PG Plaza Apartment Community Breaking Ground

On September 14th developers will herald the groundbreaking of a new 283-unit, mid-rise apartment community in Hyattsville.  Silver Spring-based Grady Management is working on the project - called 3350 at Alterra, near the Prince George's Plaza Metro station.

A ceremony will be held at 10am on this Friday, celebrating the inaugural launch, though developers have already demolished the low-rise buildings on site and begun work on the project.  The apartments are, in theory, the first phase of a mixed-use, planned redevelopment of the rental complex called Belcrest Plaza with Contee Company (which owns all the land) that would have included massive office and retail components, as well as up to 2750 apartments.  Land developers put together plans for the $600m development in 2008 for the 25-acre site, but a spokesman at Grady says there are no firm plans yet for the rest of the project.     

The design will feature a group "earth-tone" brick and Hardiboard exteriors in a 4-story building that snakes across the site, and the developers are promoting the transit-oriented nature of the project with a gridded street plan for the new community. "Pedestrian and bicycle pathways/linkages to the Metro and between all of the buildings within the development are being designed to promote non-vehicular travel and encourage walkability," notes a press release.  Developers hope to achieve a LEED rating with the project.  Lessard Design is the chief architect of the project, completion is expected in mid 2014.

Hyattsville, MD real estate development news

Contee Co. Redevelops 25 Acres around Prince George's Plaza Metro

As part of the development around the Price George's Plaza Metro station, the Contee Company, LLP, is redeveloping 25 of the its 35 acres, along with Old Town Construction and the Lessard Design. Those 35 acres were originally developed in the early ‘60s. The developer now intends to build several thousand housing units and an office building. Currently, it is working on a building dubbed "Building 6," which will replace 5 recently demolished buildings.

Jared Spahn, a Managing Member of Old Town Construction, said since the area is a living community, Contee is rebuilding the parcels one at a time and demolished the five buildings in February. Spahn said he expects a grading permit for Building 6 "in a week or two."

Building 6 will be a 4-story, 283-unit, 360,000 s.f. garden-style podium building with an underground parking garage, replacing the 105 units demolished.

"It’ll have all the great bells and whistles to compete with all the great projects,” Spahn said.  The bells and whistles apparently include fitness rooms, a business center and meditation gardens to presumably spend time in after spending a long day in the business center. Spahn said it needed to be “extremely high-end to compete with the other great projects that have been invested in around that Metro station.”

Spahn said construction should begin within the next two weeks, as soon as he receives the grading permits.

The  new building will be competing with other “luxury” complexes in the area, but Spahn thinks customer service will set it apart, commenting that having a local owner is what tips it over the edge.

“What I think sets our building apart a little bit from the others is because compared to Post Park and Equity Residential, we are renting from friends and family instead of a multinational corporation. What it allows us to do, we’re not driven by stock prices or market movements because we are long-term investors, it’s going to allow us to provide, we think, a better priced product for our customers than those that have to answer to Wall Street.”

The entire area previously had 555 garden-style apartments in 20 buildings on the site. Through redevelopment, Spahn expects 2,400 to 2,500 units and 350,000 s.f. of office space in the next ten to fifteen years.

Hyattsville, MD real estate development news

Four Years Later, Arts District at Hyattsville Chugs Along

Hyattsville in PG County is not exactly the center of "urban chic" in the DC Metro area, but a mixed-use project, lead by EYA with retail by StreetSense, is vying to stake a claim to being Maryland's H Street. Most of the residential in the West Village, the first phase of the Arts District at Hyattsville that began in 2006, has sold. After several years of threatening to do so, the development team this month broke ground on the retail element of the second phase, the East Village, and has signed on tenants: Tara Thai, Busboys and Poets and, most recently, Yes! Organic Market. Construction on the one-story retail element is scheduled to begin in earnest in May and to complete by fall 2010 with occupancy in late 2010 or spring 2011; construction on the East Village residential element is expected to begin late this year.

The $200 million Arts District is a new, 25-acre residential neighborhood off of Route 1 in PG County (a.k.a. Rhode Island Avenue in D.C.), just two miles from the District border and two miles from the University of Maryland. Jack McLaurin, a Principal at Lessard Group architects, said his firm tried to create a "depot main street architecture" for the project, hearkening back to old railroad towns, since a railroad line runs along the property. Lessard "tried to funk it up" to make the new project look like "someone had come in and revitalized an area that had been there for a long time." Faux adaptive reuse?

The project is delivering in two phases: the West and East Villages (i.e. East or West of Route 1). The West Village includes 132 townhouses, 10 of which are live-work space for artists, and the rehabilitated Lustine showroom, which serves as a community center with an art gallery and gym. Aakash Thakkar, a Vice President at EYA, said 102 of the residential units are settled, most are built, and the team "hopes to have it sold and completed by the end of 2010." To put it in perspective, sales began on the West Village in 2006.

The East Village will include 41,000 s.f. retail, 275 multi-family units and 183 townhouses. The project originally was to have fewer multi-family units, but EYA recently received approval from the Prince George's County Planning Board to add an additional 198 units in one, four-story building and to reduce by 21 the number of townhouses. Thakkar said at this time EYA has not decided whether the multi-family units will be rental or condos and that construction on the three buildings will not begin until early next year. The townhouses, however, should start sales as early as this April, with construction set to begin in the 3rd quarter of this year.

McLaurin said the West Village has more of an art deco feel than the updated design for the East village, where the team simplified the design to reduce costs. "No vinyl siding" the architect assured DCMud, but "we tried to work with interesting color combination with the brick and hardie panel." The multi-family buildings are broken up to look like a series of taller townhouses, and to keep with the depot idea, the multi-family buildings have space for ground floor retail or artists work spaces, with "larger window patterns" and "doors on ground level units." McLaurin said he wanted to create a "distinct" feel, so that people would know they were not in "anywhere U.S.A."

Guy Silverman, Managing Principal at StreetSense, said his company is the majority owner on the retail, but has been working closely with EYA so that the two developers are "very aligned...in terms of how we envision the Arts District." Silverman said this will be the first location for both Yes! Organic Market and Busboys and Poets and that the choice of Hyattsville "speaks volumes" about the project and the developers' efforts to create an urban neighborhood feel. Tara Thai is also signed on, bringing the total spoken-for retail space to 60%. StreetSense is now looking tenants like a yoga studio, a drop off dry cleaners, a small spa or maybe even an organic pet food store to fill the remaining space.

Hyattsville real estate development news

Post Park Coming Soon to Post-Hyattsville

After forty years of relative imperviousness to real estate development in neighboring Washington DC, the Prince George’s County hamlet of Hyattsville is finally taking advantage of its seat just one mile from the District line. First came new development at the aging University Town Center, which was followed shortly by EYA’s Arts District Hyattsville project – an ongoing undertaking that’s been a shot in the arm for the town’s main corridor along Route 1. Now Atlanta-based developer Post Properties, Inc. has begun construction on a new phase; their Post Park development at 3300 East West Highway.

Located on a 7-acre parcel just off of MD 410, Post Park will be a serious addition to the Prince George’s County market – especially along the busy thoroughfare known more for its drive-thrus and strip malls than big ticket residential properties. The developments primary building will measure in at 466,700 square feet and four to five stories, for a total of 364 new residential units. 1750 square of retail space will occupy the building’s ground floor, while a 544-space parking garage will serve residents only (and not patrons of the Prince George’s Plaza Metro Station just 1600 feet away).

Post has dubbed their units “apartment homes” and will be offering, in "late 2009," finishing touches like stainless steel appliances, granite countertops, ceramic tile floors, high ceilings, and access to the in-house fitness center and swimming pool to prospective residents. Per a request from the Prince George’s County Planning Board (PGCPB), the developer will also be constructing an 8,000 square foot plaza at the intersection of East West Highway and Toledo Terrace and include a connection to the neighboring Northwest Branch Stream Valley Park – one that according to PGCPB “will contain little or no transition to the park and…make the park an amenity for [Post Park] residents.” Niles Bolton Associates is handling designs for the project, while Clark Builders Group is serving as general contractor.In a move similar to EYA’s intentions for the township, Post - in tandem with the Hyattsville Community Development Corporation (HCDC) - is currently accepting submissions from local artists interested in contributing to the project’s public arts component (and the more they stand out against their Home Depot backdrop, the better). Any and all entries are due to Stuart Eisenberg, Executive Director of the HCDC by January 16^th.

Prince George's County real estate development news

Hyattsville Hanging in There

Hyattsville - otherwise known as "that place in between Washington DC and College Park" - has been undergoing a significant reinvention for the past two years, courtesy of real estate developer EYA. Their Arts District Hyattsville project is currently midway through its plans to drop nearly 500 new rowhouses and condos into the sleepy Prince George's County hamlet, less than two miles from the DC line. With a splash of urban design fundamentals - gridded street layout and sidewalks - and one dash of "aw shucks" small town neighborliness, EYA is hoping to make the once-overlooked township a new upscale alternative to the communities that surround it.

Once home to a strip of dilapidated warehouses and auto body shops, Hyattsville's main drag, Route 1 (Baltimore Avenue), is bearing the majority of development. On the west side of Route 1 - the West Village - 132 units and 35,000 square feet of retail are already largely complete, while the east side is advertised as the eventual destination of 440 residences in Phase II of the development. Even for a developer known for the heroic size of its projects - Capitol Quarter, Park Potomac, and National Park Seminary at Forest Glen, to name some - the "Arts District" is an ambitious, contending with the lack of native commerce to lean on.

EYA's solution is the “live-work” unit – a townhouse with 450 square foot storefront on the ground level with a 1300-square foot residence above, providing both residential and commercial activity not dependent on attracting big-box retailers.

Angelisa Hawes is owner of the first such unit to open for business in Arts District. After purchasing her new home in November of last year, her shop, the Book Nook Bookstore, opened its doors this past February. She says the Arts District is drawing new clientèle to the once blighted area. "It's people who live in the Arts District, but I've also had people coming from Cheverley, Bladensburg, Mount Rainier, College Park and University Park" said the recent DC transplant.

These small entrepreneurships will soon be paired with the larger operations EYA has lined up for the area – a village market and new Busboys and Poets, Tara Thai and Weight Watchers locations are among those planned in Arts District's Phase II component. EYA is also currently seeking a tenant for a 3,500-5,000 square feet space on the East Village's planned "restaurant row.

But construction of the even larger East Village - planned to include 200 condos, 220 row houses and up to 40,000 square feet of retail - was supposed to commence in the beginning of this 2008, yet remains a vacant lot surrounded by promotional renderings and "coming soon" signs. According to Aakash Thakkar, EYA’s Vice President of Development, 45% of the East Village's planned retail space has already been leased and construction will be begin - market conditions being what they are - once they hit a threshold of between 55 and 60%.

"[Retail is] the first and foremost priority. The reason is, we’ve got housing on the other side and the area has great housing stock and there are lots of residents there. People are hungry for good retail and restaurants. We think there’s a real market to get that going as quickly as possible," says Thakkar. "Once we get that lease done, we can start construction and we’ll be delivering space to tenants about 6 months from when we start…The hope is that we start first or second quarter of next year."

If the the West Village is any indication, the second half of development should be well received – the homes already built have richer detail than the cookie-cutter suburban town center designs so prevalent in new town centers, and the project was awarded the seal of approval by the Smart Growth Alliance, which advocates for live-work communities and sustainable practices for the economy and environment.

The project does, however, boast quite a few vacancies, despite an initial influx of sales that began two and a half years ago (the first two waves of “live-work” units sold out, while the other models all have vacancies). Today, there is a 70% occupancy rate, with 38 units yet to sell. As recently as November 3^rd, the developer initiated 15-20% price cuts for those units still on the market.

"We have multi-family development on that side as well, but again, we’re kind of looking at the market and just trying to forward a timeline that makes sense," says Thakkar.

Nonetheless, current residents remain are unfazed by the delays facing their new community's continued redevelopment. "Living in DC, there's so many people and you're kind of a blind face. When you go into a restaurant [here], people recognize you and say 'Hey, how's your baby?" says Dawes. "It's been a good move."

Hyattsville, MD, real estate development news

Developer to Expand Hyattsville Project

As the redevelopment of Route 1 in Hyattsville into a vibrant, livable city center moves forward, Bethesda-based developer EYA is already making plans to add new residential units and commercial/retail space to its current $125 million "Arts District Hyattsville" plan for the area. EYA has agreed to purchase two additional properties next to the former Lustine Chevrolet dealership lot (where Route 1 hits Madison Street), which it is now in the midst of redeveloping, with Phase I delivering 12 "live-work" units plus 119 townhouse-style row homes that are scheduled for Spring 2008 completion (and will sell for between $400,000-$600,000), and Phase 2 promising 220 more row homes, four "live-work" units, and 34,500 sf of retail and restaurant space (pending plan approval by the Prince George's County Planning Board this fall). With its new land purchases, EYA envisions building either 82 new residential units, or perhaps 12 residential units and a mix of commercial and retail use. EYA’s "Arts District Hyattsville" project is part of Maryland’s designated effort, launched in April 2005, to redevelop the town’s Route 1 corridor into a "gateway arts and entertainment district."

Hyattsville "Arts District" Community Moves Ahead

Bethesda- based real estate developer EYA's Redevelopment of Route 1 of Hyattsville into a city center with residential, commercial and retail takes a step forward next week with sales beginning for the first residential units. The project is the beginning of a $115m effort to redevelop the vacant site to eventually include approximately 300 townhomes, 200 condos, and ground floor retail.

The run down auto-oriented strip is intended to become a "walkable" community, essentially incorporating its own town center by concurrently developing both the residential and retail in one project, with the Lustine showroom being converted into a gallery, community center and gym. EYA’s recent projects have included similar large scale residential development in Potomac, MD and near the National’s new stadium in Washington DC. Smart Growth Alliance awarded the development its Smart Growth Award in 2005.