New restaurants, retail and a movie theater are just the start of Federal Realty’s massive redevelopment project at the former Mid-Pike Plaza Shopping Center in North Bethesda/White Flint.
The Rockville-based developer known locally for Bethesda Row and Rockville Town Square will announce in an investor call on Friday that it’s fully funded and ready to launch the second phase of Pike & Rose construction.
“Phase II” will extend Grand Park Avenue — the new street connecting to Old Georgetown Road — to the northern boundary of the property. It will also include 185,000 additional square feet of ground floor retail divided by 30 stores, another 264 apartment units and 104 luxury condos on top of a 177-room Hilton hotel announced earlier this month.
The announcement comes as Del Frisco’s Grille — the first restaurant to open in Phase I of Pike & Rose — and iPic Theaters embark on their “opening season.” A long list of other restaurants and retailers are scheduled to open over the next few months and into next spring, when Strathmore’s AMP concert venue is expected to open.
Federal Realty says more than 75 percent of the units in its 174-unit PerSei apartment building have been leased following a summer opening. Pallas, a 319-unit luxury high-rise part of Phase I, will open mid-year 2015.
Federal Realty landed Bank of America Merrill Lynch to lease 40,000 square feet of its 80,000-square-foot Class A office building part of Phase I.
Phase II construction, approved last year by the Planning Board, will start in 2015 and is expected to be complete in 2017.
In total, construction of the 1.5 million square feet of commercial space, 1,605 residential units and network of plaza parks and new streets over the 24 acres that used to be Mid-Pike Plaza will cost an estimated $500 million.
It’s the first major project to come as a result of new land use guidelines prescribed by the 2010 White Flint Sector Plan, meant to create widespread redevelopment of Rockville Pike’s strip shopping centers and surface parking lots into mixed-use, transit-oriented communities.
Map via Pike & Rose