In case the big cleanup scenes just north of College Park on Rhode Island / Rt. 1 make you wonder what’s going on there, here is the story – a WAWA store will soon be built in that parcel of land.
The new WAWA will be located in Beltsville in between Route 1 and Rhode Island avenue, just north of Sunnyside avenue. The site is across from Chestnut Hills Shopping Center on Route 1. WAWA will have entrances on Route 1 and Rhode Island Avenue.
In fact the news of building a Wawa store in the Beltsville is nothing new. WAWA used to have a branch in downtown College Park which was closed in 2007 (please see the old store picture in the gallery above – it’s the top left one, courtesy of RTCP).
The Beltsville Civic Association had representatives from the proposed WAWA discussing some design changes in its May 2007 meeting at Beltsville Elementary School.
The Prince George’s County’s June 2005 zoning related documents suggest that WAWA applied for an approval of a special exception for a gas station in the C-S-C Zone. While technical staff denied, the planning board approved the request. The zoning hearing examiner also approved the request with condition.
Reports have it that the WAWA’s special exception request hit another snag, when the nearby Shell gas station filed a lawsuit, which took the past several years to settle.
So far the clearing job has been moving fairly fast. The brushes and small trees that occupied the lot once have been cleared. It’ll be interesting to see how soon the actual store construction starts.