It has been nearly 10 years since Walmart officially abandoned its plans to open a store in Aspen Hill. The retail giant was intending to build a 118,000-square-foot store with expanded grocery offerings on the site of the vacant BAE/Vitro office building at 4115 Aspen Hill Road, touting the creation of nearly 300 jobs. The nearly 10-acre Aspen Hill property included a 262,000-square-foot office building that was vacant since 2010. In 2019 it was purchased by Kaiser for a future Medical Center that was originally planned to open in 2022. The pandemic halted those plans, and we are still awaiting the next move by Kaiser.
In August 2014, Walmart spokesman William Wertz said “I can confirm that Walmart has decided not to move forward with the Aspen Hill project.” “We will continue to look for new opportunities to serve customers in the area. However, at this time, with our recent store expansion and renovation in Germantown, as well as our new store on Georgia Ave. in Washington, D.C., we can effectively serve Montgomery County residents from these locations. Our decision was based purely on business considerations and uncertainty about the length of Montgomery County’s zoning process.”
Bruce Lee, president of Silver Spring-based Lee Development Group, which owned the site at the time, said “They hung in there for a couple of years, but we are still looking at several more years to get all approvals for rezoning. All retailers really want certainty. No retailer wants to get involved in a long schedule, and Montgomery County approval times take a long time, especially when you throw in rezoning.” Lee added, “We need to improve the processes and find ways to shorten time frames so we can encourage businesses to come to Montgomery County.” Lee’s family owned the land for decades, since it was farmland prior to the construction of the office buildings for vitro in 1968.
The site at Aspen Hill Road and Connecticut Avenue was zoned for office use and was undergoing the county’s minor master plan amendment process to rezone the property for retail use. The amendment process it was going through was the county’s fast track method to rezone properties out of sequence from the master plan amendment process and Lee said the rezoning was expected to be completed by mid-2015, but other planning approvals for the site could take an additional three years. “That’s too long a wait for Walmart,” Lee added.
At the time, Lee Development Group was paying about $500,000 a year in taxes, utility fees, and insurance costs for the property, amounting to $2.5 million in expenditures while the property sat vacant. Around the same time the property across the street, Northgate Shopping Plaza, underwent a $14 million renovation. “We are confident that this is a great retail location, ultimately offering much-needed shopping options to the underserved Aspen Hill community,” Lee said. “Once the property is zoned appropriately for retail use, we expect strong interest from retailers looking to come to Aspen Hill.”
The planned store was surrounded by controversy, with some residents and local officials opposing the opening. Washington Business Journals wrote that “some Aspen Hill homeowners founded a group to oppose it and a MoveOn petition was launched, while several Montgomery County council members had expressed a healthy skepticism, if not outright hostility.”
In 2019, Kaiser announced that it “purchased 10.4 acres of land at 13900 Connecticut Avenue in the Aspen Hill Area of Montgomery County, MD. We plan to build a new medical center that will open in 2022.” Montgomery Planning staff recommended approval for the plan that requested “to construct a 180,000 square-foot medical facility, built over two phases; phase 1 to consist of 130,000 square feet of development, 542 parking spaces, and 63,144 square feet of open space; phase 2 to consist of 180,000 square feet of development, 846 parking spaces, and reduces the open space to 44,148 square feet.” The pandemic stalled plans and now it seems that the future of the property is uncertain while the county awaits Kaiser’s move.
Information in this article was attained from The Washington Post, Biz Journals, MyMCMedia, The Gazette, and Montgomery Planning.