A historic Bethesda retail property across from the National Institutes of Health, recently updated and expanded by its owners as a "labor of love," has hit the market.
The old Bethesda Community Store at 8804 Old Georgetown Road has been vacant for years, save for the food trucks that found a home in its parking lot — Call Your Mother deli between 2020 and 2025 and now Silver and Sons BBQ.
Commercial real estate brokerage Feldman Ruel recently put the property on the market with a list price of $2.1 million on behalf of owner Greentree Road Ventures LLC, led by Mimi Brodsky Kress and Phil Leibovitz of Bethesda’s Sandy Spring Builders.
The site, slightly more than a quarter acre, includes a market structure spanning roughly 1,300 square feet above grade plus a 400-square-foot basement and a brand new shed spanning 200 square feet.
“You are allowed to have a food truck, one concept in the main structure and third concept in the shed,” Alex Petrov of Feldman Ruel told me. “It gives you versatile uses and income streams.”
Commercial uses on the site, at the intersection of Old Georgetown and Greentree roads, date back to its days as Morgan’s Store in the 1890s, according to Feldman Ruel. The original 540-square-foot, single-room market was constructed in the 1920s. Multiple owners and operators would lead the store over the next 90 years or so — Brown, Owens, Ferguson, Henderson, Caudil, Fainman — through May 2016, when Bethesda Community Store & Deli and its outdoor BCS Barbeque concept closed.
The property was designated a historic site by Montgomery County in 1986.
Kress and Leibovitz paid $750,000 for the property in October 2024, acquiring it from an LLC tied to the investors behind Call Your Mother. The deli had looked at establishing a permanent shop on the BCS property but ultimately went with locations at Pike & Rose in North Bethesda and at 4828 St. Elmo Ave. in downtown Bethesda instead.
Liebovitz and I "always loved the historic Community Store and hated to see it left in such disrepair for so many, many years," Kress told me in an email. "I drive by it at least twice a day, and it’s been a labor of love for Phil and I to restore the space for the community, and we really hope that whatever business ends up there will be a great addition for the neighborhood."
The addition to the market building includes new HVAC, plumbing and electrical systems.
According to Feldman Ruel marketing material, the site is zoned for residential "but benefits from commercial entitlements that are not typically achievable in the Bethesda submarket." Eating and drinking establishments are permitted, as are retail and service uses, clinic, even rural antique shop. A drive-thru would be a permitted accessory use with site plan approval.