Subscribe
Community
Olive Garden to open in winter
Other restaurants also in works for Park Place
Friday, Nov. 13, 2009
|
| ||
|
E-Mail This Article
Construction of an Olive Garden restaurant off Route 235 in California is zooming along at the new Park Place development and more restaurants and offices are coming to the site at the corner of Shady Mile Drive.
Developer John Parlett Jr. updated the St. Mary's County Planning Commission this week on the project's progress.
While the exterior of the Olive Garden went up rapidly, the restaurant is not scheduled to open for business until late February or early March in 2010, Parlett said.
A Red Robin Gourmet Burgers restaurant has signed a lease at the site as well and construction should begin this winter. A Buffalo Wild Wings has signed a letter of intent, and plans also show a Texas Roadhouse restaurant.
The original site plan for the development also called for an additional four office buildings, up to five stories tall, in line with board of zoning appeals approvals so far, there now will be one office building, three stories tall. The defense contractor SAIC will be moving into that building.
All plans for homes on the site have been dropped.
Eventual plans also call for another office building, a bank, a church and a 100-room hotel, though a hotel won't be coming to this site anytime soon. "The current economy has made hotel financing a rare commodity," Parlett said.
There are several other new and planned hotels in the Lexington Park area.
The Park Place project received concept site plan approval two years ago. "In this economy leasing has gone slower than any of us anticipated," Parlett said.
But now the restaurants are under construction or soon will be. A single Olive Garden restaurant averages $4.5 million in sales a year. It has 25 employees per shift and seats up to 246 people, Parlett said. A single Red Robin restaurant does $3 million in annual sales.
Tammie Sebacher, a neighbor of Park Place in North Town Creek, complimented Parlett for working closely with the community and keeping them informed of their plans.
A brick house on the site, built in 1948, was demolished, but Parlett allowed people and businesses take what they wanted from the house before it was torn down.
