An announcement about the grocery store that will anchor the Chevy Chase Lake town center could be around the corner as developers get ready to break ground, a project representative said Wednesday.
The multi-phase project at the intersection of Connecticut Avenue and Manor Road is expected to begin in the spring with demolition at the Chevy Chase Lake shopping center, said Thomas Regnell, the president and CEO of the Chevy Chase Land Co.
Over the following two years, the developers will work on three mixed-use buildings with up to 790,000 square feet and 534 homes.
The shopping center sits next to the site of a future Purple Line station, and the second and third stages of the development were on hold until construction began on the light-rail project.
Although work on the Purple Line has started, Regnell said the developers—Chevy Chase Land Co. and The Bozzuto Group—are eager to make progress on the first part of the project before pursuing county planning approvals for the rest.
“Phase one is very ambitious,” he said. “We wanted to get that going first.”
The shopping center slated for redevelopment is dominated by the Chevy Chase Supermarket, and it’s been unclear whether the fourth-generation family-run business will reopen once the town center is complete. Regnell said the developers are talking with a couple of grocers about leasing space in the development and are “starting to drill down” on one potential tenant. He said they could be ready to reveal the new tenant within the next couple of months.
One of the buildings planned for the shopping center site will be 11 stories high, and the other two will be six stories, according to project plans. All of them will have ground-floor retail space with housing upstairs.
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A sketch of the proposal, as seen from Connecticut Avenue, via the Chevy Chase Land Co. and the Bozzuto Group
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A sketch of the proposal, as seen from Manor Road, via the Chevy Chase Land Co. and the Bozzuto Group.
A landscaped town square will separate two of the buildings and face Connecticut Avenue.
The second phase of the project covers the area where a Starbucks and Einstein Bros. Bagels now stands. The third phase is near the intersection of Connecticut Avenue and Chevy Chase Lake Drive. Altogether, the Chevy Chase Lake project could result in 1.5 million square feet of new development, according to project approvals.