A Chili's restaurant will join Texas Roadhouse as a new tenant in Dundalk's Merritt Park Shopping Center.
Brinker International, the Dallas-based company that owns the Chili's chain, has applied to Baltimore County for approval of a 6,082-square-foot, free-standing restaurant in the shopping center at 1762 Merritt Blvd.
The Chili's would take over a space that formerly housed a Firestone tire center and a grassy area that was once a gas station, said Peter Grose, vice president of Regional Management, Inc., the center's property manager.
It could take about a year for Chili's to make it through the county review process and build the new restaurant, Grose said. Chili's will join Texas Roadhouse, which is under construction, as a second sit-down restaurant in the center.
Grose said his company found that Dundalk has an unmet demand for restaurants.
"There's a huge amount of leakage on the restaurant side. A lot of people from Dundalk leave the community in order to go to some of these sit-down type restaurants," he said.
Merritt Park has been mostly empty as Regional Management made repairs and did a face lift of the property since taking over in 2011, but Grose said interest is picking up among prospective tenants.
Rite-Aid already built a nearly-15,000-square foot drugstore at Merritt Park. Texas Roadhouse is expected to open in the coming months.
Grose said recent tenant signings include a ChoiceOne urgent care center, an Allstate insurance agent and a pediatric office.
Regional Management is hoping to bring more food options and specialty retailers to the center, but Grose declined to name any prospective tenants.
Merritt Park is across Merritt Boulevard from the North Point Government Center, which the county is selling to be developed into a commercial center called Merritt Pavilion with offices, stores and restaurants. Buyer Vanguard Commercial Development has said fast-casual chains Panera, Five Guys and Chipotle are possible tenants.
The Merritt Pavilion proposal will be reviewed by a county administrative judge during a hearing at 10 a.m. on Thursday at the Jefferson Building, 105 W. Chesapeake Ave. in Towson.
twitter.com/pwoodreporter