Big Lots Coming to Reisterstown Shopping Center, ROG Takes Redistricting Position

The space that formerly housed Ames in the will be home to a Big Lots, a shopping center operator said.

The remainder of the north strip at the Reisterstown Shopping Center will be demolished this summer, with the exception of a 50,000 square-foot space, said Bob Pollokoff, president of shopping center operator Fedder Management Corp.

Approximately two-thirds of the remaining building will be occupied by Big Lots, he told the Reisterstown-Owings Mills-Glyndon Coordinating Council at its meeting Monday night.

“Clearing out this entire north end is [to] attract a number of different retailers the community might like, but we might not have been able to otherwise accommodate,” Pollokoff said.

His company is still working to in the strip, he said. His company and the owners are also in the process of searching for new tenants, and are in early talks with a sit-down restaurant, he said.

“What we’ve done here is harmonious with what we think the community wants the shopping center to become,” Pollokoff said.

Pollokoff said retailers are hesitant to open new stores, and many are waiting to see what happens at the Owings Mills Solo Cup plant, which will close by mid-2012, reports say.

In addition to movement at the shopping center, the dreaded came up at Monday's meeting. ROG President Mary Molinaro wrote a letter on behalf of the group to national, state and local officials about the school board policy, which community groups said makes it nearly impossible to hold events on school grounds.

Molinaro got the same answer from several officials.

“Basically, all of them said the board of education is an autonomous group and they can do whatever they please,” she said.

Continuing to voice its collective opinion on local issues, the group voted to endorse redrawing Baltimore County Council lines, and putting as much of Reisterstown as possible into one council district. It is currently divided among districts 2, 3 and 4.