60 Years: Milt Peterson’s fresh designs of brick-and-mortar continue to inspire
In 1965, Milt Peterson was working for a homebuilder in Fairfax County, Va., when he decided to strike out on his own. Fairfax, now one of the wealthiest counties in the nation, was fairly wide open in those days. A lot of land was available at a reasonable price, and Milt had a different idea of what could be done with some of it.
What he envisioned were master-planned communities, not the ones we see built on huge tracts of former farmland today, but MPCs that would enliven existing suburbs with residential, office, hospitality, and retail. During the 1970s, he and some partners undertook several such projects. One of them was Fair Lakes, at the interchange of Fairfax County Parkway and Interstate 66, and is credited for transforming Fairfax County from a bedroom community to a serious center of business activity and commerce.
His most ambitious effort was National Harbor, which sits on a mile-long stretch of property on the Potomac River just south of Washington, D.C., and welcomes nearly 15 million visitors a year. Situated on what had been a barren waterfront, National Harbor now houses the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, MGM National Harbor Resort & Casino, The Capital Wheel, 80-plus shops and restaurants, offices, hotels and more than 2,000 residents.
In 1994, Milt bought a 100-acre piece of land in Gaithersburg, Md., a former golf course with a nine-acre lake. Today, it is RIO, a community with residential units and high-energy retail and restaurant tenants. Five years ago, Peterson launched a $30 million reinvestment in RIO. On the budget’s to-do list were new and enhanced options, a new brand identity to unify the 760,000-sq.-ft. center, and physical plant upgrades such as the boardwalk around the lake.
We at Peterson Companies work hard at keeping our retail and restaurant concepts exciting for RIO’s visitors and are now obtaining entitlements for 450 apartment units--the first phase of what will ultimately be 1,200 apartments on the property. We recently bid farewell to Joe’s Crab Shack and Macaroni Grill and said hello to Yardhouse, True Food Kitchen, and Silver Diner.
We’ve learned a lot of lessons at Peterson Companies over the years, one of the most important being that no two projects are the same.
In 1997, we took on the project of renovating the retail center of downtown Silver Spring, a D.C. suburb that had gone through a bad patch in the 70s and 80s. The municipality wanted to re-create the heart of the community, so we reinvigorated the zone with a bold new image — not with new tenants so much as with a new image.
A 300-ft.-long street mural inspired by sound and electricity waves zig-zags across Ellsworth Drive, now lined with bistro tables and shade umbrellas. A 20-foot- high flower-tower titled “The Queen of Blooms” has transformed an elevator tower a busy pedestrian center has been covered with murals. “Blumen Lumen,” a 25-foot-tall sculpture of folded, stainless-steel flowers that open and close as the sun rises and sets and, at night, is capable of reacting to human voices.
We soon learned that we had underestimated the growing wealth of the community. We felt that we needed to get a Whole Foods into downtown Silver Spring. It wasn’t easy, but we did it. We also added H&M. Both are doing phenomenally well.
Good retail real estate developers constantly must ask themselves, “Where does the consumer want to be?” Because that, of course, is also where leading retailers want to be.
We recently invested $110 million to add 30,000-sq.-ft. of retail space and 228 residential units to our Fairfax Corner development in Fairfax County. Last fall, we opened an Apple store in the new space. From Thanksgiving to Dec. 25, our traffic was up by 57% over the year before, all due to Apple’s arrival.
In 2025, Peterson Companies celebrates its 60th anniversary. We lost Milt Peterson four years ago at the age of 85, but his bold spirit of creativity and innovation still lives with us and always will.
Paul Weinschenk is COO of Fairfax, Va.-based Peterson Companies.
