After more than a year of construction, north county’s newest shopping center is nearing completion.
Quarterfield Crossing, a 113-acre mixed-use property in Severn that will include the county’s first Wal-Mart Supercenter, is home to seven confirmed tenants, including a Chevy Chase Bank branch and a Chick-fil-A restaurant. Both stores are expected to open by the end of August, representing the first stage of a three-phase plan to open all the businesses in the shopping center on Quarterfield Road near Interstate 97.
“Things are going according to plan at this point,” said Brett Guy, a spokesman for Osprey Property Co., one of several players behind the massive retail complex. “It’s been a normal development process.”
A major tenant will be Wal-Mart, which is building a 184,000-square-foot Supercenter, the county’s only such facility. Wal-Mart will close its existing store on Crain Highway and shift all personnel to the Supercenter when it’s completed in early 2008.
Other tenants include a 138,000-square-foot Lowe’s, a 135,000-square-foot Sam’s Club, a 96,000-square-foot Kohl’s and a much smaller Rite Aid pharmacy.
The second phase of opening Quarterfield Crossing calls for Lowe’s and Kohl’s to open by the end of November, with Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club slated to open early next year, Mr. Guy said.
Details about the third and last phase are still being finalized, but it’s likely to involve the construction of restaurants, office buildings and a hotel behind the major stores, he said.
The whole project is being funded and managed by Quarterfield Partners, a joint venture of Osprey, Koch & Associates and the Baldwin family, which owns Reliable Contracting in Millersville.
The venture was formed because all three groups owned part of the land needed for the project and wanted it to go forward, said Patricia Baldwin, treasurer of Reliable Contracting.
The company is responsible for performing all site work at Quarterfield Crossing, though each tenant hires its individual contractors to do building work, Ms. Baldwin said.
Quarterfield Partners submitted site plans for the project two years ago to the county, but zoning and permitting issues have taken somewhat longer than expected to address.
“Certainly things have come up that we’ve had to deal with,” Mr. Guy said. “But nothing has happened that’s dramatic or newsworthy.”
Once the first two phases are complete, traffic in the area will skyrocket, but Mr. Guy took a conservative view of the project.
“I think it’ll be a big draw, but it’s near Arundel Mills,” he said. “That’s certainly bigger.”
Excerpted from The Capital, Annapolis, MD Written by GRANT HUANG, Staff Writer