Found this little nugget about Belcrest Plaza located directly behind The Mall at Prince Georges. The architects will be the Lessard Group. I looked at their site and have not seen any renderings yet. Take note at the list of preliminary designs at the bottom.
http://www.thesentinel.com/pgs/Belcrest-Plaza-redevelopment
Belcrest Plaza residents balk at redevelopment plans
Published on: Wednesday, May 20, 2009
By Tamra Tomlinson
The transformation of the Prince George’s Plaza Metro Station area took another step forward Tuesday night as the owners of the Belcrest Plaza apartment complex revealed plans for the property’s dramatic redevelopment.
The approximately 36-acre community is just behind The Mall at Prince Georges, at the intersection of Belcrest Road and Toledo Terrace.
The plans were presented to a group of about 90 Belcrest Plaza residents who attended a meeting with the property owners and management at Northwestern High School in Hyattsville.
“We wanted to alert our residents before they heard it from anyone else,” said Jonathan Genn, executive vice president and general counsel for Silver Spring-based Percontee Inc., owners of Belcrest Plaza.
“The property is 50 years old. There comes a time when it becomes less cost effective to make repairs. It got to that point.” The new development, Genn said, will be “a community for the next 50 years.”
Genn emphasized that detailed plans haven’t yet been finalized and that there won’t be any physical changes until at least 2011.
The redevelopment is expected to take at least five to 10 years.
The developer’s plan divides the 783-unit community into four parcels, with demolition and construction proceeding in three phases. A fourth parcel along Dean Drive will be left intact. The buildings in that part of the complex, labeled “Parcel D” in Percontee’s plan, are expected to remain for 10 to 15 years. Any residents whose leases extend beyond their units’ scheduled demolition will have the option of moving to one of those units at company expense, Genn said.
Belcrest Plaza is already hemmed in by new development at both ends, with a nearly completed Post apartment complex to the west and University Town Center to the east. New commercial and residential projects surround the Prince George’s Plaza station two blocks south. The Prince George’s County Planning Board has also granted conditional approval to redevelopment plans for the Plaza Towers apartments just across Toledo Terrace.
Stephen Gang, lead designer for the project with Lesssard Group, said that a detailed site plan will be submitted to the county’s planning board at the end of June, with final approval by the county council expected in spring 2010.
The new community will be “an exciting place to live seven days a week, morning, noon and night,” said Ayana Lambert, deputy general counsel for Percontee, Inc.
Lambert opened the meeting with a digital slide show of the new project’s proposed townhouses, four-story lowrise apartments and 30-story residential tower with street-level retail and rooftop greenspace. The tower is planned for the corner of Belcrest Road and Toledo Terrace, with 11 or 12 stories of office and neighborhood amenity space nearby.
After the presentation, residents were invited to ask questions about the development plans. But most who spoke took the opportunity to instead vent frustrations with the state the apartments are in now. Complaints ranged from poor exterior lighting and slow maintenance service to mice and break-ins.
“It doesn’t come as a surprise,” Carlene Darbeau-James said of the redevelopment plans. “The owners and management have to stay up to date to compete.”
Darbeau-James grew up in Belcrest Plaza. Her mother has lived there for 36 years.
“My major concern is for the residents here now,” she said. “The management and upkeep, it’s very poor.”
She was also skeptical about the offer to move residents to the Dean Drive units.
“That ‘Parcel D’ plan sounds to me like a pocket of the projects,” she said.
Other residents expressed resentment that new development will price them out of a neighborhood they want to live in.
“There is no question that some of these residences will be more expensive,” Genn acknowledged. But current residents who want to return “will get first crack” at choosing homes in the new community, he said.
Genn also said that he’s thought “long and hard” about the need for another meeting with Belcrest residents, this time focusing solely on ways that the community can be improved right now.
Edna Smith, a four-year Belcrest Plaza resident, said that she’d been hearing rumors about the apartments’ fate for about a year.
“I wanted to get it firsthand. I had a feeling they were coming down,” she said.
Smith, who is 82, plans to move to a retirement community when she leaves Belcrest Plaza. But, she wonders what will happen to the many young families who live there.
“Where in the world will some of these families go?” Smith said, gesturing toward three little boys playing in the grassy courtyard just in front of her living room window. “There are no more cheap apartments around here.”
PRELIMINARY DESIGNS
Preliminary designs for the new mixed-use development include:
• 2,750 condominium and rental residential units
• 200,000 square feet of office space
• 50,000 to 75,000 square feet of retail and commercial space
• 25,000 square feet of community recreation space
• 20,000 square feet of neighborhood amenities, possibly including a library
• 300,000 square feet of mixed-use, non-residential space