In 1962 Reisterstown Road Plaza opened in Baltimore as a walk in the open air, with Hecht's at one end and Stewart's at the other.
Stewart's had escalators and a restaurant of its own, the Chesapeake Room, and down the walk that summer Woolworth was hiring students as sales clerks.
The walk got a roof in the 1970s. By the end of the 1980s both department stores were gone, and the plaza they had anchored went on without them.
It is still open, behind a rebuilt front entrance. But Marshalls has closed there, and in January 2026 the empty Big Lots held a winter festival instead of a store.
That leaves the plaza's largest stores, several of them left behind by national chains, and what its new owner is putting in them.
The plaza opens outdoors and gets a roof
On March 14, 1962, Reisterstown Road Plaza opened in Northwest Baltimore, Maryland, as an open-air shopping center, with Hecht's at one end of its outdoor walkway and Stewart's at the other.
Food Fair Properties built it facing Reisterstown Road from the south, between Patterson Avenue and Brookhill Road: about 700,000 square feet and roughly 50 stores spread over about 60 acres, with a Food Fair supermarket from the developer's own grocery business.
Around the buildings lay a surface parking field for about 4,000 cars. The center was planned for shoppers who drove in.
Inside Stewart's, escalators linked several floors, home furnishings were set out on display, and the Chesapeake Room restaurant had a foyer and a dining room of its own.
Woolworth was open by summer.
In July 1962 its store at 6550 Reisterstown Road had 31 employees and federal permission to employ full-time students as sales clerks at special minimum rates for the coming year.
The walkway between the two department stores stayed open to the weather only until the 1970s.
During that decade the center was enclosed, and the open-air plaza became an enclosed regional mall.
Stewart's and Hecht's give way to offices
Continental Realty bought the plaza in 1979, and in January 1983 Stewart's closed.
During the 1980s, department-store space at the plaza was divided between shops and offices.
In 1985 Hecht's, Continental Realty, and Hechinger won city approval for a Hechinger parcel of about 7 acres at the corner of Reisterstown Road and Patterson Avenue.
A year later, in 1986, Hecht's closed for good.
The State of Maryland became a major long-term tenant of the offices.
By July 2000 the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services was running its headquarters from 6776 Reisterstown Road, with about 108,000 square feet after expanding by roughly 31,000.
A $625,000 office overhaul approved the next year was aimed at opening up about half of the older space and changing its HVAC, lighting, power, and communications systems.
A fire at Woolworth and empty big stores
On July 12, 1997, a fire broke out at Woolworth, a plaza tenant since 1962, and most of the center closed for the day.
The building Hechinger had used took a furniture tenant that lasted about eight months: International Furniture Liquidators moved into about 80,000 square feet there, and in March 2002 the company announced it would leave for Security Square Mall in the suburbs, taking over a 110,000-square-foot store Montgomery Ward had once used.
Behind the plaza, the Food King supermarket had closed by 2001, and its building stood empty.
That March, National Wholesale Liquidators, Burlington Coat Factory, and The Mart were the plaza's major tenants.
The owners were preparing a rebuild around two new anchors, a home-improvement store and a new supermarket, plus renovated shops and offices in the former Hecht building and new lighting, signs, and parking surfaces across the property.
Home Depot opens behind the mall
The empty Food King sat on the ground Home Depot wanted: about 9.5 acres behind the plaza, where the old supermarket was to be torn down.
The city approved a separate planned development for the store in late 2001, drawn so that its land would not overlap the plaza's own plans for small buildings along the roads.
By March 2002 the numbers were public.
The $5.8 million project called for a 95,000-square-foot store and a 17,000-square-foot garden center, and it was expected to bring 150 jobs, with a goal of filling 60 percent of them with city residents.
A public storm drain and a gas line ran through the site, and the city committed $600,000 to moving them.
The store was promised for that fall. It came in on time.
The 100,000-square-foot Home Depot opened on November 18, 2002, the chain's second store in Baltimore City, on ground it leased behind the mall.
Giant and Marshalls rebuild the north side
In 2003 part of the plaza's north side was gutted or torn down to make room for Marshalls and Giant.
Giant's new supermarket opened at 6620 Reisterstown Road in 2004 with 63,800 square feet.
The Giant it replaced, across Reisterstown Road, had 27,000.
Near the roads, the owners planned freestanding buildings on separate pads, and only some of them went up.
Applebee's won final design approval in August 2002 and was built.
A Giant gas station approved in October 2003, a shop building on Patterson Avenue approved that December, and an Old Country Buffet approved in 2004 never were.
The mall corridor in between held some very small shops.
In August 2004 African Art and Craft, Perfumery International, Hip Hop One Stop, and Gifts and Balloons each leased between 200 and about 240 square feet, in the same plaza where Burlington Coat Factory leased 60,000.
That August, Inland Western, a national real estate trust, took majority control of the plaza in a partnership with the existing owners.
The plaza sells for $48.25 million
The national landlord went on refitting space.
In 2011 it spent $2.3 million preparing units for Shopper's World and for Big Lots, which took about 38,000 square feet.
By 2012 offices made up more than a third of the space the owner held, State of Maryland agencies leased more than 200,000 square feet under seven leases, and Baltimore City Community College and WBJC 91.5 also worked out of the plaza.
Out front stood five restaurant buildings, Applebee's and Wendy's among them.
Between 2016 and 2018 the owner reworked a section of about 40,000 square feet and gave it a new facade, at a cost of about $10.3 million.
By 2020 that section was fully leased.
A merger in 2021 brought the plaza to Kite Realty Group, which sold it in September 2023 for $48.25 million to a local ownership group tied to Tide Realty Capital.
Petco and Marshalls were among the plaza's larger tenants at the sale.
A new owner rebuilds the main entrance
The new owner started with the zoning.
Under the planned-development rules the plaza had carried since 2001, a drive-through use such as a gas station or a fast-food window needed that special approval, while the city's newer commercial zoning could handle it through its ordinary process.
At the owner's request, the Planning Commission voted 8-0 in May 2024 to drop the old shopping-center plan, and the City Council repealed it, along with the separate Home Depot plan, in September 2024.
In October 2024 Chesapeake Contracting Group was hired for a two-phase renovation designed by Bignell Watkins Hasser Architects.
A $1 million state grant from the Baltimore Vacants Reinvestment Initiative helped pay for the first phase: a new main entrance, fresh exterior paint, parking-lot work, and new trees.
By January 2025 work on the redesigned entrance was under way, and DTLR opened that February while the crews were on site.
On June 29, 2025, state and local officials gathered at the rebuilt entrance for a ribbon cutting that marked the first phase as finished.
Goodwill opens as a restaurant building goes up
Big Lots was gone by January 2026, and on January 11 its empty store held the plaza's first Winter Wonderland, with games, face painting, a magician, a DJ, and a gingerbread obstacle course nearly 50 feet long.
Xfinity opened a store at 6538 Reisterstown Road that month.
On April 1, 2026, the annual Baltimore chometz burning, held at Pimlico Race Course for nearly two decades, moved to the rear parking lot facing Home Depot, close to Wendy's, while Pimlico was under construction.
Food fit for donation went to the Maryland Food Bank instead of the fire.
Petco's old unit went to Goodwill.
Announced in February 2026 for a spring opening, the 12,000-square-foot store and donation center opened on July 23, 2026, after a ribbon cutting, as Goodwill Industries of the Chesapeake's fourth store in Baltimore City.
In May 2026 construction started beside Applebee's on an 8,200-square-foot restaurant building for Chipotle, with a drive-through pickup lane, and for Five Guys, Jersey Mike's, and Quickway.
It is scheduled to be finished by the end of 2026.
Reisterstown Road Plaza is open, and its local owner is still filling spaces that national chains left.
Marshalls, on the north side since the 2003 rebuild, has closed.
More than 40 stores, restaurants, and offices operate there, among them Home Depot, Giant, and Burlington, along with state offices such as the Maryland Board of Nursing and the Division of Vital Records, Baltimore City Community College, and WBJC 91.5.
The Reisterstown Plaza Metro station sits next to the center.
The plaza became an enclosed regional mall in the 1970s.
A smaller indoor corridor survives from that mall and holds small shops, restaurants, beauty salons, and convenience stores, while Home Depot and Burlington open to the outside.
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