Towne Centre Laurel opens as an open-air town center on the former mill site

The brand new Towne Centre Laurel development has
now been formally opened in Laurel, Maryland. 

Towne Centre Laurel opened in November 2014 as an open-air town center on the site of the former Laurel mill on Route 1 in Laurel, Maryland. The $130 million redevelopment chose the open-air format over the enclosed-mall model that defined the previous generation of suburban retail, a decision that reflects where ground-up development was heading in secondary markets at the time.

The 400,000 sq ft site had stood undeveloped since 2006. The completed centre anchors on Regal Cinemas, Burlington Coat Factory, Old Navy and Sports Authority, with a Harris Teeter that is the grocer’s first in Prince George’s County. The grocery anchor matters to the leasing logic: it broadens the catchment from occasional comparison and leisure trips toward weekly frequency, which supports co-tenancy for the inline and off-price tenants around it.

The project was developed by Maryland-based Greenberg Gibbons. At the formal opening, the centre was 85% leased and 70% open, with the remaining buildings under construction and completion scheduled for spring 2015. Phased openings of this kind are a structural feature of open-air development, where buildings can be delivered and occupied individually rather than behind a single enclosed-mall handover.

Greenberg Gibbons positioned the asset as a mixed-use town centre rather than a conventional shopping centre, and argued the open-air layout was the more viable format for the site. The rationale tracks the dominant 2014 development thinking: lower build and operating cost than an enclosed mall, greater flexibility in tenant configuration, and a format that reads as a destination main street rather than a single-purpose retail box.