Howard University Alum, Real Estate Investor Adam Rashid Talks About Plans For The New Upper Marlboro Destination

By Raoul Dennis

Adam Rashid, of the TPA Group, is a commercial real estate investor who made a presentation at a recent meeting of the Greater Prince George’s Business Roundtable. The TPA Group is the real estate/investment company leading the development vision at the former Six Flags location in Upper Marlboro, a project led by NBA Player Kevin Durant’s 35V

The TPA Group, is a real estate and investment group based in Atlanta, GA. But Rashid is no stranger to Prince George’s County. In fact, he was born here.

“I was actually born in Prince George's Hospital Center,” he said to the board and guests of the Roundtable. “For most of my life I lived between Silver Spring Maryland and Atlanta. I went to Howard University [earning a Bachelor’s of Business Administration in Finance]. I’ve really spent most of my life here doing commercial real estate and investment.”

He joined TPA three years ago and is now the face of the effort to reimagine the location formally identified with Six Flags America.

The following is an excerpt from his remarks at the Roundtable meeting, held September 9,

First of all, the finance and our entry side, I'm at a place called Artemis Real Estate partners and then from the development side at JP Smith and then joined TPA group just about three years ago.

TPA is a 40-plus year-old company. the acronym TPA, actually stands for Technology Partners Atlanta which is one of our first master plan developments in Atlanta, Georgia. It became what is now the city of Johns Creek.

So, we had a long history of doing large-scale master plan developments around the country. I lead our efforts here in Washington, DC area. This is going to be our first major project in the Washington, DC area Metro area.

We couldn’t be more excited than to do this in a place like Prince George’s County.

We heard from the County Executive when we were awarded this project. Working with industry, working with private development is a priority for the county. We do a lot around the country, a lot in the sunbelt.

We're very excited to be coming into Prince George's County at a time where the county leadership is really leading into development.

About the scale of this project

This is a 515-Acre site, and all of us from the area, grew up going to Six Flags. Six Flags actually only operated on about 100 acres. Our goal is to redevelop at five times that size.

There's about 100 acres or so of existing wetlands. Our current plan [doesn’t touch them]. There are footpaths and trails along there. The goal is to make sure that those are forever preserved as green areas.

But that still puts us at four times what the existing Six Flags footprint was. That’s a tremendous amount of land area.

We were really fortunate to have the amount of land area that will allow us to build something that we think will be special, that we think will be iconic. Something that draws people not just from around the area but hopefully from around the country.

This will likely be a phase project. All masterplan developments, especially one of this size, [are done] with a vision of development pillars that will help guide us over time.

From a vision perspective, our goal is to really develop a place centered around community, centered around health, and centered around wealth.

So, we have about five pillars that really drive our development vision. It will drive both the partners that we select and the tenants that we select and how we propose programming at the site.

A Vision Based On Five Pillars

Entertainment.

We want to lean in to what this place has meant for decades to the county and for so many people here as a place for family entertainment. We want to honor that.

Education.

We are heartened by the survey we have that’s out in the community right now. We have about 6,000 respondents to it. One of the top things that we’re hearing about is education. [We are looking at programming] from early childhood to trade education and higher education.

Housing.

We recognize that the county is in a place where a lot of folks have just developed townhome communities and adopt them in the county. That's not our vision. Our goal is to deliver housing that serves a mix of uses that is well incorporate to the existing area, and that goes everywhere from teachers’ housing to seniors’ housing and all housing types in the middle.

Health.
There's a phenomenal anchor across the street [from the development area]: our seniors in Cameron Grove leading into health for our senior community. But we are also looking into health facilities that can deliver across demographics, not just our seniors.

One of the things that really benefits this site are the demographics. It's one of the highest income areas in Prince George County…actually one of the highest income areas in the whole DC metro area. There's not a health and wellness facility that focuses on that demographic. And so, we think that in addition to seniors’ and veterans’ health needs, we’re focusing on the needs of that demographic that seems to be underserved in the community.

Innovation/Technology.

The state of Maryland is really leading and becoming a global leader in several places of innovation, including quantum computing. So, our goal is to piggyback off of that and to deliver spaces that are at the cutting edge of the next generation of business and of innovation.

So what you'll see from us in in the coming months will be an unveiling of our first phase, where many of these aspects will come to fore.

As this is our first project in Prince George’s, it wasn’t for us to come in here saying: ‘We know we can do this. We know we should do it this way,’ but instead to include listening to all the elected leaders and the community.

We’ve been taking that in over the last few months with the goal of presenting a first phase here shortly that we hope will be well received and be grounded on those pillars. We’ll really deliver something special.