The Mall Got Honeygrow. Baltimore Avenue Got a Civil Rights Lawyer.

Two half-mile stretches of Hyattsville quietly picked opposite directions this year. At the Mall at Prince George's, a fast-casual chain with 82 locations nationwide slid into a food court spot that used to be a Mezeh. A few blocks south on Baltimore Avenue, a woman who spent 24 years litigating housing discrimination cases for the Department of Justice took early retirement, signed a lease in a triangle-shaped building, and started selling secondhand blazers.

Neither story is unusual on its own. Together, they describe something more specific: this is a neighborhood running two different storefront economies at the same time, and if you only pay attention to one of them, you're only seeing half of what's actually opening around you this fall.

What Landed at the Mall

Honeygrow opened its doors at the Mall at Prince George's on August 24, taking over the interior food court spot Mezeh Mediterranean Grill vacated. It's the chain's 82nd location and its 15th in Maryland, which tells you less about Hyattsville specifically and more about where the brand is spending its expansion budget this year. Honeygrow senior vice president Todd Miller framed it as regional momentum rather than a bet on this particular corner of Route 1.

"Maryland continues to be an important part of honeygrow's growth, and Hyattsville is a community we're really excited to join."

That's the mall's role in this story. It's where national chains test the market, run the numbers, and open on the same week their real estate teams finalize a lease elsewhere in the region. Primark had already done the same thing in May, opening at the mall as one more national name filling a known retail footprint. Both are useful for a resident who wants a familiar option on a Tuesday night. Neither one tells you anything about what's happening a few blocks away, where the storefronts are smaller, the owners are local, and almost none of them are chains.

What's Filling In on Baltimore Avenue

Erin Meehan Richmond didn't plan to open a consignment shop. She spent 24 years in the DOJ's civil rights division, suing landlords on behalf of the federal government, and figured she'd put in 30 before retiring. Budget cuts under the current administration's cost-cutting push changed that math. By her own estimate, close to 75 percent of her colleagues in the division took early retirement around the same time she did.

She looked at spaces in College Park and Riverdale Park before settling on Hyattsville, partly because former DOJ colleagues already lived there and in the neighboring town, partly because the city had, in her words, a great vibe. She opened De Novo this July at 5101 Baltimore Avenue, in the triangle-shaped building just south of Franklins, selling curated women's clothing alongside shoes, handbags, and pieces from local artisans. The name comes from a Latin legal term meaning "anew," a small joke from someone who spent two decades in courtrooms.

"I wanted a space where I would honestly be excited to come every day, a place that people could do more than just visit my shop."

That's the pattern on this stretch of Baltimore Avenue right now. The people opening storefronts aren't retail chains chasing foot traffic data. They're career-changers who picked Hyattsville specifically, often because they already knew somebody here.

A Record Shop Ten Years in the Making

Fireplace Records didn't start as a storefront idea either. Four DJs, Anthony Mims, Black Wilson, DJ 2-Tone Jones, and DJ Iran, spent more than a decade selling vinyl out of crates at farmers markets before pooling their collections into an actual shop at 4344 Farragut Street in November 2025. Mims, a Philadelphia native who now lives in Hyattsville, had also been selling at the monthly Crate Convention in DC's Anacostia Arts Center since 2021. By this spring, the shop had outgrown its space and moved up to the second floor of the same building to make room for a bigger collection.

Every record in the store gets a condition grade, EX for excellent, NM for near mint, VG+ for very good plus, sorted alphabetically and by genre in crates labeled in Sharpie. It's the kind of organizational system that only makes sense if the people running it have spent years doing this the hard way first.

"Whatever the community and customers want, we'll seek it out. If we don't have it, we'll get it."

Further up Baltimore Avenue, Three Little Birds Sewing Co. runs on the same logic, just with thread instead of vinyl. Owner Katie Blattner hosts a weekly Makers Night & Sewcial every Wednesday from 6:30 to 9 p.m., where anywhere from 10 to 40 people show up for a $5 fee to use the shop's machines and work on their own sewing and knitting projects alongside neighbors. Nobody's required to buy anything. The business model is closer to a standing invitation than a transaction.

Where the Two Hyattsvilles Share a Sidewalk

The one day a year these two retail economies actually overlap is the Hyattsville Arts Festival, which returns to Gallatin Street on Saturday, September 19. Last year's festival was the 16th annual and was expected to draw thousands, and this year's lineup keeps the same structure: more than 100 artists and makers, food trucks, and a beer garden pouring from local names most residents already recognize.

The festival's beer and spirits lineup this year includes:

• Franklins and Streetcar 82 Brewing Co.
• Denizens Brewing Co. and Maryland Meadworks
• Rosie Cheeks distillery and Tenth Ward Distilling Co.
• Sheree Harvest winery

Inside Pyramid Atlantic Art Center, a vinyl lounge run by the HyFi Groove Society gives DJs a stage of their own, which feels less like a coincidence and more like the festival organizers know exactly which side of Baltimore Avenue their crowd actually shops on. It's free, it runs noon to 6 p.m., and it's organized by the Hyattsville Community Development Corporation, the same group that's been managing the Gateway Arts District's slow build-out for years.

For one Saturday, the mall crowd and the Baltimore Avenue regulars end up standing in the same beer garden line. The rest of the year, they're shopping in two different parts of town without necessarily noticing it.

The Same Zip Code, Running Two Different Playbooks

None of this means one side of Hyattsville is doing better than the other. The mall gives the neighborhood chain convenience and food court variety on a Tuesday night. Baltimore Avenue gives it the kind of owner-operated storefronts that only show up when someone with a specific skill, a decade of side-hustle experience, or a career change decides this particular street is worth betting on. A neighborhood that can support both at the same time isn't choosing a direction. It's running two playbooks in parallel, and residents get the benefit of whichever one they happen to need that week.

If you're the kind of person who tracks a neighborhood by watching who opens up shop in it, Hyattsville is worth watching closely this fall. Reach out to The Dapo Group to book a discovery call if you'd like a local perspective on what these shifts mean for the neighborhoods around Baltimore Avenue and beyond.