Sandy Spring Builders owners Mimi Brodsky Kress and Phil Leibovitz say they are hoping to breathe new life into the historic Bethesda Community Store & Deli with a renovation to make the iconic Old Georgetown Road building suitable for a new tenant in about four or five months.
A neighborhood fixture for decades, the store in the nearly 101-year-old building at 8804 Old Georgetown Road closed for business in 2016. Kress and Leibovitz, who live in Bethesda, bought the property in October.
“We’ve always been fond of [the store],” Kress said. “We’ve driven by it all these years.”
The Bethesda Community Store dates to around 1892, according to local historian Jerome Collins, and the building was constructed around 1924. Montgomery County’s Historic Preservation Commission designated the site historic in 1986 because it is one of the few surviving commercial structures from the early 20th century in Bethesda. The designation prevents the property from being developed or significantly altered.
Now the building is a skeleton of its former self, with just the front porch, a wall and the roof remaining, held up by wooden stilts as construction continues. The original wooden walls were removed to allow for the construction of a new foundation, and whatever wood is in good condition will return, Kress told Bethesda Today on Monday.
“What we can salvage of [the original building], we will. What we can’t, we will match,” Kress said. She noted the building was in a state of “disrepair” when the company began work at the site. “There was no insulation, it was a dirt floor,” she said.
The construction comes six months after Call Your Mother moved its “Lil’ Deli” mobile deli from the property’s parking lot to Riverdale in February, and more than nine years after the store and its outdoor barbecue stand shut down.
Kress and Leibovitz are renovating the site with the help of Bethesda-based GTM Architects, according to Kress. They plan to construct a “warm lit shell,” a commercial real estate term that means the building will be minimally built out with air conditioning, plumbing and electricity, but future tenants can make interior improvements to their liking.
A glass breezeway will connect the original building to the new, rear addition. The addition could be used for seating or dining, Kress said, and it will also have a sub-basement space for storage or use as a small office. Aside from restoration and construction work, the property’s parking lot and picnic area will remain the same.
Kress said she and Leibovitz hope a local business would want to rent the renovated space.
“We work closely with people at the historic commission and they want to see something that’s viable and has long-term life. They don’t want the building to go into disrepair and be empty again,” she said.
An Old Georgetown Road mainstay
Kress says she and Leibovitz decided to buy the Old Georgetown Road property after learning that Call Your Mother would be leaving. The project is separate from their Sandy Spring Builders business.
Call Your Mother had been at the site since its trolley car debut in July 2020. In September 2023, the trolley car was replaced with the pink-and-blue trailer, according social media post by the bagel chain.
Call Your Mother co-owner Andrew Dana told Bethesda Today in January that the bagel chain considered moving into the vacant 350-square-foot Bethesda Community Store & Deli. However, construction costs for renovating the store became “too high.”
Throughout the years, several Historic Area Work Permits (HAWP) have been approved by the Historic Preservation Commission for various construction projects at the site, including building a new shed and rear addition and removal of the store’s chimney. Much of that work was not undertaken, according to a historic work permit application that was filed in early December.
The Historic Preservation Commission approved that HAWP application on Dec. 18, giving Kress and Leibovitz the ability to fulfill and revise previous historic work permits to better fit their vision for the store.
Kress told Bethesda Today that it may take another four to five months of construction before the site is ready for a tenant.
Former Bethesda Today reporter Andrew Metcalf contributed to this report.
