The College Park Shopping Center, a high-traffic retail plaza steps away from the University of Maryland, College Park campus, has been sold.
A joint venture between affiliates of the Terrapin Development Co., the university’s real estate arm, and Chicago-based Northpond Partners bought the shopping center for $53.05 million. The sale of the 75,471-square-foot center closed on June 17, according to CBRE, which facilitated the deal.
The shopping center is at the intersection of Hartwick Road and Baltimore Avenue in downtown College Park, just south of the university's main campus. It’s currently home to a slew of fast-casual chains, including Chipotle, Starbucks and Cava, as well as a CVS Pharmacy and Bank of America branch. The center was about 86% leased at the time of the sale, according to CBRE.
Ken Ulman, Terrapin Development Co.'s president and the university’s chief strategy officer for economic development, told me that there are no near-term plans to redevelop the shopping center. Instead, he said Terrapin Development wants to focus on marketing the property’s 14,000-square-foot office space, which has long been underutilized. The retail space at the shopping center is fully leased, Ulman said.
“We’re really pleased with the acquisition,” Ulman said. “It’s just such a centrally located retail and office complex that is so intertwined with the university and surrounding community.”
The Freudberg and Rosenfeld families, which operated the shopping center for more than 40 years, were the sellers. When it became clear that the families were putting the property on the market, Terrapin Development “jumped into action” to lock it down in a tight time frame, Ulman said. The shopping center spent about five months on the market.
The area adjacent to the shopping center has experienced rampant redevelopment in the past five years. In 2023, Chick-fil-A opened its Little Blue Menu quick-service restaurant and test kitchen immediately to the south. A block north is downtown College Park’s main thoroughfare, home to Marathon Deli, Taqueria Habanero and Terrapin’s Turf.
The Aster College Park and The Standard at College Park, two new student housing developments, have added more than 1,300 units near the center, across Hartwick Road. Trader Joe’s anchors the ground-floor retail space beneath The Aster, with other tenants including Crunch Fitness, PNC Bank and Arepa Zone.
Terrapin Development will work on “uplifting the appearance” of the shopping center, which is less polished than its neighboring developments.
The sale of the shopping center marks the latest change of hands for retail plaza space in College Park. Campus Village Shoppes, a decades-old shopping center north of campus, shuttered in 2023 after LV Collective LLC announced plans to replace it with 300 apartments and 16,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial and institutional uses.
The closure of those shops, which were about a mile up Baltimore Avenue from the College Park Shopping Center, sparked an outcry from local residents and students over the loss of small-business presence in the fast-developing corridor north of campus. LV Collective’s new development, dubbed Rambler College Park, is slated to deliver in fall 2027.
Northpond Partners, a retail-focused investment firm, acquires and enhances unanchored neighborhood shopping centers in supply-constrained markets, per its website. Ulman told me that the university’s real estate arm was drawn to Northpond because of its national experience in operating unanchored retail shopping centers, similar to the College Park Shopping Center.
Northpond’s largest commercial footprint is in the Southeast and Midwest. It also owns a handful of properties in Greater Washington, including a 44,000-square-foot retail center in Old Town Alexandria it acquired in 2024.
Read the original article from The Washington Business Journal here