The Route 1 Strip at Hartwick Road Is Gone. Where Did Its College Park Restaurants Go?

The low strip at the northeast corner of Baltimore Avenue and Hartwick Road was torn down this summer. A University of Maryland photographer recorded demolition at 7313 Baltimore Ave. on July 6, 2026, to clear the way for Terrapin House. That building is planned at six stories, with 93 apartments, retail and a parking garage, as Maryland Today reported in September.

If you ate on that corner, you probably want to know where the food went. Only two of its restaurants are cooking in College Park again, and neither had to wait for a new building to go up.

Six storefronts on one corner, and where each one is now

The Diamondback's account of the strip lists its tenants as Tokoa Cheesesteaks, Kung Fu Tea, Pho Thom, Jerk at Nite, Ritchie's Colombian Restaurant and Northwest Chinese Food. Here is where things stand:

• Northwest Chinese Food reopened Aug. 15 inside Li Chun Café, 7401 Baltimore Ave., next to College Park City Hall. It serves dinner.
• Pho Thom reopened under Union on Knox at 4340 Knox Road.
• Ritchie's Colombian Restaurant served its last day on Feb. 22. In an Instagram post, it promised to reopen "very soon in a new location" nearby, though no address had been given as of The Diamondback's March report.
• Jerk At Nite closed its College Park location. The brand still lists a Baltimore restaurant at 21 N. Eutaw St., which opened before the College Park closure.
• Tokoa Cheesesteaks and Kung Fu Tea had both moved out by December 2025, The Diamondback reported.

Ritchie's had been on Route 1 since September 2020. Its lease ran into 2026, so it stayed open past the new year even though demolition was first planned for the end of 2025. In September, the paper's business roundup quoted the city's economic development director saying College Park had struggled to keep the strip's other displaced businesses in town.

The two that stayed found space that was already open

Northwest Chinese spent 10 years at its Route 1 address before closing in March. The family behind it also runs Li Chun Café, and that is where it went. Brand manager Xue Ling told The Diamondback that the family looked at other options. Nearby spaces were expensive, and opening a second standalone restaurant could have taken about two years.

So one dining room now runs three operations each day. Li Chun Café serves lunch from 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., with food drawn from northeast China. Northwest Chinese serves dinner from 5 to 9 p.m., with a menu inspired by the country's northwest. A tea bar sells drinks, pastries and snacks all day. Two kitchen teams share one small kitchen, and some staff arrive as early as 8 a.m. Ling said the daily changeover from lunch to dinner is the hardest part.

"We didn't know people were going to respond to the new setup, but then it turns out customers are more excited than us." Xue Ling, speaking to The Diamondback in October 2026

Customers did come back. During family weekend and homecoming, some waited about 30 minutes for a table. Ling said service has settled down since then. Most of the old menu has returned. Staff told the paper the early favorites are the spicy beef rou jia mo, a braised meat sandwich on house-made bread, and the signature hot oil seared noodles.

Pho Thom didn't go far either. It reopened a few minutes away under Union on Knox, a building where Shake Shack, Chopt and Berries and Bowls were already serving customers.

Starting from scratch on this corridor is slow, and it's expensive

To see why existing space mattered so much, look at the newest tenants a block away on Knox Road.

Duck Donuts opened at 4360 Knox Rd. on Sept. 19. Before it opened, franchise owner and general manager Cameron Moore told The Diamondback that the job had taken a year of construction. The space sits above the Union on Knox underground parking garage, whose wiring and piping complicated inspections. The work also needed structural renovations and updated permits under fire safety codes. "It was just a bunch of little issues," Moore said.

Black Lion Café, a family-owned Ethiopian coffee shop with locations in Rockville and Silver Spring, signed its Union on Knox lease in 2025. The plan was to open in spring 2026. The Diamondback reported on Oct. 6 that owner Abdu Tuku now expects to open in early December, after permitting delays. Here is how long each move took, start to finish:

1. Duck Donuts. Announced for Union on Knox in December 2025, opened Sept. 19, 2026.
2. Black Lion Café. Lease signed in 2025, spring 2026 target missed, early December 2026 now planned.
3. Northwest Chinese Food. Closed in March 2026, reopened Aug. 15 by sharing a kitchen that was already running.

Rent matters too. When Peter Chang Kitchen & Bar closed its Route 1 location at 8503 Baltimore Ave. in mid-May, after about 10 months, the restaurant said the high cost of the space left it "no choice but to close down." It was the second business to close at that address since September 2023.

The city has seen the same thing. Michael Williams, College Park's economic development director, said the city has tried to keep the rest of the displaced businesses but has struggled, citing the economy and the growth of delivery. "It's still a very hard ask for an owner to kind of start over with a new landlord and trying to find new life in different kind of a place," he told The Diamondback.

Who decides what goes into the new ground floors

The storefronts replacing the old strips are usually under student housing, and they don't work like a strip mall with one landlord. At Union on Knox, Greystar owns and runs the building, including the retail. The Terrapin Development Company owns the land under it through a long-term ground lease. TDC president Ken Ulman told The Diamondback that Black Lion leases directly from Greystar, but TDC takes an active role in shaping the mix of businesses. Boho Nails and Open Barre, a studio that moved over from the College Park Shopping Center, are the next tenants on the way. "We're really proud of the combination of national chains with local retailers we've helped move in," Ulman told Maryland Today.

The same kind of building is going up on the old Hartwick Road corner. In the county's staff report on the site plan, the applicant is Terrapin Main Street, LLC. The site covers 7313 Baltimore Ave., 7302 Yale Ave. and 4424 Hartwick Road. The plan described in that report calls for 93 homes with 298 beds and 4,800 square feet of ground-floor retail. No opening date or retail tenant has been announced. Going by the Knox Road timelines, a restaurant that eventually signs there should expect a long build-out after the building is finished.

Farther north, Rambler College Park North is under construction on the old Campus Village strip mall site. Maryland Today reports that it's scheduled for fall 2027 with more than 15,000 square feet of ground-floor retail, including some former Campus Village tenants. That could be the next test of whether longtime tenants can move back into a new building.

Eating your way through what's left of the old corner this fall

The old corner's food is now spread across a few blocks, and most of it is still close by.

The next date to watch is early November, when Northwest Chinese plans an 11th-anniversary celebration with special T-shirts, daily menu discounts, a few dishes that haven't been on the menu yet, and some new items. The restaurant hasn't announced an exact day. Weeknight dinner is probably the better bet, since the long waits came on the big campus weekends. If you're in the neighborhood with kids on Saturday, the city's CPAE Spooky Kid Disco runs from 4 to 6 p.m. on Oct. 31 at the Old Parish House, 4711 Knox Road, a short walk from Pho Thom and Duck Donuts.

Black Lion's December date has already slipped once, so watch for the café to confirm it before you plan around it. Ritchie's had not named a new address as of The Diamondback's March report.

I've watched Route 1 redevelop for years, and I keep track of which favorites land where. If you'd like to talk through what all this building means for your own block in College Park or Hyattsville, or you just want to compare notes on where to get the hot oil seared noodles now, Vicki Reyes is glad to hear from you. Let's Connect.