Real Estate
Coming Soon: Senior Housing at Rockville Town Center?
Proposed project will be presented at neighborhood meeting Wednesday night at Rockville Memorial Library.
The vacant Giant grocery store site at Rockville Town Center could be the future home of a 190-apartment housing community for senior citizens.
On Thursday, the Baltimore-based Shelter Group filed a pre-application submission to the City of Rockville for an independent living community called Brightview Rockville Town Center, said Andrew Teeters, The Shelter Group’s vice president of development.
A neighborhood meeting on the proposal has been set for 6 p.m. Wednesday at Rockville Memorial Library, according to city records.
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Brightview is part of a bigger effort to transform the Washington Street site, laden with weed-rimmed parking lots and vacant buildings.
Planners already approved plans submitted by Chevy Chase-based JGB group—which owns the site—to replace the old Giant supermarket with a two-story foot office building with a bank and retail. Future plans call for a Walgreens at the former Orange Ball Billiards site, at 430 Hungerford Drive.
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Teeters said the more hustle and bustle, the better. It’s what attracted Brightview to Town Center in the first place.
“It’s the combination of the all the amenities and that they’re walkable—the restaurants in Town Square, VisArts and the other retail stores are all in walking distance of this site,” Teeters told Patch. “One of our goals is to enable seniors to remain connected in their community.”
The Shelter Group specializes in housing for seniors and opened Brightview at Fallsgrove in February.
But unlike Fallsgrove, which is an assisted living community, the Town Center location would focus mostly on housing for independent living, with some offerings for assisted living, Teeters said.
Teeters estimated the proposed seven-story building would cost more than $40 million to build.
Construction could start late next year.
One potential hurdle for the new site is a moratorium on certain types of development at 275 N. Washington St., since schools in the area are already overcrowded, The Gazette reported.
Anthony Greenberg of JGB told The Gazette that the moratorium was something he had considered. A city spokesperson told newspaper that the proposed senior housing would be eligible to apply for a waiver.
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