Politics & Government

All You Need to Know About the Cafritz Property

The facts behind the Riverdale Park development project.

Location: The Cafritz property is 38.5 acres of dense woods on the northernmost point of Riverdale Park off Baltimore Avenue.

Ownership: Calvin and Jane Cafritz are the current property owners. The Cafritz family purchased the property in 1958. Before that the property was the site of Calvert Homes, which was government housing for the factory employees of ERCO, an aircraft company. The northeast parcel of the property is owned by the University of Maryland.

Team of Developers:

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  • MV+A Architects
  • Loiderman Soltesz Associates
  • H & R Retail
  • Wells Associates
  • Rifkin, Livingston, Levitan & Silver, LLC

Project Details: In May of 2011, the upscale grocery chain Whole Foods signed a lease with Cafritz to open a store on the property in 2014.

Retail and office space expected to be built on the property would be just under 170,000 square feet - 45,000 square feet for a health center, small shops, restaurants, 22,000 square feet for office space and Whole Food is set to be 35,000 square feet.

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As for residential portion of the project, developers said, "presently, our plan envisions a varietyof housing types, including 100 luxury townhouses, 640 multifamily units, 224 senior housing units, as well as the potential for 30 graduate and/or faculty housing units and a 120-room boutique hotel."

The cost for the project will be approximately $226 million, according to Chip Reed, attorney for the Cafritz family.

In a six-year period, he said about 1,883 jobs will be created on site and 430 full-time permanent jobs will result from the retail and office space.

Whole Foods can expect to bring in $11 million in revenue annually, Reed said, and should be open by the end of 2014.

Zoning: The land is currently zoned as Residential-55, which means that 220 to 250 single-family homes could be built on the property, according to Reed.

The project's developers, however, want to change the zoning classification to Mixed-Use Town Center (M-UTC) within the College Park-Riverdale Transit District Overlay Zone (TDOZ). The Transit District Overlay Zone is for Metro-oriented development, much like the M-Square property off River Road. Currently, all of the Transit District Overlay Zone lies east of the CSX railroad tracks.

Steve Adams, urban design supervisor with Prince George's County's planning department, said the developers are asking to extend the TDOZ west of the tracks — something that hasn't been done before.

He said Riverdale's Mixed-Use Town Center (MUTC) zoning is pedestrian-oriented. The town will have to extend its own MUTC zone for that to work.

Important Dates: The project will be presented to the county's planning board on Dec. 15 at 1 p.m.

To read all of the stories related to the Cafritz Property, please visit our news page dedicated to this project.


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