New Options for Half-Century Old Normandy

Built in the era of weekend daytrips out to the Enchanted Forest and family dinners in Buell’s Restaurant, the half-century-old Normandy Shopping Center has cleared another hurdle on a track to redevelopment.

Redeveloping Howard County’s first suburban shopping center into a new-generation mixed-use community passed after a March 30 county zoning board work session. The original 25-acre site was a pioneer of inline retail commercialism along U.S. 40 in then-still-rural Ellicott City.

Normandy Shopping Center was once the main retail game in Ellicott City, but is now in need of renovation.

The zoning panel’s decision followed a January decision by the county planning board to apply a Traditional Neighborhood Center (TNC) zone overlay on the current business zoning. Marsha McLaughlin, director of Howard County Office of Planning & Zoning (DPZ), explained that zoning overlay was designed nearly a decade ago and aimed at redeveloping Normandy and other older shopping centers.

She strongly supported the rezoning, saying that “the next comprehensive county rezoning probably won’t occur for three years, leaving the center to deteriorate further.

“The TNC is an overlay that lets us take on a new option — to do mixed-use commercial with residential and offices,” said McLaughlin. “With the TNC, it’s pedestrian-friendly housing and commercial space. Cars are not the focus.”

Phase One

Normandy’s original shopping center building aligned along the northeastern axis of the site, with a 31,252-square-foot Safeway Supermarket as the anchor store on the corner of Route 40. An addition in the ’70s and a freestanding bank near the Route 40 entrance in the latter part of the decade completed the first phase of development.

A second phase, west of the original, was developed in the mid-’80s. A second building and an enlarged parking lot on the east side of Normandy Center Drive, and a third building and a new parking lot on the west side of that road, completed the development.

Over the years, Normandy remained a successful shopping center. However, in 2008, the Miller Ford dealership on Route 40 closed and the next year Safeway chose not to renew its lease. The shopping center has not had an anchor grocery store since. Safeway needed a commercial space of more than 55,000 square feet in order to stay in that location. Normandy’s owners felt that it was not economically feasible to construct a single anchor grocery store of that size with adequate parking due to the cost of the required excavation and removal of rock.

When the store’s lease expired, Safeway management decided not to renew it, choosing instead to focus on larger, existing stores in the Columbia Village of Long Reach and further west on Route 40, near the Enchanted Forest.

Currently, Normandy operates at 70% capacity; before Safeway left the anchor spot, that figure stood at 94%.

Apartments Key

“We’re trying to keep the center viable,” said Owner David Moxley, who contends that Normandy’s anchor space is not large enough to attract a popular tenant. He added that tearing the center down and rebuilding it would not be profitable unless he could develop a high-rise apartment complex on a portion of the property away from Route 40.

“[Normandy] has needed to be redeveloped for a while,” said Manager Ted Campbell. Normandy Venture Limited Partnership (NVLP) developed a concept plan for presentation to the zoning process. “We are in the process of tweaking that plan; some leasing issues remain.”

“We tried to get Safeway to stay,” said Campbell, “but, retail trends have changed. We do not have the need for inline retail developments anymore. Campbell said that the new development will include 200 apartments with retail in front on the Route 40 side, in a “main street” configuration.

The other two sections, flanking Normandy Center Drive, will remain the same in the current plan.

However, the proposed redevelopment plans met some community resistance. The high-end apartment complex, the most controversial piece of NVLP’s redevelopment plan, has led wary residential neighbors to complain that this section of Route 40 is already saturated with more than 3,500 similar apartments.

Moxley said that NVLP has done everything in its power to market the shopping center to retailers. Rezoning for inclusion of apartments is integral to making the redevelopment economically viable.

Next Steps

The DPZ agrees, concluding its Technical Staff Report by saying, “Applying the TNC Overlay to the property to allow for redevelopment, which could include residential dwelling units, is actually more consistent with the Land Use Policies than the existing B-2 zoning.”

“Now, they have to come back to the DPZ with a plan,” said McLaughlin. “That has to be cleared by various agencies, and all projects on Route 40 need to have a pre-submission meeting with the community.”

Any projects on Route 40 also have to go before a design advisory panel, appointed to offer objective suggestions. A manual of design standards also governs any development in the corridor.

“Nothing is etched in stone yet,” said Campbell. “We need to find enough tenants to fill the new space to make it viable, and we want to work with the existing tenants.”