The Westminster Planning and Zoning Commission has approved the design for a new medical office building and a preschool at 404 Malcolm Drive, clearing one of the final approvals the project needs before it can break ground.
The 12,000-square-foot building planned for the site will house a Goddard School. Bryan Eberle, a president at Obrecht Properties, the Timonium developer behind the project, told Westminster Wire in an email that the school has signed a lease. The Goddard School is a national early childhood education franchise offering preschool and child care, and its arrival would add a new early-learning option along Westminster's Route 140 corridor.
The commission approved the revised building elevations and a new monument sign at its July meeting, acting on a staff report dated July 16, 2026. (Watch the full meeting.) It had approved the rest of the site plan in December, leaving the building design as the final piece.
Two buildings on a lot that once held a U.S. Army Reserve center
According to the plans presented to the commission, the 3.8-acre site, filed as Site Development Plan S-25-0006, will hold two buildings: a 22,000-square-foot medical office building and the 12,000-square-foot building slated for the Goddard School. The property is the former site of a U.S. Army Reserve center, which has been demolished.
As first presented, planners said the second building's use was undecided and could have been used as a daycare, a school, or additional office space. The Goddard lease answers that question. Eberle told the commission that both buildings will be built at the same time, that the developer hopes to break ground within 30 days and welcome the first occupant by Sept. 1, 2027, and that Obrecht has prospects but no signed tenant yet for the medical office building.
Obrecht owns other property in the immediate area, including the Main Street Exchange complex at 410 and 412 Malcolm Drive, a pair of buildings totaling about 51,000 square feet that are occupied mainly by medical and dental practices.
The city held the line on design and changes were made
The exterior was the sticking point. The plan Obrecht first brought forward called for a facade of stamped concrete that would be painted to mimic other materials, along with form liners, which are stamped concrete panels textured to resemble wood or brick.
City planners rejected that approach. They said it did not meet Westminster's design preference manual, which requires a mix of material types, and that the city had never allowed painted stamped concrete of that kind. Andrea Gerhard, the city's senior planner, walked the commission through several rounds of revisions the applicant submitted, each one moving further from the painted concrete.
The version the commission approved uses real thin brick, which the project architect described at the meeting as a clay brick roughly half an inch to an inch thick, applied to concrete panels with adhesive and finished with mortar joints, so the wall reads as conventional brick. The design also swaps in a metal panel with a faux-wood finish for the form liners and uses a textured finish over concrete on some sections. A new monument sign will be finished in brick veneer, matching the base of the buildings.
The buildings are concrete tilt-up construction, in which wall panels are cast on the slab, lifted into place, and braced while a steel roof is set. Eberle, speaking to the commission by phone, said the method is fast and cost-effective, and it allows for an open floor plan with few interior columns, which helps with leasing space. Commissioners compared the look to newer retail and office developments along Route 140 — such as the Malcolm Drive retail center with Panda Express and the Westminster Station shopping center, which houses Sprouts — and agreed it would not fit downtown but would suit this commercial corridor.
Google Maps image with the project site at 404 Malcolm Drive marked with a red pin.
Traffic questions near Route 140, Malcolm Drive, and East Main
Robert Wack, a former Westminster Common Council president who was elected to chair the meeting in the absence of the commission's acting chair, pressed on traffic. He pointed to the eastbound merge on Route 140, the access point at the 140 Village center, and the turn lanes at Route 140 and East Main Street, where he said crossing maneuvers are already constant. "If you now add in ingress and egress out of something, especially if it's a school, it's going to get spicy," Wack said.
Planners said a cross-access agreement with an adjacent parcel, which the developer also owns, is recorded in perpetuity, and that a direct connection to the neighboring parcel was studied but ruled out because of grade differences. A traffic impact analysis covering both the office-only and office-plus-school scenarios was submitted to Carroll County and the State Highway Administration.
With the design and monument sign approved, planners said, the project moves to the signature set, the final approved drawings that all parties sign before construction, and to final county sign-offs before construction can begin.
Featured image: the view from 140 Village Drive, as shown in the July 16, 2026, Planning & Zoning Commission meeting.