Upscaling of Wheaton continues with plan to redevelop low-income Ambassador Apartments

By Sonny Goldreich
The upscaling of downtown Wheaton—in size and wealth—takes another leap forward this summer at the crumbling Ambassador Apartments, where the county Housing Opportunities Commission is negotiating to redevelop the subsidized rental project into a mixed-income, mixed-use property.

Details are still undecided on the future of the 162-unit building, which sits at a prime spot opposite the Westfield Wheaton shopping center  at 2715 University Blvd. West on the northwest corner intersecting Veirs Mill Road. But new zoning pushed by the HOC allows for a much larger building that will include market-rate units to help support preserving the current number of cheaply priced apartments within walking distance of the Wheaton Metro station.

The stage was set for redevelopment in 2012, when the new Wheaton sector plan included much denser zoning that would allow for what the HOC calls a “landmark structure” that could reach as high as 130 feet and total as much as 275,252 gross square feet. That’s almost twice the size of the existing 137,675-square-foot-building, which includes the HOC’s six stories of mostly tiny efficiency apartments atop ground-floor retail space owned by the Potomac-based Willco Cos., and an attached parking garage. The complex sits back from Veirs Mill Road, at the far end of a parking lot that includes a small vacant bank building.

By comparison, The Exchange at Wheaton Station at the south end of downtown Wheaton occupies 800,000 square feet, including 486 apartment units in a 17-story building with a ground-floor Safeway grocery and underground parking.

“HOC and its development partner, Willco Companies, are in the preliminary stage of vetting design concepts and assessing feasibility,” commission spokesman Scott Ellinwood said in an email. “The team is still exploring multiple options for the site to utilize the significant [floor-to-area ratio] available to the agency.

The building—which started life as a Howard Johnson hotel in 1959—was converted into low-income housing in 1992, when kitchens were added to every unit. In between, the hotel switched brand names to Best Western and the ground-floor Embassy restraurant—a rare white tablecloth spot in Wheaton—survived for a time after the birth of the Ambassador. Now, the property is best known as the site of CASA's first day laborer employment center.

The HOC issued a request for development proposals in 2012, seeking plans to improve its finances while preserving 162 units of affordable housing. The building is carrying about $8.2 million in debt.

The HOC named Pennrose Properties as the developer of the new project last year, and will soon turn over management of the existing building to the Philadelphia-based firm. The HOC and Pennrose are working out details of a development plan, which will decide the new building’s size and the number of market-rate and low-income units.

“HOC and Willco are considering several possible mixed-income and/or mixed-use solutions,” Ellinwood wrote.

Pennrose was selected in part because its proposal most closely matched the HOC goal of maximizing use of space allowed under the new Wheaton sector plan zoning. The firm has developed 12,000 units in more than 180 affordable, mixed‐income, and mixed‐use projects, including five Baltimore properties.

The Ambassador units are little changed since the 1992 hotel-to-apartment conversion. The original apartment developer, IDI, which also built Leisure World south of Olney, created 156 efficiency units—mostly less than 300 square feet—and six one-bedroom units of about 500 square feet. All units come furnished and are reserved for renters earning less than 60 percent of area median income, pegged to the 2013 federal published income limit for a one‐bedroom unit of $48,330.

Pre-development plans calls for speeding up the relocation of tenants from the building, which was temporarily condemned in January, when pipes froze and a water main break caused fire sprinkler and central boiler systems failures. More than 200 residents were relocated to hotel rooms for 24 hours.

As of early May, 135 units were occupied, but the HOC hopes to double the pace of tenants leaving to 12 rooms per month, through a combination of natural renter attrition and relocation to other county or alternative low-income housing. The pre-development plan stipulates that “no announcement of relocation of residents or actual relocation will be undertaken prior to approval of the full relocation plan, including costs and implementation.”

With no development agreement in place, construction on the new project is at least two years away, given the time it takes to clear anything through the Planning Board’s approval process.