Branch Avenue Metro apartment complex OK’d

Proposal should have included more retail and office space, planners say

When it is completed, the $200 million complex will include two four- to six-floor apartment buildings and 65,359 square feet of retail spread among six buildings, according to a plan submitted to the Planning Board by Archstone, the Colorado-based company that is building the project.

The complex, known as the Town Center at Camp Springs, was approved for a vacant field next to a Metro parking lot on Auth Way. Developers said they hope to begin construction in fall 2009.

The project is geared toward attracting young, high-earning professionals, Archstone representatives said.

‘‘From a private citizen’s perspective, I see this type of housing bringing in the type of clientele that stimulates the retail growth this area so desperately needs,” said the Rev. Welton Fields Jr., whose Southern Friendship Missionary Baptist Church is within two miles of the development.

Fields said his congregation held town hall meetings last year to discuss the development, and that all but a handful of the few hundred in attendance supported it.

But county planners said the project does not incorporate enough space for retail or commercial uses, considering the site it will be on is zoned for mixed-use and is located next to a Metro station.

Susan Lareuse, a county development review planner, said the developer should have been required to add another floor of retail or office to each of the six single-floor retail buildings it is proposing.

Because there already are a few large, mostly residential projects being built around the Metro station, another could make the area too one-dimensional, she said.

‘‘We do believe the retail component is important, or alternately, office space would be attractive,” she said during the Planning Board’s hearing on the project last week.

Lareuse also said she worried that because Archstone is free to develop the project at its own pace, it will opt to build the apartments first and hold off on the retail space because of the weak economy.

Each of the apartment buildings will take two years to complete, and developers said they plan to build them one at a time.

Archstone Senior Vice President Robert M. Seldin said his company intends to build the retail it has proposed – and will consider expanding it vertically – but only if the market picks up.

‘‘We’ve been talking to and negotiating with retailers for 13 months, and right now we just don’t have the interest,” he said.

Seldin said the project does not propose more retail space because most of the area’s shopping centers are established on Branch Avenue and Allentown Road.

Teena Green, chairwoman of the Branch Avenue Metro Focus Group, said she welcomed the project but shared Lareuse’s concerns.

‘‘I have no real hesitation about the quality of the product that will be there, but I think everyone has some hesitation about the staging,” said Green, whose Branch Avenue Metro Focus Group is made up of area residents involved in planning and development decisions.

‘‘We’re looking to make sure a mix happens,” she said.

Dean Rosa, who recently moved into a new townhouse development across the street from the Archstone property, said he looks forward to having the retailers move in.

‘‘My neighbors and I are very excited about a project like this,” he said. ‘‘Unfortunately, we don’t have a place to shop, no place to eat, no place for the kids. We’d like to see some component of upscale shopping.”

E-mail Andy Zieminski at azieminski@gazette.net.