CAN BRAC COME OUT TO PLAY?

August 17, 2011 | 8:00 am ET Staff Reporter

All work and no play? No way. All those workers that BRAC is pushing to the Baltimore-Washington Corridor this fall need a place to live and play, too. Hence Arundel Preserve and its newest entries: two-week-old apartments and a one-week-old hotel.

Southern Management's John Cohan told us yesterday that high-income pros, most of them relocating to work in BRAC-related properties like Fort Meade and the NSA's Cyber Command, have signed leases for half his firm's 242 luxury units in The Residences at Arundel Preserve, which has been open for less than a month. The studios start at $1,275 per month, and two-bedrooms are going for $2,700.

Southern Management owns 24,000 apartments (and to think we were proud of renting just one) in the BW Corridor, but it couldn't help throwing up the 150-key luxury Hotel at Arundel Preserve, which opened last week. John says the market is underserved for luxury hotels. Amenities include indoor and outdoor pools and free wireless, and there's space for a full-service spa. (The firm owns one other hotel, the Bear Creek Mountain Resort in the Lehigh Valley's Macungie Pa.) John also says that in addition to the hotel's Grillfire restaurant, Indian eatery Rangoli and two others (coming soon) will be in The Residences.

Wondering about demand for all those fancy rooms? It doesn't hurt that the hotel has 10k SF of meeting/banquet space. Good digs for BRAC gatherings, but the hotel also hosted its first wedding on Saturday, just three days after opening. We hear it went off without a hitch.

Forget the pyramids. We wonder how many ancient Egyptians it would take to build all this because there's a lot more going on here than Southern Management's hotel and apartments (collectively known as the Arundel Preserve Town Center). Arundel Preserve, which master developer Somserset Construction started in '07, will also include Southern Management's Palisades. It may be a hole in the ground now, but by spring 2013, it'll be a 317-unit luxury apartment high-rise. COPT has built a 153k SF LEED Gold office and is putting up 11 more for a total of 2M SF. And Toll Brothers, M/I Homes, and Hovnanian have put up 110 residences and have 340 more coming.

See? Even Google can't handle all the elements at Arundel Preserve, which Somerset Construction's Neil Greenberg tells us is just part of the whopping 1,100-acre Arundel Mills. That also includes the1.3M SF Arundel Mills Mall (delivered in 2000 and now owned by Simon), the Villages at Dorchester single-family community, the Arbors at Arundel Mills apartments (which Bozzuto delivered in '07 and has fully leased), and plenty of hotels, restaurants, and standalone stores. Plus COPT has plans for yet another office, the 171k SF Arundel Overlook, which awaits a lead tenant to start development. Oh, and did we mention Cordish's planned Maryland Live casino next to the mall? We're exhausted. Where's the food court?

CAN BRAC COME OUT TO PLAY?

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