College Park’s Applebee’s has shut its doors, a victim of changing millennial tastes in restaurants and looming redevelopment along Route 1.

A sign recently went up saying the chain restaurant was now closed and promoting its location in Laurel, also on Baltimore Avenue.

College Park Planning Director Terry Schum told the Hyattsville Wire that the city was surprised by the closure. Applebee’s still had about a year on its lease on the building, which was slated to be part of a second phase of a $140 million redevelopment project on the former sites of Quality Inn, Plato’s Diner and a FedEx Kinko’s nearby.

Designs for that project have already been approved, so developers would either have to restart the permitting process or hold off on the portion that involves the Applebee’s site.

“We’re really curious about what’s going on,” Schum said.

Applebee’s has also shuttered restaurants across the country in recent years. The fast-casual dining chain has attempted to rebrand itself in recent years to attract a younger demographic with dishes like chicken wonton tacos. But sales have been down among millennials with more discriminating palates.

That’s especially rough in College Park, where a large part of the customer base is students at the University of Maryland and their parents.

But while fewer people are eating at Applebee’s, College Park’s dining scene has grown more diverse, even among fast-casual chains.

Among local chain restaurants, there’s the newly opened Mediterranean cuisine at Cava, Persian cuisine at Moby Dick, Hawaiian poke at Poki District, Vietnamese fusion at The Red Boat, Korean streetfare at SeoulSpice and authentic Mexican tacos at the upcoming Taqueria Habanero.

And that’s not to mention Nando’s, a South African chain; Taiwanese bubble tea chain Gong Cha and the recently opened pan-Asian Ten Asian Food Hall.