One of Georgetown’s oldest parking lots, located at 3320 Prospect St. NW across from Café Milano, will soon be replaced by a new retail center called Prospect Place. The current 82-space parking garage will make way for 27,600 feet of retail space; a 101-space parking garage will lie underground.

The Weaver family, who currently owns Prospect Street lot, has hired the Chicago-based real estate development company McCaffery Interests Inc. to reconstruct the lot. The family will exercise full approval of the project and retain ownership of the property.

“The owners of the property, who have owned the property for 100 years, and have been in Georgetown for over 200 years, have wanted to develop the site for a long time. They engaged our company to develop it on their behalf. The Weaver family will maintain 100 percent ownership of the lot,” said Juan Cameron, partner at McCaffrey Interest and senior managing director of development and acquisitions.

The project’s timeline remains to be determined, since McCaffrey Interests still awaits approval on the project plans.

“We still need to go through municipal and community approvals,” Cameron said.

The Advisory Neighborhood Commission for District 2E, which includes Georgetown, discussed the plans for the project in a meeting Sept. 29 and the Old Georgetown Board will have the chance to discuss the plans on Oct. 2.

“We don’t know exactly what they have in mind. All we’ve seen are the press reports. At some point, they will have to get design approval, and then they come to the ANC for design, put it on our agenda and then we will know a lot more about it,” ANC Chair for District 2E Ron Lewis said.

Georgetown students were excited about the new retail options, the increased shopping opportunities and the employment opportunities.

“Although there are already so many stores in Georgetown, I think it will be a positive impact to have more, and it will be convenient to have many stores centralized together. Opening more stores will also benefit the greater community by providing more job opportunities,” Kathryn Coughlin (COL ’18) said.

Rachel Morota (SFS ’17) said that she hoped to see more affordable shopping options at the retail complex.

“I think it depends on what retail store opens. … Georgetown’s shops are very expensive right now. Apart from H&M, almost anything on M Street is ridiculously expensive, especially since this is a student town. If the shops that open in this new retail store are more affordable to regular people who don’t shop at J. Crew, then I think that there will be a definite influx of Georgetown students that will be shopping there,” she said.

Surrounding restaurants, including Mai Thai and Café Milano, could not be reached for comment.