Students looking for an extra caffeine jolt or a spot to hang out and do homework could soon find a place in the Starbucks Coffee moving into the College Park Shopping Center.
The 2,888-square-foot store would occupy the old site of Great Clips between Chipotle Mexican Grill and Vertigo Book. District 2 Councilman Bob Catlin said he heard the company might try to lease the property where Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions stands, but did not know specific details.
Kaplan manager Eric Chui said he heard talk about the acquisition and said Kaplan considered moving to a larger location.
Some officials said they also heard incorrect rumors that Starbucks would open in the newly constructed Terrapin Station, the 13,000-square-foot strip mall across Route 1 from the College Park Shopping Center.
There is a Starbucks on the corner of Route 1 and Cherry Hill Road in the Marketplace at College Park north of the campus, but it is not within walking distance and can be difficult to drive to on the gridlocked Route 1. The new location would be Starbuck’s 13th within five miles of the campus.
Freshman letters and sciences major Lauren Gamble said she would be glad to see a Starbucks open up within walking distance of the campus.
“That would be the greatest day of my life,” she said. “I would go there all day, every day. It’s like an addiction. I had to buy coffee yesterday to keep me up so I could write my paper.”
But not everyone feels the same. Vertigo employees Jen Cook and Melanie Craig said they would probably go to Starbucks sometimes, but had mixed feelings about the franchise moving in.
“It will be positive because people might go to Starbucks and then say, ‘Oh, let’s go to the bookstore,’ but there are too many chain stores and not enough independent ones here,” Cook said.
Starbucks opened its first store in 1971, and there are now more than 8,000 locations worldwide, according to the company website.
Cook and Craig are also worried the crowded parking lot could get much worse during busy hours. Catlin said because Starbucks is more of a morning place, the bulk of its traffic might come at a time when not all the stores at the shopping center are open, so it “probably would not be crowded enough to cause a problem.”
He said if it did, the new downtown parking garage, which will be ready in 2006 at the earliest, would aid the situation.
“The parking garage is the answer to everything that ails us, probably,” Catlin said.
City Hall on Knox Road will be replaced with a parking garage, retail space, offices and apartments.
Catlin said a Starbucks would be good for the city, but in terms of redevelopment should be more diverse.
“I would say [Starbucks] would definitely have an effect, but we need more than these small little restaurant-type things,” he said. “We’ve got to think of things better than that to attract a diverse retail mix.”
The College Park Shopping Center is owned by JBG Rosenfeld Retail, a privately owned retail real estate company that owns more than four million square feet of space at more than 35 shopping centers and freestanding retail sites in Maryland and Virginia.
