Growing With Neighborhoods
For Carl M. Freeman Companies’ commercial real estate division, new centers and redevelopments follow growing markets.
Randall Shearin

For The Carl M. Freeman Companies, the last year has been a bittersweet one. In December 2006, the company lost its president, chairman and CEO, Joshua M. Freeman, in a helicopter accident. While the company had no outside investors, the loss has not proved insurmountable for the company. In fact, it has showed no signs of slowing down. Sustainability was one of the fundamentals of the company’s organization, and that has proved invaluable over the last 10 months. The company, meanwhile, has continued to forge ahead in retail and other areas of real estate development, creating a successful year.

Shopping Center Business recently spoke with Michael Reilly, vice president and general manager of the commercial real estate division of Olney, Maryland-based Carl M. Freeman Companies (CMF).

The Shoppers Food Warehouse store at Olney Town Center.

The Carl M. Freeman Companies was started as a community builder focused on housing in 1947. The company continues to this day to be one of the largest master-planned homebuilding companies in the Washington, D.C., area. That knowledge of building many homes in one area led to the natural progression to consider retail development for the company. Over the years, the company has developed neighborhood and community shopping centers for the communities in which it built homes. Today, the company is continuing that practice in growing communities, and holds several commercial properties in communities throughout out the DelMarVa region.

The company’s largest retail project underway is in a growing area of the Washington-Baltimore MSA. In Ranson, West Virginia, about 60 miles from Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, the company has acquired approximately 300 acres to build a 1.5 million square feet Towne Center complex. Due to the astounding growth in the area over the last 5 years, demand is pent up for retail. The 300 acres is divided by a four-lane highway — 55 acres sit on one side and 235 on the other. CMF has worked with the state of West Virginia to add a traffic light at the intersection. There are 22,000 new homes that have been built over the last 4 years in the market

“The growth in this marketplace is expected to be incredible,” says Reilly. “Over the last 12 months, the absorption of new housing in the market has far outpaced the core Washington, D.C., market as a whole, and the pricing has remained pretty consistent.”

An aerial photo of The Marketplace at Potomac Town Center in Ranson, West Virginia, under construction.

The nearest significant retail offerings for the market were 22 miles away in Frederick, Maryland, 20 miles southwest to Winchester, Virginia, or 15 miles north to Martinsburg, West Virginia. To benefit nearby residents, CMF is bringing a number of retailers, from home goods to soft goods to grocery, to its project, called Potomac Towne Center. The company has already developed the 55 acres, which lie on the east side of Route 9, calling it The Marketplace at Potomac Towne Center. The project is anchored by The Home Depot, who opened its doors 16 months ago doing sales substantially above what it projected. Weis Markets also opened a 60,000-square-foot store, offering a higher end grocery store for the market. Kohl’s opened its 89,000-square-foot location in March 2007, receiving higher than projected sales. Other retailers at The Marketplace include Panera Bread, Dunkin Donuts, Famous Footwear and Petco. The Marketplace is about 400,000 square feet in total.

The Kohl’s store at Potomac Towne Center.

The development of The Marketplace has set the tone for the larger center that CMF plans to develop across Route 9 on 235 acres. CMF plans to develop that area in three phases. Phase I is known as The Boulevard at Potomac Towne Center and will be lifestyle destination with a state-of-the-art stadium style  theatre and selection of national and regional restaurants. The center contains a number of national retailers who are entering the West Virginia market for the first time, including Starbucks. Other retailers in The Boulevard include Rite-Aid,  McDonalds, Golden Corral, Bob Evans, and a 12-screen Frank Theatre.

CMF has put in place architectural restrictions and covenants to make sure the project is tasteful and attractive. When the project is developed it won’t feel like a collection of boxes and outparcels.

“We have a very long term commitment to our projects, whether we are building houses, golf courses or shopping centers,” says Reilly. “We consider ourselves community builders so we add a lot of details to make our projects special.”

Phase II of the center will be built on 75 to 100 acres and will consist of a Costco location, as well as several large retail department stores. Other big boxes, such as a bookstore, linens retailer and electronics retailer, will also be a part of Phase II. Hotel space and multifamily rental residential projects are also being included in the planning for Phase II.

CMF developed its first shopping center, Cabin John Shopping Center, in 1968 in Potomac, Maryland. The center was developed on excess land from a residential development and added expansions to the center in 1978 and 1986.  Today, CMF is in the early stages of redeveloping the 220,000-square-foot Giant Food-anchored center. The company rezoned the center so it could create a 300,000-square-foot mixed-use center on the property, adding several hundred residential units as part of the project.

An overview of Olney Town Center in Olney, Maryland. Carl M. Freeman Associates has plans to redevelop the property.

CMF also has plans to renovate the 100,000-square-foot Olney Town Center in Olney, Maryland, in the next several years. The 30-year-old center will be redeveloped to have 200,000 square feet of retail, including a high-end grocery anchor, as well as 250 residential units. The redevelopment is scheduled to begin sometime during the next 2 years.

CMF has also spent the better part of the last few years identifying older centers that need work and improvements to increase their value and cash flow. The company has done more than 1 million square feet of redevelopment to its centers over the last 10 years.

“Over the past 25 years, the grocery store format has changed dramatically,” says Reilly. “The prototype has gone from 20,000 square feet to between 60,000 and 70,000 square feet, and they offer a variety of services now that they didn’t in 1980. Renovating our centers allows us to modernize our centers, as well as our grocery anchors. It also allows us to reinvest in our architecture and site plan, and meet the demand of the housing market as the demographics continue to shift.”

Potomac Towne Center’s Boulevard component will contain an office building, shown here.

For the future, the company plans to continue to redevelop its existing portfolio of retail centers, as well as develop new large-scale centers like Potomac Towne Center.

“We will continue to have a focus on large  projects of greater than 500,000 square feet in growth markets where there is a shortage of quality retail,” says Reilly. “We have a terrific relationship with everyone in the cities where we are active. In some areas, we have helped to write the zoning and ordinances for what we are doing.”


©2007 France Publications, Inc. Duplication or reproduction of this article not permitted without authorization from France Publications, Inc. For information on reprints of this article contact Barbara Sherer at (630) 554-6054.