PG County hopes to boost flagging retail base

Prince George's County made an appeal to retail developers yesterday in a daylong event showcasing the county's affluent demographics and successes of existing retailers there.

The county has suffered a dearth of retailers since the mid-1990s, when two Woodward & Lothrop stores, one Garfinckel's and one Hecht's closed. The county is now home to only four Hecht's stores, which new owner Federated Department Stores plans to turn into Macy's in the fall.

Until recently, no upscale retailers had moved into the county, despite the local government's attempts to bring high-end retailers there.

Prince George's has 1.97 square feet of department store space per household, compared with 5.1 square feet in Montgomery County, 4.73 in Anne Arundel County and 5.23 in Howard County.

County officials asked the International Council of Shopping Centers, a national trade group in New York, to hold the event yesterday to show retail developers the county's prospects.

"We want retailers to understand our market better," said Kwasi Holman, president and chief executive officer of the Prince George's County Economic Development Corp.

The group says the county's income averages can support retail. The county's average household income was $68,488 in 2004, more than Towson in Baltimore County, but less than Anne Arundel's $78,461, Howard's $93,856 and Montgomery's $101,737.

Real estate executives have said Prince George's 63 percent black population is stopping some retailers, even though the county has the richest black-majority population in the nation.

Half the county's residents had shopped at a department store outside of the county in a three-month period in 2004, according to McComb Group Ltd., a Minneapolis real estate and retail consulting company.

"Prince George's County is an affluent, underserved retail market," McComb President James McComb said.

Some retailers have seen success there. Ikea, the Swedish home-furnishing company, reported that 2.1 million people come to its College Park location in Prince George's County annually since it opened in 2003. The store's sales beat Ikea's locations in Woodbridge, Va., and Baltimore, store manager Paget Ingham said.

One of the brightest spots in Prince George's retail future is the National Harbor project, a 4.5-million-square-foot mix of hotel, office, retail and residential space along the Potomac River in Fort Washington, which is expected to kick-start a retail rebirth in the county.

The 1,500-room Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center has bumped its number of rooms to 2,000 based on demand two years before the project is expected to be completed, developer Thomas Maskey, senior vice president of the Peterson Co. in Fairfax, said yesterday.

Some say the retail rebirth already has started.

"Over the past 24 months, we've seen expanded interest from major fashion retailers," Mr. Holman said. "In the next several months there will be a series of announcements related to retailers who aren't in the county who will hopefully be making decisions to locate stores in the county," he said, declining to go into specifics.