Skilled Sword Fighter Pushes for Development in Odenton

Bob Eitel spends a lot of his spare time working to perfect his skills in the Japanese martial art of Kendo. It's an athletic pursuit that's big on discipline and big on fairness. 

Eitel is a big fan of fairness. 

As an advocate for development in Odenton, he said it’s not fair that other communities in the region flourished with new real estate projects while Odenton has lagged behind. It’s not fair, in his view, that people talked for decades about the millions of square feet of development in the Odenton Town Center without it becoming a reality.

Now, as a member of the Odenton Town Center Plan Oversight Committee, the engineer is directly involved in reversing some of these perceived injustices.

“It’s unfair to the citizens of Odenton who have been waiting for this to happen, with things coming very slowly over a number of years,” said Eitel, 54. “Those improvements should have come long ago.”

Putting the reasons for the delay aside, he said the community is now poised at a moment of opportunity, with the economy gradually rebounding and thousands federal workers flocking to the area as a result of expansion at Fort Meade.

More than a dozen development projects in Odenton are either under construction or in the final planning stages. But there are several projects–including the Halle Companies multi-million square-foot Independence Square project near the intersection of Route 32 and Route 175–that can’t get started until the completion of a major sewer line through the center of town.

Eitel, who is employed as a vice president at christopher consultants ltd. in Columbia, MD, has started collaborating with fellow committee member and engineer Jamie Fraser on proposals to cut the sewer construction timeline from four years to as little as two.

“Our recommendations may not follow standard county procedure, but we’re going to think outside the box and basically say to the committee ‘this is the key project for the town center,’” Eitel said. “We’re going to recommend things that maybe are a little bit different, but these are ideas to hopefully deliver that sewer sooner.”

Eitel began his involvement in Odenton more than a decade ago, working as an engineer on the construction of homes in Seven Oaks. He also did design work on some road projects, including the roundabout in Piney Orchard that was recently damaged by an out-of-control motorist. (He cringes when he thinks about it.)

Eitel served on a subcommittee of the West Anne Arundel Chamber of Commerce to prepare for an update of the Odenton Town Center Master Plan, then was appointed to serve on the town center oversight committee two years ago.

He admitted that selfishly, he’d like to see development in Odenton move forward because it could result in more business for his firm and others in his line of work. (He has recused himself from voting on some projects because he has been involved in them.) But he also said it’s a simple matter of believing that Odenton’s time has come.

“Odenton’s been the forgotten part of the county for a long time,” Eitel said. “But the potential with the federal government spending tremendous amounts of money at Fort Meade, just makes it remarkable to me that this hasn’t come out of the ground sooner.”

Eitel has lived in Anne Arundel County for nearly 40 years, and now resides near Cape St. Claire. He is married, with two grown daughters who graduated from Broadneck High. When he can, he finds time to work on his Kendo skills at Baltimore-Annapolis Kendo in Severna Park. 

While advocating for development in Odenton is less of a contact sport, Eitel takes it just as seriously. He is particularly energized by the idea of new high-end retailers and a greater selection of restaurants in town.

“I hope there will be not only places to live, but the retail and restaurants to come with it,” he said. “The type of person working at Fort Meade is so different than those who lived in the World War II barracks. These are people with advanced degrees, language skills, computer skills. They bring an education, an income level ... there’s so much going on, let’s put the pedal to the metal and let’s get this thing done.”

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Editor's Note: This story is part of a series profiling members of the Odenton Town Center Plan Oversight Committee. Please read previous profiles on members and .