Wilde Lake Village Center’s long-awaited redevelopment moves incrementally forward Dec. 19 when the property’s owner unveils architectural plans for new residential buildings to the village board at a 7 p.m. public meeting at Slayton House.

Giant Food, the center’s anchor supermarket, closed in 2006. Since then, other merchants have shuttered shops and overall business has declined, said Trevor Gardner, manager of Today’s Catch, a seafood store in business for 30 years at Wilde Lake.

“New redevelopment will bring life back into the center,” he said.

Kimco Realty Corporation, which owns the 40-plus-year-old retail hub for Wilde Lake Village, would not return inquiries about redevelopment plans.

However, both Village Board Village Chairman Bill Santos and Village Manager Kristin Shulder confirmed that Kimco representatives would present detailed plans for proposed new housing in a future redeveloped village center.

“They’ll come, the village board will ask questions and then the plans will be displayed in Slayton House for three weeks,” Shulder said. “We encourage residents to view them and comment.”

While all of Columbia’s 10 villages have architectural committees, which enforce village covenants for individual houses’ exterior design and color, only Wilde Lake has guidelines for “non-residential or commercial” development, Shulder explained. She said the additional guidelines were adopted about three years ago because down the road, “we knew there would be changes at the village center.”

To date, Santos said Wilde Lake’s Architectural Committee has approved Kimco’s site plan, or basic footprint, for the proposed residential development. He said Kimco was also working on a petition to the Howard County Department of Planning and Zoning, because the village center is not zoned for residential development.

Kimco’s proposed plans for a revamped Wilde Lake Village Center include two new residential buildings with as many as 250 apartments and parking underneath.

The company is also considering a drug store, a bank and a small food store with offices on the second story. The former Giant store would be torn down to open up one end of the courtyard and to extend one entrance from Twin Rivers Road through the center to Cross Fox Lane.