Westmont Shopping Center on Columbia Pike Could Soon Be Torn Down, Redeveloped

The Westmont Shopping Center, located at the intersection of S. Glebe Road and Columbia Pike, could soon be torn down and redeveloped into a new mixed-use building.

A developer has submitted plans to the county looking for permission to build a six-story building on the lot, long home to shops and restaurants including a Boston Market and an INOVA Urgent Care. The proposal calls for about 250 new apartments on the site, sitting above 23,225 square feet of retail space.

The new development would also include an underground parking garage for residents with about 285 spaces, and another 60 surface parking spots for visitors. The project is backed by Republic Properties Corporation, the developer of a variety of projects around the D.C. area. Perhaps its most notable effort is the sizable Potomac Mills mall in Woodbridge.

The proposal calls for the current shopping center to be razed in its entirety, but it would generally preserve the existing traffic pattern in the area — for instance, visitors would still be able to reach the parking lot via a left-hand turn lane on S. Glebe Road. It also includes some streetscape improvements along Columbia Pike and S. Glebe Road, including the addition of new trees, benches and trash bins.

Though the development would bring plenty of new residents to the Pike, an area notorious for its transportation challenges, the county’s traffic consultants wrote in an August report it would still be a good fit for Arlington’s vision of “creating a mixed-use environment focused on multimodal transportation.”

They added that the redevelopment would result in only “minor increases in delay” at major intersections in the area, with differences of just a few seconds at each traffic signal.

County planners are still in the preliminary phase of reviewing the development, though the traffic analysis notes that the developer hopes to have it “complete and fully occupied by 2020.”

H/t Chris Slatt