A work in progress

Wheaton’s downtown is gaining space and a new identity — but it will take time

Friday, June 9, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo Laurie DeWitt⁄The Gazette The new Bally Total Fitness brings a big-box retail façade to the corner of Georgia Avenue and Veirs Mill Road near Westfield Wheaton mall. Click here to enlarge this photo Laurie DeWitt⁄The Gazette More must be done to draw mall shoppers elsewhere downtown, says Joseph Davis, director of the Wheaton Redevelopment Program. Click here to enlarge this photo

At first, renovating a downtown doesn’t seem too complicated.

However, coming up with a plan for an area where people want to work, visit and live that also fits the surrounding community can take time and, most importantly, cooperation from the key players. The business community, including retailers, professional services companies and other employers, must work hand in hand with the community to make the redevelopment a success.

Downtown Wheaton is one of those massive redevelopment works in progress. Developers have focused on adding residential and office space. New townhouses have been built by the Metro station. The mall, Westfield Shoppingtown Wheaton, recently underwent a renovation and brought in new stores, such as Montgomery County’s first Macy’s.

In all, some $280 million worth of projects has either recently been completed or is in the works, county officials said.

When all projects are completed in the next few years, downtown Wheaton will add some 2 million square feet of new development, including 744 residential units, about 600,000 square feet of retail and more than 300,000 square feet of office space, according to county projections.

Tuning in to residents

Greenbelt development company The Bozzuto Group is among the most active developers in Wheaton, having worked on projects there since the late 1990s. Those include the Montgomery at Wheaton Metro, a $33 million, 243-apartment complex along Georgia Avenue that includes 16 loft-style and 12 townhome-style residences. Bethesda developer EYA, formerly known as Eakin⁄Youngentob Associates, also built townhomes on that site.

Along with the Housing Opportunities Commission of Montgomery County, Bozzuto is working on a $50 million mixed-use project. Plans call for 173 apartments, 3,500 square feet of street-level retail space, a 270-space parking garage and a renovated ‘‘Kiss and Ride” drop-off area and entrance into the Wheaton Metro station. Thirty percent of the units will be affordable. In about two years, developers plan to build an office building over the bus station on the west side of Georgia Avenue.

But it’s taken a lot of more than dollars and cents and bricks and mortar to make all this redevelopment happen. It’s taken a lot of listening.

Bozzuto officials have listened to suggestions from residents, small-business owners and others when creating plans, keeping in mind Wheaton’s need for more residential and office space, said Artie Harris, a vice president of the development company. ‘‘You don’t want to be a cookie-cutter community,” he said.

Local business officials and residents must be involved in the process or the projects might not meet their needs, said Marian Fryer, a Wheaton small-business owner who serves on several advisory committees. Besides more office and residential space, Wheaton needs to ensure that existing small businesses are not forced to move — as some did from downtown Silver Spring — and there is proper access to key sites such as the Westfield mall, she said.

‘‘That’s one of the reasons why I’ve been so active,” Fryer said. ‘‘We have an opportunity to be Wheaton, to be different from Silver Spring, to be different from Rockville.”

Silver Spring’s route

Before Silver Spring’s downtown redevelopment — which is much further along than Wheaton’s — began to take shape, two major large-scale plans were considered and rejected mainly because developers didn’t believe retailers would rent space in the buildings that had been proposed.

Many credit the role of community activists who opposed the projects that didn’t get built and kept encouraging county officials and developers to consider development on a smaller scale.

Both the business and civic community played significant roles in downtown development, said longtime Silver Spring business owner Charles Atwell. When developers were considering putting the American Dream mall in downtown Silver Spring, some of the members of those advisory committees even visited the Mall of America in Minneapolis and West Edmonton Mall in Canada, which were seen as prototypes for the Silver Spring mall.

Members of the Ghermezian family from Triple Five Development made public appearances in Silver Spring, touting a destination shopping center that featured an amusement park, a theme hotel and a wave pool. While some believed a megamall was inappropriate, others saw it as just what Silver Spring needed. Ultimately, the lack of development interest doomed the project.

Residents then told developers Foulger-Pratt Cos. and Peterson Cos. about the types of stores they wanted, confirming the ideas of development officials.

The suggestions included traditional town fixtures, such as a grocery and hardware store, which Foulger-Pratt and Peterson sought out as tenants. Whole Foods was one of the first stores to sign on to the project.

‘‘We felt like the Ghermezian project kind of missed the whole community issue,” said Bryant Foulger, vice president of Foulger-Pratt. ‘‘They took the view that this needed to be an entertainment [center].”

Foulger said his vision — and the community’s — was of a center that would serve and draw in people in the surrounding neighborhoods. People living near downtown Silver Spring had money to spend, he said.

‘‘We had a very clear picture of what would do well and wouldn’t do well,” he said.

Wanted: Zoning changes

Unlike Silver Spring, Wheaton doesn’t have county land available to give to a company to bring workers to the downtown. That is why some Wheaton developers and others are interested in zoning changes that would allow increased building height to provide more space for offices, residences and some retail that would attract more people and retain existing small businesses.

The Westfield mall is a major attraction, drawing shoppers each day into downtown Wheaton. Its $140 million renovation added another shopping level with some 50 specialty stores and made the mall the largest in Montgomery County at 1.44 million square feet, officials said.

However, there is a large space open at the center. Cincinnati retail giant Federated Department Stores, the owner of Macy’s, completed its $11 billion purchase of May Department Stores Co. of St. Louis, owner of Hecht’s, last year, leading to the closing of the 179,000-square-foot Wheaton Hecht’s earlier this year.

The Westfield Group, an Australian company that owns the Wheaton mall, purchased the Hecht’s space and is seeking a new occupant. Westfield officials could not be reached for comment.

Joseph Davis, director of Montgomery County’s Wheaton Redevelopment Program, said he had not heard anything new about the former Hecht’s site.

With the mall such a big attraction, county officials and developers need to do more to get those people to the rest of downtown, Davis said. That entails creating walkways, as well as marketing the downtown and its events, such as Taste of Wheaton, he said.

Several big-name homebuilders are involved in Wheaton’s downtown revitalization efforts. Pulte Homes completed a 43-unit project of mostly townhomes in 2004 in Wheaton’s northern downtown area. Sales prices ranged from the high $300,000s to the low $500,000s, said Melanie Hearsch, a spokeswoman for the Bloomfield Hills, Mich., builder.

Among future projects is one with 201 residential units along Georgia Avenue just north of downtown Wheaton to be developed by Centex Homes of Dallas and John Laing Homes of Newport Beach, Calif. Construction on this project is to begin next spring, said Ronny Salameh, Maryland division manager of the Washington, D.C., region for Centex.

Staff Writer Kevin J. Shaycontributed to this report.