WRS presents Lakeforest development update to MVF Board

At the February 27 MVF Board of Directors meeting, Kevin Rogers, Principal of WRS, the owner and developer of the Lakeforest property, along with Gary Unterberg, Senior Vice President at Rodgers Consulting, and Greg Mann from the City of Gaithersburg Planning Commission, provided an update on the Lakeforest development project. 

Rogers began by explaining that the Lakeforest property will go through radical change over the next 18 months to 2 years as the buildings are demolished and the landscape is prepared for new construction. He cautioned that whenever making timeline projections, there is always the likelihood that construction stages may slip or accelerate in one direction or the other.

Rogers said that the team hopes to begin demolition of the mall in mid-April 2025. He said that the demolition of the mall building, which is about a million square feet, will take 4 to 6 months. He added that there are a lot of materials that will be smashed and put into dump trucks, some of which will get crushed and reused on site, while some will be hauled away. He said the balance of the demolition of the mass mall site work will take 12 months after the mall building is demolished.

After the demolition is completed, Rogers said that in phases across the 108 acres, the following activities will commence: ripping up the asphalt to reach the utilities underneath, including the water lines, sewer lines, fiber optics and cables of all kinds. He said the crews will also dig 30 feet underground to remove and relocate a giant pipe. Rogers said that a much longer-term part of the project during those 12 months will be to build three of the main spine roads in conjunction with the City of Gaithersburg. Also included in this body of work is the offsite work, meaning outside the boundaries of the 108 acres, such as installing new stoplights, new sidewalks and intersection improvement. With this work accomplished, the developers will then move on to the framework to then start building vertically upwards with building construction. In summary, he said that all the demolition and underground work will be a cumulative of a 16-to-18-month period. 

Rogers then gave a brief overview of the housing and retail areas of the site, in accordance with the planning documents, and like other presentations previously given for the site plan. Unterberg addressed allotted parking on the site, noting public garages, on-street parking and garage/driveway parking for residential units.

Mann added the City of Gaithersburg would eventually be working with Montgomery County on the Transit Center but currently it was focused on improvements to Russell Avenue to connect to the City’s Old Town District. He also said the Department of Public Works was in the design phase of the 10-foot shared use path.