Bennies, Walross owner accuses the crime in Mall in Columbia for closings

In March the restaurateur Desmond Reilly Chicken + Whiskey in the shopping center in Columbia, but promised that his two other county restaurants would not go anywhere.

They closed next month.

Bennies Pizza, a newcomer in the shopping center, which a menu issued by a Michelin star Gerald Addison and the Walross Oyster & Ale House, a seven-year-old veteran who recently tried to revive the business with a new, French menu with a new, French menu.

For Reilly, who claims that both the shopping center and the failure of Howard County to tackle an increase in crime, ultimately forced his hand.

“Now that I am completely away from Columbia, I can be honest … The shopping center in Columbia has become another world,” said Reilly, a resident of Howard County. “It was not the world for which we registered, or a world in which we could make money.”

Reilly, head of the SRG Concept Restaurant Group in Washington, DC, says that the shopping center has changed “dramatically” in recent years. He claimed that from March 2023 he found more fighting between young people before Bennies. People were afraid to go to the restaurants of the shopping center and added that the cover or customers in his shop in Walrorus Oyster & Ale House had dropped by 25%this year.

The decline was allegedly continued by a further 20%by 2024, and until 2025 Reilly said that the number of customers who had served in the Walrus had fallen by cumulative 60%.

A public portal persecution crime in the city center of Columbia, which includes the shopping center, shows no crime that constantly tends up or down. In 2023, the number of reports reported in March reached the lowest point and a highlight in April to give the same timeline that Reilly claims to notice the crime in the shopping center. In 2024, the crimes met a zenith in June when there were 23 reported crimes and seven reported attacks in the region. In July this year there was a murder in the Food Court bathroom, where 17-year-old Angelo Little was fatally shot.

Reilly remembers the shootout well, but claims that the shopping center had done little to encourage anxious customers to return to the area. “It became clear that people in Howard County do not feel safe in the shopping center,” he said, adding that he was discouraged by the lack of effort from the shopping center to pass it on to return to restaurants.

He was also discouraged by the lack of a town hall or other communication through the management of the district to tackle youth crimes and encourage people to patronize local companies. This “silence” continued in the bus loop of the shopping center after the latest fatal double shots by 16-year-old Michael Robertson and Blake McCray in February 2025.

Lindsay Kahn, a spokeswoman for Brooksfield Property Management, that the landlord of the shopping center, including Reilly's restaurants, said that it was unhappy and misleading to accuse the crime and inactivity of the shopping center for the closures, especially after a few months of negotiations between the groups, to determine a way to the restaurants.

“We always maintained a robust and comprehensive security program that is visible to the public and behind the scenes,” said Kahn.

Safa Hira, communications director at Howard County Government, said her team is working with several companies to clear out security concerns, but have no records of a complaint.

Hira added that a full -time, constant unit of officers was recently stationed in an area in which the Merriweather district, the Columbia Lakefront and the shopping center in Columbia belonged. A satellite office will come to the shopping center in the coming months, she said, and an additional beat has been set up for 24-hour patrol.

Since the plan was adopted, no reports on weapon crimes or shooting incidents have been reported in the region.

Lori Boone, a spokeswoman for the Howard County Police Department, said that the new beat was an operational decision that the police were made and was not initiated due to inquiries from the purchasing center or other company.

Reilly says that his business suffered more than most of the people of the crime in the Mall in Columbia because he and his other two partners, in contrast to the cheesecake factory or other franchise company, had to preserve the legal template independently from month to month. It was what the shopping center initially liked to do SRG concepts, he said: They recruited it to the shopping center because the group promised new, innovative concepts of a local company instead of a national chain.

“We found it flattering to be the little guy,” he said.

Reilly's concepts seemed to flourish outside of Columbia, including a branch in Walross in the national port and a chicken + whiskey in the 14th Street Northwest in DC

And while the crime was also a problem in the DC location of Chicken + Whiskey, Reilly says that the audience is not so deterred.

“If you are in a city with 700,000 people, there is an acceptable tolerance that people have [for crime]”, He said.” But in Howard County the tolerance for this crime is zero. … It is very different in the suburbs that claim security. “

After Little's death, Reilly said that he had sent Brookfield real estate for further information and wanted further measures to take signal crime seriously. However, the answers were limited and centered on the status updates of the police investigation, he claimed.

“Our landlord and the local guides wanted to sweep everything under the carpet,” he said. “You identify yourself as a city center, as the Nexus point of the community. So why are there no community messages?”

Reilly rejected it to show the Banner these messages and said that despite his concerns, he did not turn to the district leadership of tackling crimes because he wanted to keep politics away from his restaurants.

Some of his concerns repeated two other business owners in the shopping center in Columbia, who refused to annoy their landlord.

An employee of a restaurant who is an independent operation like Reilly said that the crime has made it more difficult to lure the shopping center a “wealthier” audience. Another restaurant owner in shopping centers said that customers are growing more and more fear of the shopping center and were not made enough. He added that even the outcome lock at 6 p.m., which was added to combat violence in youthful violence, interrupted some of his customers in the evening. He said his restaurant would not extend their rental contract with the development.

Chad Gauß, who has the food market in Columbia and the vacation that is exposed to the shopping center, said, although he saw a little slump in the guests, he wrote it to the “additional over 500 places that were added to the Merriweather district.

He added that there were individual problems from time to time in the Columbia Mall, but we find it extremely safe in the area “and called it a” funny, family -friendly market “.

However, concerns about the crime of young people are not new. In 2014, a mass shooting in the shopping center triggered the security of customers by customers. Reilly admitted that he did not consider Columbia as an isolated case, but as a symptom of a larger “American problem”.

While Bennie's was not long enough to evaluate whether the crime caused his downfall, he was still confident that the crime for closing the Walross was responsible, even though the restaurant sounds during his tenure.

Reilly said he would spend the coming months to look for jobs for the 81 people who have been released by his restaurants in the past two months. He remains skeptical about the measures taken to combat crime and calls the heavy police “in the suburban world” rather a deterrent for customers than for crime.

But he doesn't leave the shopping center with regret. Reilly is of the opinion

“My wife and children eat in the food court, where a boy was murdered in the bathroom,” he said. “Does anyone need more understanding than that?”