"The board finds that the law permits on-site consumption of spirits without a requirement to offer food for sale." Board Chair Oretha Bridgwaters-Simms read that line into the record on March 11, and the room at Town Center Market's hearing exhaled. The 14-year-old liquor store and patio on Queensbury Road had kept its right to pour a beer for someone who wants to sit outside and drink it. Neighbors who treat that patio as their after-work default breathed easy. The story got reported as a win, and it was one.
But read past the ruling itself, and the board added something that got less attention: it has "major concerns" with the business model of liquor stores serving drinks without a kitchen, and it may push for legislative clarification down the road. That is not a settled question. That is a pause.
What actually happened this spring
The trouble started quietly. A late-January email circulating on local listservs flagged that the Prince George's County Board of License Commissioners would take up a challenge to Town Center Market's liquor license at a February hearing. The market, at 4705 Queensbury Road along the Trolley Trail, has operated under a license classification that allows both packaged sales and on-site drinking, a combination the county stopped issuing to new applicants years ago. Existing holders can keep renewing for $3,270 a year, which is how a business built around six-packs and bottles of wine ended up running a patio where you can also order a pint and drink it on-site.
The commission's own director had characterized the arrangement as being outside the intended scope of that license class. The original February 11 hearing got postponed at the market's request, which pushed the real fight to March 11.
By then, the market wasn't fighting alone. Prince George's County Councilmember Eric Olson, who represents District 3, wrote directly to the board chair calling Town Center Market "much more than a beer, wine and liquor store" and pointing out that the law does not actually require a kitchen for a Class B+ holder to serve drinks on-site. The College Park City Council sent its own letter of support on February 24, an unusual move for a neighboring town's elected body to make over a liquor license dispute in Riverdale Park. Co-owner Jim Spiropoulos, who runs the store with his brother, told reporters the patio functions as a gathering spot, and that they actively encourage customers to bring in food from the restaurants nearby rather than trying to compete with them.
The fine print in the ruling
Here is where the coverage got the headline right and the substance half right. The board did not simply reaffirm the status quo. It drew a distinction between what the law currently permits and what it thinks the law should permit going forward.
| What the ruling settled | What it left open |
|---|---|
| Town Center Market keeps serving drinks on-site under its current license | The board flagged "major concerns" with the business model generally |
| The 14-year practice continues without interruption | Bridgwaters-Simms said the board may seek legislative clarification |
| No fine, no license downgrade, no forced kitchen requirement | The broader county trend toward tightening liquor-store licenses while easing them for restaurants and bars continues |
That last row matters more than it looks. Prince George's County has been moving in a direction that makes it easier for restaurants and bars to get on-site consumption licenses while making it harder for liquor stores to hold onto that same privilege. A pilot program floated separately would let some grocery stores apply for their own alcohol licenses. Town Center Market's grandfathered status is the exception the county is trying to figure out what to do with, not a settled precedent other businesses could point to.
If you drink on that patio regularly, the practical answer for this fall is simple: nothing changes. The longer answer is that the arrangement survived on the specific facts of this hearing, not because the underlying tension went away.
A few blocks away, a second bet on evening hours
While the market's fight was working through the county's hearing calendar, a second piece of Riverdale Park's evening life was rebuilding itself with a different kind of risk. Manifest Bread, the bakery at 6208 Rhode Island Avenue near the MARC station, closed in July 2024 for what owners Rick and Tyes Cook expected to be a four-month renovation. Permitting delays and a snowy stretch at the end of 2024 stretched that into ten months. The bakery didn't reopen until May 28, 2025.
What came back was a different business. The original storefront sat seven people. The rebuilt space runs roughly 3,000 square feet with about 30 seats, financed in part by a Kickstarter campaign that raised $47,275 from 539 backers. The bakery had already tested dinner service in bursts, starting with a single Thursday pizza night at the end of 2023. Since the reopening, that has grown into a real evening schedule: dinner service Wednesday through Saturday, a full bar available all day, and a rotating pizza menu that now runs most nights instead of one afternoon a week.
Two blocks of the same town center, two businesses whose current evening hours exist because of two completely different kinds of pressure. One survived a hearing in front of a county board. The other survived a construction delay and a crowdfunding campaign that had to work.
Why two different survival stories matter for the town center's evenings
Zoom out and the pattern is this: Riverdale Park's historic core does not have one anchor tenant carrying its nightlife. It has two, and neither got there on a straight line. If you're the kind of resident who treats a Wednesday pizza at Manifest or a Friday beer on the Town Center Market patio as part of your week, both of those routines exist right now because of decisions made under real financial and regulatory pressure in the past twelve months, not because either business coasted into its current form.
That has a practical implication for anyone paying attention to what the town center actually offers after 6 p.m. The Station, a mile or so away, gets credit for anchoring Riverdale Park's retail with Whole Foods, Denizens Brewing Co., and Call Your Mother's bagel shop opening later this year. But the historic town center along the Trolley Trail and Rhode Island Avenue is running its own evening economy in parallel, built by two small operators who each had to fight for the version of their business that exists today.
What to actually watch for
The board's comment about seeking legislative clarification is the detail worth bookmarking. If Prince George's County does take up a bill addressing Class B+ or BL+ licenses and on-site consumption without a kitchen requirement, that conversation would happen at the county level, not inside a single hearing, and it could reopen exactly the question this March ruling appeared to close. Town Center Market's win this spring was specific to its case. A change in the underlying statute would apply more broadly.
For now, the patio is open, Manifest's bar runs through the week, and the town center has more going on after dark than it did two years ago. Whether that holds depends partly on decisions that haven't been made yet in Upper Marlboro.
If you're weighing what life actually looks like in Riverdale Park day to day, our neighborhood guide covers more of what's changing around town, and our earlier look at where the week actually happens along Queensbury Road fills in the rest of the corridor.
Have questions about what's happening in your part of Riverdale Park, or curious what your home might be worth in today's market? The team at The Foley Group of Go Brent Realty knows this town center block by block. Get your free home valuation and let's talk about what's next.
