Ellsworth Place is a 350,000-square-foot (33,000 m2), six-story, enclosed vertical power center in downtown Silver Spring, Maryland. It opened as City Place Mall on April 2, 1992,[1][2] and is located at the intersection of Fenton Street and Colesville Road (U.S. Route 29). Dave and Buster's opened in November 2016.[3]
Main Entrance at the corner of Colesville Rd. and Fenton St.Exterior rendering from Fenton Street and Colesville Road, showing it renamed as 'Ellsworth Place'
The building that houses the mall was formerly a Hecht Company department store, the first suburban Washington, D.C., branch of that company, which opened in 1947; the downtown Silver Spring Hecht's closed when the Hecht's at Wheaton Plaza opened in 1987. (The mall is an expansion of the original Hecht's building.) From its start, the mall included "upscale" discount stores, including original tenants Nordstrom Rack and Ross Dress for Less.[7] The mall also included an AMC movie theater on its fifth floor, but it closed shortly after a 20-screen Consolidated Theatres (now Regal Cinemas) opened directly across Ellsworth Drive from Ellsworth Place. In 2005 then up-and-coming artist Rihanna performed a free concert at the mall, on a temporary stage built over the center court fountain. The event was sponsored by radio station Hot 99.5, and was in support of her debut album Music of the Sun, with proceeds donated to victims of Hurricane Katrina.[8]
References
^"City Place Grand Opening Today," The Washington Post, Apr 2, 1992, p. M5.
^"Silver Spring Mall Calls Shoppers Back Home," by Retha Hill, The Washington Post, Apr 3, 1992, p. 1.
^"A Slow, Sure Bloom After the Boom; Developments in Silver Spring Gain Momentum After Years of Planning," by Neil Irwin, The Washington Post, Jun 24, 2002, p. E4.
^"For Silver Spring Mall, Downtown Is No Paradise; City Place Hanging On, but Still Battling for Business," by Charles Babington; Louis Aguilar, The Washington Post, Jun 12, 1994, p. B1.
