For most of the past five years, the lot at Connecticut Avenue and Plyers Mill Road was just the place where a gas station used to be. Cars slowed for the light, glanced at the plywood and the chain link, and kept driving toward Howard Avenue or the Beltway. Construction on that corner has been underway since January 2021, long enough that a lot of residents stopped expecting anything to actually open there.
Two of the five tenants who signed on have opened their doors since last fall. But the story worth paying attention to isn't the new storefronts themselves. It's what their arrival is about to do to a bank on the other side of town, in the middle of the historic district that has run Kensington's errands for over a century.
What Actually Opened
Buffalo Wild Wings GO was the first tenant through the door, opening in September 2025 as a to-go and delivery format of the wings chain rather than a full sit-down restaurant. It sat alone in the new development for months.
Then, on Friday, May 8 at 5 p.m., Marathon Deli held its grand opening at 10619 Connecticut Avenue. This is a bigger deal than a new gyro spot suggests. Marathon Deli has run out of College Park since 1972, built by owner and chef George Soldatos, a native of Lefkada, Greece, who still runs the restaurant with his wife Maria and their son Peter. In more than fifty years, the family had never opened a second location anywhere. Kensington is it.
The Kensington location is now open seven days a week, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., with a full bar in addition to the deli counter, custom murals on the walls, and outdoor seating for anyone who wants their gyro in the parking lot air instead of at a booth.
Marathon Deli spent more than five decades as a single-location College Park institution before it opened anywhere else. That anywhere else is a strip mall across a parking lot from a Buffalo Wild Wings GO.
What's Still Waiting on a Sign
Two more tenants signed leases here but haven't opened yet, and it's worth knowing which ones so you're not driving past expecting something that isn't there.
Mezeh Mediterranean Grill has a confirmed 2,350 square feet next to Buffalo Wild Wings GO and directly across from Marathon Deli. As of the most recent public reporting this spring, no opening date had been set. If you've been checking the storefront for activity, that's why it still looks quiet.
M&T Bank is the fifth and final signed tenant, alongside My Allure Nail Spa. The bank's move has been part of the plan since before construction finished, but it's tied to a specific detail that matters more than it looks like on paper: M&T isn't opening a new branch. It's relocating its existing branch from Howard Avenue, where it has operated for years inside Kensington's historic commercial core.
Why the Bank Move Is the Real Story
Kensington's commercial identity was never built around banking or fast-casual lunch. It was built around Antique Row: the dealer shops on Howard, Armory, and Fawcett, the Saturday farmers market at the Historic Train Station, a handful of cafes tucked between storefronts that have sold vintage furniture for decades. That corridor was designed for browsing on foot, not for the kind of errand you run on a lunch break.
M&T Bank's Howard Avenue branch has been one of the only pieces of that corridor built for speed rather than browsing. Once it relocates to Connecticut Avenue and Plyers Mill Road, that will change. Antique Row keeps its antiques. But the last quick-errand anchor on that stretch moves out, and a new one opens up half a mile away, purpose-built for exactly that kind of trip.
Here's what the two commercial zones actually look like once the move is complete:
| Historic Core (Howard Avenue / Antique Row) | New Corner (Crossroads at Kensington) |
|---|---|
| Antique shops, multi-dealer market, design center | Marathon Deli, Buffalo Wild Wings GO, Mezeh (pending) |
| Saturday farmers market at the Historic Train Station | My Allure Nail Spa |
| Owner-operated cafes and specialty shops | M&T Bank (relocating from Howard Ave) |
| Built for browsing and weekend routine | Built for a fast lunch, a wings order, a bank deposit |
The corner at Connecticut and Plyers Mill is an 11,000 square foot development, which is small by strip-mall standards but larger than anything Kensington's historic core has room to build inside its existing footprint. That's the practical reason a bank branch, a fast-casual Mediterranean spot, and a nail salon all landed in the same new construction rather than filling a vacancy on Howard Avenue: there wasn't a vacancy of that size to fill.
What This Means for a Regular Week
If you've spent years running your Saturday morning at the farmers market, then walking the antique shops, then stopping at the bank on Howard before heading home, that loop is about to split into two separate trips. The market and the antiques stay exactly where they've always been. The banking, along with a fast lunch or a quick order of wings, moves to a corner that didn't have a single storefront on it five years ago.
It's a small shift in geography, but it's the kind of thing that changes how a Tuesday actually runs. For years, everything you needed for a quick errand sat within a few blocks of Howard Avenue. Now Kensington effectively has two commercial centers of gravity: one for the things you browse, and one for the things you just need to get done.
Whether Mezeh opens this fall or next spring, and whether M&T finishes its move before the end of the year, the direction is already set. The corner that sat empty since 2021 isn't just filling in with tenants. It's absorbing the one piece of everyday commerce that historic Kensington had left, and giving the town its first real answer to a question it hadn't had to ask before: where do you go when you just need something done fast.
If you're watching how a neighborhood's commercial center shifts and wondering what it means for property values or timing a move, that's the kind of question worth a second set of eyes. Patrick Thelwell works these Maryland suburbs daily and can walk you through what a corner like this one means for the blocks around it. Get a free home valuation to see where your Kensington property stands today.
