Campus Village Shoppes stores scatter

By JALEN WADE

Four of the 15 stores and restaurants once located in the Campus Village Shoppes on Route 1 will be returning to the site once its new owner finishes construction on a student housing complex in fall 2027.

Taqueria Habanero, Hanami Japanese, Mr Fries Man and the UPS store have told LV Collective, the complex’s developer, that they will be reclaiming their old spots when they become available, four years after the now-demolished mini mall closed in October 2023, Kristen Hendrix, a representative for the developer, confirmed.

In the meantime, Taqueria Habanero operates out of a food truck on Route 1 and is preparing to move to a temporary location in the old Jimmy John’s storefront in downtown College Park. The UPS store has temporarily relocated to the Stamp Student Union on the University of Maryland (UMD) campus. Mr Fries Man, which runs a food truck on 2nd Street in Northeast Washington and plans to open a restaurant there, will return to College Park when the student housing complex opens. And Hanami Japanese is closed until the new building opens, according to College Park Economic Development Director Michael WIlliams.

In addition, newcomer Daydreamer Coffee, a national chain, is scheduled to open a shop on the complex’s first-floor retail level.

Daisy Alvarado, a cook at the Habanero food truck, said she is looking forward to moving back to the old Campus Village location. 

“We’ve been in the food truck, and the service is not really like a good restaurant,” Alvarado said. ”We have a lot of customers from the University of Maryland, so they’re happy we will be there soon.”

Another displaced tenant of Campus Village Shoppes, Laser Essential, moved to another College Park location, 9658 Baltimore Ave. Co-owner Keith Bouchelion said the hair removal salon will not be returning to its old location, where the business operated for nine years.

Bouchelion said the developer invited the business to reopen in the new student housing complex, but his experience with that firm wasn’t a good one.

“We did not trust them and they wouldn’t answer our questions,” Bouchelion said of LV Collective. “They wouldn’t repair the repairs that needed to be done. The grounds were just filthy. They would always send out a Band-Aid.”

Three of the former occupants already had other locations nearby and have no immediate plans to reopen in College Park, according to employees.

Pupuseria La Familiar, a Salvadoran restaurant, has locations in New Carrollton, Wheaton and Falls Church. Box’d Kitchen, a Mediterranean and Asian fusion restaurant, operates a store in Vienna. Jodeem African Cuisine’s store in Greenbelt’s Beltway Plaza remains open; one of the owners said she will not open another restaurant in College Park.

The seven remaining businesses appear to be permanently closed. They are: Town Hall Liquor & Bar, Main Event Barber Shop, Jidong Tea, U-M Nail Spa, Pandora’s Cube, Vape Exchange and College Park Liquors, whose co-owner said she unsuccessfully tried to raise money for a new store through a GoFundMe account and would like to reopen.

“We want to stay in College Park,” the co-owner, who declined to give her name, said, explaining that because the new building is for student housing, no liquor stores are being accepted as tenants. “That’s why it’s hard to find a new location.”

Williams said the displaced businesses have various reasons for not returning. For example, he said, “One of the things we found out is that some of the businesses did capitalize on the ability to kind of break out of their lease legally, without any obligation.” 

Williams added that it can take a few years for a displaced business to return to the city. “That’s a two, three, maybe four-year process,” he said.

The city granted some funding to the UPS Store, Taqueria Habanero and Laser Essential to help with moving and operating expenses in an effort to keep them in the city, Williams said.

The mixed-use apartment complex is set to include 299 student housing units, 13,000 square feet of retail space and a community center “designed to meet the needs of the Lakeland community,” according to the developer.