Walk the sidewalk along Massachusetts Avenue past the shopping center and you'll pass a construction fence that's been there long enough to become part of the scenery. Behind it, framing has started to climb where a grocery store used to sit. If you've lived in Spring Valley for more than a decade, you already know the lot. It's the old Superfresh site, and it has been empty since 2013.
That's the detail worth sitting with before anything else. Eleven years is longer than most residents have lived in their current house. It's long enough for a toddler who was born the year the grocery store closed to now be finishing elementary school. And for all eleven of those years, the shopping center twenty feet away kept doing just fine without it.
The Lot That Outlasted The Market Around It
Spring Valley Shopping Center, the low brick complex anchored by Crate & Barrel, has never struggled for tenants. When Spring Valley Village sold for $47.5 million in 2023, the deal closed with the center's six buildings 98 percent leased. Millie's still runs a waitlist for its patio on warm evenings. Bluestone Lane's Spring Valley café still fills up for weekend brunch. Compass Coffee, Pizza Paradiso, and the wine shop Pizzeria Paradiso added inside its own storefront have all found steady footing here.
None of that answers the obvious question: if the retail appetite in Spring Valley is this strong, why did the parcel next door sit vacant for over a decade? The shopping center's success wasn't the problem. The problem was everything that happens when a developer proposes new housing in a neighborhood built almost entirely of single-family lots.
Why It Took Eleven Years, Not Eleven Months
Valor Development first pitched a project for the old Superfresh site in 2016, with roughly 230 units. A neighborhood group called Citizens for Responsible Development organized against it almost immediately, arguing the building was out of scale for the block and worried about what added traffic would do to nearby Wagshal's Deli and the surrounding streets.
The back and forth stretched for years. Valor brought in Mill Creek Residential as a partner in 2018 and returned in 2019 with a smaller plan: 219 units and 19,000 square feet of retail, down from the original proposal. The D.C. Zoning Commission approved that scaled-back version in February 2020. Five months later, opponents filed an appeal that kept the project frozen through the pandemic and into 2023, when the D.C. Court of Appeals sided with the Zoning Commission and affirmed the approval.
Financing didn't close until December 2024, when a joint venture of Mill Creek and PGIM Real Estate secured a $92.3 million construction loan from U.S. Bank, with Valor exiting the deal at the same time. Mill Creek's managing director for the Mid-Atlantic called it the closing chapter on an eight-year predevelopment slog. That's the arc: eight years from pitch to shovel, plus the year it sat vacant before anyone proposed anything at all.
A rough timeline, if you're keeping track of what actually happened and when:
- 2013 — Superfresh closes; the site goes dark
- 2016 — Valor Development files its first proposal, around 230 units
- 2018 — Mill Creek Residential joins as a partner
- 2019 — A revised, smaller application goes in: 219 units, 19,000 square feet of retail
- February 2020 — D.C. Zoning Commission approves the project
- Mid-2020 — Opponents file an appeal, freezing the project
- October 2023 — D.C. Court of Appeals affirms the Zoning Commission's approval
- December 2024 — Financing closes, Valor exits, groundbreaking follows
- April 2025 — Mill Creek announces construction is officially underway
- Summer 2027 — First move-ins anticipated
The Grocery Store Detail That Actually Matters Here
Here's the part of the story that tends to get buried under unit counts and construction loans: the project's ground floor is built around an 18,000-square-foot organic grocery store, MOM's Organic Market, according to Mill Creek's own project materials. That number is worth comparing against the 19,000 square feet of retail the Zoning Commission approved back in 2019. The grocery store isn't a piece of the retail plan. It's almost the entire plan. There's very little room left over for additional shops once the anchor tenant is accounted for.
That matters because Spring Valley hasn't had a full-line grocery store inside its own boundaries since 2013. Residents have been driving to Wagshal's for specialty items, to the Giant on Wisconsin Avenue, or further out to Whole Foods for a full cart. The Ladybird site, now branded Modera Lady Bird, is set to close that gap for the first time in over a decade. Mill Creek has described it as the first Class A residential community along this stretch of Massachusetts Avenue in more than 40 years, and whatever you make of that framing, the grocery store return is the part of the project that will actually change a resident's weekly errands, not just the skyline.
One other number worth noting: the finished project as Mill Creek now describes it totals 234 homes, up from the 219 units the Zoning Commission approved in 2019. That's a 15-unit increase somewhere between approval and construction, likely worked out through minor design adjustments rather than a new zoning fight, but it's the kind of detail that rarely makes it into press releases.
What You'll Actually Be Walking Past Until 2027
If you're local, here's the practical version. Construction is active now, with framing visible from Massachusetts Avenue as of this year. Mill Creek has said the community, at 4330 48th Street NW, will include a rooftop lounge, a ground-level courtyard with a fire pit, an outdoor pool, and controlled-access parking with EV charging, on top of the grocery store anchor. First move-ins are targeted for summer 2027, which puts the site at roughly 14 years from grocery closure to grocery reopening once all is said and done.
In the meantime, expect the fencing, the noise, and the occasional lane shift near 48th and Massachusetts to be part of the walk to Millie's or the drive past the shopping center for a while longer. The existing businesses around it, Crate & Barrel, Bluestone Lane, Compass Coffee, Pizza Paradiso, aren't going anywhere. The construction is happening around them, not through them.
A Neighborhood That Doesn't Change Often, Changing Anyway
What makes this story specific to Spring Valley isn't the building itself. Mid-rise apartment buildings with rooftop pools go up constantly across D.C. What's specific here is how long a single parcel can sit empty in a neighborhood that's otherwise almost entirely built out, and how much organized effort it takes to move a project through when that neighborhood is mostly single-family homes with residents willing to fight over scale, traffic, and precedent.
The fence comes down eventually. When it does, the story worth remembering is that it took longer to get a grocery store back into Spring Valley than most residents' kids will spend in elementary school, not because anyone doubted people would shop there, but because nobody could agree on what should be built around it.
If you're watching this project, or thinking about what a neighborhood with this little turnover and this much scrutiny over new construction means for buying or selling a home nearby, District Property Group has been tracking Spring Valley long enough to talk through it in plain terms. Let's connect to discuss your real estate goals.
