Making way for a new 3,293-square-foot Chase Bank, demolition of the former Pizza Hut building at the corner of Old Landing Road and Route 1 has begun. A crew got to work April 3.
Pizza Hut closed its doors in September 2020. The Sussex County Planning & Zoning Commission approved a site plan for the new bank in October.
Chase Bank is the nation's largest and has nine branches in New Castle County. This would be the first in Sussex County. J.P. Morgan Chase officials announced in 2019 a plan to open 10 to 12 new branches in Delaware.
The visible corner lot is located next to what used to be a Capital Bank, which closed in May 2020, and is part of the Rehoboth Mall development, which is owned by Baltimore-based Cordish Companies. According to a company website with mall leasing information, the mall area is a total of 259,000 square feet and has an average daily traffic count of 73,000 vehicles. The website says there are nearly 80,000 people within a 10-mile radius of the mall.
The new bank is the second redevelopment project taking place in the shopping center. On the opposite side, the former Peebles is being converted into a Grocery Outlet. There are no other Grocery Outlets in Delaware. There are two on Maryland’s Eastern Shore – Salisbury and Elkton.