s County Blue Line Corridor facilities, with the Maryland Stadium Authority authorized to issue bonds and required to complete financing and oversight steps before some approvals. That means the plaza was not just a local construction project, but part of a state-backed development effort now facing scrutiny over whether public money was spent on a design that cannot safely serve the public.

For Prince George’s residents, the consequence is plain: a fenced-off civic landmark outside county headquarters, built with public dollars, still waiting for a fix while officials debate who approved it, what went wrong and how much more the public may have to pay.