Willard Retail has sold part of a Manassas shopping center, including the Regal Manassas movie theater, for residential redevelopment.
The Bethesda-based firm, in a joint venture with Buchanan Partners, got the 44-acre Parkridge Shopping Center at 10900 and 11380 Bulloch Drive, just off I-66, rezoned for mixed-use redevelopment in late December. That move paved the way for 363 townhomes and stacked condos to replace about half the existing retail space.
Willard sold the first of two land bays, about 12 acres currently home to the 57,000-square-foot Regal Cinemas movie theatre and a parking lot, to Hines, a global real estate investment firm out of Houston, for $18.4 million on July 11. Hines currently plans to develop about 162 units there, though that could change, as it’s entitled to build up to 203 units.
The other land bay, which includes additional single-story retail buildings and a parking lot to be demolished east of the existing Old Navy, would inherit whatever remains of the total approved housing units. Willard plans to sell that land bay separately within the next few years.
Out of Parkridge’s existing 314,000 square feet of retail space, about 168,000 square feet, currently home to Old Navy and Kohl’s, would remain in the middle at residential buildout.
The redevelopment aims to “right-size” the retail center, which a press release describes as “underperforming.” By replacing struggling retail space with new housing, Willard aims to improve the viability of the remaining retail, Willard Principal Grant Ehat told me.
Parkridge serves as an example of “Willard’s broader strategy targeting housing demand through densifying suburban retail centers,” per the release. Specifically, Willard sold another Regal movie theater in 2021 for $22 million for the development of 166 units. And in December of 2023, it won county approval to redevelop part of Cascades Marketplace, also in Sterling, with 350 apartments and 180 townhomes.
The Regal, the only movie theater in Manassas, is 24 years old and still operational. The timeline for its likely closure is unclear. A Regal spokesperson was not immediately available for comment. The theater chain maintains a much newer facility at Virginia Gateway in Gainesville.
B&B Theaters has signed on to open an eight-screen luxury theater as part of developer Norton Scott LLC’s Village at Manassas Park project.
Willard is seeing strong retail demand overall across its Greater Washington portfolio, owing in part to little new being built in recent years, Ehat said. But residential demand is high too, so in some cases, especially when it’d take a big investment to revitalize the existing retail, as with Parkridge, it makes sense to shift part of a retail property into housing, instead.
We’ve seen many retail properties, not least malls, head toward mixed-use redevelopment, not least through the addition of new housing. But it’s hard to point to a universal trend. Sometimes, aging suburban shopping centers are ripe for such redevelopment or residential infill, while other times, as Federal Realty Investment Trust (NYSE: FRT) CEO Don Wood recently told me of his company’s Pike Seven center in Tysons, yesteryear’s strip malls with ample surface parking remain just what consumers want.
Source: Washington Business Journal