Brown Wants Urban Center for Owings Mills by Spring 2013

Owings Mills will be a little more urban in just over a year, if developer Howard Brown has anything to say about it.

Brown, the chairman of David S. Brown Enterprises, said his Metro Centre project on Painters Mill Road will effectively create a "downtown Owings Mills," with offices, shops and apartments surrounding the existing Metro Subway station and the project's anchor building, .

The anchor is being called the Owings Mills Learning Center and will be finished by spring 2013. The first phase of offices, shops and apartments will also be ready by late spring 2013, Brown said.

Phase one will include up to 300,000 square feet of office space, up to 100,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space, plus 250 apartments, a company statement said.

The developer has already secured seven liquor licenses and also intends to have coffee shops and other small restaurants to serve Metro Subway commuters.

"It will be a downtown for Owings Mills," Brown said. "High rises, ammenities, this is the vision here...that's the future of Owings Mills. It's a place you're going to linger...then they get on the train and go downtown."

When completed, the project should include 1.2 million square feet of commercial office space and 1,700 apartments. As a so-called Transit Oriented Development, Metro Centre depends on traffic to and from the Metro Subway station.

The Metro Centre development will also have pedestrian access to the Owings Mills Mall, which is being partially torn down by Kimco Realty and replaced by other types of retail. Connecting the two will provide easy access to Metro Centre from I-795 and Owings Mills Boulevard, Brown said.

Geoffrey Glazer, a Kimco vice president, confirmed that the developers see the projects working together due, in part, to the the road network.

Traffic management has surfaced as an important issue surrounding the mall, Metro Centre and a proposal by Greenberg Gibbons Commercial to build a Wegmans-anchored development at the current site of the factory.

According to Brown, all roads already lead to the mall and the Metro Centre.

"You've got a road network that's already built," Brown said. "There was a master plan."

Editor’s Note: This is the third story in a series that will report and analyze Owings Mills development arguments. . .