Downtown Rebirth Stops at Mall Door

Perceived as Downscale, City Place Is Left Behind by New Silver Spring

Yes, this was the place for his new restaurant, Abdelhak Abdelmoumen thought as he toured Silver Spring last year.

The entire downtown seemed new and vibrant. Here was the recently opened Whole Foods, across from the stadium-seat movie theater, next to the Borders bookstore, which was across the street from all sorts of new restaurants.

Then, Abdelmoumen turned the corner and walked into the City Place Mall, where his restaurant, Taste of Morocco, would be located. It was as dead as the streets outside the mall's doors were lively. "There was no action," he said. "I got scared."

Downtown Silver Spring's metamorphosis from a moribund ghost town to a thriving city center has been hailed as one of the country's most successful redevelopment projects. After years of neglect and failed attempts to revive it, downtown is bustling day and night, giving Montgomery County officials reason to boastfully dub it "Silver Sprung."

But the renaissance has largely bypassed City Place, which for more than a decade was the city's only major retail center. Small discount stores and boutiques have come and gone, and upscale chains stayed away from the indoor mall that largely drew a lower-income clientele.

Now surrounded by Starbucks lattes, art films and the glittering headquarters of Discovery Communications at Colesville Road and Georgia Avenue, City Place is an encased island, a vestige of what Silver Spring used to be. It symbolizes the juxtapositions of race and class, old and new, suddenly created by the relentless evolution of a community.

The movie theater that closed more than a year ago sits vacant, its ticket windows shuttered, concession stand empty. A cobbler can be found most afternoons listening to a Spanish-language radio station and waiting for customers. City Place "is now the orphan of Silver Spring," said Blair Lee, a longtime developer and political commentator in the area. "It doesn't fit into the current reality, or even the future."

Inside at lunchtime Friday, Shana Johnson, a 20-year-old college student, and her mother browsed through a store called Rave, where a sales associate said business is "terrible" and stretch jeans with rhinestone studs on the back pockets cost $20. Johnson and her mother come to City Place -- home to Marshalls, Burlington Coat Factory, Fashion One and jewelry stands selling kitschy necklaces -- when they want "something less pricey," Johnson said. "I'm on a budget."

When they want to splurge, they shop at Saks Fifth Avenue and Bloomingdale's. But it's nice to have decent discount shopping so close, they said. "I refuse to spend $49.99 on a shirt when I know I can get it for less here," Johnson said.

Outside City Place on Friday, Eric Liao, 29, a doctor, sat on a park bench outside of Borders. His Dell laptop was logged into downtown's free wireless Internet, and he was checking e-mail while classical music played softly on speakers that line the development. Growing up in the District, he said, "Silver Spring was always nowhere." But since moving recently to the Maryland city, he said, he has been pleasantly surprised with how hip most of downtown has become.

The outside, anyway. He has never stepped inside City Place.

To tap into the prosperity all around it, the mall's management has spent $4 million on a recent expansion, opening a wing that better links the mall to the busy streets and that houses a Ben and Jerry's and a Noodles & Co. restaurant, among other tenants. Galaxy Billiards Cafe, an upscale pool hall with 36 televisions and Stella Artois on tap for $4 a glass, opened a year and a half ago. More changes are coming, mall officials say.