Developers and government officials will hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony this morning for the Potomac Town Center in Prince William County, dubbed the first high-end retail complex to come to the area.
The whole project, exceeding $500 million, will include 550,000 square feet of retail space with about 65 retailers, 500,000 square feet of office space and 500 residential units.
This Sunday, the center’s first store, a Wegman’s, will open. At 138,000 square feet, it will be the largest supermarket in the county. The next retail construction phase, consisting of about 65,000 square feet, will start at the end of this month, said Richard Lake, principal with project developer Roadside Development.
“Prince William has become more established over the past five to 10 years,” said Jason Grant, communications manager for Prince William’s Department of Economic Development. Now it has a “demand for higher-end retail, simply because of the demographics that are there,” he added.
But Prince William also has the highest foreclosure rate in Virginia, with one in every 83 households facing foreclosure in April, according to the Irving, Calif.-based RealtyTrac, which monitors foreclosure data across the country.
In total, 1,571 properties had foreclosure filings in April, a 290 percent increase from April 2007. Nearby Fairfax County had one out of every 278 households enter foreclosure in April.
Loudoun County, where there was rapid growth over the last five years similar to Prince William, had one out of every 181 households face foreclosure.
Despite this, Prince William has a high median household income, just above $80,000, Grant said.
The foreclosure issue “does affect the shopper directly,” Lake said. The timing is a “critical component in delivering” this project, he added.
There are other factors potentially affecting the project’s future, Lake said, including the influx of workers created by the Defense Department’s realignment of military bases. That initiative will also be a driver of economic growth for the area, he said.
“As activities increase on the bases … companies supporting their efforts often need to locate within a certain radius of the facilities,” Grant said.
