Landover May Be Next On Revival Bandwagon

Planners are drafting the Landover Gateway Sector Plan, which would cover the demolished mall site, two aging apartment complexes, the Landover Crossing Shopping Center -- a half-empty complex with a liquor store, nail salon and barbecue takeout restaurant -- and a nearby abandoned used-car dealership. The county would need to make a zoning change in the area from commercial and residential to mixed use.

For years, community activists and residents of Landover, which includes the neighborhoods of Palmer Park, Kentland, Glenarden and Brightseat, have urged the county to push for revitalization of the area.

Diane McGlone, 53, said she wants beauty and jobs brought back to the area.

The Palmer Park resident remembers shopping, going to dinner and seeing movies at Landover Mall, which sits at the Capital Beltway and Landover Road, during its heyday in the mid-1970s.

The mall, with Garfinckels, Woodward & Lothrop and Hecht's as its anchors, was a landmark in the county for three decades. Before Bowie Town Center was built, people from across the region converged on the mall, which provided shoppers with the type of quality stores offered in nearby Montgomery and Fairfax counties.

But a stabbing on mall property, a shooting at a nearby apartment complex that left five people dead and a surge in overall crime in the area in the late 1980s and early 1990s frightened shoppers and eventually helped fuel the mall's rapid decline.

By the time the mall closed in 2002, it had been reduced to a shell of its former self, its fashionable stores replaced with others selling items for a dollar, McGlone said. Only Sears remains of what used to be Landover Mall.

"Whatever they do, it will be beneficial for the community," McGlone said.

But not everyone is so certain.

Glenarden Mayor John W. Anderson said he is worried about the thousands of people, many of them low-income, who will be forced from their homes.

"Where are they going to go?" Anderson asked. "Somebody needs to be concerned about that. . . . It's not that I'm not advocating for development, but you have to also be concerned about the people who are going to be displaced."

Arthur Berlin, general partner of the Maple Ridge Apartments, which has more than 400 units, said he is interested not in selling his property, but in improving it. Berlin said he'd like to see a more upscale community, but he also wants "to make sure long-term tenants are able to react to the situation."

Harrington said the redevelopment of the area is designed to complement the nearly $1 billion mixed-use development being built less than two miles away, known as Woodmore Towne Centre at Glenarden. The 245-acre development, set to open next year, will include condominiums, a hotel, office space and a Wegmans grocery store.

"The two areas would strengthen each other," said Christine Osei, a county planner who is working on the Landover plan.

Osei said an outline of the development should be finished by the end of the year. A public hearing is expected to be held in February, and the council will consider it for final approval at the end of next year, according to the projected timetable.