Bringing Better Retail to Prince George’s County

In spite of our recent momentum and successes like Tanger Outlets, Whole Foods, Nordstrom Rack, Wegmans, Brandywine Crossing, Dave & Busters, and MGM National Harbor, one of the most common concerns that people have had for many years is about attracting higher quality retail to Prince George’s County.  While our local government can do many things, making high end retailers and restaurants go where we want them to go is not one of them.  Those are private sector business decisions.  The best we can do is create an economic and planning environment that encourages high quality business and job creation, recognizing that we share a region with competing jurisdictions with among the highest median incomes in the world.  Nonetheless, we continue to work hard on this issue and initiated a retail study to get a better sense of why retailers were attracted to certain areas.

Two Biggest Findings:

-Prince George’s County has a disparity between where above-average household density is located and where median-household incomes are high.

-The County’s prime retail locations must compete with the Baltimore-Washington region’s super prime locations with higher population densities and some of the highest incomes and education levels in the United States.

For the full Prince George’s Co. Retail Study Report, go here: https://tinyurl.com/pgc-retail-study

Some select charts showing Prince George’s County’s population density and median household income and portions of the region below: