Is Wootton High’s move impacting a long-awaited Rockville development?
City councilmember says yes, company says no
By
Ashlyn Campbell&
Ceoli JacobyAugust 17, 2026 7:05 p.m.
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A developer on Monday afternoon said its decision to find new builders for the Rockshire Village housing project is unrelated to the school district’s decision to move Thomas S. Wootton High School — contradicting a Rockville City Councilmember’s press release.
Adam Van Grack, a Rockville councilmember and parent of a student at Wootton High, said Monday in a statement to press that EYA LLC, a Bethesda-based development company, told the city that it “indefinitely suspended” plans for a 60-home redevelopment project called Rockshire Village “specifically because interest in the project plummeted following the vote to close Wootton.”
The Montgomery County school board in March approved new school boundary lines that permanently move Wootton High School into the upcoming Crown High in Gaithersburg for the 2027-2028 school year. Bethesda Today did not receive an immediate response on Monday for comment from Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) regarding Van Grack’s statement.
In a Monday phone interview with Bethesda Today, Van Grack said the Rockshire Village Center was once home to a Giant grocery store, a bank, a barbershop and other businesses that served the surrounding community.
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When the Giant closed in 2012, other tenants in the shopping center followed, leaving the property “essentially abandoned,” Van Grack said. Vandalism and fires at the site were a routine issue, he said, which forced the city to station police officers in the area.
In 2023, EYA submitted plans to the City of Rockville to redevelop the site as a mixed-use neighborhood with a retail component, a park and 60 residential units. The city approved the plans in May 2024, according to the city’s website, and the developer officially announced its purchase of the property in July 2025. The site is less than half a mile from Wootton High, located at 2100 Wootton Parkway.
Van Grack told Bethesda Today he recently asked the city manager to check on the status of the Rockshire Village redevelopment project after he and some of his constituents noticed that a sales trailer and a “for sale” sign had been removed from the site.
According to Van Grack, EYA told the city manager on Friday that it was putting the project on pause because there had been a “significant drop off” in interest following the school district’s decision to move the Wootton community to Crown High.
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Van Grack said Monday that the “suspension” of the project was a “serious setback” for the community.
“The suspension of Rockshire Village should serve as a warning that decisions about community schools have real consequences,” Van Grack said in his early Monday statement. “Rockville and Gaithersburg are trying to create housing and attract families. School decisions should support that growth, not make it harder.”
On Monday afternoon, however, EYA said they were negotiating an agreement with a “trusted and experienced homebuilder” to finish the residential portion of the project and that the Wootton High move did not factor in the decision to select a homebuilder. EYA will continue to serve as the developer of the project’s site improvements and retail components.
“We changed direction to remain focused on our core business of townhome and multifamily development,” the company said in an email to Bethesda Today. “Because Rockshire Village includes a majority of single-family homes, we decided to partner with a best-in-class builder with expertise in both single-family and townhome communities. This decision is consistent with our decisions to sell single-family lots in other EYA communities like Strathmore View, Tower Oaks and Grosvenor Heights.”
The company said the homes will continue to be built using the same floorplans and designs from the company.
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Van Grack has been a vocal opponent of the decision to move Wootton to Gaithersburg and has testified several times to the school board about possible impacts.
“For the past year, before the Board of Education, I have repeatedly warned that school capacity, housing, infrastructure, and economic development cannot be planned independently of one another,” Van Grack said in his Monday statement, noting that the Maryland Building Industry Association and Senator Cheryl Kagan raised concerns about the impact and planning leading up to the decision to move Wootton.
He said EYA did not tell the city at that time about its plans to find a new homebuilder to complete the residential component of the Rockshire Village redevelopment.
“I welcome anybody to build this project,” Van Grack said.
Still, he argued, “something as dramatic as the closure of a school obviously is going to affect development in the region.”
He added that he would be “extremely disappointed” if EYA is unable to find a buyer, leaving the city with “two vacant properties across the street from one another” — the former Rockshire Village Center and the former Wootton High building, which is set to be used as a holding school for when other schools undergo renovations.
In a statement provided later on Monday, Van Grack said the statement from EYA and his earlier statement “are not mutually exclusive.”
“The information I shared was not speculation. It came from information provided directly by EYA to the City, and I stand by the central point that the Wootton closure decision materially affected buyer interest in the development,” Van Grack said.
Elia Griffin contributed to this report.
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Originally published at Bethesdamagazine