Citing Montgomery County’s lengthy approval process, Walmart dropped its plan to build a superstore in Aspen Hill, its would-be landlord, Silver Spring-based Lee Development Group, announced Tuesday.
This is the second time that a store proposal by the discount retail giant has fallen through since 2012, even though the Bentonville, Arkansas firm managed to fight off regulatory hurdles raised by various County Council bills.
Lee intends to move forward with its proposal to rezone the property, which sits next to the intersection of Georgia and Connecticut avenues about five miles north of downtown Silver Spring.
“We are confident that this is a great retail location, ultimately offering much-needed shopping options to the under-served Aspen Hill community,” Bruce H. Lee, president of Lee Development, said in the press release. “Once the property is zoned appropriately for retail use, we expect strong interest from retailers looking to come to Aspen Hill."
The site is occupied by a sprawling 262,923-square-foot office building, which has been empty since 2010, when BAE systems/Vitro consolidated its operations to Rockville. The county Department of Planning has recommended reclassifying the property as a commercial/residential town zone, allowing for a dense mix of uses (see Planners endorse Walmart, green office building at ends of Georgia Avenue corridor).
A public hearing for the proposal has been set for Sept. 11, when the Planning Board will consider the change under the Aspen Hill minor master plan amendment process. The minor amendment is a fast-track process designed to address smaller areas in a speedier time frame than rewriting an area’s entire master plan.
County planners said last month that a commercial/residential zone makes sense for Aspen Hill because of poor demand for large-scale office buildings throughout the region. The property is also at the site of a proposed transit station as part of a rapid bus line that would run between downtown Silver Spring and Olney.
Walmart would have brought 300 jobs to the site of a circa 1968 office building that used to provide strong foot traffic for about 1 million square feet of neighboring retail in three strip malls. The store would have added a third grocery option for Aspen Hill residents, in competition with a Giant Food across the street and a Lotte Plaza Asian Market two blocks to the south.
United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400—the union that represents Giant employees—has been in the forefront of opposition to Walmart, which is seen as a threat to nearby jobs. The group failed to win passage of a council bill that would have required big box stores to seek community benefits agreements with at least three civic groups on issues like living wages or traffic improvements.
The Planning Board approved a pair of zoning text amendments targeting big box stores. The first—enacted by the council—aimed at a proposed Walmart on Rockville Pike by limiting new stores within half a mile of a Metro station to 80,000 square feet and requiring that they be paired with smaller retailers in a mixed-use project. A second measure targeting the BAE site—but never passed by the council—would require that the proposed Aspen Hill store go through the special exception review process in addition to the property being rezoned from its current office space designation.
The Rockville Walmart plan has been frozen since the strip mall it would have replaced was sold in 2012.
The Aspen Hill Walmart would have filled a huge hole for Lee. The firm would have been positioned to create something of a superstore cluster, paired with a Kohl’s department store and a Michael’s craft store across the street in Lee’s Northgate Shopping Center.
The Walmart plan has divided Aspen Hill, where some looked forward to new jobs and retail options and others feared the effects on already crowded traffic and surrounding businesses.
A new group, Aspen Hill Homeowners Group, organized in opposition to Walmart, and many residents’ yards have been papered with signs opposing the rezoning in recent months.
The long-established Aspen Hill Civic Association—which has more than 200 members—supports rezoning the Lee property but has remained neutral on which businesses might occupy the site.
A local business owners group supported the Walmart project.
“On behalf of the Aspen Hill Business Coalition, I’d like to express our utmost disappointment with the news that Walmart is withdrawing their plans for the BAE/Vitro site,” Boris Lander, co-president of the organization and owner of two nearby Dunkin Donut stores, said in the Lee press release. “After working diligently for two years, our organization will continue to work to urge a rezoning of the property in order to help local businesses and to revitalize our community by providing the opportunity to bring in a major retailer and present more shopping choices.”
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