A developer wants to build an 88-townhome community at a Rockville shopping center it says has struggled to attract tenants since its Giant Food store shut down in 2012.
Community Associates submitted its application outlining the proposal this week to City of Rockville planning officials.
In a memo detailing the project, land use attorneys from Bethesda-based firm Lerch, Early & Brewer said the decline of the Rockshire Village Shopping Center led Community Associates to determine a retail center can no longer work in the spot, which is on Wootton Parkway not far from Thomas S. Wootton High School.
“Based on the decline and ultimate failure of the retail center due to the newer and better located and positioned full service retail centers in close proximity, the property owner began exploring options for the site in an effort to help ensure a viable reuse of this property and the avoidance of an abandoned shopping center and the resulting negative impacts on the surrounding community and the City of Rockville,” the memo said.
The 30,000-square-foot Giant Food store in the 52,000-square-foot shopping center closed in 2012, leaving the shopping center mostly empty. Giant’s long-term ground lease for the entire center, including the smaller stores, is set to expire in April 2017—opening up the opportunity for redevelopment.
“Despite their best efforts [Community Associates] has been unsuccessful at finding an anchor tenant to lease the vacated space,” the project description memo said. “Many of the other small tenants either have or are expected to close their operations, or fail to re-lease their spaces over the next year, due to the lack of an anchor to draw in customers.”
Community Associates is proposing to build the townhomes in the shopping center’s place. The neighborhood would be laid out in rows of between five and eight townhomes with private streets and a courtyard area in the middle of the property.
Site plan application for a townhome redevelopment at the Rockshire Village Shopping Center, via City of Rockville. (Click to enlarge)
Eleven of the townhomes would be moderately priced dwelling units, a form of income-restricted affordable housing, and six of the townhomes would be what the developer called “live/work units” with retail space on the lower level.
The application said 78 of the townhomes will have two-car garages and driveways with space for two cars. The other townhomes will have one-car garages and driveways with space for one car.
The application also claimed the neighborhood will generate fewer vehicle trips than the existing shopping center, with 142 trips in the morning peak hours and 455 trips in the evening peak hours. The developer is also promising to enhance the existing Millennium Trail that runs in the area and to build a green space for outdoor activities “and potential farmer’s market operations.”
