AvalonBay is Laurel Land Buyer

Maryland Newsletters

Five years after it was annexed into the City of Laurel, approximately 18 acres near Van Dusen Road has been sold to AvalonBay Communities.

The apartment developer can proceed with up to 350 units on the ground that it bought from Annapolis-based Ribera Development. AvalonBay reportedly paid approximately $9.5 million.Ribera keeps a small commercial site of about two acres.

The annexation was part of a larger annexation of about 40 acres along Van Dusen Road. It was brought in under the M-X-T zone, and prompted an effort by then-Councilmember Tom Dernoga to send the annexation to referendum.

The site traded largely ready to go, but AvalonBay’s plans for apartments will put it in a healthy line of other multi-family builders targeting Laurel. Most recently Rockville-based Cohen Siegel Investors paid $8.5 million for the approximately 1,000 units plus office space at Hawthorne Place, on Marshall Avenue. Cohen Siegel has said it expects to yield about 500 units in all. The group had hoped to get underway this fall on a first phase of 296 units on the former truck terminal off Route 1.

Likewise, Rockville-based Mill Creek Residentialhas 450 units at ‘Westside’ in the queue. Located on Van Dusen Road, those apartments will be part of a larger mixed-use project planned by Manassas, Va.-based Strittmatter Inc.

Farther off in the distance are the Residences at Towne Centre, where Greenberg Gibbons owns the rights to up to 450 units at the redeveloped Laurel Mall; and the Laurel MARC station, where Patriot Realty can build 300 units once it builds a new parking garage.

Bruce Winston and Aaron Lebovitz of Fraser Forbes Real Estate Services brokered the Ribera to AvalonBay deal.