By Sonny Goldreich
Carrots haven’t worked to encourage redevelopment of the
nearly empty Burtonsville Crossing strip mall, where Giant Food has a veto to
protect its neighboring store.
So now Montgomery County officials whittled a
stick in the form of a solicitation to use public land to build a competing grocery
as the anchor to a new village center.
That achieves the dual purpose of dodging Giant’s tenant block
and giving the municipal finger to the Dutch-owned firm for standing in the way
of reviving Burtonsville.
 |
| Giant Food started a tenant exodus at Burtonsville Crossing in 2010, the strip mall soon became a mostly empty shell. |
County officials won’t acknowledge it, but the stick is
buried deep in a formal Request for Qualifications to redevelop a park-and-ride site adjoining Burtonsville
Crossing. The RFQ—which had a May 30 response deadline—spells out that one plan
that would meet the county’s goals would be a new grocery on the 4-acre parcel as
part of a project to redevelop the adjoining Burtonsville Crossing.
No other specific plan is mentioned.
County Executive Ike Leggett said he still hopes that
carrots will work to attract development to his Burtonsville community surrounding
the crossroads of US Rt. 29 and MD Rt.198.
He noted the new Burtonsville neighborhood plan adopted in 2012,
which includes zoning to encourage mixed-use commercial and residential development.
The county followed up with an enterprise zone last December that offers tax
credits for capital investment.
“We’re still trying to negotiate with Giant Food to move
forward,” Leggett said in an interview.
He did not want to comment further on the situation for fear
of spoiling talks with Giant, a Landover-based chain that was acquired by Royal
Ahold, a Dutch conglomerate, in 1998.
Development officials have high hopes for Burtonsville,
which serves as a gateway to Silver Spring and would be the northern terminus
of an 11-mile rapid bus transit system for Rt. 29. The 2012 plan calls for multifamily development and a village green to add a sense of place to an area that started as a rural crossroads and has evolved into a car-centered business district with little surrounding residential space.
But Burtonsville Crossing has stood as a sign of decay for almost
a decade, since the State Highway Administration built an interchange at Rt. 29
and Rt. 198 that steered traffic away from the 129,726-square-foot strip mall. The real death watch began in 2010, when Giant moved across the street from the
center it once owned.
At issue is a right of refusal Giant holds to block tenants at
Burtonsville Crossing that could compete with its new store, which relocated to
the Burtonsville Town Center strip mall on the west side of Old Columbia Pike. Giant’s
veto carries over from 2003, when it sold Burtonsville Crossing and six other grocery-anchored malls to Columbia, SC-based Edens (formerly Edens & Avant), which
owns 111 East Coast retail centers.
Other tenants followed Giant out of Burtonsville Crossing and
the mall has been more than two thirds vacant for years.
Tina Benjamin, director of special projects for the county Department
of Economic Development, would not say whether anyone has proposed a
grocery-anchored plan in response to the park-and-ride RFQ.
“We did this to hopefully encourage redevelopment,” she said.
“I think there is a bright future for Burtonsville.”
But a close reading of the Burtonsville RFQ provides the
puzzle pieces that could allow a developer to sidestep Giant’s veto by building
a grocery next door to Burtonsville Crossing.
The RFQ—issued May 2—is short on details other than saying
the county seeks a private partner to “help remake Burtonsville into a
signature location by …. creating a vibrant mixed-use development that will
generate economic activity in the community, including consumer retail outlets
such as a grocery store…”
The RFQ also says of the park-and-rise site that, “This strategically
located Parcel will help define the village center, which also includes the largely
vacant Burtonsville Crossing Shopping Plaza that abuts the property. Developers
are encouraged to consider how the redevelopment of the shopping plaza and the
Parcel can complement each other.”
Benjamin said she could not comment on the county’s
redevelopment preferences for the park-and-ride site, which shares space with
two acres of state-owned property.
“That is to be determined based on the solicitation
responses and won’t be announced until the county chooses a developer,” she
said.
In the meantime, other property owners already have invested
in Burtonsville’s future.
On the north side of Rt. 29, Starpoint Plaza, a small mixed-use
office building first proposed in 2008, is nearing completion. The 25,239-square-foot project will include 8,431 square feet of first floor retail space, according to broker Lee
& Associates' website. The building sits at the southwest corner of the intersection
of Rt. 198 and Star Pointe Lane in the Burtonsville Industrial Area. Starpoint
Plaza, 4009 Sandy Spring Road, will open next to where community opposition and
zoning complexities have stalled a 147,000-square-foot EZ Storage facility for
years.
The project is designed to meet silver certification by the
U.S. Green Building Council.
Abutting Burtonsville Crossing, the four-building Burtonsville Office Park is in new hands after the previous owner defaulted on its mortgage. DC-based
Bernstein Management Corp. paid $8.4 million for the 116,000 square feet complex,
which sold in a 2012 courthouse auction. The property traded at a very deep
discount, after previously selling for almost $22.4 million in 2005.
As for Burtonsville Crossing, it’s down to a Starbucks and handful
of other small tenants after the Dress Barn held its closing sale last month. (I always wondered who thought selling dresses from a barn
was a good idea. And who would buy dresses from a barn?)
The mall is so empty that it has begun to attract alternative
uses. I recently saw a group of people holding hands in a circle between two garbage
trucks one Saturday morning, after drivers slowly cruised around the vast empty parking lot in the lumbering
vehicles.
So maybe if a village center isn’t in the cards,
Burtonsville Crossing could live on as a trash haulers’ rodeo.
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