Tollgate Marketplace To Expand In Preparation For New Tenant

BEL AIR, MD — Tollgate Marketplace plans to expand and welcome a new tenant.

Dick’s Sporting Goods will move to the shopping center off Belair Road and MD 24.

The shopping center — trading as Bel Air Square — plans to add 15,800 square feet near Ashley Furniture adjacent to the former Tollgate Liquors storefront, according to representatives.

"They will be combined together and then expanded," Joseph Snee, attorney for the shopping center, told the Bel Air Planning Commission at its recent meeting, where he revealed the tenant, with permission.

"It's Dick's Sporting Goods," Snee said. "It will be relocated from its existing location to this facility."

The shopping center near the intersection of US 1 and MD 24 is worth about $45 million, "which to the town of Bel Air is not insignificant," Snee said. "With our project ... we'll be adding to that value."

Currently, Dick's Sporting Goods is on MacPhail Road near the Weis supermarket.

"What's going to happen at the soon-to-be former one, I do not know," Snee said. "So stay tuned for that."

As part of the construction project at the Tollgate Marketplace, the parking lot will be re-paved and re-striped, and new truck bays will be added, according to Jeff Smith, an engineer with Kimley-Horn.

To "break up a sea of asphalt," Smith said developers will add islands with 55 new trees and 118 new shrubs.

"Since we own the whole site," Smith said, the plants will be added "not only in front of our building but in front of the whole center."

A bioretention area will also be added, Smith told the Planning Commission Thursday night in Bel Air.

A trash compactor will be on site to handle trash, and it will be enclosed but not visible along Tollgate Road, according to Smith, who requested it not need further enclosure around it.

The retail space will be expanded toward South Tollgate Road, Smith said.

The Bel Air Planning Commission unanimously approved of the site plan and landscape plan for the project.