The Ellsworth Place Mall Redevelopment

Silver Spring

GBT Realty, which bought Ellsworth Place Mall in 2018, wants to build a roughly 20-story residential tower on top of the mall. The concept, which swaps in apartments for an office tower that was planned when the mall opened in the early 1990s but never built, would add up to 450 units, about 15% of them MPDUs. The Planning Board approved the sketch plan 4-0 in May 2024. The building would rise to about 300 feet using the existing mall as its base and would include no parking, since planning documents cite the site's transit access and its location in the county's Parking Lot District, with the Town Square Garage connected to the mall by a skywalk.