Federal Realty Pays $72M for Another Retail Plaza in Southern Maryland

Grocery-anchored retail has become commercial real estate’s most reliable sector, including for Federal Realty Investment Trust.

The North Bethesda, Md.-based, retail-focused real estate investment trust paid $72.3 million for Congressional North Shopping Center in Rockville, Md. The Aldi-anchored plaza, sold by local investment firm Cohen Siegel Investors, spans 176,000 square feet on 13 acres. Other retail tenants at 1501-1519 Rockville Pike include RH Outlet, Petco and Staples.

The property is immediately adjacent to Federal Realty’s Congressional Plaza, a 309,000-square-foot shopping center that includes Nordstrom Rack and Ulta Beauty among its tenant roster. Aside from conjoining the retail plazas into one contiguous property, the purchase bolsters Federal Realty’s holdings along the highly trafficked Rockville Pike corridor. 

Congressional North is the REIT’s fifth retail property in the corridor. Its other plazas include the 249,000-square-foot Federal Plaza, 369,000-square-foot Montrose Crossing Shopping Center and the nearly 1 million-square-foot Pike & Rose complex in North Bethesda. 

“This is a highly strategic addition for us,” Don Wood, Federal Realty president and CEO said in a statement. “With this acquisition, we now control the key retail nodes along Rockville Pike from Bethesda through Rockville, giving us greater flexibility to curate tenancy and merchandising across the corridor.”

Aside from its Rockville portfolio, Federal Realty has been quite active elsewhere in Maryland over the past 12 months. In October, it paid $187 million for the 480,000-square-foot Annapolis Town Center plaza in Annapolis, Md. Two months later, it sold two properties — the former Pallas at Pike & Rose multifamily complex in North Bethesda, and the Bristol Plaza retail center in Bristol, Conn. — in two separate deals for $170 million. 

Nick Trombola can be reached at ntrombola@commercialobserver.com.