The project was marked by unprecedented cooperation between property owner, developer and local residents.

The nearly 200,000-square-foot shopping center has been under construction for the past year and utilizes several cutting-edge environmental techniques, especially for stormwater control.

"Negotiation, negotiation, negotiation, and working with neighbors ... it really can work," said Joan Scott, president of the Lee Airport Conservancy.

The conservancy is a cooperative panel that has overseen the project every step of the way since ironing out an initial agreement 10 years ago between several surrounding neighborhoods and the Lee family, which owns the 100-plus-acre former farm west of Route 2 in Edgewater.

The new 63,000-square-foot Giant grocery store will anchor the center, which also has a Panera Bread, Hong Kong Express, Subway, Chipotle, GNC Nutrition Center, Hair Cuttery and a day spa on board, geared to open in the spring.

In the next couple of weeks, work will begin on an assisted living center on the opposite end of the development.

"As we get more tenants to commit we will continue building out the center," said Don Stedham, vice president of Regency Centers, a developer that builds, owns and operates shopping centers nationwide.

At the moment, the completed Giant and two buildings under construction on either side of it are the only structures evident alongside the parking lot.

But that parking lot - with cutting-edge stormwater elements like deep swales traversing the pavement, connected by wooden bridges - is what some point to in holding up the project as an example to be followed elsewhere.

Greenest project

Even the developer recognizes it has gone beyond its previous efforts.

"This really is the greenest project Regency has ever done," Stedham said at Thursday's red-carpet preopening at Giant.

"While we did not agree with the conservancy on many aspects of the design - and that partnership was tense at times - we implemented them anyway," he added. "And personally, I think we are a better developer because of this experience."

Stedham said the project proves that greener methods, especially those that deal with stormwater, can be "implemented cost effectively."

The many infiltration swales, which allow water to slowly steep into the ground, and retention ponds should improve stormwater reaching the three nearby waterways: Warehouse and Beards creeks and the South River.

Stedham said developed models indicate the techniques should deliver results.

"But here we will be able to prove, finally, whether they perform as modeled," he said.

Every rainfall will be monitored to measure nitrogen and phosphorous runoff and other elements compared to a predevelopment water quality baseline.

"And I think it will prove it is cost effective to do it, and it is the right thing to do," Stedham said.

Others concur. Members of the county Watershed Steward program, which trains those interested in keeping an eye on water quality within the county's 12 watersheds, spent a day touring the site while it was under construction. They came away thinking the Village at Lee Airport is an example to follow.

The South River Federation has been keeping an eye on the project all along and attended biweekly meetings with Regency, the conservancy and construction companies as work progressed.

"We were pleased to be part of the collaborative process," Executive Director Erik Michelsen said. "If tweaks or enhancements were required during the process, we got quick response."

He is pleased with how things turned out, especially since there were several very heavy rainfalls while construction was under way, including the heaviest one-day deluge on record.

"On the construction side they went well above and beyond required stormwater controls," Michelsen said. "The Lees certainly deserve credit for holding this project up to the highest standards."

He said the collaborative process made for a much better project than it would have been otherwise, adding, "We hope the county and developers utilize this as a model for similar projects elsewhere."

Long time coming

The Village at Lee Airport grew out of a cooperative agreement between several neighborhoods surrounding the former Lee farm and Lee Airport, a general aviation air park operating since the 1940s.

The Lee property is roughly 160 acres in the heart of Edgewater along the west side of Route 2.

The Lees, under the guidance of county planners during the 1995 General Development Plan small area planning process, proposed rezoning part of the land from R1 residential to C3 commercial. In exchange, they agreed not to build out the residential property remaining between the rezoned strip along Route 2 and the creekside communities.

Following 18 months of negotiation, the Lees and the Edgewater Beach community signed a nonbinding agreement to that effect, and the Lee Airport Conservancy grew from that.

The zoning changes were approved in 2002 after much back and forth before the County Council and negotiations between the neighborhoods and the Lees.

Regency submitted its first plans to the county in February 2005. That approval process and other considerations, including the 2007 presentation and temporary withdrawal of legislation required to move Maryland Avenue plus the economic downturn, stalled the project until late last year.

"I never thought I'd see the day," Mary Carroll Lee said just before getting up from her chair to help cut the ribbon at the new Giant store Thursday night. "It has been a long time coming."

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